Bikes on Bloor anyone?
The City of Toronto is embarking on an exciting study to develop a planning vision for the future development of Bloor Street West, between Avenue Road and Bathurst Street. You are invited to the initial meeting with City staff and its consultant team to help launch the study and provide valuable community input into the process.
Date: Wednesday, May 9, 2007 Time: 6:00 p.m. – 9:00 p.m.
Location: Walmer Road Baptist Church, Upper Gym 188 Lowther Avenue
This information meeting will provide an opportunity for the community to view a presentation introducing the study, its goals and objectives. Attendees will then be able to ask questions and offer feedback through discussion and interactive exercises. This is the first in a series of public forums scheduled over the next several months.
For further background information, study progress and updates including future meeting notices, please check in often on the project website.
If you would like further information about this study, please contact: Barry Brooks, Senior Planner, City of Toronto, 416-392-1316, bbrooks@toronto.ca
Note that this is just west of the Bloor-Yorkville Bloor Street Transformation project, which, so far, to my knowledge does not include bike lanes in its redesign plans. Previous post here.
photo by Andrejz W on Flickr
12 comments
Given that, west of Spadina, this is one of the most successful strips in Toronto, any plan for its “future development” makes me anxious. It already seems pretty much ideal, so I hope future changes to the Spadina-to-Bathurst strip will stick to the basic template that is currently in place.
Totally illegal Coors Light sign on the Brunny, which is listed historical.
Landscape design REALLY REALLY needs to be incorporated into the street design. Like most of Toronto, Bloor Street is gray, concrete and sterile.
We need to have more trees along the sidewalks, and — very importantly — shrubs or greenery around the trees — so that they are green all year round. There should also be planters and boxes for flowers incorporated into the design.
I am sick and tired of walking around the concrete jungle we call our city!!!!! It is depressing and ugly.
When are we going to see a plan to develop Yonge Street south of Bloor? That’s a really dismal, decrepit part of town too.
It also happens to be the centre of our city, yet we seem ok with allowing it to stay in this state of decay.
Thanks for the plug Tammy.
While it was a hot sticky night, the place was packed and it seems bikes and biking on Bloor have become an “issue” within the study and the community, which is quite wonderful, given that there were only four TTTers out of maybe 60 to 80 people.
Of particular note is that within the City’s Bloor St. Improvement Plan of 1997 (Spadina to Bathurst) there was a call for bike lanes on the street, the earliest reference I’m thus far aware of. This study, and the bike-car crash data further solidify the liability of the city for not providing safer passage for bikes, moreso as there is “absolutely exceptional” transit in this area and distributed off-street parking too as one consultant, J. Keesmat pointed out.
Councillor Vaughan was a bit later in biking to the meeting, and was aware of the cycling concerns and also of putting pedestrians first as “absolute highest priority”, raised after one more senior woman vexed about being hit by a bike while walking. He cautioned against too simplistic an approach eg. just paint the damned line already a decade later! as it apparently disses those who don’t share the same views as biketypes, and there may be other ways of improving bike safety (I’m paraphrasing).
I did have a paper copy of a longer letter plus to AV about a few cycling improvements in Ward 20 that I’d hoped to give to you Tammy; perhaps you could let me know what’s the best way of getting it to you please?
But with the apparent interest and support of a lot of people in the Bloor area of Giambrone, the missing link may be more in Pantalonia now, though I worry about the BYBIA segement too yet I’ve not been chasing Mr. Rae about details.
I agree with Jonathan about the unfortunate lack of landscape design on Bloor Street (and all over the city). Landscape design should be incorporated into the design of buildings and streets. Look at any great city in the world and this has been done. Toronto’s streets and public spaces are barren, sterile and neglected.
So… plant more trees, plant shrubs that stay green year round (shrubs surrounding the trees, encircling buildings etc), put planters at entrances to buildings. Also create more attractive lighting along the streets so that walking around Toronto becomes a pleasant experience.
It would be so wonderful to be able to walk along Bloor from Bathurst to Church and be delighted by the shops, architecture, and landscaping.
Currently, the walk along Bloor (as well as most of the city) is a pretty depressing experience. It’s an ugly, neglected, decaying street.
