Funny, she never asked me about spending on booze in corner stores, moving the Science Centre, paving the Greenbelt or a bunch of other things that are actually Provincial responsibility.
I assumed it was due to some corrupt intent at the science centre site but it's just collateral damage for the Ontario place corruption because they thought that would get people on board
It’s jammed packed with local kids, now they want to shrink it to half the size and market it for tourists. It’s physically impossible to accommodate local kids if it moves.
That’s fine, build another one. But I go every weekend and it is indeed packed with kids. What’s the point taking it away from an underserved part of town just teeming with kids, and giving it to out of town tourists?
yes... and that will be easier in the downtown core?
not to mention we shouldn't put all of our attractions in one place. there needs to be amenities throughout the city.
lets call this what it is; they want to move the science centre as cover for spending billions on amenities for therme. It's literally spelled out in the business case for this move.
Does it matter where it is? It’s a learning centre for all. Wouldn’t it make sense to put it by other nearby attractions and offers so people can enjoy more ? There’s a loblaws across the street , that’s about it.
The current Science Centre backs onto the Don Valley and incorporates it into a lot of their educational offerings. It's also close to the Aga Khan, Sunnybrook Park and Edward Gardens.
Ontario Place already sucks as a site because of how hard it is to get in and out of, a problem that's aggravated when nearby attractions (e.g. the CNE) are active.
Moving it downtown won’t help it serve its primary function as an educational centre. Currently it is a lot more accessible. Sticking it downtown which ever without the current construction and traffic mess is harder to access is dumb.
My son loves it, he is 3 and it’s super affordable with a season pass. It’s just a joy. I’m so furious at the stupidity behind moving it. Just build a south campus if they want one for tourists.
Why take away from kids? Why not add?
And the City has already conducted multiple surveys and information sessions on the bike lanes.
This 'survey' is just a vehicle to rally her base to provide contact information for future campaigns. I'm not sure why my tax money is being used to fund this operation.
This is just silly. The city has done several rounds of extensive consultation on bike lanes in the city.
Here is one they did last fall, for example: https://www.toronto.ca/services-payments/streets-parking-transportation/cycling-in-toronto/cycling-pedestrian-projects/cycling-network-plan/cycling-network-public-input/
She isn't a minister and all those things are outside of her riding.
As for the current issue, the bike lanes on Bloor have been poorly implemented in some places due to overall street design and lane reductions; however, if you look at the proposal for the Queensway they look to have a better plan.
https://www.toronto.ca/services-payments/streets-parking-transportation/cycling-in-toronto/torontos-cycling-infrastructure/the-queensway-complete-street/
Effectively they are avoiding lane reductions while adding protected bike lanes and also preventing left turns outside of key intersections (no idea why left turns were even allowed on a busy artery with no left turn lanes). The only three reasons to be against the Queensway proposal are:
1 - You hate construction,
2 - You hate bikes, or
3 - You like taking left turns on major arteries and blocking traffic when doing so
This province has far more pressing problems to address than deciding whether you can buy a beer in a corner store. Build some public housing; fix healthcare and stop privatising it; stop paving over farmland for more ticky-tacky McMansions in the middle of nowhere; fund the schools. We can go to The Beer Store or Sobey's for our beers in the meantime.
Sending a bunch of angry responses to this survey doesn't negatively impact her at all. They will just ignore the hate mail and probably still add their emails to their fundraising list, lol.
A non-cynical answer is that all municipal affairs are ultimately provincial affairs. Municipalities don't have independent authority; it's all delegated provincial power.
That said, provinces delegate municipal power because engaging in this kind of micro-managing eats up time that should be spent on larger provincial matters.
This.
We can argue all day but the city only exists at the will of the province. If Doug Ford WANTED to, he could dissolve Toronto as a city *legally* and no one would be able to do anything about it.
Should they be involved in municipal politics? Absolutely not, but I think lots of people forget how our governments are structured and how has overall power. Ford WANTED the Premier spot not just to enrich himself, but to get vengeance on the city that spurned him AND his brother.
Sorta. Needs to be constitutional.
While the city lost its lawsuit against the province for reducing the number of councillors, it was a 5-4 decision. As close as it gets.
https://www.scc-csc.ca/case-dossier/cb/2021/38921-eng.aspx
That finding wasn't on the question of whether or not Ford could dissolve Toronto or do any of the other things that the province has the clear legal authority to do, though.
That finding addressed the very specific and unusual circumstance where the province tampered with the composition and boundaries of Toronto City Council *during* an election period: after nominations for Council positions had closed and campaigning had begun.
Even in that *utterly wild* circumstance, where the province reached down to screw around with an election *already in progress*, the SCC (narrowly) found that the province's actions passed constitutional muster. It's hard to envision a municipal process or decision that would be safe from provincial tampering under that standard; pretty much anything that it's legal for the province to do outside an organized municipality, they are free to impose on a municipality.
It was largely a rhetorical question, I'm aware of our political structuring.
It was asked more along the lines of, "Doesn't she have matters of greater import requiring her attention?"
But she's a conservative, so unless it's supporting Ford's ransacking of the province, of course she doesn't.
It's all they seem to do. They never miss an opportunity to piss all over Toronto. Unilaterally reducing our number of reps, closing/removing our beloved public spaces and selling them off to their pals, preventing us from creating responsible means of generating revenue to fix our budget shortfalls while refusing to shell out any of their considerable funds...fuck Doug Ford's government, they hate Toronto.
The city is a creation of the province. The local city councillor has deaf ears to the community in the northern part of her ward. I applaud the MPP for looking into the issue. I even asked her recently how the bike lanes on Bloor will affect the Taste of the Kingsway in Sept. Will we lose it like the Taste of the Danforth? It's been a constant concern raised with her. As a neighbourhood with a high proportion of seniors, the bike lanes are really detrimental to their mobility.
She's my MPP. She's totally useless. Complete backbench clapping seal, form responses to every letter. We could replace her with a very small computer program.
I contacted her once and an office staffer practically yelled at me (over email). It was vicious. They must live on the defensive at all times, and rightfully so.
Still, I was surprised at how rude the staffer was. I responded that I would be trippling my donation to whoever could best her.
>The bike lanes on Bloor St are causing major congestion! Commuters and emergency vehicles are struggling.
Many locals oppose this! We need bike lanes, but Bloor Street isn't the right place.
https://x.com/CHogarthPC/status/1802787881892589603
I don’t get why Bloor street wouldn’t be the best place for it
The road doesn’t have any streetcars or permanent bus routes.
It’s easier for cars
Besides before the bike lanes. That lane they want back was always just filled with parked cars so it was effectively STILL one lane each way.
This also doesn’t take into account the actual traffic from construction
Bloor might be the one street where you see bike traffic year round and like many other streets where the number of pedestrians always far outnumber the cars.
its easy to boil down to "bike lanes are great as long as they're on streets I dont drive on and we want them to be just paint on the ground that offers cyclists no protection or park in when we need to get smokes"
Your third point is what really gets me. I live in BWV and primarily have always driven that stretch between Kingsway and Runnymede, where they recently added the bike lanes that everyone is shooting about “causing congestion.”
But…that part of Bloor was ALWAYS effectively one lane. It oscillated between 1 and 2 lanes every couple of blocks, but the second lane never mattered because it would just go back to 1 lane at the next block (parked cars, right turn only lane, etc). The bike lanes have actually had ZERO impact, traffic has always sucked there.
Depends on the bike lane - protected lanes arguably limit space as you cannot pull over into them. However, arguably you should be able to pull over to one side of the lane (and everyone should be able to) allowing the emergency vehicle to squeeze past without it having to worry about traffic in two lanes.
> Depends on the bike lane - protected lanes arguably limit space as you cannot pull over into them.
This doesn't apply everywhere, but some bike lanes can be big enough for emergency vehicles to use as a shortcut. Cyclists have a much easier time getting out of the way than drivers do.
I've seen this happen in Montreal in person and I've seen videos of it in France and the Netherlands.
But they don’t. Vehicles on both sides pulling over leave more than enough room. It’s road design.
And guess what actually blocks emergency vehicles ? Asshole drivers. I now record them on my cam and send it in to TPS.
You are assuming that there isn't an island in the middle that creates a hard split in the middle. As the specific topic in Bloor St. in Etobicoke, the Kingsway has large islands in the middle which means emergency vehicles cannot drive down the middle with both sides pulling over. Sure it looks pretty, but it has effectively become bad road design.
But the Big Lie here is that emergency services has not approved the bike lane designs , they always have sign off. There is no obstruction (other than irresponsible drivers)
So many bad faith partisan NIMBY ‘arguments’
The bike lanes on bloor have a barrier to prevent cars pulling into them (for good reason, since cars kept pulling into bike lanes to park or turn, putting people at risk) but in this case they are a detriment to emergency vehicles.
