Word.

I would flatten some a-hole before I got crushed by a truck that couldn't stop. This is just effing dumb.

you've never actually seen the gardiner expressway, have you?

I have a real nice view, personally. Good for a laugh.

I haven't seen my prostate either.

My wife commutes by motorcycle (that gets 70 MPG) because she has a 40-mile daily round trip. I could imagine some tool stepping out in front of her on a roadway that she “assumed” would be jack@ss free only to have to break hard while a car drives up her @ss, killing her because they want to make a point about cars.

Between fulltime commuting, and racing I ride over 12,000 miles a year. Save your rhetoric for someone who doesn’t go through chains, and sprockets like others go through tubes.

See the point you missed is that there would be little risk of your wife being slammed from behind, if you'll forgive the expression, since both she and the car behind her are likely to be at maximum brake-hardness already at just about any point during the day.

+1. i hate the argument that if you don't experience it, you can't criticize it. totally bogus.

this freeway cm is stupid, pointless, and only increasing the divide between cyclists and drivers.

i'll take this to mean that you've never seen the gardiner and that your postulations about 18 wheelers and all that comes purely from your imagination. just to help you, here's a pic:



the road was build 50 years ago for 60,000 cars a day and now gets about three times that many. in fact, it's such a disaster traffic-wise that last year the toronto city council got a bunch of experts to produce a report on what to do about it (the report alone cost $1million) and of the three reccomendations it made two were to either bury it in a tunnel or just completely demolish the whole thing.

i dunno, maybe you don't have freeways like that in san francisco.

And here I was suggesting the same thing for free!

funny story about the Gardiner Express.


My step dad street raced on the gardiner, one of the guard rails saved his life as he was racing down an off ramp on his motorbike... got his foot peg caught, and thats the only reason he didn't go over the edge... He was the definition of a ****ing idiot. now hes a Buddhist, go figure.




anyways, the Gardiner is slow, so slow in fact, that I raced my mum (who was driving Gardiner) and i rode my bike along the lake shore path, and I beat her from Spadina to Ashbridges bay (i think its like 7km...). That was after rush hour on a wednesday. if she had put on her hand brake she might have, wait no she already had it on half the time.

With the exception of rush hour, or when people are coming in/out for a game, the Gardner is 100km/hr+ with many crazy *******s weaving in/out, speeding on or off the on ramps. A number of people have accidentally flew off the Garnder on to the lakeshore below.

A Tunnel would be awesome.

I drive it everyday. Unfortuantely.

I support almost any action that takes it to the man.

Roads are public space built with tax dollars. Cyclists are members of the public hence they should be allowed to use public space as long as they don't impede on others rights. Cars impede on my rights daily, these speeding hunks of metal could kill me at any moment. When I ride a CM I feel impowered, its a rolling party. I have found CM rides to be safe and fun the only people who are ever hurt are due to drivers getting mad and flooring it because they can't wait 10 minutes until the mass rides past. CM is an attempt to level the playing field, make cyclists feel good and i have to say most drivers smile and wave even thought they have to wait. everyone loves a parade.

Laws are made by man. Men by defination are flawed. even though the streets are suppose to be public space they are dominated by automobiles because the auto and oil lobbys have forced the goverments hand in bending rules making it easy to get a drivers licesense, underfunding public trans, etc. Most american cities had street cars until automakers bought them and bankrupted them in the 1950s. CM is far from perfect but it does force people to stop in they daily activity which can be a very good thing.

An automobie in most places in the world is a convience if you live to far from work move closer to work if you don't want to do that your work is obviously not very important to you.

some day soon there will be more bikes than cars on the road (very soon w/gas prices going up!) and people in cars will be the ones who wave "thank you" for simply being let into a lane of traffic. the way it is now is one person in a giant SUV feels completely justified in hogging half a road while dozens of people on small bikes have to cower and ride to the extreme right edge (or get killed). some day those roles will be reversed.

I would love to know where I justified violence towards other cyclists.

Would I have much pity for someone who is breaking the law and is hurt because of it? Not much, no. But I don't wish violence on them.

I hope this day comes soon - but until gas becomes expensive (it's not even close yet) it won't happen unfortunately.

I fully support bicycle reform in Toronto. It seems like it is hell from these posts.

I just wonder if there are better ways to go about it. Pissing off people isn't going to do much to help them respect your right to the road. If this is as big of a problem as it seems, you guys have to do more than just ride in a raucous group one day of the month. This has to get on the public and government's radar and be a positive for everyone. That's the only way real progress is going to get made. When the news source covering this, and the police, had zero idea what the purpose of this 'protest' was, it is pointless.

I also support Critical Mass, I just don't support breaking traffic law.

It's crystal clear, people are a wide spectrum. If you truly give a rat's ass you will realize that to reach throughout that spectrum toward a common goal requires accepting those different means which include manners and mass.

Otherwise you're just stroking yourself, and doing so by recommending violence or harm against other people is at least reprehensible.

More bikes on the roads is a common goal no matter your stance on any of the silly issues, bike lanes, deaths, road rage, mass, manners, none of that stuff matters in furthering the one thing that mitigates all of those factors.

Get fixed.

those cyclists who were riding on the Gardiner Expressway are a bunch of total nerds.

What are you ****ing idiot? You clearly justify it in others here, as something to be expected for temporarily impeding traffic flow. You can argue semantics now in defense, but your sentiment was clear.

So because you ride 12,000 miles a year down in the states you can make accurate assumptions about a stretch of road in Toronto, Ontario?

Personally, I don't have an opinion on whether the CM highway ride promoted cycling or not, I don't really care. But, the majority of the arguments put forth by both sides are for the most part, totally juvenile.
The gardiner is a parking lot during rush hour traffic, but it does move in the evenings. I can see the damn thing from my balcony and i used to do 200+ on it with my other bike. That being said, nobody is getting hit by a damn semi on that highway unless they jump out in front of one. I don't think anyone did that or is talking about doing that. There is something called visibility and stopping distance, I think both would have been abundant in this scenario. You know, I might not race bikes and go through sprockets like others go through tires, but I do live here.

The 12K yearly just illustrates how much I ride. The fact I don't do it on a highway (regardless where said highway is) illustrates that I graduated kindergarten.

I was trying to poke holes in both sides of the (stupid) argument. But hey, it's clearly more important for you to feel big. I prefer humour:

When it doubt just accuse the other party of taking things more seriously than you. THE INTERNET IS SERIOUS BUSINESS LMBO!

Try harder

JA holman is right. we all have differing opinions on what is acceptable behavior when out on our bikes. But we all have a common goal.

I personally like a little lawlessness. I'm not a boyscout. I see fat people from the suburbs eating and talking on their cellphones while driving huge SUVs (that they can't even afford) everywhere in my city. They're gonna hate me anyway. If i offend them by being in a huge group of bicyclists that take up 4 city blocks, then... I'm happy about it. These people roadrage every day anyway - its part of their daily commute to be angry at traffic.

If you've never been on a Critical Mass ride, you really should show up just one time. Its fun. Yeah some people honk and are angry, but more people are waving, smiling, and holding their fists up in solidarity. You get to finally take your bike out on the town and ride it in the middle of the street with complete freedom. Its something hard to describe.