Sean Marshall

Tag: Cycling

  • Suburban cycling infrastructure: the 416 versus the 905

    IMG_2051-001Riding along the McNicoll hydro corridor in northern Scarborough

    Earlier this summer, I took two rides from my downtown apartment to suburban locations. On one ride, I biked northeast to Agincourt, on another trip, I biked to Downtown Brampton on a route that took me past the Humber River and Etobicoke Creek. I experienced different standards for on-street and off-road cycling routes. The City of Toronto generally does better, but suburban cycling infrastructure generally depends on off-road trails, rather than on-street bike lanes and cycle tracks.

    In the urban, central part of Toronto, bike lanes and cycle tracks (separated bike lanes located along major streets) are the predominant form of cycling infrastructure. While there are some bike lanes in suburban Toronto and in other municipalities like Mississauga and Brampton, most bike routes, if they exist, are off-road multi-use trails, in ravine or hydro corridors, or alongside major roads, like sidewalks.

    Multi-use paths are pleasant to ride on, but they’re often treated as recreational trails, rather than transportation corridors. Most paths are not cleared of snow in the winter (winter cycling really should be encouraged), and they are often isolated from the adjacent road network and local destinations, and they can meander, rather than follow straight lines. Road crossings can often be awkward.

    Bike lanes, which offer less protection from motorized traffic at least are integrated with the rest of the street grid, and are generally more direct. But on fast-moving suburban arterials, they aren’t ideal without separation. This is where the side-of-road path comes in.

    IMG_2305-001Shared pathway, Derry Road, Mississauga

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  • Shortsighted short-turns at Bramalea GO

    IMG_2321-001Bramalea GO Station

    Earlier this week, I took a train from Union Station to Bramalea, as I was preparing for a walk that I will hosting on Sunday exploring Canada’s first satellite city.

    Bramalea Station opened in 1973 when the Georgetown GO train service — GO Transit’s second commuter rail line — was inaugurated. The station is located at the southwest corner of Steeles Avenue and Bramalea Road, surrounded by factories, warehouses and busy roads and highways.

    There’s little to fault GO Transit for locating its station where it is. In 1973, GO was still in its infancy, launching its first rail services along the Lakeshore Line in 1967. It wasn’t anything more than a commuter rail service, offering downtown-bound commuters an alternative to driving all the way in; free and ample parking was part of that successful model. In 1967, GO Transit was created to reduce the need to upgrade provincial highways; it allowed Downtown Toronto to become a bustling global financial centre without needing huge parking lots and garages and more freeways feeding into it; .

    The GO station is located in Bramalea’s south end, next to the CN mainline, surrounded by land designated for industrial development since 1959, when work began on that new suburb. The station is located near a waste-to-energy plant (an incinerator), and is located under Pearson Airport’s flight paths. Since GO insists on providing free parking to its customers, Bramalea (unlike, say, Downtown Brampton) isn’t a bad place to put lots of parking spots; in total, Bramalea has 2,377 parking spots. And since Bramalea Station is adjacent to Highway 407, it’s a major transfer point for GO bus routes to York University, Hamilton, Guelph and Kitchener.

    But like too many GO stations, Bramalea is needlessly hostile to pedestrians and cyclists, and is even hostile for many local transit users. As Metrolinx, the agency responsible for GO Transit, pursues Regional Express Rail (RER), it has a responsibility to improve Bramalea Station. As it exists right now, Bramalea is a terrible transit terminal.

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  • On Toronto’s newest ten-year cycling plan

    The newly completed Finch Hydro Corridor
    The Finch Hydro Corridor

    The City of Toronto has released a new proposed Ten Year Cycling Network Plan, which establishes a minimum grid of cycling infrastructure across the entire city. It will be presented to the Public Works and Infrastructure Committee next week; city staff, who have worked long and hard on this project, consulting many stakeholders and members of the public, recommend its adoption by City Council. It will create over 500 kilometres of safer cycling routes, while connecting existing bike lanes and trails to each other. The plan would cost just over $150 million over ten years, a bargain.

    Of course, we’ve been down this road before. Only a fraction of the cycling infrastructure approved in previous plans has been built. And many new trails that were built — following hydro corridors and abandoned railways in suburban parts of the city — don’t connect to nearby ravines and parks. And railways and highways remain major barriers; there are only three places where the city’s designated cycling network crosses Highway 401.

