bike lanes

Since the Eglinton LRT is back from the dead, it looks like the bike lanes planned in the EA may also be back!

There is a public meeting Monday, March 19th at 6:30PM in the Northern District Public Library, 2nd floor meeting room, 40 Orchard View Blvd. (Just north of Yonge & Eglinton)

Goals: Identify opportunities for cycling advocacy created by the LRT, learn about planning initiatives under way, and set cyclist strategy.

I feel like I should explain (while also being a bit pugilistic, fighting the good fight). Being a volunteer blogger I have to rely on the goodwill of others who have gathered information for me, or who are actively involved in the issue and are willing to share with me what's going on. I think it's better to get the information out there while couching it in terms like "likely" and "maybe" rather than keep it locked up.

Councillor Kristyn Wong-Tam sent a February 7 letter (pdf) to Transportation Services cycling manager Dan Egan requesting that the Sherbourne separated bike lane be made into a "pilot" saying there needed to be further "consultation". Surprisingly she sent this letter during the consultation period which ended February 17 and she didn't copy Councillor Pam McConnell whose ward shares Sherbourne.

NOW featured a letter by the daughter of the man hit and killed by a cyclist on the sidewalk this month. She felt people were quick to blame cyclists when in fact her own father loved cycling but found it hard to bike in the suburbs:

Ride The City is simplifying the way their cycling maps are updated by moving all the cycling route information to the Open Street Map (OSM) site, a world-wide crowd-sourced map that is edited by tens of thousands. Ride the City is already using OSM for the basic map (and for mapping the cycling routes in some cities) and now would like to move cities like Toronto to OSM to provide more flexibility to people to edit the routing themselves.

Why kill the Jarvis bike lanes and at the same time claim to be building a bikeway network?

Everyone with half a brain and who was honest enough to the traffic experts knows that Jarvis works with bike lanes. Car traffic volumes were the same before and after. Logically, putting back the fifth lane wouldn't change car traffic volumes either. With bottlenecks at the top and bottom of Jarvis, it doesn't matter how many lanes you install in between, only so many cars can squeeze through the pinch point during any period of time.