Bike Lane Diary

Especially if you are way too old to be part of it and too pig headed to listen to the people.
''When the roads were established in Mississauga, they were not established on the basis of bicycle lanes. The roads were built for cars and trucks,'' she said.... Ms. McCallion said the petition to add bicycle lanes will be given its due consideration, but no traffic lanes will be lost to include cycling commuters."Matthew Coutts, National Post

Published: Wednesday, November 29, 2006

Mayor Miller asks Torontonians "How Do You Get Your Move On?"
TORONTO, Nov. 30 /CNW/ - The "How Do You Get Your Move On?"
media campaign is being launched this week with print advertising and a series of Public Service Announcements (PSAs) to air on Rogers OMNI Television in four languages, Farsi, Mandarin, Spanish and Tamil, in addition to English. The PSA features a cycling Mayor David Miller, Honorary Chair of Toronto's Get Your Move On (GYMO) initiative, encouraging everyone to join him in being physically active. "I'm pleased to be able to join leaders from health, recreation, and corporate sectors as well as others to take action on an important issue for the health and vitality of our city," the Mayor said. The media campaign promotes the GYMO website and phone line where people can get information about thousands of physical activity opportunities in Toronto, as well as multilingual physical activity resources. Maple Leaf Sports & Entertainment Ltd., owner of the Toronto Maple Leafs and Toronto Raptors and a lead member of Get Your Move On, is showing the PSA on Air Canada Centre's Jumbotron and airing it on Leafs TV and Raptors NBA TV. The PSA will also be streamed on the YMCA of Greater Toronto website, another key GYMO partner. "Get Your Move On is connecting Toronto to opportunities for healthy, active living," said Scott Haldane, President and CEO of the YMCA of Greater Toronto and co-chair of the initiative. "Children, youth, and adults of all ages and backgrounds need to move more." In 2004, leaders in the public, voluntary and private sectors started Get Your Move On to address epidemic levels of physical inactivity by making it easy for people to be active, any time, any place. "Get Your Move On is about reducing barriers so everyone can become healthier," said Dr. David McKeown, Toronto's Medical Officer of Health. "Reaching people in many languages is fundamental to the campaign." "We applaud GYMO for creating an inclusive campaign that recognizes the importance of extending its message to local ethnocultural communities in their language of comfort," said Madeline Ziniak, vice president and station manager of Rogers OMNI Television. Funding for the GYMO PSAs was provided by OMNI Television's Public Service Announcement Production Fund, which supports local community groups and helps ensure the accessibility of important public information to third language communities. Alison Duke of Goldelox Productions and Susan Nation of Tween Entertainment were responsible for creation and production of the PSAs, working in association with the GYMO Public Awareness Action Group. For more information and to view the PSAs, visit the Get Your Move On website.

Squid!!!!!!

Dupont and Spadina. Photo by Sarah Hood via Unknown Toronto

CP24 is reporting that Vancouver's new fleet of buses have a serious design flaw. When a bicycle is mounted in the bike rack they cover the buses headlights. Cyclists can no longer use the bike racks at night. Have not found any photos of the offending buses but this link contains photos of every bus used in Vancouver. There seem to be a couple of possible culprits. http://trans-vancouver.fotopic.net

What is great to note here is that every bus pictured has a rack.

More Photos

Chris from Tucorides is on to something. Seems to me that after being shafted by our elected leaders year after year and I dare say punished for choosing a bicycle to get around, people have had enough.

You can have your say here by signing the petition for giving cyclists and cycling a fair deal in Canada. Thank you.

Stencil Art by Janet Attard

Back in 1995, bike couriers of Toronto hosted about 500 messengers from some 18 countries over three days in the Liberty Village neighbourhood at the 3rd Cycle Messenger World Championships. Since then, the CMWC has been held in places like Barcelona, Budapest, Sydney, San Francisco, NY and DC. In 2008, the XVIth edition of the CMWC returns to Toronto, probably on June 14 and 15, and quite likely on the Toronto Islands. The organizing committee is already looking for submissions for the event logo. If you want more info, email cmwcto@hotmail.com.