    Last week’s Council approval of the Bloor Street bike lanes between Shaw Street and Avenue Road — a simple pilot project — didn’t look like a sure thing, even though it ended up voting 38-3 in favour.

    Deputy Mayor Denzil Minnan-Wong warned of “bike lane creep,” afraid that a safe bike route would extend to Danforth Avenue (which it should). And Councillor Stephen Holyday (Ward 3, Etobicoke Centre) ridiculously claimed cycling advocates were “trying to build a wall” around the downtown core, ignoring the fact that there’s a subway along the same corridor, which moves many times more people than two lanes of Bloor Street, and there are other options — such as the Gardiner Expressway, which we are needlessly committed to keeping up — for getting downtown with a car.

    Some of the highlights of the new plan:

    • Long distance cycling corridors, such as Bloor/Danforth from Etobicoke to Kingston Road in Scarborough, Kingston Road from the Beaches to West Hill, and Yonge Street from Downtown to Steeles Avenue.
    • New connections across railways, ravines and highways.
    • Extensions to popular off-road trails, such as the West Toronto Railpath.

    Highways are very dangerous for pedestrians and cyclists to cross: high-speed ramps are marked with signs telling pedestrians to wait for gaps. Cyclists must navigate cars quickly changing lanes and exiting freeways. And railways can create long, impenetrable barriers unless pedestrians trespass on railway property. I wrote about it at more length in Spacing.

    The worst example might be where Bridgeland Road ends on one side of the Metrolinx-owned Newmarket Subdivision (GO Transit’s Barrie Line) and Floral Parkway ends on the other side. Highway 401 conspires to make this an exceptionally bad case. Happily, this is one of the places where the city seeks to build a new bridge or tunnel to allow cyclists and pedestrians to cross safely, and I am glad to see other gaps addressed in this latest plan.


    An example of how railways and highways create barriers to active transporation

    There are four large maps (large PDF files) that show the existing cycling network and the proposed new routes. They correspond to the four community council boundaries.

    Toronto and East York
    North York
    Etobicoke-York
    Scarborough

    It’s not only important that City Council approve this new plan, it’s also crucial that proponents of active transportation keep on top of the city to actually build the new cycling infrastructure and multi-use paths and bridges. We’ve seen this play out before: council approves a great plan for cycling, for transit, for urban development, and then rests on its laurels. Let’s do better this time around.

  • Dispatches from Durham Region, and Kingston Road tokenism

    Two weeks ago, I was out exploring Durham Region, the eastern end of the Greater Toronto Area. While south Durham Region is mostly made up of generic suburban sprawl, there are some interesting historic villages and new urbanist neighbourhoods. North of Highway 7, Durham Region is still mostly rural, though plans for a new airport in North Pickering may change that.

    Sadly, Durham Region remains auto-centric in its outlook, even more so than other suburbs to the north and west of Toronto. The provincial government is constructing an eastern extension of Highway 407, with two new connecting highways to Highway 401 either nearly complete, or proposed. Oshawa, the largest city in Durham, is the birthplace of General Motors Canada, but while the auto industry declines, the city has been continuing to make many civic planning mistakes. And in Ajax, a small symbol of change – new bus and bicycle lanes – is still merely a token effort.

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  • A ride through Midwestern Ontario, Part II

    IMG_6019-001The Cambridge to Paris Rail Trail, part of a network of rail trails that join together in the City of Brantford

    Previously in this blog, I described the first day of a two-day ride through Midwestern Ontario, between Guelph and Kitchener via West Montrose and St. Jacobs. I rode through Ontario’s only authentic covered bridge, along infrastructure created for both cyclists and carriages, and through several picturesque towns and villages.

    Midwestern Ontario is a term that I generally use to describe the part of the province west of the Greater Toronto Area, yet outside the flat, prairie landscapes of Southwestern Ontario (Essex, Lambton, and Kent Counties). The rural landscape is marked by gentle rolling hills, livestock and cash crop farms, as well as cities and towns adjusting to a post-industrial economy. Brantford was once the capital of Canada’s once massive farm implement industry, but now not even the factories remain. Kitchener-Waterloo’s diverse heavy manufacturing concerns have mostly left; but there’s now a strong knowledge economy. Galt (now part of Cambridge) and Paris straddle the Grand River, their grand stone churches and commercial blocks make these some of Ontario’s most picturesque.

