Bloor Street Bike Lane Pilot Project

Below is a letter to Toronto's PWIC (Public Works and Infrastructure Committee) to request their support of the planned Bloor Street Bike Lane Pilot Project planned for this summer (and well described here). Take what you want from this. Use it yourself to send your own letter urging the committee's support.

I’m writing to implore you to support the bike lane pilot project on Bloor Street.

Bloor is easily one of the most important east-west routes in the city. As a fairly flat route it can take you across town to many important landmarks, workplaces, institutions and places of worship. From High Park to Christie Pits to access to ravines, public libraries, schools, Universities, theatres, churches, museums and to countless restaurants and shops, Bloor Street is an exemplar of what makes Toronto great. That’s why this bike lane pilot project is so important.

• A lane for people who bike would make a safer Bloor Street for pedestrians and cyclists.
• It would make Bloor Street less stressful for people who drive, bike and walk.
• A bike lane on Bloor would ease congestion - the fact that Bloor has two lanes of moving traffic and two lanes of parked cars makes no sense. Open up the available street real estate to people on the move.
• It would allow for more shoppers to access stores, restaurants, coffee shops, museums, galleries and theatres and spend more money in those establishments.
• A Bloor Street bike lane would give students a safe, healthy and quick way to get to school.
• A Bloor Street bike lane would give residents a safe, healthy way to access libraries and community services. We’ve made these services with our hard earned tax dollars, why make it difficult and dangerous to get to them?

I’ve lived in Toronto for almost two decades and for last five years I’ve gone without a car. That means I have personally made more space on our streets. By not owning a car, I’ve personally freed up at least 8 parking spots (by some estimates, that’s the average number of spots available for each car). By riding a bike, I’ve given up my seat on the bus, street car or subway for someone unable to ride a bike or drive a car. I ride roughly 2000 km per year saving approximately 340 kg of carbon dioxide from Toronto’s air. Multiple that by five years and I have personally prevented over a metric ton of CO2 from entering our air. That is just the impact one cyclist has, think of the difference the thousands of people who bike in Toronto make every day.

Lastly, by riding a bike, I keep healthy enough to stay out our health care system - now it’s up to you to make it safe enough for me to stay out our health care system.

Help make Toronto a smart, modern, mobile and safe city to live, work and play. Please support the Bloor Street Bike Lane Pilot.

Thank you for your consideration.

Biking Wisdom in 10 Words or Less

Your Biking Wisdom in 10 Words is an interactive map that crowd sources cyclist advice for a dozen or so North American cities created by the New York Times. It's just as much fun looking at what people have said as it is to add to. Toronto is the only Canadian city, which will hopefully be joined by Montreal or Vancouver some time in the future.

Off the Rack, On Your Back

Buster Keaton exhibits proper dandy cycling form.

Myself and a few cycling designer colleagues often like to bemoan the fact that there is very little fashionable clothing you could wear cycling. Of course there is plenty of high-performance gear but, the argument goes, nothing you could wear to work. Something that allowed movement, breathability, water resistance and practical, well-placed pockets.

That was then, this is now. Our new complaint is more likely that there is no fashionable cycling clothing you can afford. As that much maligned urban creature, the Hipster, has taken to cycling (especially cycling on bikes without fenders or chain guards), there are an increasing number of clothing options from casual to, well, not so casual. There are doubts about the financial viability of a dinner jacket or tuxedo made for cycling.

In fact, there are so many options, mostly expensive ones, that it would be impractical to tackle them all in one post. When a company like Levi's dedicates an entire line of jeans and jackets to cycle commuters you realize the days of this as a niche market are numbered.

For myself, I contend that it's really more about the bike than having high-performance kit designed to look like street fashion. A commuting-friendly bike equipped with baskets, racks, fenders and a chain guard would most likely accommodate any clothing. Yet, there is something really great about having clothing that deals with sweat and rain that you can wear anywhere. I admit to having a minor jacket fetish (I own more stupid looking Gore-Tex jackets than one man should admit). I can't explain it other than to say for years I wore ill-fitting, poorly cut clothing from outdoor outfitters because they were lightweight and water resistant and I didn't even commute by bike. The only problem was I looked like a German tourist reading to hike the highest peaks. No offense to German tourists, but, you know, fanny packs… really?

To that end I'm going to opine about the following companies and their wares. I'm sure there are more, and this list may be expanded but if you're looking for such clothing and accessories and don't want to bother with my bullshit, here's the list. There is a North American bias and I know there are European and Japanese brands not shown here, but difficulty in availability means they would be impracticable to show here.

Levi's Commuter Line
Rapha
Aether Apparel
Outlier
Vulpine
Betabrand
Arc'teryx Veilance
Nau
Icebreaker
Chrome Industries
Mission Workshop
MEC

My Morning Jacket

This morning it was raining a bit so even though my "ride" to work is two minutes or less, I threw on my light-weight rain jacket (it's still very hot in Toronto). I didn't bother throwing the rain cover on my knapsack.

