{"id":14399,"date":"2010-10-01T16:26:30","date_gmt":"2010-10-01T20:26:30","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/spacingtoronto.ca\/?p=14399"},"modified":"2010-10-01T16:26:42","modified_gmt":"2010-10-01T20:26:42","slug":"so-many-bikes","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/spacing.ca\/toronto\/2010\/10\/01\/so-many-bikes\/","title":{"rendered":"So many bikes"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

I’ve been cycling to my job at the University of Toronto for several years now, and each year there have been a few more bikes parked there. But when I arrived on the first day of classes this year at the beginning of September, the sight was astonishing — there were bikes everywhere, fillling up not only the local ring-and-posts but also every signpost available (there are some locked to the posts for the parking spot numbers in the distance, too). It\u00a0 continued like this all month.<\/p>\n

It’s not just the students, either — I know more and more professors and university staff members who are riding their bikes to work.<\/p>\n

I’ve been observing this trend for the past year in the downtown core during the cycling-friendly months — bikes taking up every possible bike parking space wherever there is a work destination. It’s not just places where you’d expect a lot of people to bike to work (like 215 Spadina<\/a>, where Spacing<\/em>‘s offices are), but around all kinds of office areas downtown. It’s one of the signs that cycling has really taken off as a mode of transportation in the last couple of years.<\/p>\n

It goes to show that the anti-bike rhetoric of some mayoral candidates is missing the boat. Cycling is already ensconced as a basic part of the transportation network in the central part of Toronto. And it’s a direction that many other large cities around Canada and the world are also headed towards, whether it’s Montreal, New York or London. It makes sense not just for health and environmental reasons, but also simply from the standpoint of transportation efficiency — you can carry more people on the same amount of road if you can get lots of them cycling, because bikes take up less space than cars (plus, bike lanes cost less than additional transit).<\/p>\n

For the most part, this has been\u00a0 true in Toronto — the increase in cycling has not detracted from other ways of getting to work, but simply added capacity to existing roads. Usually, bike lanes have been added to streets in Toronto simply by squeezing unneccesarily wide vehicle lanes into narrower ones, not removing them, which does not reduce vehicle capacity (there is possibly a slight reduction in potential speed, but no-one is travelling fast in rush hour anyway), along with in some cases removing a small number of parking spaces.\u00a0 The Jarvis bike lanes, where a lane of motor vehicle traffic was removed to make way for them, were anomalous — but, unfortunately, their media prominence has created an inaccurate impression in some people’s minds of the impact of bike lanes as a whole. The reality is that, in most cases, bike lanes have enabled the same amount of road to carry more people — the same number of vehicles as before, plus bikes as well. If anything, they have helped mitigate\u00a0 increasing congestion by absorbing more capacity as the number of commuters heading downtown increases, expecially during the summer months when Toronto is most susceptible to smog.<\/p>\n

To me, a good example of how to integrate bike lanes into a crowded city is the recently completed Wellesley bike lanes, which I have recently started using to get to work. While most of Wellesley is wide enough for bike lanes, like many city streets it’s erratic. Rather than giving up on the idea, or having ridiculous bits of unconnected bike lane, the Wellesley lane adapts to the street by using sharrows<\/a> to link the sections of lane together where the road is too narrow for a full lane — and also, going east at Bay, to indicate to cyclists to avoid the right-turn lane, where they would get in the way of turning cars. I’ve found that the presence of sharrows is usually enough to get cars to leave enough space for bikes, and also to remind them to look out for bikes and accommodate them. Essentially, bikes have been integrated into the street without significantly interfering with its use by cars (or buses) — increasing its overall capacity.<\/p>\n

As well as bike lanes, though, the sight of bikes spilling over every possible parking spot is a reminder that the City also needs to continually increase the amount of bike parking available in order to absorb the increasing number of cyclists. In addition to ring-and-posts, the requirements in the new zoning bylaw that new buildings have to provide bike parking, and ideas like converting on-street parking spots to bike parking<\/a> where there is demand, are not just nice ideas, but long-term neccessities.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I’ve been cycling to my job at the University of Toronto for several years now, and each year there have been a few more bikes parked there. 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