Six City of Vancouver Reports Just in Time For the Long Weekend

The City of Vancouver has been a busy bee. Six reports were released in the last few days on subjects ranging from the separated bike lanes to sustainable neighbourhoods projects to homelessness to pedestrian safety. I have yet to read all the reports, but here they are linked in all their multi-page glory for those of you who have some time during this long weekend to sit down with a cold beer and some good ol' fashioned municipal publications (note: these are all links to PDFs).

Improving Pedestrian Safety and Accessibility

Viaducts and False Creek Flats Planning: Eastern Core Strategy

Sustainable City of Sustainable Neighbourhoods Project

Vancouver's Next Community Plans

Downtown Separated Bicycle Lanes Status Report, Summer 2011

Housing and Homelessness Strategy 2011 - 2021

Happy reading!

photo of the Dunsmuir separated bike lane taken by the author

A Guide to the Recent Flurry of Bicycle Articles

You can thank John Cassidy for starting it all.

His blog post, "Battle of the Bike Lanes" went up on the New Yorker website on March 8 2011 and sparked an immediate flurry of counter-arguments and fist-shaking from the pro-bike lane crowd. The next day, Adam Sternbergh, over at the New York Times Magazine, responded by comparing Cassidy line-by-line to Tea Partiers in his article "'I Was a Teenage Cyclist,' or, How Anti-Bike Lane Arguments Echo the Tea Party".

The Economist responded with an article titled "The World is His Parking Lot", in which the idea of the tragedy of the commons is invoked to explain how motorists are getting a free ride while off-loading the externalities of driving onto the environment.

Felix Salmon attempted his Cassidy take-down by fixating on his use of the word 'bipeds' in his article "John Cassidy vs. Bipeds", something Cassidy himself addressed in a follow-up article he published on the New Yorker titled "The Condemned Motorist Speaks". Ezra Klein at The Washington Post attempted to turn Cassidy's argument on its head when he argued that New York's proliferation of bike lanes can be seen as pro-car in his article "Love Driving? Buy Your Neighbor a Bike."

Olaf Storbeck, a self-professed admirer of John Cassidy, performed an erudite economic oh-snap in his blog post "The Economics of Bike Lanes - How Can John Cassidy Get it So Wrong?" in which he explained the problems with free parking written about by Donald Shoup.

John Cassidy felt the need to respond a third time in his own defence in "A Closing Word", which spurred Felix Salmon at Reuters to write another post, which then spurred John Cassidy to write an addendum to his closing word, reminding me of kids who vow to stop speaking staaaaarrrttting now....OK now......OK now.

It is now, by the way, only two days later at this point.

Finally, not necessarily part of this dialogue, Dave Meslin wrote a piece in the Toronto Star called "Rob Ford: Cycling Advocate" where he made the case for getting rid of the "Ford Nation Vs. Left-Wing Pinko framework" in an effort to actually work together.

What a novel idea.

Toronto's Separated Bike Lanes: Just Build Them Already

When Rob Ford was announced Toronto's next mayor, I think many cyclists buried their face in their handlebars and gave a great bit frustrated sob. So it was a surprise when Councillor Denzil Minnan-Wong, public works and infrastructure committee chair, announced his proposal for a network of curb-separated bike lanes in the city. These lanes would mostly create separated bicycle lanes on streets that currently have painted lanes, such as Wellesley, Sherbourne, and St. George but would also see one on John St and the creation of a new two-way separated lane on Richmond Street. Below is a map of what the gist of the network would look like, give or take a few blocks.

In this same area, separated lanes on Harbord/Hoskin, University Ave, Jarvis Street, Bloor east of Spadina, College, and Bay would be nice as well, and there are many other opportunities across the city to have them installed. The lanes would be separated by a curb and use a line of parked cars as a buffer, much like they do in Montreal as seen in the photo below (source).

Although the Ford administration did some back-pedalling (thank you Globe and Mail for that gem), it's encouraging that the idea has even been raised. Of course, the usual criticisms have been trotted out: But how would we do garbage pick-up? What about parking and delivery? How do we snow plow them? Can someone help me tie my shoelaces? I mean, c'mon. In a city as innovative as Toronto, one filled with both great thinkers and doers, are you telling me that the reason against separated bike lanes is that we can't figure out how to collect garbage or get deliveries?

If we have an issue bending our mind around that problem, then we can, of course, always look to other cities like Montreal, New York, Copenhagen, and most recently Vancouver to see how they solved that issue. I doubt they have garbage piling up on the side of the road and delivery truck drivers idling in roadways scratching their heads. Below is Vancouver's reworking of Hornby Street to accomodate a separated lane (source), which has since been built and is open. (Note: even though parking was taken away, parking was incorporated into the plan and 160 spaces are planned on neighbouring streets)

Only one of the proposed lanes (Richmond Street) actually takes space away from cars as well, which should assuage the fears of those that get riled up about the imaginary war on the car, which apparently is now over anyway.

The fact is that every driver in downtown Toronto should be behind this proposal. Physically separating bikers from drivers doesn't just increase safety for both parties, but also creates predictability--ie, you know exactly where the biker is going to be and where the car is going to be. Tired of white-knuckling your steering wheel wondering whether that crazy cyclist is going to weave out in front of you? Easy! Put a curb between the two of you.

Sure, there are some kinks to work out, but some problems are just worth taking the time to solve.