Update: The Toronto municipal bureaucracy, however, does keep hope alive with a plan to add bike boxes around five busy intersections, including the terrifying College & Spadina.

2. The New York Times’ ethics columnist goes for a bike ride around New York City and discusses cycling ethics.

3. The 2010 Bikeway Network Improvements pass Toronto City Council, but the high-profile plan for a segregated lane on University Avenue (which I was really looking forward to) fails due to an ostensible voting error by one councillor.

4. An NDP private member’s bill in the Legislative Assembly of Ontario would require drivers to leave 3 feet of space between their vehicles and cyclists; write your MPP.

With winter finally seeming to have been beaten, it’s time to take this blog out of its seasonal (albeit never planned) hibernation.

There’s been a lot of attention paid in the past few weeks to a pilot project that would see the city create a segregated cycling route through centretown on a trial basis. The Sun was the first to report on it on March 15th (though doesn’t have most of the details exactly right and is pretty slanted against), Centretown News followed up on the 26th (their details are right, but they managed to get some names wrong), and the Citizen has something published today. Note all stories talk about different events: the Sun followed the original presentation to the Roads and Cycling Advisory Committee (full disclosure: I’m chair of RCAC. I  write here as an individual), the latter follow Councillor Holmes’ stepping in to propose the creation of a different consultation mechanism.

I think that there’s lots to be optimistic about in this. Given that this will be a bit of a first for Ottawa (at least in the core). My impression, at least based on what RCAC was told, was that the plan was to begin meeting with other community and business groups. What is being proposed here is to make the consultation process more formal. That might slow things down a bit, but I’m not sure that we would have seen any changes this cycling season in any case. It’s more important that we do what is needed to make sure that everyone is comfortable with the process and is able to contribute as much as is possible: it’ll produce a better result, and it will help avoid infighting amongst various road users/business groups/residents.

Now, in The Citizen Holmes’ suggests that downtown was listed as an option, but the cycling plan calls for considerations of larger east-west routes, which is true. I think that the idea of a downtown route for the pilot has more to do with it being an area where there is a good concentration of places to go, local residents, and people commuting in. There’s also already a lot of bicycles. That’s a good mix for a first project, and is probably different than if it were farther from the core.

Doucet, quoted in the CBC:

“I hope to see Ottawa becoming much safer,” Doucet said Wednesday. “We’ll hopefully have an east-west dedicated lane through the centre of the city, which we don’t have now. I mean talk to my staff, who come to work down Gladstone and have to share the lane with a bus — pretty scary.”

Now, I bike down Gladstone all the time and have never really felt unsafe given the volume of traffic. But I also bike 9 months of the year and contribute to a cycling blog, so I’m probably not the best judge of average. A full set of city-wide cycling lanes designed for commuting would certainly be nice, and would probably help to get more people onto bikes. I know I’d certainly appreciate something a bit more dedicated in the downtown core, given that Queen St., and the risk of door prizes and people making blind right turns, represents that most dangerous couple minutes of my day.

These lanes require dedicated funding for cycling projects, which have been something that the city has not always been great about finding. Also, while it doesn’t seem to be in either of the links above, I seem to recall staff mentioning somewhere else that in most of the areas where we’ve seen accidents segregated lanes are not really feasible.

These now go onto full council for further discussion, so emailing your councilor support would be handy.

(link)

It looks like a safe and enjoyable way to get downtown. Let’s hope the trial is successful.

[Via I Bike TO]

A fascinating article appeared on The Infrastructurist this weekend which argues that by removing highways, the cities of Seoul, San Fransico and Portland actually reduced traffic. This seems counterintuitive but according to the Braess Paradox, as more roads are built, each driver tries to optimize their own route resulting in greater congestion. If this still sounds like abstract mathmatics read about it on wikipedia. When this idea is coupled with the induced demand phenomenon or Kevin Costner in Field of Dreams syndrome the effect of additional highway construction because dubious.

Link

One of the councillors in opposition declared this initiative a “war on cars.” While the remark was brushed off by those in favour, in retrospect it actually is and I couldn’t be happier about it. Yes it will make traffic on Jarvis worse for the short term. However it also now makes cycling down the same street a legitamite option for people who previously would have driven the same route.

This is what opponents of cycling initiatives don’t understand. Bike lanes and such aren’t catering to a small minority. All of us at cyclinginottawa.ca and I’m sure many readers will use their bikes regardless. Having a dangerous city to cycle around turns off future cyclists. Every time the city does something to make cycling safer, more people are likely to view it as a legitamite means of commuting/travelling. It is exactly the same as transit, as you make it safer and easier to access, more people will leave their cars behind.

Is it a war on cars? Sure is! A war Ottawa should be fighting as well.

Bike Lanes and Bus Lanes in Dublin

I was in Dublin in early January and was generally impressed by the seeming dedication of Dublin to provide bike lanes around most of the city centre. This stood in stark contrast to Cork which had no bike lanes. However, while good intentions are one thing, practical results are another.

Take a closer look at the photo I took outside of my hostel. The bike lane is intersected by the bus lane wherever the city bus stops. Seeing as this is in the urban core, that is quite frequently. In my 15 minutes waiting for the bus two cyclists were almost hit by the bus as it pulled into what the driver thought was its exclusive lane.

While the attempts by Dublin to have the entire city cycle friendly are admirable, the actual enactment of the policy appears to have been done without ever consulting cyclists themselves. While cycling is a legitamite transportation option, it can’t be treated exactly the same as other options. Cyclists have unique needs and safety issues which need to be considered before painting some lines of a road and declaring the city bike-friendly.

1. Stop at major intersections.
2. Don’t go the wrong way on one-way streets.
3. Stay off sidewalks.
4. Signal before turning

These suggestions strike me as incredibly modest and probably already followed by everyone who reads this blog. In fact, I’m not sure the bad reputation that cyclists have comes from anybody who is serious enough about cycling to read a blog, join an advocacy group, etc. (although Sullivan does criticize the “Lance Armstong types” in his piece for their poor urban etiquette). That being said, it’s good to remember we are all in this together, as far as reputations go – maybe some more casual cyclists will read this the Times and reform their ways.