bike infrastructure

On John Street looking north towards Queen Street

Councillor Vaughan's proposed bike lanes:

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The regular bike lanes would be 1 km on Dan Leckie, 1.4 km on Bremner, and 1.3 km on Blue Jays Way, for a total of 3.7 km.

After months of pondering about the fate of these plans to build a protected multi-use bicycle path and pedestrian promenade along Queens Quay, an article by Hamutal Dotan of the Torontoist finally gave us an update on its status.

It's taken a bit of community pressure from the Bike Union, business and residents associations as well as pressure from above with Chair of Public Works and Infrastructure (PWIC), Councillor Minnan-Wong as a born-again cyclist. Things are looking up for the separated bike lanes aka cycle tracks when they go to PWIC in June. The proposal has support from the left as well as the right. Even though PWIC is packed with some suburban councillors, I'm guessing they are unlikely to try to oppose the Chair's pet project.

http://player.vimeo.com/video/22886687
On first view cycle tracks (separated bike lanes) seem to be just about cyclists, but in New York and elsewhere it's been found to provide great benefits to pedestrians and to street life. They help create islands of refuge for pedestrians crossing wide roads; they provide a barrier between pedestrians and car traffic and they get all ages, young and old onto bikes and other mobility devices (like wheelchairs).

Councillor Vaughan recently sent this note out via Facebook. I've been hammering on Vaughan recently for his opposition to the separated bike lane plan (he's still not clear if he opposes the whole thing or if he just wants to protect his John pedestrianization project). I've known that Vaughan has been relatively supportive of cycling in his ward (though really how can a politician come out as anti-bike downtown?) but I still think he's making a mistake by coming out so strongly against this plan instead of working with the cycling community to come to a compromise.

[Update: I've linked below to the casa map, due to popular demand. Thanks Antony]

Some people (particularly those without cellphones) have been asking for a printable map of BixiTO stations. I've cobbled one together - nothing pretty but functional.