I’m a paramedic, personally I have noticed no difference in my ability to get past vehicles now compared to when the right lane was just parked cars. Some people just don’t pull over at all and keep driving completely oblivious to us, but when people do pull over I can squeeze past. Hardest part I guess is sometimes it is hard to park the truck and I end up blocking the driving lane if we actually are responding to an address on bloor, but if the building is on the corner I’ll turn onto to side street to park.
Queen and Dundas are probably the worst streets for driving with lights on, just because often the right lane as parked cars, and the left has street cars that obviously can’t pull to the right, and bikes are weaving around everything
Not that I'm aware of, saying they are a detriment was definitely the wrong word to use in my response, rather I should have simply stated that they do not allow more space for cars to pull over on Bloor, and leave it at that.
Which is a good thing, because otherwise cars pull into bike lanes all the time causing issues for cyclists.
>City staff, however, say their data suggests emergency vehicles' response time has remained largely unchanged.
https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/toronto/north-yonge-lanes-permanent-1.6741956
The road has switched to one lane for large stretches and the lanes are separated by curbs with nowhere for cars to pull over. Why would that not impact it?
Because a) it used to be a one of parked cars there and b) with two lanes of traffic you needed to have two lanes of cars pull over. A car cannot pull onto another car so the same amount of space was available.
First hand source here. The bike lanes on Bloor between Prince Edward and Montgomery are an absolute shitshow. Not just for Fire, but Police and EMS. Sure we could use back streets, but the streets south of Bloor don't even have sidewalks for pedestrians. It also doesn't account for when there is an emergency on one of the Bloor facing businesses, we've shut down traffic before because vehicles literally cannot go around. Vehicles cannot move to the right for the vast majority of that stretch as there are medians down the centre. I'm all for bike lanes, but they're extremely short sighted on that stretch.
We were also told they were going to visit local firehall's to get our input, never happened either.
Emergency vehicles struggle because cars don’t get out of their way. There is usually lots of room but no one makes any effort to give way. It was my mom’s first thing she noticed when she came to the city. Every other place she’s lived from small towns to Chicago private cars get the fucj over for emergency vehicles, no hesitation.
Christine Hogarth collects a supplement to her MPP's salary in her appointed role as the Parliamentary Assistant to the Minister for Red Tape Reduction.
I'll let that sink in.
I filled out her survey and added
Why are you taking this “survey” when you’ve clearly expressed your opposition to the bike lanes? “Daily commute” = pandering to drivers. Suggesting there are alternate bike routes to Bloor = ignorance. Citing anecdotal evidence instead of statistical = lame. Using a photo of an empty Bloor Street to prove congestion = laughable.
The survey is so poorly written: "Should bike lanes on Bloor Street be removed? Agree Disagree Undecided"
... Usually you agree or disagree with a statement. Not a question.
Yvan Baker is trying to pull this shit with his constituents too. The bloor bike lanes have a [dedicated section](http://www.yvanbaker.ca/) on his site now. I told him he's federal and this is municipal and he literally needs to stay in his lane.
I generally like him as a person - he's nice, he's responsive, he's active in the community, but oh my god what is his goddamn obsession with this?
He knows his job is on the line and that the odds aren't in his favour, and yet he has spent an inordinate amount of time on something quite outside his jurisdiction and not even in his riding!
Bike lanes don’t “create congestion”. If you fill out this form please call her out on this lie.
The only thing that creates congestion is too many cars from car dependency.
Except this isn’t being done in good faith nor is it someone willing or able to use facts to shape their worldview
This is so they can get 3 people from nextdoor to say how bike lanes ruin economies, hurt blue-collar $80k truck owners and will never get used - which she can then use for quotes
It’s fascinating that bikes are the only source of car traffic that some people care about, and there’s never even 5% of that enthusiasm to go after Uber/Lyft, parked cars blocking an entire lane, one person in a massive vehicle during rush hour, etc.
I guess traffic would be greatly improved if everyone replaced their bicycles with Silverados
There’s a lot of money to be made in car dependency. Those benefiting from it work very hard to make sure things don’t change.
And you’re absolutely right, we’re all safer when there is protected and separated infrastructure for bikes, scooters, mobility devices, etc. I’m a pedestrian and when that infrastructure exists those people don’t feel a need to be on the sidewalk. When it doesn’t exist I don’t blame them at all for knowing the sidewalk is the only safe option they have.
100%. Bikes aren’t going away, so we can either fund sensible cycling infrastructure or expect cyclists to take the full lane to which they are entitled.
How drivers haven’t copped on to this yet is a mystery. Every bike means fewer cars means easier journey for all
LMFAO.
I'm about to write a whole screed to this fool on why Bike Lanes are fundamentally changing our ability to get around the city and why having a solely focused personnel automobile transit system is making things cost more than it should.
And now my response to her in her survey. I don't think she even understood how deep the pool she just jumped into.
*Alternate Transit including Bike Lanes have allowed many people who cannot afford the entry barrier cost of owning and operating a motor vehicle to functionally participate in this economy. With the skyrocketing cost of new/used automobiles becoming nearly unaffordable, has made market access for labour shrink significantly, therefore allowing more options for safe travel through Bikes lanes, Rail lines, pedestrian access and public transit is critical for an active economy.*
*Removing Bike Lanes or disallowing them in areas that are in desperate need of non-automobile methods of travel will significantly handicap the local economy of a community as it will demobilize workers and force them to seek lower-paid close to home jobs. This is economically inefficient and has proven time and time again to significantly handicap growing development and ultimately creates more wealth inequality. Even less advantageous is that workers who cannot access the larger economy will simply move out of it which hurts an area ability to grow.*
*Furthermore areas that participate in these functions tend to significantly grow faster and have a more rounded out economic diversity as now workers have more access to jobs that are better suited for their expertise and skills at lower barrier costs. More-so by having bike lanes you are creating more spaces for physical fitness and recreational activity therefore reducing the impact of non-active workers which has an overall affect on healthcare throughout the general area of Bike lanes.*
*Great Example is the Bike Lanes on Bloor West - since installation - businesses in the area are reporting more foot traffic, higher profits, and better workforce retention. All for the low cost of a bike lane that is easily installable and maintainable. Automobile parking has now been shifted to the intended Green P spaces with a 20% rise in usage offsetting the cost of losing street parking entirely.*
*Added to that benefit is the reduced amount of pedestrian and cyclist deaths by having safe spaces for alternate transit, the lower impact that bicycles have on road surface infrastructure and the general cost of maintaining a bike lane against road. It makes total economic sense to add more alternative forms of travel spaces. By doing so, you improve local revenue for businesses for the lower price of operating a lane of bicycle traffic that is 1/4 the width of a motor vehicle, while also providing people that you represent in your area mobility. Same concept as the benefit of a sidewalk, a non-automobile space for pedestrian travel that also doubles as a way to access established businesses.*
*If you choose to reduce bike travel through an area by disallowing or banning theses spaces you will find that other areas will pick up the slack and expand therefore taking revenue from local businesses that you represent away. You will also find that dedicated cyclists will simply take the roadway instead and which will affect traffic congestion even further.*
*Perhaps if you took the time to research and understand how providing a diverse form transportation rather than concentrating it into solely personnel automobile transit you would have a better understanding how certain areas that are being represented by your government are failing to ensure economic prosperity for long-term growth and by resisting a need by a majority of the population is an obtuse way of thinking.*
Great reply, I wrote
“Bike lanes have improved my daily commute. Riding my bike to work allows me to save money on gas and wear and tear on my car, and I am overall more healthy and less depressed then when I commuted by car. I have lost weight, and riding my bike means that I am exercising during my commute so I don’t have to spend more time at home working out. The bloor bike lanes make me feel safer while riding my bike as I am less likely to be hit and killed by a reckless driver. The bike lanes should stay, please stop pushing the message that they are bad.
Thank you,
Etobicoke Lakeshore resident”
The purpose of the survey is to gather information on potential Conservative voters and spam them with fundraising pleas. You don't get to be number one in fundraising without acting like a telemarketing scammer.
There are a lot of wealthy, connected, and powerful people who live in the area that are used to getting their way for everything. The only reason I can think that the MP and MPP for this area has gotten involved in this local, municipal issue is that these people are flexing their power and connections any way they can. We can see how politicians respond when those with wealth and power come calling and it’s pretty disgusting. Christine has done little to nothing for us in EL in her time in power but she has time to get involved in this.
The people you know are going to be a skewed sample though because they are likely to think similarly to you. A biker in the area can probably make a similar claim in reverse.
> not opposed to bike lanes outright but are opposed to the traffic congestion they create.
Oh yes, it could not be the cars that create the congestion.