(Photo: World Champ 2005 - Simone from Toronto)

With apologies to all women.

Bike Friday

I have heard a rumour that someone near Queen and Dufferin has glued a car to the road. Apparently a neighbour was upset that the driver kept parking on the sidewalk so they glued the wheels to the road/sidewalk. I do not know if this is for real or a PR stunt and would really like to see some pics. Anyone?

Yonge Street. Before the Santa Claus Parade. Stencil via Maya's World Of Stencils

In front of the Bike Clinic on Harbord. Vinnie told me he just asked the guys to paint him one while they were working on the Harbord bike lane extension.

Nice!
I am jealous.

One of my favourite bands from Mexico and a great video.

PART ONE


PART TWO Excellent Film!

These photos are dedicated to fellow Cycling Photographers
Gwadzilla, Nicomachus, Vic Gedris and Darren Stehr.

Polite 'foreign' woman kicks cars out of bike lanes in Beijing.

One of the best examples of corking I have ever seen. Make sure you check out the rest of the images. (link below)

Thanks to Steeker for the news tip.


Via EastSouthWestNorth.
Update: The driver who threw her bike down later apologized publicly!

Fine article in NOW today.

More great thinking in Spacing

All I have to say to the folks at City Hall is this:

"No guts, no glory."

So good. Notice the two guys riding bikes to run the lighting, etc. ...
(full performance about 47 minutes)

Blognetlife

Cycling Cog

Vic Gedris News Aggregator



Stencil by Janet Attard.

Art by Erwin Wurm


Holding my breath,

Martino

"I’ve always been a strong believer that bicycling is an essential part of Toronto’s transportation strategy. That’s why we have developed the Toronto Bike Plan which is a comprehensive cycling promotion strategy encompassing: bicycle friendly streets, a bikeway network, safety and education, bike parking, and promotion of combining cycling and transit.

One of the keys to promoting cycling is to give people a safe place to ride. Currently, Toronto has 90 KM of bike lanes, and the Bike Plan calls for 1000 KM to be built by 2011.

Under my leadership, the City of Toronto has aggressively promoted cycling as not just a method of transportation, but a way of life. Every year, I launch Bike Week which is a week-long series of events that promotes biking around Toronto. The City also issues a cycling newsletter, encourages residents to form local cycling committees, and has launched the “door prize” campaign to educated motorists and taxi drivers about the need to check for cyclists.

We’ve started a number of pilot projects -like putting bike racks on the front of buses, and increasing the amount of transit parking in front of subway stations - to encourage people to combine cycling with transit. In fact, next year the bicycle infrastructure budget will double to $ 6.2 million. For as long as I am Mayor of Toronto we will continue to pursue an aggressive bicycle promotion strategy.

When we talk about funding issues it is important to note the context in which they occur. Toronto has more people than Newfoundland, New Brunswick, Nova Scotia, Prince Edward Island, Yukon, the Northwest Territories and Nunavut put together – and yet we lack the powers and funding sources of even the smallest of these jurisdictions.

Toronto lacks support in critical areas. For example, in 2006 alone, the cost of delivering programs that the province once provided -- such as social services, the Ontario Drug Plan, affordable housing and transit -- cost the city an astonishing $731 million.

A recent Conference Board of Canada study determined that Toronto is underfunded by $1.1 billion a year. This is counter-productive – for our citizens, for our city and for our nation.

To unleash Toronto’s true economic potential and compete with the world’s greatest cities, I argue that just a small portion of the vast wealth Toronto generates for Canada should be invested back into the city."

Via the survey conducted by TCAT

Via Spacing
Great article about Case Ootes by Tammy Thorne!

I could not help myself but take a final look at the polls. Ootes wins by 20 votes. It was such a close race. Well on the positive side the Mayor has someone to blame for all of his shortcomings. 1127pm - maybe a recount?