    Electric and steam railways — the Grand River Railway, the Lake Erie & Northern, the Toronto, Hamilton & Buffalo, the Grand Trunk, the Canada Southern — tied many of these communities together; now highways do. But many those abandoned railways have found new purpose as hiking and cycling trails; Brantford is at the heart of this new network.

    The second day’s ride, on August 30, took me from Downtown Kitchener, where I stayed overnight, through Cambridge, I then followed the Grand River closely to Brantford. After a stop in Brantford, I took the former TH&B railway corridor into Downtown Hamilton, where I enjoyed dinner and refreshments before loading my bike on a GO Transit bus and rode back home to Toronto. I completed a similar trip in 2012; I wrote about that ride in Spacing.

    Photos and commentary follow.

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  • A ride through Midwestern Ontario, Part I

    IMG_5885-001

    Just prior to Labour Day weekend, I went on a two-day bike excursion west of Toronto, starting in Guelph, staying in Downtown Kitchener, and finishing my ride in Downtown Hamilton. [Part II, Kitchener to Hamilton is here.]

    I find that cycling long distances, especially in the countryside, is valuable “me” time. I go at my own place, which is great, because I do not have the stamina nor the build for keeping up with seasoned road cyclists. In my opinion, well-maintained rail trails are excellent — there are no hills to climb, no traffic to deal with (except where the trail crosses busy country roads), and there is much peace and quiet. Fellow trail users are friendly, a nod, a hello, or a wave are normally exchanged by passing cyclists or pedestrians.

    On the first day of this 160-kilometre ride, I rode from Guelph, through West Montrose, Elmira, and St. Jacobs to Downtown Kitchener. I stopped at a covered bridge, rode through several charming small towns, sampled the beers of a craft brewery celebrating its second anniversary, and checked out some interesting cycling infrastructure shared by a very different form of muscle-powered transport.

    I don’t have a car, so planning rural rides are little bit more challenging. Happily, for most out-of-town ride I rely on GO Transit’s trains and buses, which provide an opportunity for one-way or “open-jaw” trips without worrying about the logistics of organizing shuttle rides. In the last few years, I’ve used GO Transit to get to/from Uxbridge, Lindsay and Peterborough, Hamilton (and on to Port Dover by bike), Niagara Region, Georgetown and Newmarket, and Barrie (and on to Orillia and Midland), these cities served by GO are all great places to start or finish a ride.

    IMG_4943-002Downtown Guelph. The Basilica Church of Our Lady Immaculate dominates McConnell Street (photo taken earlier this year)

    On a pleasant Saturday, I loaded my bike on the rack took a GO bus from the Union Station Bus Terminal to Guelph, a long bus ride that took nearly two hours. GO Transit’s buses are quite comfortable; if you’re planning to bring a bike along, just be sure to arrive early to make sure you get one of the two bike rack spots.

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  • More thoughts on cycling infrastructure

    In Torontoist last week, I mapped the new and improved bike lanes proposed for 2016. There are some great new additions – more contraflow lanes in the east end and through Kensington Market allow cyclists to take direct routes along quieter residential streets. There will finally be a pilot of the long-demanded Bloor Street bikeway; at least between Shaw Street and Avenue Road. And, as I write this post, work is being completed on separated bike lanes along Adelaide and Richmond Streets east to Parliament Street. The popularity of the lanes added last year (University Avenue to Bathurst) pretty much guarantees that these new bike corridors, still officially pilots, are permanent.

    But the map below – created for the Torontoist post – shows many gaps, even with the new 2015 and 2016 additions. Note the long north-south lane in the top centre of the map. That’s Willowdale Avenue, the longest planned addition. It ends at Sheppard, just before Highway 401; there’s no easy and safe way for cyclists to cross North America’s widest and busiest auto route anywhere near where the new Willowdale bike lane ends. Freeways and railways remain nearly impenetrable barriers for pedestrians and cyclists; this prevents the true implementation of a minimum grid.

    Bike Routes - Sept17

    But even bike lanes are only good if they aren’t blocked by ignorant or ill-intended motorists. Simple barriers like knock-down bollards or curbs are helpful, but they aren’t always effective.