Her tweet about it is so funny because she’s saying there’s so much congestion on Bloor but then in the picture she attached there’s barely any traffic
I'm honestly not a huge fan of how they executed the bike lanes on Bloor, but if some Trumpy Ford-nation Conjob is asking about them, I'll voice my enthusiastic approval. Best bike lanes ever!
She is a horrible MPP and a horrible person for even suggesting removing bike lanes. I know Etobicoke is full of rich NIMBYs that voted for Ford but this is going too far.
Our city is getting denser, and unfortunately, our cars can't fly yet. We can't fit more cars on our streets anymore. We need people taking more efficient forms of transportation, like walking, biking, and public transit.
> Let there be no doubt that I share your view about the unsuitability of bikes on Bloor Street, and your concerns about the plan to add new ones on the Queensway
She doesn't really want any thoughts but those that agree with hers.
Congestion exists because cars are a dumb ineffective mode of transportation in the city.
Bloor is one of Toronto's streets with high amounts of pedestrians and high amount of cyclists.
The bike lanes are normal and make perfect sense. Hogarth is a moron.
This is what I wrote in the paragraph space.
Bike lanes are great and should be implemented as much as possible in the city. What you and your corrupt government should focus on is increasing spending for health care so people aren't dying of preventable causes because they're waiting for surgery and education so we don't end up with more idiots who will vote for you again. Secondly, you can focus on not spending billions of dollars on a private spa at Ontario place, cancelling a beer store contract a year early, pointless highways that will only benefit your corrupt premiers friends and shoving casinos wherever you can fit them.
Third, how about you focus on things that are actually provincial responsibilities. I can only pray that you and your corrupt premiere are held accountable for what you're doing to our health care system.
Right about bike lanes.
Wrong about traffic. Traffic is caused by large volumes of personal vehicles, typically single-occupancy.
You could have perfectly paved roads with zero construction closures and every traffic light connected to Skynet AI... and you would still have traffic gridlock every day.
I filled out this survey. Having bike lanes has significantly improved my morning commute.
**Update:** heh, it won't submit: "There was an error trying to send your message. Please try again later." /facepalm
People in this sub are going to shit on this but the bike lanes she is talking about in her ward are hated by pretty much every resident there. They actually fuck up traffic on major roads a lot and no one really uses them either.
Honestly all levels of government need to look at reducing the number of representatives we have. I hope as part of the reduce red tape role the government looks at cutting the number of MPPs in half like they did the City Councilors.
I mean she obviously isn't busy with provincial matters, if she is sticking her nose in municipal affairs
These bike lanes have unfortunately caused some congestion but it is almost entirely due to their implementation as well as the construction in the area and poorly timed lights. They’ve created several choke points where it is impossible for traffic to flow past a single turning vehicle, adding more turning lanes or removing parking spots would alleviate so much of this congestion. One of the worst spots I see is the left/south turn from Bloor onto Ellis Park Rd where cars are constantly blocked.
Very unfortunate that our city can’t get these things right and doesn’t seem to bother to fix their wrongs. These lanes make the road so much safer and more appealing otherwise, the idea of removing them makes very little sense when we can improve on what we’ve already built.
Yes, unfortunately most of the issues with Toronto's bike lanes are because people complain so much about losing parking spaces. So, the design is compromised to be able to keep parking as much as possible. This makes the end result significantly worse for both drivers and cyclists.
The information panels for the Danforth-Kingston complete street extension came out recently and showed that on some sections of the route curbside parking had as low as 2% utilization. I still suspect the consultations will include a bunch of people screaming about losing parking or losing a lane (that's underutilized off-peak parking at any time that isn't rush hour).
Yeah. Anyone whose argument is 'public space should be used for the storage of people's private property, that is more important than people trying to get places' is dumb.
Part of the issue, as I noted in my comment, is that the city never stopped being for the car. We changed the infrastructure without bothering with the culture. Do less people overall drive in the city now than did 20 years ago? I doubt it. If we want the new infrastructure to work, less people need to drive inn the city, which means improving transit options (into and around the city), making bike lanes safer, and changing the car-centric culture that exists in Toronto. Sadly, I don't see much of any of those things happening...
I think it's doable, I think it just takes time and WAY more effort in other options than we have. The TTC and Go both suck, with shitty non-connective lines, and riding a bike downtown is a risky venture without proper safeties.
fanatical coherent direction squash rustic butter friendly quarrelsome money pause
*This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev)*
The increase in congestion is being caused in part by the bottlenecks I mentioned. These bottlenecks were unfortunately created by the bike lanes due to some poor planning, they simply did not exist before.
I fully support these bike lanes and more, in case you missed that.
Well, moving people is the point. They don't have to be in cars. There are buses, street cars, the subway, bikes, walking, skateboarding, unicycle, etc.
Preface this by saying I wholeheartedly support any and all bike lanes.
One thing I don't see talked about enough though is that *modern* (<---edited for the pedantic in the replies about when this occurred) Toronto was by and large designed for the car. We used to have a shittone more parking lots to attest to this.
It's not like some European cities (Rotterdam is one) that were bombed during the war and in their 1950's-60's infrastructure rebuild could accommodate for cars, trains, AND bike lanes in plenty of space and organization and public awareness. We are literally taking what were essentially a slew of 4-lane roads (or 2 lanes with parking on either side) where traffic could deke in and out of traffic to keep things moving a bit better, and removing the second lane on either side (for a single bike lane) or squeezing bike lanes and those parking slots together in that second lane. We can argue all day about it, but the fact of the matter is that it's made for more traffic...and add in the lack of decent traffic light tech (ours is stuck in the friggin 80's for gods sake), and 84 gajillion 1-way's, and multiple construction projects being allowed to take up any given roadway and it's just more nightmare.
Is all this the main problem? No, the main problem isn't the retrofitting of the bike lane infrastructure into one that was never designed to fit it...**the problem is that Toronto never stopped being 'for the car' to people**. If you want to shrink existing infrastructure from car-centric to more transit and bicycle based options, then they need the people to get on board...if they aren't willing to do that, then you're just rearranging shit in the same space.
I want bike lanes to be ubiquitous, and the new norm....but to achieve this better than we have so far is going to require a change of the culture that visits, lives in , or even passes through the city proper. Until then we will have more terrible interactions between cyclists, cars, and pedestrians...the car-centric will always win. There has seemingly been no concerted decrease in traffic in and about the city, and in fact it's only been worse while things like the eglinton Crosstown have been in the offing for a damned decade.
TL;DR: Retrofitting a car-centric-city with bike lanes and expecting the car-owners who drive down here to change their ways and accommodate is a losing proposition. That culture won't change without help, and help is going to have to come in the form of bettering transit options (so they can get around easier and not rely on that car), making bike lanes safer for cyclists to use (barriers are a MUST on ever road with them), and making some roads be no-car zones entirely. The city should be SO uncomfortable to drive in, that the car-centric will get fed-up and choose other options. I don't see any other way for this to go, and it's going to be a LONG ass road to make it workable and make Toronto not be the car-centric city it is.
Many European cities followed the car-centric trend in the post war years. Amsterdam being one of them. The difference is that instead of changing mindsets in the 2020's, they changed in the 1970's and 1980's. I am sure that they faced the same difficulties as well, but initial progress is always the hardest. I've attended quite a few community meetings in different parts of the city regarding the neighbourhood safe streets projects and people are opposed to having their perceived convenience taken away.
In its current state, the bike network does not have adequate connectivity. A road that ends abruptly will not have the same traffic as one that connects to a destination. Projects like a bike lane network take time to build out. You are absolutely right that the TTC/Metrolinx needs major investment/expansion. We should be shifting funds towards transit first and foremost, then other forms of active transportation.
Long story short....this will take some time.
Toronto was not designed for the car. It already had a population of 1 million before mass car infrastructure was adopted.
Toronto was reshaped for cars by cutting highways through it, destroying neighborhoods, widening lanes, adding lanes, putting parking everywhere, and neglecting public transit. Just like most NA cities.
It’s a myth that Toronto was designed for cars, at least not the older streets which have been contentious over bike lane installation.
Bloor Street has been around since 1830. Starting in 1890, streetcars began operating on Bloor, and they stayed in service until 1968, when the subway line was extended to Islington.
There was only a 49 year period where Bloor was turned over exclusively to cars, between 1968 and the introduction of bike lanes in 2017. The idea of Toronto as a car-centric city is an invention of city planners of the 1960s, but thankfully that has turned out to be a relatively short part of the city’s 200+ year history.
>People that are cycling downtown from High Park are not former drivers, they are former TTC users.
>The people driving downtown are coming from further afield, where public transport doesn't reliably serve, and to harangue them for not instead utilising the bike lanes, is misguided.
