Tuesday, November 13, 2007
Budgeting for Bicyclists
I know I have a lot of catching up to do around here. It's just one of those things that happens when you have too much going on at once.
Today, Toronto is hearing "presentations" from the public regarding the capital budget for 2008. I would have liked to show up in person but it was impossible. I made an email presentation instead. Right this minute, the public is probably making presentations to city council, so "for the record", as they say on the CBC, here's my email presentation made public.
If you would like to write a letter, there's still time. You can get some good numbers from TCAT.
Today, Toronto is hearing "presentations" from the public regarding the capital budget for 2008. I would have liked to show up in person but it was impossible. I made an email presentation instead. Right this minute, the public is probably making presentations to city council, so "for the record", as they say on the CBC, here's my email presentation made public.
To Toronto Councillors:
As I am unable to attend the Capital Budget Hearings, please accept this email as my public presentation.
I am deeply concerned about the future of our city. We can build Toronto into one of two cities. We can build a city for people; or we can build a city for respiratory disease deaths, traffic jams, high energy costs, and death and injury of pedestrians and cyclists. If we build the wrong city, we will also bear the burden of responsibility for climate change and its impact.
This is not hyperbole. These are real problems recognized repeatedly in study after study. In fact, Toronto's own Medical Officer of Health recently reported that 440 people die per year from motor vehicle pollution. The International Energy Agency predicts a serious energy crisis by 2012 as oil exporting nations reduce their exports in favour of domestic use. That is only a few years away.
These problems demand a multifaceted solution. Fortunately, we don't need to experiment, as the critical pieces of the solution have been implemented in other cities around the world. Public transit improvements and cycling infrastructure are key. Vancouver, Montreal, Paris, London, Portland, New York and Chicago have all added welcoming bicycle infrastructure in recent years. Even Toronto's mayor and councillors have recognized the importance and value of cycling infrastructure by promising to implement the bike network by 2012. However, the current capital budget contradicts this.
It is Toronto's neglected bicycle infrastructure about which I write today.
To see success with the Bike Plan, at the very least you need to:
1. Move the $38 million for the bicycle plan scheduled for after 2012 back to the 2008 to 2011 plan.
2. Hire additional staff to begin implementing bike lanes, bike paths and highway crossings immediately.
3. Restore the $200K to the Parks, Forestry and Recreation budget for bike paths.
4. Ensure financing for bike paths to be implemented in 2008, including the CN Leaside Spur Bike Path and the Finch Hydro Corridor Bike Path.
Please make these changes to our capital budget, so we can build a Toronto that can handle the great challenges faced by our citizens today and in the future.
Sources:
Pedestrian deaths
Automobile pollution deaths
IEA Energy Crisis
Promises from Toronto Council
If you would like to write a letter, there's still time. You can get some good numbers from TCAT.
Labels: city hall, climate change, infrastructure, public transit, toronto
Friday, April 13, 2007
Opportunities abound
Until yesterday, I've been beat up by a cold. No cycling for me. My leg muscles are going to wither away soon.
One of our local free weekly newspapers comes out with it's Bike Edition this week. They kicked it off with a "Town Hall" meeting to talk Bike Plan. I wasn't there, but BlogTO was. I like that Tanya suggested putting signs up that say cyclists can use a full lane. Those signs need to be on many of the narrow arterials around the city.
Which way is faster? Now Magazine looks into that too. The bike wins in this 9 km competition. It starts in a dense urban part of the city, and finishes in a dense suburban part. Anyone else think the TTC guy would have done way better if he took the University-Spadina line? The Yonge line is overcrowded, not the University side.
I did my own bike v. car competition in the suburbs last year. It was much less dramatic, and didn't end with the cyclist eating ice cream. The race was also skewed because the motorist assumed he would kick my ass, so he gave me a head start.
If you have a lazy Friday afternoon, you'll want to watch this video starring the president of Trek Bicycle. Here's the non-executive summary (not all of us have time to hear a president talk for 20 minutes!):
- The bike industry was propelled in recent decades by the mountain bike trend and Lance Armstrong.
- Very few people in most US and Canadian cities ride bikes.
- If people rode bikes, it would solve many of the western world's major problems, such as obesity, traffic congestion, and pollution.
- Government will start to recognize how good bikes are and bike companies will soon sell many bikes.
- BUT to make this happen, the bike companies need to support bicycle advocacy groups, so people see real bicycle infrastructure. He gives examples of where bike infrastructure made a real difference in bicycling rates (U.K. and Louisville, Kentucky stand out).
Found on Spinopsys
One of our local free weekly newspapers comes out with it's Bike Edition this week. They kicked it off with a "Town Hall" meeting to talk Bike Plan. I wasn't there, but BlogTO was. I like that Tanya suggested putting signs up that say cyclists can use a full lane. Those signs need to be on many of the narrow arterials around the city.
Which way is faster? Now Magazine looks into that too. The bike wins in this 9 km competition. It starts in a dense urban part of the city, and finishes in a dense suburban part. Anyone else think the TTC guy would have done way better if he took the University-Spadina line? The Yonge line is overcrowded, not the University side.
I did my own bike v. car competition in the suburbs last year. It was much less dramatic, and didn't end with the cyclist eating ice cream. The race was also skewed because the motorist assumed he would kick my ass, so he gave me a head start.
If you have a lazy Friday afternoon, you'll want to watch this video starring the president of Trek Bicycle. Here's the non-executive summary (not all of us have time to hear a president talk for 20 minutes!):
- The bike industry was propelled in recent decades by the mountain bike trend and Lance Armstrong.
