Back in June, Rob Ford presented his BikePlan, which essentially was just a re-hashing of some earlier concepts by other politicians and I think, originally, by Dave Meslin, including most signficantly, an idea to put separated bikelanes on Richmond and Adelaide Streets.
That plan is one step closer now due to the Public Works and Infrastructure Committee carrying an item at their meeting on Thurs, Nov. 3rd to move ahead with an Environmental Assessment on the feasibility of the separated lanes.
The full text of the item is as follows:
1. City Council authorize the General Manager of Transportation Services to initiate a Municipal Class Environmental Assessment study for separated bicycle lanes within the Richmond-Adelaide corridor, between Bathurst Street and Sherbourne Street, which could include consideration of a pilot project to install and evaluate separated bicycle lanes on the preferred alignment during the course of the study.
2. City Council direct that the Municipal Class Environmental Assessment Study for separated bicycle lanes within the Richmond-Adelaide corridor be limited to existing one-way road configurations.
3. City Council authorize the General Manager of Transportation Services to initiate a second study to develop preferred bikeway route alignments to connect the future Richmond-Adelaide corridor bike lanes to existing bikeways east of the Don Valley, including, but not limited to, Dundas Street East, Eastern Avenue, and the Lake Shore Boulevard East path, as well as to the west of Bathurst Street to connect with bikeways on Strachan Avenue and Shaw Street.
The PWIC Agenda Item on the City’s website has a lot more background information on this as well. I recommend you checking it out if you’re interested.
[Image by Dave Meslin, via the Bike Union]
