Egnaro TV

There is only one issue in the upcoming municipal election that is on my mind – bikes! The candidate's attitudes towards cyclists and the infrastructure to support them is incredibly indicative of their broader sensibilities about governing the city of Toronto.

I dropped our car off for brake work this morning which afforded me the opportunity to ride in to work along Danforth. It goes without saying that Danforth has both the room and the need for bike lanes. The part I forgot about though was the recent improvements made to the Bloor viaduct lanes. They are wider and have double white lines to separate them from traffic. There was room to pass other cyclists without leaving the bike lane – what a treat! I then connected up with Jarvis to head down the new lanes there towards the office (btw, when did the top end of Jarvis get renamed as Ted Rogers Way or Lane or whatever it was?). 

When I got to work I was feeling all good about these improvements to our city but then after passing along some more info pointing out the ever growing mountain of mayoral inadequacies that Rob Ford continues to demonstrate my main man @amsterdamized (who's endless stream of photos showing Amsterdam cyclists is inspiring) sent me a link to recent column by Christopher Hume that brought me back to reality.

Hume's right, not having connections off of Bloor to the Jarvis lanes is a massive shortcoming and although the lanes across the viaduct are fantastic, lanes all the way across Bloor/Danforth with proper connections to all north/south lanes would be remarkable. In fact having any sort of end to end network of bike lanes would seem a reasonable and attainable goal yet this is still along way off. 

Where's all this tie into the mayoral race? Well the two front runners, Smitherman and Ford, as well as Rossi, have all identified in varying degrees of political speak, that they would freeze expansion of the cycling network in the city. I wouldn't be surprised if Ford and Rossi would even go so far as to try having the Jarvis lanes removed. Ford has made his views on cyclists quite clear in the past essentially saying if you ride your bike on the street it's your own fault if you get killed.

As Hume points out, cyclists are going away and in fact are growing in numbers. Every winter I see more people take to the streets on two wheels as they realize that some minor variations in dress is all that it takes to cycle almost year round. Along with other factors like environmental change, rising oil prices and a need to fight the bulge, people are taking to bikes like never before.

When the polls open in a couple months, get off your butts, walk or bike to your polling station and drop a vote for Pantalone. He may not be the charismatic or innovative leader we'd like him to be, but he's the only candidate that understands that a city is a living organism that needs to be fed a healthy diet or improvement and change, that needs to support the desire of it's inhabitants to nourish it back. The other candidates see a city as nothing more than a series of widgets that either consume or produce money and their only goal is to make sure that the money producing widgets outnumber those that consume it. They don't see how subtle changes have a major impact on the lifeblood of a city, how hidden connections between the pieces fuel economic growth in subtle yet powerful ways. Bike lanes are but one example of these important connectors that will help make Toronto a world-class city.

Apparently the city is discussing the possibility of installing bike lanes on University. This would be a great north-south route through the city, and particularly helpful for getting right into the downtown core which can be a bit of a challenge still.

680 News has a brief story about this proposal. I haven't seen much else yet other than blog commentary.

This would be awesome, but particularly if they were dedicated, separate bike lanes like the lovely lanes found all over Europe.

As much as I hate Harper and his bullshit federal politics, it appears I'm going to have to focus my attentions – and hopefully those of anyone reading this – more locally. The race to become Toronto's next mayor is already yielding some interesting comments that certainly need to be addressed.

My primary point of interest here is that concerning bicycles in the city. Let's start with this whooper about Rocco Rossi from the Globe and Mail:

"When Rocco Rossi vowed to banish bike lanes from major streets, the suit-and-tie crowd at the Empire Club event erupted into its most enthusiastic applause yet for the first real speech of the 2010 mayor's race."

In the same speech Rossi also suggested he'd put a stop to most of the Transit City plan. All this in the name of making sure that those who choose to drive can continue to be the privileged class while the rest of us our on the bottom of the pile.

Given the incredible number of pedestrians killed by cars in the past 2 weeks you'd think we'd be talking about how to reduce the number of cars on the road and slow down the rest of them. However I'm more inclined to think Rossi might suggest banning walking before he ever dreamed of offending the cities road warriors.

Fortunately it's not looking like Rossi has a hope in hell of winning this election, but George Smitherman might and his stance on bikes isn't much better. Sounds like he's not interested in doing anything for cyclists that might some how be conceived to impede drivers.

Fortunately there's some hope. Adam Giambrone is set to run and there's no doubt Transit City, cycling and all the other things important to growing a healthy Toronto will be on his agenda. I've also not heard much about what Pantalone is up to but I'll definitely be keeping an eye on him. 

When North American cyclists go looking for a place to call mecca, they often turn to Amsterdam. It's easy to see why. On the train from Schiphol airport to Amsterdam Centraal you already see the signs of cycling. Bike lanes on every road, people of all ages and genders on their old bikes zooming around everywhere. One of the first sights you see when exiting the train station is the multi-level bike parking facilities with what must be thousands of bikes on it. Those bikes spill out of the official parking and onto every railing and post in sight.

Walking away from the station you quickly find yourself crossing roadways consisting of car, tram and bike lanes, each usually separated by it's own median. Intersections have bike signals in addition to the usual lights. Deeper into the downtown core the cars come alone the roadways at pretty spares intervals and instead you spend most of your time dodging bikes instead.

As a Toronto bike commuter I felt like I'd discovered heaven my first time in Amsterdam. While I'd like to think this would all be possible in Toronto some day, I really doubt it will ever happen. Amsterdam is what it is because of it's old foundations, the canals and narrow streets have made it an easily sell to promote cycling as the best way to get around. The mild winter weather definitely helps too.

If you really want to look somewhere for a cycling infrastructure that Toronto could truly model itself after, I'd say go to Rotterdam. It's an hour train ride southwest of Amsterdam and is really a completely different city. Having been almost completely destroyed during the war, Rotterdam is a now a very modern city, full of new, stunning architecture and intelligent urban planning.  It's common here to find six lane roads, much like those in suburban Toronto, but down the center often runs a light rail line and on the outsides are wide bike lanes separated from the rest of the road.

Rotterdam is obviously a city that clearly thought about the bike as an important part of urban transport and as incorporated the necessary infrastructure where ever possible. I could see Toronto being this way. In many ways Rotterdam feels like Toronto with it's modern shopping malls, diverse population and mix of industrial past and modern financial centres.

This photo shows the clear separation of a major bike line next to a major roadway. Even cooler is the way the median has been re-purposed here. A huge skate park sits on it, keeping the skaters away from anyone who might be annoyed by them. And underneath this is a nightclub, where the ground muffles the beats late into the night. Such great usage of this space.

I never really saw it before, but the more I consider how Toronto could be transformed into a hub of cycling activity the more I realize just how much our weather will always make this nearly impossible. At least until global warming heats things up enough that we no longer get snow. Trying to imagine a snow plow clear the streets of Rotterdam is scary. You'd need different machines to clear each type of lane, all working together to move the snow all the way to the sidewalk. It would be painful at best. Or even, as much as I love the old (and new) cobblestone sidewalks and roadways, can you imagine trying to clear these with a sand shovel?

Maybe turning the Gardiner Expressway into an enclosed bike and pedestrian route isn't such a crazy idea afterall.