In late 2012, the City of Toronto announced the completion of its first separated bike lanes (cycle tracks) on Sherbourne Street. By physically separating cyclists from motor vehicle traffic, cycle tracks are a key way to increase safety, de-stress cycling, boost ridership and reduce conflicts between road users in Toronto. Cycle Toronto conducted an on-line [...]
Website rates Canadian cities on bike-ability [CBC News] Researchers at UBC and Simon Fraser University have come up with a way to rate how good major Canadian cities are for cycling. Modelled on a site called Walk-Score, researchers tallied up three factors: topography, bike accessibility to shops and the number of bike lanes. The results are [...]
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 [...]
Here is information straight from the latest issue of Cyclometer that runs down the essentials of the Rob Ford Bike Plan. There’s already hubbub about it because although it plans for separated bikelanes downtown, it also takes OUT bikelanes in Scarborough (on Pharmacy and Birchmount) – arguably an area that needs safe biking infrastructure way [...]
The “new” Toronto BikePlan has been revealed (PDF link) and it is what is expected. There is a good write-up about it on the CBC website, but here are the highlights (and lowlights): Downtown Focus Physically Separate Bikelanes on Bloor between Sherbourne & Broadview (2011) Possible Physically Separate Bikelanes on Sherbourne & Wellesley (2012) Studying [...]
Way back in 2006 Toronto saw a test-run of a cyclist and pedestrian-friendly Queens Quay… a re-imagination of the street that closed the eastbound lanes to cars and turned them over to pedestrians and cyclists and landscaping. It was an amazing 10 days when the street was like this … fully physically separate bikelanes along [...]
The headline for this Toronto Star article is about opposition to road tolls to pay for Mayor Ford’s enormous (and unfunded) subway plans, but if you read past the first few paragraphs, you’ll see that in a telephone poll (PDF) conducted by Forum Research found that a “whopping” 72% of those surveyed support the rumoured [...]
The National Post has an interesting article about Seinfeld-esque Bizarro World that is forming around the issue of separated bikelanes in Toronto. Denzil Minnan-Wong, head of the Public Works and Infrastructure Committee, is pushing a plan of 4 streets in downtown Toronto having physically-separate bikelanes to ensure safety for cyclists (which includes novice and tourist [...]
There’s a possibility that separated bikelanes are coming to Bloor St. in the Annex. The Annex Residents Association is looking at ways to make Bloor Street between Avenue Road and Bathurst safer for cyclists, recognizing that not only do cyclists have a right to safe travel, but: People cycle for the same reasons they walk, [...]
Waterfront Toronto has just released plans for the new “people-friendly” Queens Quay that we got a taste of back in 2006 with “Quay to the City” (photos at the end of this post). This of course includes the “connection” of the east and west portions of the Martin-Goodman Trail with a physically seperate two-way cycling [...]
Last summer, the temporary installation of Quay to the City on Queens Quay felt (to me anyways) like a small “tipping point” in Toronto’s way to being a truly bike-friendly city. Cyclists loved it, pedestrians loved it. Drivers may not have liked losing half of the street, but having what I like to call “intermodal [...]
Through a bit of investigative work on my part (searching Flickr), I have found some great photos from PeterHud of the Quay to the City installation running from today to August 20th, as a trail run for a more permanent installation next summer. The first 3 photos are of the new grassed-over and people-friendly south [...]