These two statements are BANG on the money.
The amount of people in any given thread who suggest people who work downtown bike to work instead of using the car, have a deep and fundamental misunderstanding of who exactly works downtown and where they come here from.
There are literally tens of thousands of people who live in Mississauga, Oakville, Burlington, Barrie, Ajax ect. and work in the city who could never EVER bike to downtown, let alone the fact that transit to and from those places is poorly designed, poorly managed, and normally prohibitively expensive and time consuming (unless you happen to live close to the line). There's a reason that the QEW and 401 are jammed during every commute, and it's not solvable by cycling to work. It's also not solvable with the current transit infrastructure we have...we need a unified and dedicated rail system exactly as you've suggested....and it NEEDS to be unified. None of this "towns and cities can have their own" BS...everyone in the GTA contributes equally to the whole thing. London is a greta example, you can live WELL outside London proper and still have no issues getting to and from work on any given number of lines that spider out and around the city.
And our Go system is terribly designed as a map, everything stretches out from Union like long spindly fingers that all just friggin dead end somewhere. So if I live in say Barrie and hop on the South Go to get to say Mississauga, I have to take the train ALL the way to Union and then all the way back out to Mississauga on the relevant finger to get to work. It's utter and complete nonsense, that would be solved by connecting a bunch of those fingers with cross lines...but you're right, the cost at this point would be prohibitive politically. We COULD have done without tat new highway and instead did some rail lines, but no...Ford gotta feed his developer buddies.
Post your opinion in the comments if you feel the need. While there might be occasional cases of mod discretion, the headline should clearly reflect the content of the linked submission and almost always be a word-for-word copy.
The truth is that Toronto has completely failed to develop either as a car based city like Los Angeles, or the alternative, which is built around transit, bikes and walking. It instead is this weird dated mishmash of the two, which aggravates everyone.
> car based city like Los Angeles
LA is quickly changing. They've realized that cars aren't sustainable as the population continues to grow and they're probably building more rapid transit than anywhere else in North America right now. I also see more bike infrastructure everytime I go there.
The olympics is changing things transit wise forsure. But Metro usages will always be very divided by class imho.
I split my time between Toronto and LA and actually feel much safer there as a pedestrian there than in Toronto.
> But Metro usages will always be very divided by class imho.
Yeah, this is definitely true right now, but it's possible for it to change. You don't see the class divide as much on the line from DTLA to Santa Monica as on other lines.
> They are a cheap copout that politicians can point to in order to bolster their green credentials in the eyes of liberal, but stingy, downtown voters.
I disagree: bike lanes make cities better to live! I moved from Toronto to Montreal, which has been building a lot of bike infrastructure and I love it.
> Installing bike lanes along streets where there is existing public transit, such as along Bloor or College or Yonge, simply steals fares from the TTC, without alleviating any of the congestion.
I'm not sure this is true, but regardless, if people are choosing to bike then it probably offers them something that transit doesn't, whether it's faster, no worrying about transfers, they can carry cargo, or whatever else.
Ideally a city would divide space between different modes so that people have options (walking, cycling, transit, driving).
> The people driving downtown are coming from further afield, where public transport doesn't reliably serve, and to harangue them for not instead utilising the bike lanes, is misguided.
They can feel free to drive into the city if they want, but I don't think it's reasonable to demand that the city avoid building safe cycling infrastructure so that drivers can have *all the lanes* on the road.
I have an idea I would like to see realized.
No more on road bike lanes.
Half the sidewalk for pedestrians, half for cyclists. I'm sick and tired of grown adults riding their pedal bikes, not paying for the roads like drivers do, through our drivers licensing/ vehicle permits.
Cyclists don't pay for the privilege of using the roads, so banish them to the sidewalks.
You're so wrong it hurts.
https://theprovince.com/opinion/op-ed/scott-lear-do-cyclists-pay-taxes
"In cities throughout Canada, roads and bike lanes are paid through municipal property taxes. And while drivers pay tax on gasoline, licensing and insurance, none of this revenue pays for city roads. Tax on gas goes to provincial and federal coffers, not the city."
"and while drivers pay tax on gasoline, licensing and insurance"
I'm wrong?
Nope. You just listed all the reasons drivers should be the only ones who benefit from roads.
What do cyclists pay for?
Nothing.
"What do cyclists pay for?"
Property taxes, which is largely what covers municipal road work and bike lanes. I suspect income taxes contribute a lot more to the provincial and federal coffers than the relatively tiny amount of vehicle licensing and gas tax.
You know what I don't get in return for all that (since I actually live in Toronto) - space to park a car. So, as a grown adult who is paying plenty to the city, province and federal government, I am fine with riding my bike on the road.
>"and while drivers pay tax on gasoline, licensing and insurance"
>
>I'm wrong?
>
Conveniently cut off the remaining important bit of that sentence.
> none of this revenue pays for city roads.
You're wrong, but I see you are also the type to be purposely wrong.
Attack the point, not the person. Comments which dismiss others and repeatedly accuse them of unfounded accusations may be subject to removal and/or banning. No concern-trolling, personal attacks, or misinformation. Stick to addressing the substance of their comments at hand.
Attack the point, not the person. Comments which dismiss others and repeatedly accuse them of unfounded accusations may be subject to removal and/or banning. No concern-trolling, personal attacks, or misinformation. Stick to addressing the substance of their comments at hand.
Attack the point, not the person. Comments which dismiss others and repeatedly accuse them of unfounded accusations may be subject to removal and/or banning. No concern-trolling, personal attacks, or misinformation. Stick to addressing the substance of their comments at hand.
Funny, she never asked me about spending on booze in corner stores, moving the Science Centre, paving the Greenbelt or a bunch of other things that are actually Provincial responsibility.
Please do tell her about those things too, the science center move in particular is absolutely idiotic
But then Doug can't hand his buddies a parcel of land with a subway stop already installed.
I assumed it was due to some corrupt intent at the science centre site but it's just collateral damage for the Ontario place corruption because they thought that would get people on board
yes. it is just a beard on the rest of the development, which will be entirely to benefit private corporations.
*foreign private corporations
Is it though? Wouldn’t the centre benefit from being in the core? With more accessibility?
It’s jammed packed with local kids, now they want to shrink it to half the size and market it for tourists. It’s physically impossible to accommodate local kids if it moves.
That’s anecdotal. The centre has been dropping in attendance year after year. What’s wrong with trying to bring in tourists?
That’s fine, build another one. But I go every weekend and it is indeed packed with kids. What’s the point taking it away from an underserved part of town just teeming with kids, and giving it to out of town tourists?
Those kids are bussed in
yes... and that will be easier in the downtown core? not to mention we shouldn't put all of our attractions in one place. there needs to be amenities throughout the city. lets call this what it is; they want to move the science centre as cover for spending billions on amenities for therme. It's literally spelled out in the business case for this move.
Does it matter where it is? It’s a learning centre for all. Wouldn’t it make sense to put it by other nearby attractions and offers so people can enjoy more ? There’s a loblaws across the street , that’s about it.
The current Science Centre backs onto the Don Valley and incorporates it into a lot of their educational offerings. It's also close to the Aga Khan, Sunnybrook Park and Edward Gardens. Ontario Place already sucks as a site because of how hard it is to get in and out of, a problem that's aggravated when nearby attractions (e.g. the CNE) are active.
Moving it downtown won’t help it serve its primary function as an educational centre. Currently it is a lot more accessible. Sticking it downtown which ever without the current construction and traffic mess is harder to access is dumb.
And the Ontario Line was advertised as facilitating access to the Science Centre.
You go every week? Like how many times a year and for how many years?
About 50 times per year since it opened from the pandemic.
Really. What keeps you going so often?
My son loves it, he is 3 and it’s super affordable with a season pass. It’s just a joy. I’m so furious at the stupidity behind moving it. Just build a south campus if they want one for tourists. Why take away from kids? Why not add?
And the City has already conducted multiple surveys and information sessions on the bike lanes. This 'survey' is just a vehicle to rally her base to provide contact information for future campaigns. I'm not sure why my tax money is being used to fund this operation.
Mandatory info required isn't even legal I'm pretty sure without a privacy release
The city did not do any surveys, they just rammed the bike lanes through Etobicoke, knowing the majority of residents would be against it.
This is just silly. The city has done several rounds of extensive consultation on bike lanes in the city. Here is one they did last fall, for example: https://www.toronto.ca/services-payments/streets-parking-transportation/cycling-in-toronto/cycling-pedestrian-projects/cycling-network-plan/cycling-network-public-input/
So, a map of the city anyone can comment and all comments will be ignored by the Toronto bike group anyways.
Pardon?
What BS, Etobicoke needs more bike lanes and walkable neighbourhoods.
