Toronto City Council Approves "Walker" Lanes...

FINALLY...A Reason To Smile...

News


Levy: Bike battle a triumph for Toronto
 

If I Have To Go Searching For A Parking Spot...

...will I patronize the businesses along areas where there are designated bike lanes? This is a NO brainer!

Bike lane parking fight

War on the Bike heats up

Peter Kuitenbrouwer: Denzil Minnan-Wong, please don’t take away the lanes we have and ask us to be excited about what’s coming up in the future

Cycling Common Sense...

...I don't believe there is anything that would prevent cyclists from riding on major roads.

Much pain, no gain with disappearing bike lanes


2011/05/24 09:51:01

When it comes to throwing money down the drain on bike lanes, Toronto isn't alone.

Bike Lane Maintenance Budgets Increased Dramatically...

City pays cyclist $200K for pothole crash

A cyclist who was seriously injured after falling into a pothole in 2003 will receive almost $200,000 from the city of Montreal, according to a media report.

Hey Toronto...Get In Touch With Montreal!

What the future might hold...

Montreal’s Bixi pedals hard for more funds from the city

In two short years, Montreal’s shared bicycle, the Bixi, has risen to iconic status – a trendy symbol of a downtown taste for common experience and carefree two-wheeled commuting.

In the space of a week, it has become a symbol of something even more familiar to Montrealers: a nice idea buried in debt.

Bixi bike share launches in Toronto The not-for-profit, city-owned corporation that developed the Bixi bike system went cap-in-hand to city hall on Tuesday, getting approval for $108-million in loans and guarantees.

City backing for about $71-million in future financing will bolster ambitious plans to sell thousands of the bikes to cities such as Vancouver and New York, all in the hope profits will cover Montreal’s annual $7-million Bixi deficit and eventually pay back a $37-million loan.

Bumpy first ride for Bixi bike program in Toronto
Bixi bike sharing program begins

Valid Concern Or Facetious Comment...

Life


I’m afraid of cyclists

Too High An Expectation...

Another lesson for bike lane despots

Kelly McParland October 29, 2010 – 10:29 am

The Los Angeles Times recently documented the furor that broke out when the city’s mayor, a bicycle fan, set out to expand the network of bike lanes. The mayor, Antonio Villaraigosa, grew especially determined after a cab cut him off while he was on his bike, and he hurt his elbow.
A month later, the mayor convened a bike summit, ordered up hundreds of bike safety posters and promised to beef up construction of designated paths for his two-wheeled comrades. Within weeks street crews were hard at work — some on overtime and furlough days — painting bike logos along two miles of Wilbur Avenue.
Problem was, people in the neighbourhood hadn’t asked for them, and didn’t want them.

Read More »

Even In Retirement Downing's Farts...

...more substance than Comrade Miller, Clown Council, Bureaucrats, Social In-Activistsd, etc.

Thursday, April 15, 2010

BIKES SCREWING CARS

MORE TRANSIT, LESS BIKE LANES

There is good news and bad news about this proposal to put bike lanes along University, Toronto's major ceremonial avenue.

If the silly leftist majority of Toronto council actually does something that dumb, more Torontonians will wake up to the fact we are ruled by loonies. Could make election day more challenging!

Is there nothing that councillors won't do to screw motorists?

The bike nuts see this a wonderful summer pilot project which will lead to more bike lanes on more Toronto major streets.

I think they have bit off more than the long-suffering public can chew.

For starters, roads must be built to a far higher standard than bike paths. Paths in parks are a good idea and don't have to have an intensive underpad. Bike paths on the side of roads that are so costly to construct is economic lunacy. Yet a bankrupted city has to pay around $4 million a year because the bike nuts, generally socialists who don't give a damn about citizens/motorists, want bike lanes to run down every major street in a sprawling city.

Second, traffic is already obscenely congested because of all the shenanigans of council's left, such as interfering with turns, signals, intersection constrictions, the measle epidemic of stop signs, one-way mazes, mischievous bus stop locations etc.

Since all TTC vehicles other than subway trains use this congested network of roads, any interference with the traffic flow of cars and trucks also interferes with the flow of buses and streetcars. Surely that is elementary, but not to the stolid Dr. Watsons of council.

This proposal has brought an interesting reaction from Giorgio Mammoliti, who is running for mayor. Mammoliti has been a florid expensive MPP and now councillor, and he has never seen an expense account from the public that he hasn't wanted to goose in his favour, but his idea of a $20 or $30 registration fee for bikes is interesting.

After all, if the cyclists want to have more rights on the roads, let them pay for it, like the motorists do and do and do.

It should be a token $10 for kids and seniors, but $30 is appropriate for adults. The registration number would be useful in soothing the epidemic of stolen bikes. And, of course, enforcement could be non-aggressive, except for adults riding bikes in bike lanes.

I hate to have more bureaucracy and more forms but if the cyclists want to ride with the big boys, then they have to pay their share, and it would be nice if they honoured the traffic rules too.

As I wrote in columns last year in June and May, there really isn't that great a use of bike lanes, except by in-your-face activists and politicians.

After all, in the old line about our weather, Canada has 10 months of winter and two months of bad skiing. So who in their right mind from early December to late April is going to use bike lanes on a regular basis?

You have to be as nutty as Councillor Glenn DeBaermaeker who rides incredible distances to City Hall each day to plan the next goofy wasteful scheme to rob the taxpayers.

So let the city measure the use of bike lanes. It is routine to put a rubber tube gadget down to measure the flow of cars along a street. Let them put the same gadgets on bike lanes, and if the bikes and riders aren't heavy enough to trigger them, let them do an eyeball count.

I have found on the expensive bike lanes that hinder traffic on Royal York Rd near where I live that cyclists are a rare sight. I'm with the Toronto Star columnist who counted only 15 bicyclists on a trip along Wellesley, down Sherbourne to the waterfront, then along the waterfront to Yonge St.

Of course the time of day would have a lot to do with it. And the weather. Except the roads are hindered by the bike lanes on cold wet days, whether it's night or rushhour.

The bike community, of course, have figures about use that are so exaggerated, they should make a councillor laugh, except most of our lefty/mushy politicians don't live in the real world with the rest of us but in some strange creation where the championship of ideas is more important than the cost, where grumbles from taxpayers are put down to malcontents who don't know how lucky they are to live in a community ruled by enlightened civic deep thinkers.

The reason bikes lanes are important is they are iconic symbols for the left and a thorn for the motorists and residents who already pay more than their share of this city's operation, that is if you want to pretend that this city really works.

The anti-car jerks of council are so strident, they actually planned to put bike lanes on the Front St. extension, which was killed as a project because the anti-car jerks drove the cost so high. So why do I bring up bike lanes on those proposed ramps? Because legally you can't ride bikes on the Gardiner expressway, so these were bike lanes to nowhere.

Suitable, somehow, because that's the general direction of this council's majority. If only they would stick to the basic business of running a city, which is too boring for them, so as a result we have an infrastructure that is rotting and rusty and sinking. Too bad those councillors won't follow.

Cycling...

Touring Santiago on two wheels

In Chile, biking is beginning to take root — as both tourist fun and a choice for commuters.

• All-electric, all-Texas

• Cycling kings of the concrete jungle

• Riding high on "Cycle Island"