Monday’s headlines

10 comments

1. Pantalone is an incredibly disappointing mayoral candidate. He sure isn’t working to win my vote, and thus far – despite the fact that I identify as a ‘lefty progressive’ – I am extremely unlikely to vote for him. Keith Cole looks better every day by comparison.

2. RE: Bike racks on buses

   So a Sun photographer doesn’t see the bike racks so its a failure?

   I see them in use all the time on the Dufferin line, and much more now on suburban routes.

   I’m not sure why the Sun is complaining; if a bench wasn’t used in a subway station would they complain that it was a waste of money too?

3. My hunch is that the subway rush-hour bike restrictions are a big reason why bus bike racks aren’t very popular. Why take a bike on the bus if you’re stuck locking it at a sketchy subway station?

   A commenter on BlogTO suggested that suburban subway stations with lots of room to spare might offer bike lockups *inside* the fare paid zone.

4. I guess the Sun sells papers by creating anti-TTC headlines based on whatever they can dig up but they always leave out the context. The bike racks are obviously a complex issue — you have to have somewhere to go to on your bike in order to want to use the bus rack, and the bus has to move faster than the bike to even bother. Speed up the buses, the racks will get used. Build bike infrastructure in the suburbs and the core and the racks will get used. Provide bike parking at people’s offices and… you get the idea. It’s all part of a bigger, more complicated machine.

   Even failing proper analysis, the Sun couldn’t even bother to talk about what happens in other cities. According to this article the racks are in use in 400 OTHER CITIES. Four hundred! The Sun seems to ignore transit trends and simply focuses on what an ignorant person who knows nothing about an issue can compute in their brain – “$600 for a rack no one uses? Why, that’s thousands of dollars wasted!”

   I can’t even read their articles anymore. Bush-league.

5. Sorry, here is the link I referenced:

   http://www.seattlepi.com/business/63174_bend21.shtml

6. I don’t see bike racks being used all that much. I think since I first saw them on buses I’ve only seen one bike use the rack.

7. Let’s not forget that cycling season is just starting. Let’s come back to this article in September and see if we still feel they are useless. I’m already starting to see more and more of them being used on a regular basis.

8. Also, I’ve never seen the wheelchair ramp on a low floor bus used before. I think these accessible buses were a waste of money, because no one benefits from them.

9. Is anyone else concerned about the eastern waterfront area sports complex and what sounds like a potential suburban style complex with a lot of surface level parking? We have an opportunity to create a fantastic new district on that we and subsequent generations can be proud of, but unless we’re vigilant, the end result could very well be a series of compromises resulting in an area that’s dull at best.

   Hume says the following in the article “Hockey trumps planning in Toronto”:

   ‘And so, after 10 years of hard work, the city is right back where it started building big box facilities surrounded by acres of surface parking lot on the waterfront.’

   Adam Vaughan is also concerned. If you care about the development of the city, write to Waterfront Toronto and our political leaders and remind them to build the eastern waterfront with the best urban planning principles, not the suburban status quo.

10. Since they were installed I have seen maybe 3 bikes on a rack. I am pro bike but I being honest I would say they are rarely used.