Downtown separated bike lanes plan: Minnan-Wong makes it his own

It fits perfectly with the first grid of Bixi bikes. Excellent. Now if only the city can get this implemented before the share rolls out.

Good news. But are we sure it makes sense to do this all at once? Why not install separated lanes on Richmond and Simcoe as a pilot and see how it works before converting existing lanes that already work pretty well?

In particular, if they're just going to install a curb around the existing oneway lanes on Wellesley, how do I pull out to pass another cyclist?

Not looking a gift horse in the mouth here. If Minnan-Wong can make good politics out of this and sell it through City Council, then more power to him.

Feast or famine! Not the best growth strategy.

Minnan-Wong acknowledges the source of these ideas in the first and largest article on the subject.

Sorry, that makes it seem like some of the points in your piece look like sour grapes.

By "the like of" Minnan-Wong, should we mistrust Asians or did you mean a different group?

BTW Herb, I adore your approach in this article, at least it is not terribly destructive.

I got an email from my neighbourhood association that included a note from Councillor Vaugn.

Apparently he will oppose this plan, he claims that in interferes with work already in progress.

Herb by that I mean that taking credit for the idea is a much more sane tactic that trying to quash it altogether as Vaughn has selected as his course of action.

Great to see that the City is starting to accept the need for separated lanes. Building a curb is one way to do it, another may be to raise/elevate the bike lane as if it were a sidewalk as they have in Denmark and now Guelph (something like this is quasi-happening on Roncy too). Nice to see Alan and the TCU get some recognition for this!

I'm less enthused about this - apart from the possibility of getting something on Richmond, an idea since 1992, in the Bike Plan, and supposedly to have an EA from a Council directive c. 2/3 years ago.
I do wonder how well they will work if one wants to get to the other side, at intersections, and joins with other parts of the network, such as they are (usually aren't), and I think we need more new lanes vs. adapting what we've got, How will they be plowed in winter? Will they be? Prove it by doing a good plowing out of bike lanes and indented parking bays beside them please.
I've been stressing the need to react to travel and accident stats - and we need the east-west a lot more in some places than redoing existing lanes, with some cost.
Getting physically separated lanes could make a huge difference generally, and specifically in the east-west directions from Parkdale to the core on either King or Queen St. in one of the four curb lanes. Those routes are bad, and there aren't really other options.
We also could use some physicial separation on College, especially east of Spadina on the south side, a very high bike riding zone year-round, but also constantly encroached upon.
I'm sure there are politics with this: Mr. Vaughan want's to do a different version of John St. that might close it more to bikes than what the City TV privatization/closures do. I'm not confident of the City to do a great job of planning and installation,(apart from the political meddlings), and I'm wary of the overall judgement of the CU at times.I
think we need a fuller Cycling committee with a specific network subocommittee again prior to fuller support for this - we should be suspicious that we get all excited by a nice plan, praise the Fordists for a good step, but leaving perhaps 99.9% of the rest of the City as a danger zone, and with the financial crisis, oh, gee, we don't have the money to do any of this. What a shame eh?
Should we insist on seeing the Queen's Quay redesign in action first? I've heard it's getting scaled back because of funding issues....
But I'm quite interested in what others are thinking - thanks for sharing comments..

Although I see a benefit in the proposed plan in that it could make cycling in the downtown core less daunting to new cyclists, I'm going to echo many of the above concerns.

1) How will the lanes be plowed? The physical barrier will likely block street cleaning vehicles from accessing the lanes. Will they be usable in winter?

2) Will the proposed lanes be wide enough for cyclists to comfortably pass one another? On existing lanes I often need to merge into motor traffic to pass slower cyclists. Without an extra wide bike lane cycle traffic will likely be restricted to the pace of the slowest cyclist.

3) How are left-hand turns to work? If cyclists can't merge into traffic how are they to make left-turns?

4) How will visibility be maintained at intersections? An article in the Toronto Star suggested that the lanes may be built between parking spaces and the sidewalk, potentially leaving the cyclist invisible to a motorist making a turn onto a side street.

If these issues aren't addressed, this plan has the potential to create a lose-lose situation where cyclists are forced to ride in traffic without the protection of a bike lane on roads with reduced space for motor and cycle traffic. Such a scenario would likely result in a greater backlash against bike lanes among drivers, who would find themselves sharing narrower streets with cyclists despite the presence of a separated bike lane.