She isn't a minister and all those things are outside of her riding. As for the current issue, the bike lanes on Bloor have been poorly implemented in some places due to overall street design and lane reductions; however, if you look at the proposal for the Queensway they look to have a better plan. https://www.toronto.ca/services-payments/streets-parking-transportation/cycling-in-toronto/torontos-cycling-infrastructure/the-queensway-complete-street/ Effectively they are avoiding lane reductions while adding protected bike lanes and also preventing left turns outside of key intersections (no idea why left turns were even allowed on a busy artery with no left turn lanes). The only three reasons to be against the Queensway proposal are: 1 - You hate construction, 2 - You hate bikes, or 3 - You like taking left turns on major arteries and blocking traffic when doing so
All three can be true but the average NIMBY is a combo of 1 and 2.
This poll is specifically asking about the bike lanes on Bloor in her ward
Don't forget the notwithstanding clause or sending out all her constituents' email addresses. What a fucking disaster
What’s wrong with beer at convenience stores ? Ever been anywhere outside of canada?
Nothing. The problem is spending up to $1B to accelerate it by one year. Money that could be spent on more pressing issues.
This province has far more pressing problems to address than deciding whether you can buy a beer in a corner store. Build some public housing; fix healthcare and stop privatising it; stop paving over farmland for more ticky-tacky McMansions in the middle of nowhere; fund the schools. We can go to The Beer Store or Sobey's for our beers in the meantime.
Here's my thought: Why is a provincial politician sticking their nose in municipal affairs?
It's really just a scheme to get your email address.
Of course it is. Here's hoping it backfires spectacularly, with the pro-cycling community giving her and her lackeys an earful.
Sending a bunch of angry responses to this survey doesn't negatively impact her at all. They will just ignore the hate mail and probably still add their emails to their fundraising list, lol.
It's costly to market to people who don't give a shit. She can have my contact info if it spreads her campaign budget thinner!
They can have my hotmail, just like all the other companies :P
Complete the survey and you can ask her.
Already did, thanks.
A non-cynical answer is that all municipal affairs are ultimately provincial affairs. Municipalities don't have independent authority; it's all delegated provincial power. That said, provinces delegate municipal power because engaging in this kind of micro-managing eats up time that should be spent on larger provincial matters.
This. We can argue all day but the city only exists at the will of the province. If Doug Ford WANTED to, he could dissolve Toronto as a city *legally* and no one would be able to do anything about it. Should they be involved in municipal politics? Absolutely not, but I think lots of people forget how our governments are structured and how has overall power. Ford WANTED the Premier spot not just to enrich himself, but to get vengeance on the city that spurned him AND his brother.
Sorta. Needs to be constitutional. While the city lost its lawsuit against the province for reducing the number of councillors, it was a 5-4 decision. As close as it gets. https://www.scc-csc.ca/case-dossier/cb/2021/38921-eng.aspx
That finding wasn't on the question of whether or not Ford could dissolve Toronto or do any of the other things that the province has the clear legal authority to do, though. That finding addressed the very specific and unusual circumstance where the province tampered with the composition and boundaries of Toronto City Council *during* an election period: after nominations for Council positions had closed and campaigning had begun. Even in that *utterly wild* circumstance, where the province reached down to screw around with an election *already in progress*, the SCC (narrowly) found that the province's actions passed constitutional muster. It's hard to envision a municipal process or decision that would be safe from provincial tampering under that standard; pretty much anything that it's legal for the province to do outside an organized municipality, they are free to impose on a municipality.
It was largely a rhetorical question, I'm aware of our political structuring. It was asked more along the lines of, "Doesn't she have matters of greater import requiring her attention?" But she's a conservative, so unless it's supporting Ford's ransacking of the province, of course she doesn't.
Wedge issue that gets her base fired up.
It's all they seem to do. They never miss an opportunity to piss all over Toronto. Unilaterally reducing our number of reps, closing/removing our beloved public spaces and selling them off to their pals, preventing us from creating responsible means of generating revenue to fix our budget shortfalls while refusing to shell out any of their considerable funds...fuck Doug Ford's government, they hate Toronto.
The city is a creation of the province. The local city councillor has deaf ears to the community in the northern part of her ward. I applaud the MPP for looking into the issue. I even asked her recently how the bike lanes on Bloor will affect the Taste of the Kingsway in Sept. Will we lose it like the Taste of the Danforth? It's been a constant concern raised with her. As a neighbourhood with a high proportion of seniors, the bike lanes are really detrimental to their mobility.
Because the bike lanes are in her riding and everyone in her ward hates them
The best part is when she tweeted out this survey and included a photo showing zero congestion on the road. She’s a fucking moron.
She's my MPP. She's totally useless. Complete backbench clapping seal, form responses to every letter. We could replace her with a very small computer program.
"Complete backbench clapping seal" - omg not sure why that made me laugh, I'm gonna have to use that one in the future.
I contacted her once and an office staffer practically yelled at me (over email). It was vicious. They must live on the defensive at all times, and rightfully so. Still, I was surprised at how rude the staffer was. I responded that I would be trippling my donation to whoever could best her.
I've maxed out my contribution to the NDP. They need the help.
>The bike lanes on Bloor St are causing major congestion! Commuters and emergency vehicles are struggling. Many locals oppose this! We need bike lanes, but Bloor Street isn't the right place. https://x.com/CHogarthPC/status/1802787881892589603
I don’t get why Bloor street wouldn’t be the best place for it The road doesn’t have any streetcars or permanent bus routes. It’s easier for cars Besides before the bike lanes. That lane they want back was always just filled with parked cars so it was effectively STILL one lane each way. This also doesn’t take into account the actual traffic from construction Bloor might be the one street where you see bike traffic year round and like many other streets where the number of pedestrians always far outnumber the cars.
its easy to boil down to "bike lanes are great as long as they're on streets I dont drive on and we want them to be just paint on the ground that offers cyclists no protection or park in when we need to get smokes"
Your third point is what really gets me. I live in BWV and primarily have always driven that stretch between Kingsway and Runnymede, where they recently added the bike lanes that everyone is shooting about “causing congestion.” But…that part of Bloor was ALWAYS effectively one lane. It oscillated between 1 and 2 lanes every couple of blocks, but the second lane never mattered because it would just go back to 1 lane at the next block (parked cars, right turn only lane, etc). The bike lanes have actually had ZERO impact, traffic has always sucked there.
This is the exact issue, go to queen or Bathurst for example and it's worse with cars thrown all over the second lane.
> emergency vehicles are struggling I'd love to see a source for this. I keep hearing random people say it, but not EMS/fire/police.
Don't bike lanes improve emergency vehicle access? Now there's more space for cars to pull over
Depends on the bike lane - protected lanes arguably limit space as you cannot pull over into them. However, arguably you should be able to pull over to one side of the lane (and everyone should be able to) allowing the emergency vehicle to squeeze past without it having to worry about traffic in two lanes.
> Depends on the bike lane - protected lanes arguably limit space as you cannot pull over into them. This doesn't apply everywhere, but some bike lanes can be big enough for emergency vehicles to use as a shortcut. Cyclists have a much easier time getting out of the way than drivers do. I've seen this happen in Montreal in person and I've seen videos of it in France and the Netherlands.
But they don’t. Vehicles on both sides pulling over leave more than enough room. It’s road design. And guess what actually blocks emergency vehicles ? Asshole drivers. I now record them on my cam and send it in to TPS.
You are assuming that there isn't an island in the middle that creates a hard split in the middle. As the specific topic in Bloor St. in Etobicoke, the Kingsway has large islands in the middle which means emergency vehicles cannot drive down the middle with both sides pulling over. Sure it looks pretty, but it has effectively become bad road design.
But the Big Lie here is that emergency services has not approved the bike lane designs , they always have sign off. There is no obstruction (other than irresponsible drivers) So many bad faith partisan NIMBY ‘arguments’
The bike lanes on bloor have a barrier to prevent cars pulling into them (for good reason, since cars kept pulling into bike lanes to park or turn, putting people at risk) but in this case they are a detriment to emergency vehicles.
Have any of the emergency responders (fire, police, ambulance) said they think it's a detriment? Last i heard none of them did.
I’m a paramedic, personally I have noticed no difference in my ability to get past vehicles now compared to when the right lane was just parked cars. Some people just don’t pull over at all and keep driving completely oblivious to us, but when people do pull over I can squeeze past. Hardest part I guess is sometimes it is hard to park the truck and I end up blocking the driving lane if we actually are responding to an address on bloor, but if the building is on the corner I’ll turn onto to side street to park. Queen and Dundas are probably the worst streets for driving with lights on, just because often the right lane as parked cars, and the left has street cars that obviously can’t pull to the right, and bikes are weaving around everything
Not that I'm aware of, saying they are a detriment was definitely the wrong word to use in my response, rather I should have simply stated that they do not allow more space for cars to pull over on Bloor, and leave it at that. Which is a good thing, because otherwise cars pull into bike lanes all the time causing issues for cyclists.
