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Toronto Meeting on Bloor St. Bike Lane

Old 02-19-07, 03:52 PM
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Toronto Meeting on Bloor St. Bike Lane

For all Toronto cyclists:

Councillor Adam Giambrone will be in attendance at Bloor Collegiate (Bloor, west of Duferin near Pauline) at 7pm to meet with residents to discuss the Bloor bike lane proposal. The people at Take the Tooker have advised me of the meeting and I thought it wouldn't hurt to have more voices there to advocate for this ideal east-west corridor. Come on out!
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Old 02-19-07, 08:49 PM
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I hope it wont be next to a parking lane.
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Old 02-20-07, 09:53 AM
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Bah! What night is it? Last night or tonight? I happen to be in t.o. this week.
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Old 02-20-07, 10:40 AM
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Just what we need.

A bike lane on Bloor St. West. What a waste of time and money.
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Old 02-20-07, 05:29 PM
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I tend to agree with you JIT5 - I ride on Bloor all the time and I don;t think it is a good candidate for a bike lane (particularly between lansdowne and Avenue) but it may be worthwhile in bloor west, and there already is a stripe across the bridge.

But I would like to see the suggestions and make my comments somewhere where interested people are congregated.

IMHO the best way to make the tooker a reality is to get more people riding along bloor - I find it quite pleasant from maybe ossington all the way to parliament already - but I have had a lot of stress in bloor west, some of which might be improved by a bike lane, or perhaps an increased number of cyclists.
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Old 02-20-07, 07:06 PM
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Originally Posted by jit5
Just what we need.

A bike lane on Bloor St. West. What a waste of time and money.
Why do you feel this way? Not being from Toronto, I know nothing about Bloor St.
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Old 02-20-07, 09:04 PM
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Originally Posted by rajman
I tend to agree with you JIT5 - I ride on Bloor all the time and I don;t think it is a good candidate for a bike lane (particularly between lansdowne and Avenue) but it may be worthwhile in bloor west, and there already is a stripe across the bridge.

But I would like to see the suggestions and make my comments somewhere where interested people are congregated.

IMHO the best way to make the tooker a reality is to get more people riding along bloor - I find it quite pleasant from maybe ossington all the way to parliament already - but I have had a lot of stress in bloor west, some of which might be improved by a bike lane, or perhaps an increased number of cyclists.
There are much better east/west thoroughfares that are better suited to a bike lane.
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Old 02-21-07, 11:23 AM
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Originally Posted by jit5
There are much better east/west thoroughfares that are better suited to a bike lane.
Has there been any progress on opening up the CP ROW that runs along dupont? Properly done - that could be awesome!

As for streets - I'm not sure which ones would be as comprehensive as Bloor in terms of length and directness. I'm against removing the on-street parking though (at least between say Lansdowne and Spadina). That definitely generates a lot of free traffic calming, for cars and bikes.

Which thoroughfare would you suggest?
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Old 02-21-07, 02:36 PM
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Originally Posted by rajman
Has there been any progress on opening up the CP ROW that runs along dupont? Properly done - that could be awesome!

As for streets - I'm not sure which ones would be as comprehensive as Bloor in terms of length and directness. I'm against removing the on-street parking though (at least between say Lansdowne and Spadina). That definitely generates a lot of free traffic calming, for cars and bikes.

Which thoroughfare would you suggest?
If there was a continuous bike lane running along the CP tracks that would be so amazing... You could bike directly to the zoo with no traffic! Imagine! What a great day...

As far as east west thoroughfares, toronto sucks for them. Theres bad sections on all of them... The most viable ones have parking and street car tracks, and theres little to no chance of getting rid of either of these for the benefits of cyclists. Queen, Dundas and College+Gerrard would be good if it weren't for parking and street car tracks... Dupont and Davenport are too short... St. Clair is really the only viable way to cross between Etobicoke and Scarborough but it has a gap over the don which is annoying to navigate. Then you have Eglinton which would be great but people use it like a mini 401 so it can be quite unnerving.

Going north and south we are freaking set though.
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Old 02-21-07, 05:56 PM
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Originally Posted by rajman
Bah! What night is it? Last night or tonight? I happen to be in t.o. this week.
Sorry, the meeting is Wednesday night. Starting right now in fact.
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Old 02-21-07, 06:10 PM
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Originally Posted by jit5
Just what we need.