The description and map of the network in this blog and attached map is incomplete.
The plan is much more ambitious and extensive in reach.
The plan presented to PWIC on August 18 which Minnan Wong says he supports is :
Two east west:
1. Harbord - Wellesley from Parliament to Ossington;
2. Richmond Street from Bathurst to Parliament.

Two north south:

1. Starting at Prince Arthur on St George Beverley to John Street
   connecting to new bicycle lanes on Simcoe, via the Richmond Street
   bicycle lanes , to the Lake;
   2. Sherbourne Street from Elm Avenue in Rosedale just north of Bloor all
      the way to Queens Quay.

Minnan Wong was quoted in the media last spring saying he supported snow removal for this core network.

NYC does separated bike lanes at least somewhat competently

http://www.streetfilms.org/bike-lanes-in-the-big-apple/

1m is not nearly enough room to have a bike trench with curbs at both sides.

NYC at least does bike lanes where the curbs are at least a 'step up' onto the bike lanes, so there's room for safe evasive action.

I was actually pleased that Harbord west of St. George St. wasn't in that recent map - thinking that some reason had percolated through. I'm not smitten with some aspects of that reworking just finished late this last summer, but hello! west end to the Island and City Wall - this route has just been reworked and repainted, and while not perfect, it's just fresh!! and at least in my view doesn't need any more reworking, considering that the repaving of the west-of-Bathurst curb lanes weren't necessary, and repaving was desperately needed in many other places.
Snow clearance remains a big issue for some of us given that the City is again not doing a good job on its existing network of bike lanes and routes.

You know there are several cities including a number in North America that have implemented these lanes with great success. Maybe some of the doubters here should keep their critical proclamations to the,selves. Some so called cycling advocates act more like poorly trained dogs - they just poop everywhere!

The only person who is pooh-poohing others is the pedaller.

Most of the comments are legitimate questions as there is no reason to assume the city has the techincal ability todo it right.

Montreal provides a good template: as one may expect, there is no single solution. Bollards, curbs, park paths, multi-use streets and Bixi docking stations all have their role in creating bicycle-friendly spaces. Montreal and Copenhagen also clear their bikeways of snow using special equipment, particularly Copenhagen.

What I'd really like to see is a simple, immediate, revenue-generating change: let parking enforcement officers issue tickets to vehicles stopped in bike lanes. This is a simple and fair deterrent; I'm not sure whether it's bylaw officers (not enough) or police (should be enforcing other laws) who handle this now. The fine can be raised in step with a deterrence goal.

One other harder change is an overhaul of our taxi system. The current hail-wherever-stop-wherever is a mêlée for transit and bicycles: let's get taxi ranks like they have in Europe. In tandem with that we need to amend the Highway Traffic Act so that taxis are no longer legally allowed to stop in bike lanes to pick up or drop off a fare (most people probably don't know this is legal, it certainly came as a surprise to me when I found out.)

Shame, $900 million a year and we can't even get our police to write traffic obstruction tickets which would generate income for the city, pay for some salaries and improve traffic flow on our streets.

Though they sure see happy to give us tickets for not having bells... lol.

I was riding slowly on the Wellesley Street sidewalk (being carefull not to run into pedestrians etc), as the snowplow had done a damn good job of piling all the snow and slush into the marked bike lane. As I got to the laneway (just west of Yonge) an all black unmarked police cruiser ( you know one of those stealth jobs) cut me off and forced me to stop. He rolled down his window and said its illegal for you to ride on the sidewalk and I can write you a $60 ticket. I said I'm sorry but the snow in the lane ya know. He said its no excuse as he checks my ID on his computer. I was tempted to tell him about the idling bylaw, but didn't. He gives me back my ID and says ride in the bike lane thats what they are there for. Feeling bold I says to him, I would if there was no snow in the bike lane and there were no vehicles parked in it right over there ( I pointed to the 3 cars and fieretruck pumper parked in the bike lane if front of the Rabba. He says oh they are exempt, I says so am I and rode off one eye on the ice in the lane and the other on my rear-view mirror to see where he went! He drove west on Wellesley and no one got tickets.