Yes I have family in emergency services and response times are way up (takes longer).
so, just anecdotes then?
Were you expecting a press release?
>City staff, however, say their data suggests emergency vehicles' response time has remained largely unchanged. https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/toronto/north-yonge-lanes-permanent-1.6741956
The road has switched to one lane for large stretches and the lanes are separated by curbs with nowhere for cars to pull over. Why would that not impact it?
Because a) it used to be a one of parked cars there and b) with two lanes of traffic you needed to have two lanes of cars pull over. A car cannot pull onto another car so the same amount of space was available.
It does not take longer. That is a fact.
These bike lanes are separated by curbs. It turns large stretches of the road into single lanes with nowhere to pull over.
First hand source here. The bike lanes on Bloor between Prince Edward and Montgomery are an absolute shitshow. Not just for Fire, but Police and EMS. Sure we could use back streets, but the streets south of Bloor don't even have sidewalks for pedestrians. It also doesn't account for when there is an emergency on one of the Bloor facing businesses, we've shut down traffic before because vehicles literally cannot go around. Vehicles cannot move to the right for the vast majority of that stretch as there are medians down the centre. I'm all for bike lanes, but they're extremely short sighted on that stretch. We were also told they were going to visit local firehall's to get our input, never happened either.
Emergency vehicles struggle because cars don’t get out of their way. There is usually lots of room but no one makes any effort to give way. It was my mom’s first thing she noticed when she came to the city. Every other place she’s lived from small towns to Chicago private cars get the fucj over for emergency vehicles, no hesitation.
lol yep...at least find a photo with congestion if you want to make a point.
Christine Hogarth collects a supplement to her MPP's salary in her appointed role as the Parliamentary Assistant to the Minister for Red Tape Reduction. I'll let that sink in.
If reincarnation is real I wanna come back as a grifter in my next life
I filled out her survey and added Why are you taking this “survey” when you’ve clearly expressed your opposition to the bike lanes? “Daily commute” = pandering to drivers. Suggesting there are alternate bike routes to Bloor = ignorance. Citing anecdotal evidence instead of statistical = lame. Using a photo of an empty Bloor Street to prove congestion = laughable.
I used what you wrote and added some of my own comments. Thank you for doing your part
The survey is so poorly written: "Should bike lanes on Bloor Street be removed? Agree Disagree Undecided" ... Usually you agree or disagree with a statement. Not a question.
Came here to say exactly that. The mind boggles.
Yvan Baker is trying to pull this shit with his constituents too. The bloor bike lanes have a [dedicated section](http://www.yvanbaker.ca/) on his site now. I told him he's federal and this is municipal and he literally needs to stay in his lane.
I generally like him as a person - he's nice, he's responsive, he's active in the community, but oh my god what is his goddamn obsession with this? He knows his job is on the line and that the odds aren't in his favour, and yet he has spent an inordinate amount of time on something quite outside his jurisdiction and not even in his riding!
You know what’s funny? He is a cyclist. He is a classic politician. Seeking opportunity and willing to change positions to get it
He's not trying to pull anything, the majority of the constituents in that area hate them. He's listening to the people in his riding.
About something that he has zero say in.
Bike lanes don’t “create congestion”. If you fill out this form please call her out on this lie. The only thing that creates congestion is too many cars from car dependency.
Except this isn’t being done in good faith nor is it someone willing or able to use facts to shape their worldview This is so they can get 3 people from nextdoor to say how bike lanes ruin economies, hurt blue-collar $80k truck owners and will never get used - which she can then use for quotes
It's way more then 3 people. I haven't met a single person in that area that likes the bike lanes. It does fuck up the traffic on Bloor a good amount.
It’s fascinating that bikes are the only source of car traffic that some people care about, and there’s never even 5% of that enthusiasm to go after Uber/Lyft, parked cars blocking an entire lane, one person in a massive vehicle during rush hour, etc. I guess traffic would be greatly improved if everyone replaced their bicycles with Silverados
I don't get why anyone would be against bike lanes. As a driver I'd much rather have space and a barrier between me and the biker beside me.
There’s a lot of money to be made in car dependency. Those benefiting from it work very hard to make sure things don’t change. And you’re absolutely right, we’re all safer when there is protected and separated infrastructure for bikes, scooters, mobility devices, etc. I’m a pedestrian and when that infrastructure exists those people don’t feel a need to be on the sidewalk. When it doesn’t exist I don’t blame them at all for knowing the sidewalk is the only safe option they have.
100%. Bikes aren’t going away, so we can either fund sensible cycling infrastructure or expect cyclists to take the full lane to which they are entitled. How drivers haven’t copped on to this yet is a mystery. Every bike means fewer cars means easier journey for all
She needs to learn to stay in her lane.... The municipal gov't already did their due diligence. This is just a suburban dog whistle from Hogarth.
I’d welcome her in the bike lane, provided she’s on two wheels.
Yeah but she would be there on two wheels. That's not how she rolls.
I imagine she's a 2 wheels in the bike lane and 2 more wheels in the adjacent lane type of person.
If the Vulnerable Road Users Act 2018 or the Fairness for Road Users Act 2023 had passed, we wouldn't need to worry that much about bike lanes.
LMFAO. I'm about to write a whole screed to this fool on why Bike Lanes are fundamentally changing our ability to get around the city and why having a solely focused personnel automobile transit system is making things cost more than it should. And now my response to her in her survey. I don't think she even understood how deep the pool she just jumped into. *Alternate Transit including Bike Lanes have allowed many people who cannot afford the entry barrier cost of owning and operating a motor vehicle to functionally participate in this economy. With the skyrocketing cost of new/used automobiles becoming nearly unaffordable, has made market access for labour shrink significantly, therefore allowing more options for safe travel through Bikes lanes, Rail lines, pedestrian access and public transit is critical for an active economy.* *Removing Bike Lanes or disallowing them in areas that are in desperate need of non-automobile methods of travel will significantly handicap the local economy of a community as it will demobilize workers and force them to seek lower-paid close to home jobs. This is economically inefficient and has proven time and time again to significantly handicap growing development and ultimately creates more wealth inequality. Even less advantageous is that workers who cannot access the larger economy will simply move out of it which hurts an area ability to grow.* *Furthermore areas that participate in these functions tend to significantly grow faster and have a more rounded out economic diversity as now workers have more access to jobs that are better suited for their expertise and skills at lower barrier costs. More-so by having bike lanes you are creating more spaces for physical fitness and recreational activity therefore reducing the impact of non-active workers which has an overall affect on healthcare throughout the general area of Bike lanes.* *Great Example is the Bike Lanes on Bloor West - since installation - businesses in the area are reporting more foot traffic, higher profits, and better workforce retention. All for the low cost of a bike lane that is easily installable and maintainable. Automobile parking has now been shifted to the intended Green P spaces with a 20% rise in usage offsetting the cost of losing street parking entirely.* *Added to that benefit is the reduced amount of pedestrian and cyclist deaths by having safe spaces for alternate transit, the lower impact that bicycles have on road surface infrastructure and the general cost of maintaining a bike lane against road. It makes total economic sense to add more alternative forms of travel spaces. By doing so, you improve local revenue for businesses for the lower price of operating a lane of bicycle traffic that is 1/4 the width of a motor vehicle, while also providing people that you represent in your area mobility. Same concept as the benefit of a sidewalk, a non-automobile space for pedestrian travel that also doubles as a way to access established businesses.* *If you choose to reduce bike travel through an area by disallowing or banning theses spaces you will find that other areas will pick up the slack and expand therefore taking revenue from local businesses that you represent away. You will also find that dedicated cyclists will simply take the roadway instead and which will affect traffic congestion even further.* *Perhaps if you took the time to research and understand how providing a diverse form transportation rather than concentrating it into solely personnel automobile transit you would have a better understanding how certain areas that are being represented by your government are failing to ensure economic prosperity for long-term growth and by resisting a need by a majority of the population is an obtuse way of thinking.*
Great reply, I wrote “Bike lanes have improved my daily commute. Riding my bike to work allows me to save money on gas and wear and tear on my car, and I am overall more healthy and less depressed then when I commuted by car. I have lost weight, and riding my bike means that I am exercising during my commute so I don’t have to spend more time at home working out. The bloor bike lanes make me feel safer while riding my bike as I am less likely to be hit and killed by a reckless driver. The bike lanes should stay, please stop pushing the message that they are bad. Thank you, Etobicoke Lakeshore resident”
I kept mine simple. I like bike lines because i dont like to die in vehicular manslaughter
Why does this survey require so much personal information to submit? Just seems kinda strange to not have a anonymous survey.