A bike lane on Bloor St. West. What a waste of time and money.
I don't understand why you'd say this. I am a habitue of the Dovercourt & Bloor area and I see many many cyclists, even in winter. Bloor St. and Danforth Ave. have greater cycling traffic than Harbord that has a bicycle lane (and during the summer, that is a busy route) I've ridden from Victoria Park & Danforth to Islington & Bloor many times as well and can't think of one area where a bike lane would not have been a good idea. The stretch between Bathurst to Christie is the worst section I know of being doored and the section between Bathurst & Spadina is the worst for pedestrians stepping out between cars.

The reason it is the best choice is because it is long, flat and runs adjacent to the subway line. Plenty of parking exists north and south of Bloor St. as well as Danforth Ave. If you can think of a better east-west route, I'd like to know what it is. Combined with the recent announcement that Toronto needs to actively disourage downtown car use by reducing the number of parking spaces (among other initiatives), the Bloor/Danforth line is perfect. It would encourage those that won't ride to take the subway.
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Old 02-22-07, 09:16 AM
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Darn it - I missed the meeting.

I don't agree with most of the posts here - bloor works quite well as an east west corridor. The main drawback is that it's not that fast - due to the lights and traffic. I ride bloor street regularly, as do a lot of commuters.

The other thing to keep in mind is that for a long stretch Bloor St is quite narrow - bike lanes could only be put in by taking out parking on one side or the other - I think you would find that a bloor st bike lane would be deeply disfunctional due people parking cars in the lane - kind of like the college lanes but worse.

I think that if you want to 'take the tooker' just go ahead and enjoy the ride - bloor danforth is already a bike thoroughfare - just count the bikes at rush hour.

Bloor as a street is mainly a pedestrian street - the subway dumps huge numbers of pedestrians every few blocks or so - and a lot of people live in the area. Cars and bikes are secondary to the pedestrian nature of the street - and trucks making deliveries are essential to the commercial life of the street. I would be against any proposal that made it harder to jaywalk across bloor, or increased the speed of traffic on it (the rush hour parking ban is a reasonable compromise IMHO).

Compare bloor to yonge- the lack of parking on yonge greatly increases the speed on the street - I would like to see parking on yonge street.

FWIW I think where bloor is wider I could see putting in a bike lane might be useful - but the street could probably just be fixed by narrowing it, as they are considering with college.

It would be nice however, to put up signs saying 'Tooker Expressway' along bloor - and promoting it as a bike route. While I'm not lonely riding on bloor - I'd love to see more bikes
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Old 02-22-07, 09:21 AM
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You are right about bloor being hairy at times EM - but I think that is because we should see bloor street as more of an open air shopping mall/playground than a transportation corridor. The real transportation along bloor is underground (the subway carries hundreds or thousands of times more people than the surface street does). I don't expect to be able to ride at 30 km/h through the eaton centre and I don't expect to be able to ride at 30 km/h on bloor (at least for any length of time) - that's just the nature of the beast.

By the way - I ride through the dufferin to spadina zone all the time - and I love it.
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Old 02-23-07, 01:30 AM
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Paint stripe, a waste of money. Bike lane on bloor can't hurt. No bike lane om bloor, a world of hurt.
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Old 02-26-07, 06:21 PM
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The few times I've ridden downtown, I've found that the streets with two lanes each way that incorporate on-street parking are the easiest. I take the left side of the right lane and I'm out of the door zone, while the cars have to change lanes anyway because the lane (with parked cars) isn't wide enough for them.

The flow of traffic is generally slow enough for me to keep up anyway.

I don't see how a dedicated bike lane helps matters here.

I do see the need for a bike lane across the viaduct (isn't there one already?) , and probably over the Humber because the speeds pick up quite a bit there.
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Old 02-27-07, 08:52 AM
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Originally Posted by rajman
I don't expect to be able to ride at 30 km/h through the eaton centre and I don't expect to be able to ride at 30 km/h on bloor
Sorry, missed this post earlier. What speed DO you expect to be able to ride through the Eaton Centre at?
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Old 02-27-07, 09:06 AM
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Originally Posted by ghettocruiser
Sorry, missed this post earlier. What speed DO you expect to be able to ride through the Eaton Centre at?
Resonably?....about 10-15kph...
I'm actually in agreement with JIT...Bloor is just fine the way it is. Another bike lane snaking in between traffic and parked cars is useless.
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