A step backwards as City fails to make Union Station at Front Street safer for cyclists

I don't need to read about Chicago, I already know they're mopping the floor with Toronto. Chicago has been a somewhat solid source of urban planning. Look at their highway systems.

The sort of urban planning going on in Toronto is so lowest common denominator. It's not even one step about a dusty wild west town. Sure the politicians make a show of not pandering to private interests, but when it comes down to it build what you want where you want and the muppets will buy it. Be sure to give the finger or throw wrenches into any thought out and unified transit plan so you can increase parking in front of your place by 3 spots. Remember if you don't have to hear about them in the media or they can't cost you an election they don't matter.

Idiots are in charge.

Those cabs are an awful smelly polluting traffic blocking mess. Even with their own lane they'll still clog traffic. Just you wait. City council should have put them in a lot somewhere else instead of encouraging them to end up right in front of your main transit terminal.

Union Station, and the East-West strip in front of it is not meant to be a throughfare. You either go IN or OUT of Union. That's the point. People get dropped off and picked up there by taxis and cars. Why the hell would you have a need to cycle through it?

Bike lanes because you want to go east or west on Front st. on a bicycle or take mass transit to union station and then use a bicycle to get around the downtown.

Further a single lane east and west on Front with people getting in and out of cabs and those cabs entering and exiting traffic flow. Please, somebody cue the slow applause and the sound of all the future doorings/pedestrian accidents.

It's not a very future proof plan.

Toronto. We don't have oil. We are quickly losing manufacturing jobs. If we dom't put in place a progressive infrastructure to attract and retain creative talent (services, software, etc...) which is largely urban and commited to bike transportation, how are we exactly expecting to stay relevant? These Toronto politicians are dinosaurs and a road block to Toronto's productivity and potential as a creative centre for the 21st century.

This approval isn't good news for cyclists, but it's almost worse news for transit, as there was this great Opportunity for a Front St. transitway I was promoting a few years back as an option to the quarter-billion Front St. Extension, now removed, and it involved restoring transit to Front St., and there was also a good plan, called the Downtown Relief Line that involved putting a subway under Front St. and is the reason why the CBC studios are atop their building, to avert vibrations. So relative to a cost of a subway, the $5M of ripping everything up or whatever cost it will be, is minor.

More serious is the constraining of options for ped improvement within the limited terms of Ref of the EA - so that they didn't look at closing off Bay St. for motorised traffic in rush hours from the Lakeshore up to Richmond Adelaide, and letting all the pedestrians just walk on the road.

It's nice to have some company in criticizng the green mayor's bike commitments, and also a note that the core councillors ain't all that pro-bike despite rhetoric, and I now spell blind with a "p" eg. blindp...

A key example is Councillor Vaughan, though not so officially NDP. In the John St. rebuild that was also on the same PWIC agenda, and subject of another post, he claimed in a printed email to other councillors that bike lanes on Peter St. and Simcoe St. were "approved" - but do we actually have Council approval for these bike lanes? I may have missed some things being a bit focussed on Bloor St. and that option, and there's also a distinction between in the Bike Plan approved, Councillor approved, and Council approved.

Prior to any appeal to the Environment Minister for an Individual EA, a faint hope, I'd really like to know if I'm wrong about the Simcoe and Peter St. bike lanes being approved or not, and I guess I can resend the query to Mr. Vaughan and research more myself, but in case any one knows a clear and specific approval/time, it'd be great please.

It kinda looks like the situation is worse for everyone. If there are still going to be two TTC bus routes serving Union, that 'private vehicle and bus' area is going to get crowded. Pedestrian traffic is not just about the area between Union Station and the Royal York and wider sidewalks at the corners don't really address that fact. Front St is, for better or worse, an important conduit for car traffic between University/York and Bay (and also Front) - things are not going flow any more smoothly than they do now, and certainly not for any surface transit that might be added to Front.

What are they thinking!! My friend lives in NY and he is loving how well the city is set up for bikes. He got a lot fitter since he got there and he says it is not dangerous to ride. Why can't Toronto not follow the path of the greates cities on earth?

Digital solutions (often called electronic options or two-way selections) would be the most modern buying and selling fashion. It is extremely simple and efficient, and you can earn a living by buying and selling binary option a lot less complicated than regular buying and selling. It requires a compact original expense and can produce extremely higher returns in a very incredibly short time.

Yes, we need bike lanes in front of Union Station, because when I get off a train from Montreal or any other destination, I with my suitcases will be cycling home. Get a grip you idiots.