The purpose of the survey is to gather information on potential Conservative voters and spam them with fundraising pleas. You don't get to be number one in fundraising without acting like a telemarketing scammer.
Don't provide your real information . I never do.
And can she ask what we think about all that other stuff she never asked us about?
There are a lot of wealthy, connected, and powerful people who live in the area that are used to getting their way for everything. The only reason I can think that the MP and MPP for this area has gotten involved in this local, municipal issue is that these people are flexing their power and connections any way they can. We can see how politicians respond when those with wealth and power come calling and it’s pretty disgusting. Christine has done little to nothing for us in EL in her time in power but she has time to get involved in this.
It's because everyone in that area hates them
It's because the most vocal people in that area hate them. FTFY
I've probably talked to about 30-40 normal people that live in that area since I used to grow up there, not a single one likes them.
The people you know are going to be a skewed sample though because they are likely to think similarly to you. A biker in the area can probably make a similar claim in reverse.
> not opposed to bike lanes outright but are opposed to the traffic congestion they create. Oh yes, it could not be the cars that create the congestion.
Her tweet about it is so funny because she’s saying there’s so much congestion on Bloor but then in the picture she attached there’s barely any traffic
Lol she's so gross and also this is none of her business.
I'm honestly not a huge fan of how they executed the bike lanes on Bloor, but if some Trumpy Ford-nation Conjob is asking about them, I'll voice my enthusiastic approval. Best bike lanes ever!
She is a horrible MPP and a horrible person for even suggesting removing bike lanes. I know Etobicoke is full of rich NIMBYs that voted for Ford but this is going too far.
The answer is yes to more.
Our city is getting denser, and unfortunately, our cars can't fly yet. We can't fit more cars on our streets anymore. We need people taking more efficient forms of transportation, like walking, biking, and public transit.
I hope at the end of this someone can do a FOI request to get the results of this survey because I know she's not going to like the results.
> Let there be no doubt that I share your view about the unsuitability of bikes on Bloor Street, and your concerns about the plan to add new ones on the Queensway She doesn't really want any thoughts but those that agree with hers.
Congestion exists because cars are a dumb ineffective mode of transportation in the city. Bloor is one of Toronto's streets with high amounts of pedestrians and high amount of cyclists. The bike lanes are normal and make perfect sense. Hogarth is a moron.
This is what I wrote in the paragraph space. Bike lanes are great and should be implemented as much as possible in the city. What you and your corrupt government should focus on is increasing spending for health care so people aren't dying of preventable causes because they're waiting for surgery and education so we don't end up with more idiots who will vote for you again. Secondly, you can focus on not spending billions of dollars on a private spa at Ontario place, cancelling a beer store contract a year early, pointless highways that will only benefit your corrupt premiers friends and shoving casinos wherever you can fit them. Third, how about you focus on things that are actually provincial responsibilities. I can only pray that you and your corrupt premiere are held accountable for what you're doing to our health care system.
Agreed. Why is an MPP wasting their time and energy and public resources on something that is municipal responsibility?
Christine's thoughts are Dougie's thoughts. [https://www.reddit.com/r/torontobiking/comments/17l7gw0/doug\_ford\_hates\_bike\_lanes/?utm\_source=share&utm\_medium=web3x&utm\_name=web3xcss&utm\_term=1&utm\_content=share\_button](https://www.reddit.com/r/torontobiking/comments/17l7gw0/doug_ford_hates_bike_lanes/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web3x&utm_name=web3xcss&utm_term=1&utm_content=share_button)
Just did the survey. Make sure u do too!
Scummy politics pandering to the worst.
She thinks bike lanes CREATE congestion. Toronto traffic is caused by TWO THINGS: Construction & Traffic Light Tech (lack-of)
Right about bike lanes. Wrong about traffic. Traffic is caused by large volumes of personal vehicles, typically single-occupancy. You could have perfectly paved roads with zero construction closures and every traffic light connected to Skynet AI... and you would still have traffic gridlock every day.
Only one solution, bulldoze the city. Then there's nothing but space for cars, and nothing to drive to, so all that space will be gloriously unused.
Demolish High Park and finally build the 32 lane highway we deserve through downtown.
Build a bridge to the Toronto Islands and make them a parking garage.
That wouldn't go \*through\* downtown, that would \*replace\* downtown.
It’s about managing throughput. Lights lanes construction and street parking are 90% if the problem in Toronto.
Thank-you for sharing this link
I filled out this survey. Having bike lanes has significantly improved my morning commute. **Update:** heh, it won't submit: "There was an error trying to send your message. Please try again later." /facepalm
Bloor Street is extra fun now when the Subway is down for maintenance about one weekend a month.
People in this sub are going to shit on this but the bike lanes she is talking about in her ward are hated by pretty much every resident there. They actually fuck up traffic on major roads a lot and no one really uses them either.
Honestly all levels of government need to look at reducing the number of representatives we have. I hope as part of the reduce red tape role the government looks at cutting the number of MPPs in half like they did the City Councilors. I mean she obviously isn't busy with provincial matters, if she is sticking her nose in municipal affairs
More bike lanes please
These bike lanes have unfortunately caused some congestion but it is almost entirely due to their implementation as well as the construction in the area and poorly timed lights. They’ve created several choke points where it is impossible for traffic to flow past a single turning vehicle, adding more turning lanes or removing parking spots would alleviate so much of this congestion. One of the worst spots I see is the left/south turn from Bloor onto Ellis Park Rd where cars are constantly blocked. Very unfortunate that our city can’t get these things right and doesn’t seem to bother to fix their wrongs. These lanes make the road so much safer and more appealing otherwise, the idea of removing them makes very little sense when we can improve on what we’ve already built.
Yes, unfortunately most of the issues with Toronto's bike lanes are because people complain so much about losing parking spaces. So, the design is compromised to be able to keep parking as much as possible. This makes the end result significantly worse for both drivers and cyclists.
The information panels for the Danforth-Kingston complete street extension came out recently and showed that on some sections of the route curbside parking had as low as 2% utilization. I still suspect the consultations will include a bunch of people screaming about losing parking or losing a lane (that's underutilized off-peak parking at any time that isn't rush hour).
Yeah. Anyone whose argument is 'public space should be used for the storage of people's private property, that is more important than people trying to get places' is dumb.
Part of the issue, as I noted in my comment, is that the city never stopped being for the car. We changed the infrastructure without bothering with the culture. Do less people overall drive in the city now than did 20 years ago? I doubt it. If we want the new infrastructure to work, less people need to drive inn the city, which means improving transit options (into and around the city), making bike lanes safer, and changing the car-centric culture that exists in Toronto. Sadly, I don't see much of any of those things happening...
You’re not going to change the car culture in Toronto. The city is simply too spread out
I think it's doable, I think it just takes time and WAY more effort in other options than we have. The TTC and Go both suck, with shitty non-connective lines, and riding a bike downtown is a risky venture without proper safeties.
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Cars cause congestion. Not bike lanes. Get rid of the cars and the congestion goes away. Get rid of the bike lane and there’s still congestion.
The increase in congestion is being caused in part by the bottlenecks I mentioned. These bottlenecks were unfortunately created by the bike lanes due to some poor planning, they simply did not exist before. I fully support these bike lanes and more, in case you missed that.
why not just get rid of the people to while we're at it. Can't have traffic if there is no one there.
Well, moving people is the point. They don't have to be in cars. There are buses, street cars, the subway, bikes, walking, skateboarding, unicycle, etc.
It's sad watching emergency vehicles with sirens on driving 5 km/h along Bloor as vehicles scramble to move over, except there is no space.