    Last Sunday, I cycled from my home in east Downtown Toronto to Downtown Hamilton, following the Martin Goodman Trail, Lakeshore Road, and the Hamilton Beach trail for an 84-kilometre ride. Through Oakville and Burlington, the Waterfront Trail is nearly non-existent, so I ride on Lakeshore Road itself, which has bike lanes in only a few sections. But motorists are, almost without exception, courteous and patient; it’s the one place in the suburbs where I really enjoy cycling.

    In Hamilton, after crossing the Queen Elizabeth Way on a spectacular bridge that also spans the Red Hill Creek, I again take minor streets to make my way west towards downtown, where I usually visit a favourite pub on Augusta Street before loading my bike on a GO Transit bus rack and returning to Toronto.

    6164718675_1ac3950080_o

    Hamilton, like Toronto, has started to add some great new cycling infrastructure. It has a bike share program, called SoBi Hamilton, it has great trails leading out to Brantford and Caledonia (as well as the Waterfront Trail), and some new bike lanes and cycletracks. The most impressive is Cannon Street, where a lane on a one-way arterial was transformed into a two-way separated cycletrack last year.

    14988034160_c541a52410_k

    But even green paint, knock-down bollards, and plenty of signage wasn’t enough on Sunday, when I encountered this:

    IMG_9624

    IMG_9625

    The woman in the red shirt and grey trackpants started screaming at me as I took these photos, claiming she had the right to stop here as she was moving out of the house. She threatened to call the cops on me (!) for taking photos of her stuff, saying I could be looking to steal it. (On my bike, of course.) Cyclists encountering this from the west would be forced into oncoming traffic; in any event it’s dangerous and illegal. (Taking photos of this type, on public property, certainly is not.)

    https://twitter.com/Sean_YYZ/status/645726388310396928

     

    There’s still a lot of ignorance out there; not by the woman with the U-Haul that I mentioned; but by at least one reaction:

    Sidewalk riding is itself illegal and dangerous (sidewalk riding cyclists are a pet peeve of mine). Happily, there were plenty of others willing to correct that user about the safety of vulnerable road users and the various laws and by-laws applicable in this case.

    But this is all a long and winding way to say that more cycling infrastructure is great. And places like Toronto and Hamilton are doing great work on that front. But the infrastructure is only as strong as its connectivity, and as long as they’re not blocked by ignorant and/or hostile motorists. Education and enforcement need to go along with the buckets of green paint, signage, and barriers now being added in our cities.

     

  • Exploring Toronto by bike: A circle tour around the city

    IMG_4182-001A friendly deer passes me as I make my up the Humber River trail

    One of my favourite things to during the summer s taking long weekend bicycle rides. A few of these rides have been multi-day trips, such as the Niagara Region Circle Route tour I took on Victoria Day weekend, or my ride from Hamilton to Port Dover and return last summer, but many have been day trips. Hamilton is one of my favourite destinations; it’s about 85 kilometres from my home to Downtown Hamilton via the Waterfront Trail, Burlington Beach and the Cannon Street cycletrack. I’m not a terribly fit cyclist, and I take many breaks (for a late lunch, to take photos, or for rest) but if I leave home by 11 AM, I’ll be in Hamilton around 6 or 7 PM. For me, it’s all about enjoying the ride; when I ride alone, I find that it’s great alone time.

    But you can stay in the city and enjoy a long, leisurely ride. There are many reasons why you might want to stay in Toronto: there’s no need to carry a repair kit; you’re never too far from a TTC bus route (all buses are equipped with bike racks) if you need to end the ride early for any reason. And it’s a great way to explore the city.

    I recently spent a Sunday afternoon going for a nearly five-hour ride, a circle route from my downtown apartment back downtown, following the Humber River, the new Finch Hydro Corridor path, and the Don River, a 73-kilometre ride in total. I stayed away from Lake Ontario, avoiding the PanAm Games-related detour and general chaos near Exhbition Place.

    I passed by historical landmarks, made multiple crossings of the Humber and Don Rivers, rode through dozens of parks and swallowed at least a few flies. The Humber Trail even makes use of the long-abandoned Toronto Suburban Railway; it makes use of the piers that once supported that electric railway’s trestle over the Humber River.

    The map below illustrates the route that I took, which brought me through five of the six former municipalities that were joined to create the City of Toronto (sorry, Scarborough).