Two minutes later, my laptop bag was soaked, my arms were drenched and my shoes soaked through. Two minutes. For two minutes it was like riding through a car wash. When I sat at my desk, I double checked three of my four weather apps, all which were reporting light rain. The amount of rain was small, the intensity would've power washed graffiti from brick walls.

“…an increasing trend in extreme events”

Light rain is not actually a concern. My beloved Castelli Leggero jacket is perfect on hot days with light rain, but that was not what I just rode in. My typical approach to wet weather has been to wear light weight, quick dry clothing; you're going to get wet but at least you can dry out quickly. But as I've grown tired of wearing trail clothing and eventually just started wearing street clothes (because let's face it, trail gear might look normal in Seattle or Ottawa but not anywhere else). That meant riding a bike with fenders and chain guard to minimize street spray and just some typical rain jacket. As I started extending my riding season, fenders and rain jacket just didn't cut it. This spring, as wet and cold as it was, I thought I had cracked this problem. Comfortable merino wool base layers,  light weight rain gear, plus a bike with fenders. But today, that "light weight rain gear" let me down. Don't get me wrong, the Leggero jacket is still the tiny perfect jacket to throw in a bag or take on a ride for just-in-case scenarios, just not for it-is-raining-like-an-Indian-monsoon type scenario.

Which is in fact, the real problem. You can read all about it in this report: Historical Trends In Short Duration Rainfall In The Greater Toronto Area
The upshot is this for a ten-year period: "No consistent trend in annual extremes was identified but an increasing trend in extreme events for some months, particularly May, was identified."

Sort of like what happened in July when a typical month's worth of rain fell in a few hours. The total rainfall for the month wasn't significantly greater but the intensity of it meant extreme flooding and crop damage. Thus our storm sewers and other hydrological structures need to be designed for extreme rainfall, not typical rainfall.

And not just our "hydrological structures" but also our hydrological clothing. So I decided to just give up on all my other kind of "okay" rain jackets and fork over well earned dollars to purchase one known to be one of the best on the market. I also upgraded my rain pants. I'm done messing around. No more mister nice guy. I don't care if I look like a member of the junior SWAT team or an astronaut on furlough. I just want to arrive dry-ish. For awhile I've had different jackets for different weather; one for wind (Gore-Tex), one for hard rain, but not breathable and no hood (Cannondale), one 100% waterproof not breathable with hood (MEC) and one for light wind and rain (Castelli).

Now, with this Showers Pass jacket I'll have a water and wind resistant, breathable jacket with detachable hood. I stop here. No more will I wonder what else can I do. I will have done everything and this is it. This is as far as I go. Hopefully, I will go far.

il traffico Romano

In economically depressed Italy, bicycles have outsold cars by as much as a quarter of a million in the past year. Though as you can tell from the video at this link, my guess is that helmet sales are in a slump.

I wonder if Italians, like Americans after World War II, saw bicycles as a sign of poverty rather simply a pleasurable and practical mode of transit. As their affluence grew after the War years, did they turn their hopes and aspirations to automobiles and abandon cycling? Think of The Bicycle Thieves where the father's fate depends on a bicycle and anyone seen as a bike thief was practically lynched. Or is this more of a Roman thing, where the frenetic pace of traffic simply made cycling too hazardous or intimidating? It's so strange that countries with a great sport cycling traditions such as Italy or Belgium could have cities like Rome and Brussels that lack cycling infrastructure. Of course, it's all relative. I've been told by people who lived in Rome they never saw a cyclist or it was rare or only someone decked in Lycra. I was told a similar thing about Brussels but when I was last there, a new bike share program was in place and cyclists seemed common enough. Compared to Toronto's streets, London seems like a vision of Hell's Outer Ring Roads yet cycling continues to grow there. While I probably don't agree with Boris Johnson on too many things, I do agree with the need, as he puts it, to "de-lycrify" cycling.

Enjoying cycling for sport is great. Enjoying cycling for just everyday life is important. Additionally, I've only just discovered that Lycra is a product of Invista owned by Koch Industries, Inc., owned by the notorious big-business-small-taxes-pro-oil Koch bros. So, you know, it's sort of ironic that a product so closely linked to sports such as cycling is produced by a company much more interested in the success of the automotive sector.

Not that a ban on Lycra from cyclists would put a dent in Koch Industries bottom line, but it seems pertinent to at least recognize the irony. The stretchy, comfy, stinky, easily-laundered, non-ironing irony.

Ride On

Just over a week ago I rode in the Ride to Conquer Cancer which benefits the Princess Margaret Cancer Centre. Luckily, over 220 kilometres I didn't have a single "mechanical" and only a couple of times did I have to tell my legs to "shut up". Hopefully, this video above will give some insight on what the ride was like.

The work of the people at Princess Margaret and advancements they've made in the treatment of cancer have been remarkable but there is still a lot to be done. That's why this ride is important. That's why the money everybody gave is important.

Years ago a friend asked me if I cared about money, and I said, "Yes, yes I do."

