Glaciers melting while we dither on bike lanes

[A big welcome to Hamish, a long time cycling advocate and our new guest blogger.]

One big and valid criticism of Toronto bike lanes is that we have a patchwork, and not a network. This is especially true in the western end of the older city, where a set of situations have kept cycling less safe and robust than it needs to be.

These conditions are: an irregular grid; streetcar tracks on the main streets; a set of restrictions from the Weston rail corridor that slices through the entire area on the diagonal; and political will.

What has resulted is a very large swath of older Toronto that remains extra dangerous, with resulting tragedies and harm to many cyclists, even though it's all inherently bikeable and lots of people still do.

This gap in safety problem has been 'fessed up to in the Bike Plan, though the City has known that there's heavier east-west bike travel demand from the west end for nearly 15 years. Finally, we're getting some trace of movement in slight improvements to this travel - the recent extension to the Harbord St. lane has been great, as was the small 1km of bike lane over the Dundas St. W. bridge.

But issues remain, including the "What next?" after crossing over the railtracks at Dundas/College.

In late October, city staff gave a presentation at the Toronto Cycling Advisory Committee (TCAC) on new measures with sharrows that will soon be done on the wider portions of College St. between Lansdowne and Brock St. as College has extra width there. (This was part of the effort to improve the west end biking, much of which was simply doing the Bike Plan while ignoring what cyclists wanted, for example, safety on the main streets).

The trouble is - that stretch of College is in the Bike Plan as getting bike lanes, and we don't have the political will, it seems, from local Councillor Giambrone, to push the car parking off the street to have bike lanes. As is, though, this stretch of College feels comparatively safe to bike on compared with other parts of College because of that width.

The current TCAC, still stretched thinly from the 2/3 reduction in members imposed by Miller and company, also lacks robust sub-committees to provide a more thoughtful response. Often these presentations seem to pop up on the evening of the meeting, and it's hard to think fast -- and to push back -- where there can be real time constraints, or some occasional negativity from the Chair.

But why are we eroding the Bike Plan without pushing for another four blocks somewhere else - like the missing four blocks of Harbord St. just west of UofT?

Harbord St. is becoming a major biking conduit for many cyclists in all types of weather, but it has a less-safe four block portion from Borden St. to Spadina, (uh, gee, might it have something to do with around 19 parking spots?). But given the hazards, the push for biking, and how even a small portion of discontinuity affects safety, we should not allow the Bike Plan to be casually negated in one area just because it's a bit inconvenient , without getting something back.

The exact mechanism for ensuring balance is a challenge. A downgrading in the west end needs to be balanced with an upgrade in a clearly missing link, but TCAC is unable to function well enough to provide this balance. Quorum was lost at the tail end of the October meeting, and there have been some internal frustrations with how it seems that member opinions and desires aren't really heeded (not that this is a new problem).

But with the setting back of the amount of bike lane being installed this year, members should guard their turf. If the past trimming of the committee due to lack of progress was an indication, the next round of the Committee could be even sparser, with only one member for each district!

Relying on the Toronto Cyclists Union to champion a cause also seems unrealistic and ill-advised. The push to install bike lanes on Jarvis St., a short distance away from rough-riding Sherbourne St. still seems curious given the overall east-west travel demand and the lack of safe east-west routes.

Perhaps the key may be to work locally, and we are lucky that the new head of that Harbord area Residents' Association along with his wife are cyclists. He has noted the caramped conditions of the cyclists using Harbord St.

It would be nice to have some upgrade for cyclists in this looming election year somewhere!!

To reclaim a line, the glaciers are melting faster than we're providing for bike safety.