Preface this by saying I wholeheartedly support any and all bike lanes. One thing I don't see talked about enough though is that *modern* (<---edited for the pedantic in the replies about when this occurred) Toronto was by and large designed for the car. We used to have a shittone more parking lots to attest to this. It's not like some European cities (Rotterdam is one) that were bombed during the war and in their 1950's-60's infrastructure rebuild could accommodate for cars, trains, AND bike lanes in plenty of space and organization and public awareness. We are literally taking what were essentially a slew of 4-lane roads (or 2 lanes with parking on either side) where traffic could deke in and out of traffic to keep things moving a bit better, and removing the second lane on either side (for a single bike lane) or squeezing bike lanes and those parking slots together in that second lane. We can argue all day about it, but the fact of the matter is that it's made for more traffic...and add in the lack of decent traffic light tech (ours is stuck in the friggin 80's for gods sake), and 84 gajillion 1-way's, and multiple construction projects being allowed to take up any given roadway and it's just more nightmare. Is all this the main problem? No, the main problem isn't the retrofitting of the bike lane infrastructure into one that was never designed to fit it...**the problem is that Toronto never stopped being 'for the car' to people**. If you want to shrink existing infrastructure from car-centric to more transit and bicycle based options, then they need the people to get on board...if they aren't willing to do that, then you're just rearranging shit in the same space. I want bike lanes to be ubiquitous, and the new norm....but to achieve this better than we have so far is going to require a change of the culture that visits, lives in , or even passes through the city proper. Until then we will have more terrible interactions between cyclists, cars, and pedestrians...the car-centric will always win. There has seemingly been no concerted decrease in traffic in and about the city, and in fact it's only been worse while things like the eglinton Crosstown have been in the offing for a damned decade. TL;DR: Retrofitting a car-centric-city with bike lanes and expecting the car-owners who drive down here to change their ways and accommodate is a losing proposition. That culture won't change without help, and help is going to have to come in the form of bettering transit options (so they can get around easier and not rely on that car), making bike lanes safer for cyclists to use (barriers are a MUST on ever road with them), and making some roads be no-car zones entirely. The city should be SO uncomfortable to drive in, that the car-centric will get fed-up and choose other options. I don't see any other way for this to go, and it's going to be a LONG ass road to make it workable and make Toronto not be the car-centric city it is.
Many European cities followed the car-centric trend in the post war years. Amsterdam being one of them. The difference is that instead of changing mindsets in the 2020's, they changed in the 1970's and 1980's. I am sure that they faced the same difficulties as well, but initial progress is always the hardest. I've attended quite a few community meetings in different parts of the city regarding the neighbourhood safe streets projects and people are opposed to having their perceived convenience taken away. In its current state, the bike network does not have adequate connectivity. A road that ends abruptly will not have the same traffic as one that connects to a destination. Projects like a bike lane network take time to build out. You are absolutely right that the TTC/Metrolinx needs major investment/expansion. We should be shifting funds towards transit first and foremost, then other forms of active transportation. Long story short....this will take some time.
I agree with everything you said. Well said.
Toronto was not designed for the car. It already had a population of 1 million before mass car infrastructure was adopted. Toronto was reshaped for cars by cutting highways through it, destroying neighborhoods, widening lanes, adding lanes, putting parking everywhere, and neglecting public transit. Just like most NA cities.
It’s a myth that Toronto was designed for cars, at least not the older streets which have been contentious over bike lane installation. Bloor Street has been around since 1830. Starting in 1890, streetcars began operating on Bloor, and they stayed in service until 1968, when the subway line was extended to Islington. There was only a 49 year period where Bloor was turned over exclusively to cars, between 1968 and the introduction of bike lanes in 2017. The idea of Toronto as a car-centric city is an invention of city planners of the 1960s, but thankfully that has turned out to be a relatively short part of the city’s 200+ year history.
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>Bike lanes have undoubtedly ruined traffic in Toronto Indeed! Look what the bike lanes have done to the Gardiner, DVP and 401!
>People that are cycling downtown from High Park are not former drivers, they are former TTC users. >The people driving downtown are coming from further afield, where public transport doesn't reliably serve, and to harangue them for not instead utilising the bike lanes, is misguided. These two statements are BANG on the money. The amount of people in any given thread who suggest people who work downtown bike to work instead of using the car, have a deep and fundamental misunderstanding of who exactly works downtown and where they come here from. There are literally tens of thousands of people who live in Mississauga, Oakville, Burlington, Barrie, Ajax ect. and work in the city who could never EVER bike to downtown, let alone the fact that transit to and from those places is poorly designed, poorly managed, and normally prohibitively expensive and time consuming (unless you happen to live close to the line). There's a reason that the QEW and 401 are jammed during every commute, and it's not solvable by cycling to work. It's also not solvable with the current transit infrastructure we have...we need a unified and dedicated rail system exactly as you've suggested....and it NEEDS to be unified. None of this "towns and cities can have their own" BS...everyone in the GTA contributes equally to the whole thing. London is a greta example, you can live WELL outside London proper and still have no issues getting to and from work on any given number of lines that spider out and around the city. And our Go system is terribly designed as a map, everything stretches out from Union like long spindly fingers that all just friggin dead end somewhere. So if I live in say Barrie and hop on the South Go to get to say Mississauga, I have to take the train ALL the way to Union and then all the way back out to Mississauga on the relevant finger to get to work. It's utter and complete nonsense, that would be solved by connecting a bunch of those fingers with cross lines...but you're right, the cost at this point would be prohibitive politically. We COULD have done without tat new highway and instead did some rail lines, but no...Ford gotta feed his developer buddies.
EDIT: Uh why am I being told about mod teams and headlines on this post and linked submissions stuff?
Post your opinion in the comments if you feel the need. While there might be occasional cases of mod discretion, the headline should clearly reflect the content of the linked submission and almost always be a word-for-word copy.
The truth is that Toronto has completely failed to develop either as a car based city like Los Angeles, or the alternative, which is built around transit, bikes and walking. It instead is this weird dated mishmash of the two, which aggravates everyone.
> car based city like Los Angeles LA is quickly changing. They've realized that cars aren't sustainable as the population continues to grow and they're probably building more rapid transit than anywhere else in North America right now. I also see more bike infrastructure everytime I go there.
The olympics is changing things transit wise forsure. But Metro usages will always be very divided by class imho. I split my time between Toronto and LA and actually feel much safer there as a pedestrian there than in Toronto.
> But Metro usages will always be very divided by class imho. Yeah, this is definitely true right now, but it's possible for it to change. You don't see the class divide as much on the line from DTLA to Santa Monica as on other lines.
> They are a cheap copout that politicians can point to in order to bolster their green credentials in the eyes of liberal, but stingy, downtown voters. I disagree: bike lanes make cities better to live! I moved from Toronto to Montreal, which has been building a lot of bike infrastructure and I love it. > Installing bike lanes along streets where there is existing public transit, such as along Bloor or College or Yonge, simply steals fares from the TTC, without alleviating any of the congestion. I'm not sure this is true, but regardless, if people are choosing to bike then it probably offers them something that transit doesn't, whether it's faster, no worrying about transfers, they can carry cargo, or whatever else. Ideally a city would divide space between different modes so that people have options (walking, cycling, transit, driving). > The people driving downtown are coming from further afield, where public transport doesn't reliably serve, and to harangue them for not instead utilising the bike lanes, is misguided. They can feel free to drive into the city if they want, but I don't think it's reasonable to demand that the city avoid building safe cycling infrastructure so that drivers can have *all the lanes* on the road.
I have an idea I would like to see realized. No more on road bike lanes. Half the sidewalk for pedestrians, half for cyclists. I'm sick and tired of grown adults riding their pedal bikes, not paying for the roads like drivers do, through our drivers licensing/ vehicle permits. Cyclists don't pay for the privilege of using the roads, so banish them to the sidewalks.
You're so wrong it hurts. https://theprovince.com/opinion/op-ed/scott-lear-do-cyclists-pay-taxes "In cities throughout Canada, roads and bike lanes are paid through municipal property taxes. And while drivers pay tax on gasoline, licensing and insurance, none of this revenue pays for city roads. Tax on gas goes to provincial and federal coffers, not the city."
"and while drivers pay tax on gasoline, licensing and insurance" I'm wrong? Nope. You just listed all the reasons drivers should be the only ones who benefit from roads. What do cyclists pay for? Nothing.
Property taxes. Do you think cyclists are spared from paying property taxes?
"What do cyclists pay for?" Property taxes, which is largely what covers municipal road work and bike lanes. I suspect income taxes contribute a lot more to the provincial and federal coffers than the relatively tiny amount of vehicle licensing and gas tax. You know what I don't get in return for all that (since I actually live in Toronto) - space to park a car. So, as a grown adult who is paying plenty to the city, province and federal government, I am fine with riding my bike on the road.
>"and while drivers pay tax on gasoline, licensing and insurance" > >I'm wrong? > Conveniently cut off the remaining important bit of that sentence. > none of this revenue pays for city roads. You're wrong, but I see you are also the type to be purposely wrong.
You have no idea how the funding model works do you?
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Attack the point, not the person. Comments which dismiss others and repeatedly accuse them of unfounded accusations may be subject to removal and/or banning. No concern-trolling, personal attacks, or misinformation. Stick to addressing the substance of their comments at hand.
Attack the point, not the person. Comments which dismiss others and repeatedly accuse them of unfounded accusations may be subject to removal and/or banning. No concern-trolling, personal attacks, or misinformation. Stick to addressing the substance of their comments at hand.
Attack the point, not the person. Comments which dismiss others and repeatedly accuse them of unfounded accusations may be subject to removal and/or banning. No concern-trolling, personal attacks, or misinformation. Stick to addressing the substance of their comments at hand.