He asked, "Why? Money can't buy you happiness? It can't buy you love?"

I knew my answer then, and I know it now. Money buys freedom. But it buys more than that. Money buys the resources we need to find new treatments and fund research. I think it was Pierre Burton who wrote about the coercion of poverty, and if funding or lack thereof is one of the things coercing how we cure a disease, that seems to be the easiest of many complex problems to solve.

The total amount raised in this year's ride was over $19 million. It's said to be the largest fundraising event in Canada. While I was enjoying myself out on the open road, I also enjoyed meeting so many other riders, some far more experienced than me, and some just starting out. It was a privilege and humbling and I'm glad I was able to do it with the help of everyone who contributed.

My personal "history of fundraising" is fraught with unsold boxes of chocolate covered almonds or raffle tickets so I was pretty intimidated with the minimum goal you agree to when you sign up for the ride.

Thanks again, again and again.

Begriming One City at a Time

“Apparently Rabinowitz's hearing is going because she can't hear how ludicrous she sounds. ”

I don't live in New York City. Sometimes I wish I did, though now is not one of those times. The furor (or is it "Führer"?) over the bike-share program in New York right now is running unusually hot. While some are already claiming its success, others, namely bitchy old Conservatives, or people who have lost parking spots are claiming the program is more evidence of the dictator Bloomberg running roughshod over citizen rights. In this video, Pulitzer Prize winning conservative journalist Dorothy Rabinowitz uses phrases such as "Fascist" to describe Bloomberg, saying the bike program "begrimes" the city, controlled by the bike lobby which is an "all powerful enterprise". Who's running NYC anyway? Is it Mayor Bloomberg, the dictatorial Fascist or the all powerful bike lobby? I doubt two such undeniably evil forces could peacefully co-exist. Someone please explain to me why Conservatives are so quick to trot out words like "Fascist", "dictator" or "Socialist" when they are displeased with progressive policies? I'll never understand the guile and hatefulness of the Conservative mind. What, exactly is so frightening about a bicycle? A few hundred bicycles are "begriming" the city, but a century of the internal combustion engine is fine? I hate to tell you this, Dot, if you don't mind me referring to you with that belittling nickname, but that thick layer of grime covering New York City limestone and granite (which is probably from Indiana anyway) and smudging your summer whites is from automotive traffic, not bicycles. Apparently Rabinowitz's hearing is going because she can't hear how ludicrous she sounds.

Another claim I keep hearing is that the racks of Citibank bikes are a fire hazard? I assume that if cars were parked there, they wouldn't be a hazard because they could be towed away? Or that "New York isn't Paris, or London, or Amsterdam". If New Yorkers really think their streets are more dangerous than London's, I have news for you. New York streets are like buttercup filled meadows compared to the insanity that is London streets.



None of this unexpected from the WSJ however. I'll never really understand the ire of conservatives versus bicycles? Bicycles are completely unthreatening. There has been one death of a pedestrian from being struck by a cyclist in over a decade in Toronto. Dozens more pedestrians and cyclists are injured or killed by automobiles every year. Bikes without bicycle lanes don't take any of the road away from cars or trucks, and even less than that when in bike lanes. Bicycles do not impede the traffic of commuters, emergency or commercial vehicles. Bicycles do not cause road congestion or fuel price hikes – which, conservatives fail to notice, is caused by a failure of Capitalist markets and the near monopoly of three companies colluding on prices and supply via their refining facilities. Sadly, it is true that some cyclists ride like assholes and disobey traffic regulations. I'm only glad that drivers are there as shining examples of vehicles that never roll through stop signs, red lights, never park illegally, always signal when required, make safe lane changes, never go the wrong way on one-way streets or hardly ever drive on the sidewalk. That was sarcasm. A dull tool used to explain simple arguments to stupid people.

What is Rabinowitz so angry about? That she has to look before opening her cab door? No, it's that bike racks look distasteful in fairytale New York. Horse shit from mounted police or Central Park buggies is okay. Gaudy electronic advertising is mandated in Times Square not that the Times is located there anymore. Let's be honest. She doesn't care about fire hazards or cyclist deaths. She just doesn't like the way the bike-share stations look. She also doesn't like Mayor Bloomberg and his "nanny-state" policies. My guess is Dorothy Rabinowitz likes Tiffany's, breakfast at Balthazar, seeing shiny limos transporting high-priced whores to coked-up overpaid financiers, gleaming hotels which have neither rat shit in the basement nor bed bugs in the linens, rows of yellow cabs idling in the streets and lovers sitting on benches looking at the Brooklyn Bridge – though why they can't look at the Brooklyn Bridge from the back of their limo is beyond me.

It remains to be seen whether New York's Citibank Bike-Share program will be a success or a failure but I think you have to wait and see. Or you could be like Dorothy Rabinowitz and spew bile and rhetoric without reason or intelligence.

Update: As expected, the Bike Snob has had a lot more fun with this over at his blog Bike Snob NYC. Enjoy.