    I often see wildlife when I ride outside Toronto, but I did not expect come so close to it on this trip. But along the Humber River Trail, north of Highway 401 and Albion Road, a youngish deer was wandering down the path, grazing. I stopped my bicycle and just watched, the deer kept coming closer, cautiously walking right past me. Only a few hundred metres north at one of many trail crossings of the river, I spotted a doe and a fawn crossing.

    IMG_4187-002Deer fording the Humber River

    With the completion of the Martin Goodman Trail on Queen’s Quay, it’s almost possible to complete this circle route without riding on city streets. But there are several minor gaps (such as the Lower Humber Trail at Stephen Avenue in Etobicoke) and some very aggravating gaps.

    One of the worst gaps in Toronto’s recreational cycling network is between the Humber River trail and the Finch Hydro trail, where there is simply no safe cycling route to bridge this 3.5 kilometre distance. I survived cycling under Highway 401 on Finch Avenue, but it is not an experience that I advise doing on your own. However, the newly-constructed connection between the Finch corridor and the East Don River trail was seamless and pleasant.  There’s a gap on the East Don trail between Duncan Mill Road and Don Mills, but it is well signed; happily, this will be partially fixed with an extension of the Don Mills trail to York Mills Road.

    The Humber Trail-Finch Hydro Corridor Trail gap in North York

    IMG_6836
    One of the scariest places that I have ever cycled. 

    Happily, these gaps that I mention are on the City of Toronto’s radar. The city is in the process of updating its cycling network plan; city staff, along with consultants IBI group and Vélo Québec, are looking for comments on the new draft cycling project map. There are many other opportunities to improve cycling connections for recreational and utilitarian cycling; I encourage you to have your say.

    Below, a few more photos on my ride around Toronto.

  • Mapping the City’s Bike Network Gaps

    Bike-Routes-WO-GapsToronto’s Bikeway Network, as of January, 2015

    Over at Torontoist, I posted a short article about the gaps in Toronto’s cycling infrastructure. You can read it here. What follows is a quick summary and some more thoughts (and another map, showing the bikeway network without the sharrows and signed routes without bike infrastructure).

    Toronto’s bikeway network is composed of multi-use paths (off road trails in parks and ravines, shared with pedestrians), cycle tracks (separated bike lanes like those on Sherbourne), bike lanes and contra-flow bike lanes (painted bike lanes without separation; I don’t consider the flex-posts on Adelaide, Richmond and Wellesley to be proper separations — see this Metro Toronto article about a garbage truck entering the bike lane and destroying these flimsy plastic markers). The city also considers other signed bike routes (usually quiet residential and collector streets without heavy traffic) and sharrows to be part of its bikeway network, but I don’t.

    Bike Routes - WO Gaps, sharrowsToronto’s Bikeway Network, as of January, 2015, with the sharrows and signed routes removed

    When the sharrows and signed routes are eliminated, Toronto’s bikeway network looks very thin, especially outside the downtown core. Furthermore, most multi-use trails (shown in green) are not cleared in the winter (the Martin Goodman Trail the only exception) and many are unlit; they are not the safest options for women or vulnerable users.

    Below, I show some of the gaps in the existing network; where bike lanes and multi-use trails should be connected to create at least a complete network of bike-friendly routes across the city. Several circle routes are slowly coming together (via the Humber, Don, Rouge, Highland Creek and east-west hydro corridors) but there are many gaps that need to be closed to complete these circuits. The Waterfront trail is a disconnected labyrinth in Scarborough; I’d like to see a new multi-use trail beneath the beautiful Scarborough Bluffs to connect the trail to the parks below otherwise isolated and inaccessible without a car.

    The gaps in the existing bikeway network show the shortcomings in cycling infrastructure to support a minimum grid of safe bike routes in the suburbs, which would be mostly built on city streets, not in ravines or hydro corridors. Note that there are only three designated places to cross Highway 401, which is a much greater barrier to more Torontonians than the Gardiner Expressway is downtown.

    For his part, during the 2014 campaign John Tory said that he would support bike lanes where it was “sensible.” But he did not define what that meant or provide a timeline for specific goals. Given the number of bike-unfriendly councillors returned to city hall; one of whom is now John Tory’s deputy mayor, I don’t have too much confidence in seeing much more than a few downtown projects and more multi-use trails constructed in the next four years.

    Bike-Routes-Gaps
    Some of the many gaps in the existing bikeway network