We need to raise the standards and our expectations for the quality of design and landscaping on our streets. Toronto is one of the most unattractive cities of its size and stature anywhere in North America. We really shouldn’t put up with such low standards any more.
For the record, I really like Yonge south of Bloor. I don’t know who this other Jonathan is.
I don’t see the huge issue with Bloor from Spadina to Bathurst…but ok. I think its from Bloor from Bathurst to Christie that needs a good clean up the most sometimes, its so sterile.
On the subject of Yonge south of Bloor: I love it, one of my favourite strips…I would deffinitely not use the word “decay” to describe it. Unless of course anything not yet completely gentrified is “decay”.
Well I am not ok with having discount stores, porn shops, cheap fast food joints, neglected sidewalks, crumbling store fronts and no trees or green spaces all along Yonge Street — this is the centre of our city. It looks like the main drag of some small third-rate town, not the main street of Canada’s financial and cultural capital!!!!!
Do you see the main street of any world class city that look like ours? Ask people visiting from cities that have much higher urban design standards than Toronto (ie Paris, New York, London, Rome, Boston etc etc) what they think of downtown Toronto in general and Yonge Street in particular.
Maybe to someone coming from a small Canadian or American town, or someone from the suburbs, Yonge Street might seem “edgy” and “cool”, but if you’re actually somewhat knowledgeable about well-designed cities, and have gotten used to these standards, Toronto’s lack of sophistication and level of mediocrity is pretty hard to stomach.
We don’t have much of a design culture in this city to keep architects and urban designers on their toes and we’ve gotten used to such mediocre standards of architecture and urban design that we don’t even realize how ugly and bland things are in this city.
Please do yourself a favour and go live for a few years in a really great city and then come back to Toronto and look at the city again with fresh eyes. You will then be able to see how far behind Toronto lags and how unfortunate it is that we don’t set our standards higher.
Well said!!!! I really wish there were more people in Toronto who think like you!!
I slso wish our journalists would do a better job of educating the public on this subject and that Torontonians would have greater exposure to urban design and architectural ideas from other cities, so that we could learn from them and raise our standards of what is acceptable for our city. We have a culture of polite mediocrity in Toronto.
I agree that the lack of green space on our city streets is really awful. Most streets are concrete, sterile and barren — ESPECIALLY IN WINTER.
Why can’t a law be passed enforcing builders to incorporate landscape design on the outside of buildings and roofs of buildings?
For instance, condos could be surrounded with a row of shrubs contained by a wrought iron fence for instance, have planters at the entrance, and green space (ie shrubs and plants) around sidewalk trees. The builders would have to pay to design this and the maintenance costs would be born by the condo dwellers . These costs would be minimal when divided up among all the condo dwellers in a building.
This would make a RADICAL change in the way our streets looks and it would be fairly easy to implement.
So let’s do something like this already!!!
The city should seriously consider bike lanes on Bloor Street. It would require removing a lot of the parking, but this is not needed anyway because of the subway. By removing one of the two lanes of parking, a two-way bike lane could be created along one side of the street, separated from the car lanes by a concrete barrier.
It’s a year after this post was written. Thankfully, it looks like the Bloor Street transformation project is actually going ahead, but it is unacceptable that the transformation actually STOPS at Avenue Road and will not continue along in front of the ROM. What boneheads made this idiotic decision??? The ROM is the jewel on this street, and it needs to be showcased along a beautifully designed street.
Yonge Street south of Bloor however is still a depressing, hideously cheap and ugly part of the city, with no plans to change. Our small-town, small minded, unsophisticated, loser politicians are simply incapable of doing much to improve this part of town (and most of the city for that matter).
Why can’t the types of boutiques and shops that run along Yonge Street north of Bloor be actively approached to set up shop south of Bloor. Think how fabulous the centre of Toronto could be with Canadian designers, small spas, organic butchers, fitness clubs, Canadian jewlery stores, beautiful restaurants etc placed along a well designed Yonge Street that has trees and beautiful lighting running along it.
It would be a place Torontonians could be proud of and visitors would flock to. Instead it is a sad, cheap, ugly embarrasment to the city. A real reflection of the mediocre aspirations of this city that DOESN’T work!