At 1050pm Ootes was still losing by 183 votes with two polls unaccounted for. So it is hard to know the outcome at this point. I do not want to jinx anything now so will have to wait till morning for the outcome. Overall, what a lame election.

At 835pm Ootes is losing by 18 votes, or .17% of the vote. Could this be the end? CityTV for some reason has him as winning by a mile. 4 Pollling stations left.

858pm Ootes now losing by 180 votes.

936pm Ootes losing by 183 votes.

Giambrone returns as councillor.

Adam Vaughan elected in Olivia Chow's ward. While Ms.Chow was a great councillor she was a poor friend to cyclists. Good news that her hand picked candidate goes down in defeat.

Reality Check

Just Talk

Cycling Edinburgh

I'll spare you the second 1/2 hour ...
The defense of the car.

Part one
Ok. I have been getting emails for the whole thing go here

Two thirds of the jurors voted GUILTY!

More photos of the car here

Note from Streets Are For People:
Heya,
Augusta Ave. is a little less colourful today -
the garden car, aka: 'Community Vehicular
reclamation Project' was moved to her new home this morning. Streets are for People! promised the City that we'd move it at the end of the growing season and we have done just that.The garden now resides behind Segovia Meats, down an alley that runs West off of Augusta Ave.. People are welcome to visit her when the gate is open but should take note that there is a big dog that lives back there... you can peak over the fence from the Green P lot on Bellevue - head to the N E corner of the lot :)
www.pskensington.ca
www.streetsareforpeople.org

via Velorution

Photos taken on Dufferin north of Bloor today.

Thank you P.S. Kensington
& Streets Are For People!
for another great summer and
actually making a difference.

There was a good article by
Christopher Hume in the Star
today about why our streets
just never seem to improve.








Photos (2005)

The fabulous owner of
CineCycle and Randonneur.

Wanna go for a really long ride?
Try this.

Martin Heath did and filmed it all along the way.

Btw, he's the original Martino.

Mayor Miller at the Yimby Event
(Gladstone Hotel)

Photo via Take The Tooker

Graphic by Martin Koob (biketoronto.ca)

The bike lane network is not expanding as fast as it should – what's happening on this front?
"My plan the first three years was to put way more money in it. That didn't create the bike lanes we'd hoped, predominantly because of local community opposition. Councillor Case Ootes is still fighting to take out bike lanes. It's appalling. So my approach this time is going to be different. We need to think strategically about which routes we really need and try to get the entire route. We have to marshal the cycling community to work with neighbourhoods so [more bike lanes] become politically feasible. Mobility isn't about moving cars or buses; it's about people. You experience a city through your feet." From NOW Magazine
Lots of money, eh? Well, not quite true, eh? The Bike Plan has been underfunded and mis-managed from the start.

" ... marshall the cycling community has to work with neighbourhoods."
Ahem. Sounds right but wrong. The City needs to get off their lazy ass and give cyclists a chance to ride safely which means politcal will to do the right thing.

Shall we talk about bike lanes and public roads? Enrique Peñalosa puts it this way:
“We cannot continue to deceive ourselves into thinking that to paint a little line on a road is a bikeway. A bicycle way which is not safe for an eight year-old is not a bicycle way.”
“Mathematically it is totally impossible to solve the transportation problems of a city using cars.”
“The essence of the conflict today, really, is cars versus people…We can have a city that is very friendly to cars, or a city that is very friendly to people. We cannot have both.”
“We give priority to public transport in the use of road space. So public good prevails over private transport

But hats off to TCAT for their vision for a better healthier city (follow the link/press conference November 1st)

Art by Rick Conroy and David Woodward.

Too bad the City of Toronto does not.

Update:
Yellow Bikes are dead.
CBN is still trying to keep the bikes rolling somehow next year, but truth is they're not
likely to be back next season.

So sad.