- Very few people in most US and Canadian cities ride bikes.
- If people rode bikes, it would solve many of the western world's major problems, such as obesity, traffic congestion, and pollution.
- Government will start to recognize how good bikes are and bike companies will soon sell many bikes.
- BUT to make this happen, the bike companies need to support bicycle advocacy groups, so people see real bicycle infrastructure. He gives examples of where bike infrastructure made a real difference in bicycling rates (U.K. and Louisville, Kentucky stand out).
Found on Spinopsys
Labels: infrastructure, public transit
Friday, March 02, 2007
A stormy ride on Viva
I know I wasn't alone in having a long commute home last night. Mine went something like this.
I decided in the morning that taking the bus/subway was the most sensible thing to do, given the coming snowstorm. Most of us left work early to start the trek home.
Viva, the local express bus system, has two kinds of buses. It has normal length buses, which I'll call the short buses, and articulated buses. There was a lot of hype about them, and they seem to deserve it. The seats are comfortable; they're easy to get on and off; a large display gives you the time and tells you what you should be buying. They were designed in Belgium.
According to the bus stop sign, an articulated bus was meant to arrive at the stop in 1 minute. It doesn't show up. I get picked up by a short bus after waiting about 15 minutes. It moves along Highway Seven, getting us all quickly to Yonge Street. At Yonge Street this bus turns south to head to the subway. Rounding the corner, we pass two articulated buses that are stranded on the ramp. Police are eyeing the buses, and I'm half expecting them to make a chalk outline if it would have shown up in the snow.
We pull onto Yonge and crawl underneath the 407. The traffic is heavy. We crawl. And crawl. It takes us about 30 minutes to go 400 metres. The bus is jam packed. While we're crawling, my neighbours and I are talking about European history. Yeah, right. We were talking about how slow we were going.
I start working out how far it is from the next stop to Finch Subway Station. I make a few errors and calculate that it's 3.5 km to 4 km away, which I declare is very walkable, and in fact if I jog, I would get to Finch Station in 40 minutes and beat the bus there. If I had GMap Pedometer handy, I would have seen that I was way off, and the real distance was 5 km. Not having a map, I figure I'll be a genius and start jogging.
I hop out of my short bus at the next stop and start running. Despite having listened to my reasoning, none of my fellow passengers decided to follow. It turns out, when a bus is going slowly because the street is covered in snow, it means the sidewalk is covered in snow too. Wearing a winter coat, back-pack, and my boot-like shoes doesn't really help me keep a good 10 minute-kilometre pace.
I leave my bus behind and run past an articulated bus that's sitting at a bus stop. I wave to the bus driver confidently to say I don't need to get on. He's stuck in traffic anyways. Casually jogging down a big valley leads to the somewhat predictable challenge of making my way up the other side of the valley. Traffic is opening up a bit here and I notice the articulated bus catching up to me. The short bus is still well back, so no problem. I still made the right decision.
At the top of the hill, the articulated bus passes me and the short bus catches up. I see that I can still reach the articulated bus up ahead at the stop, and if I get on it, I'll still have gained by getting on the earlier bus. I'm pretty much out of breath at this point, so I hop on the bus. This is probably the exact scenario that Viva imagined when they formulated their hop-on-hop-off-for-2-hours policy.
The bus goes about 100 metres at a good pace (faster than a jog), then it's back to a crawl. I'm too tired at this point to do anything about it, so I settle in. Just after the next bus stop I see two articulated buses at the bottom of the hill, empty and off to the side.
I figure the buses didn't make it up the hill, so this could be where I part ways with this bus. My driver was evidently thinking the same thing, so he let the short bus go past us and disappear into the mess of traffic. The next sentence covers about 30 minutes. We pass the two articulated buses.
Whew! We made it. Well I won't celebrate yet, since we're still going up hill. I see another bus up ahead stuck on the right side and another one in the middle of the road. I keep thinking that I'm going to see the short bus, but it appears to be long gone. All the buses I see are the articulated ones.
I must have had a very good driver, or a lucky one, because we make it up the hill, passing a total of 7 (seven!) other articulated buses on the way. We moved about 1 foot every 30 seconds, but eventually made it to the top. I clap for the driver and so does a guy sitting behind me. The two other passengers didn't seem interested. (There were 4 of us. I think everyone else in York Region has already learned to only ride on short buses when the weather is bad.)
We do well for a kilometre, then reach a red light on a tiny slope. The light turns green and we inch forward. Pedestrians are gawking at us. By the time the light turns red, we haven't even crossed the pedestrian walkway. We're all shocked that we're stuck on this slight slope, after our driver displayed such skill getting us up the big hill. Cars pass in front of us, and we keep spinning. The light turns green. We slowly work our way into the intersection. The light turns red while we're spanning both lanes. Pedestrians, eager to cross, look at us and aren't sure what to do. We're still inching forwards. Clearly confident we aren't going anywhere, they start to pass in front of us. A woman carrying her baby even walks in front of our bus with the engine revving.
More time passes and we make it to Finch Station, where I start an uneventful trip on the subway. My total travel time was about 2.5 hours instead of 45 minutes.
I decided in the morning that taking the bus/subway was the most sensible thing to do, given the coming snowstorm. Most of us left work early to start the trek home.
Viva, the local express bus system, has two kinds of buses. It has normal length buses, which I'll call the short buses, and articulated buses. There was a lot of hype about them, and they seem to deserve it. The seats are comfortable; they're easy to get on and off; a large display gives you the time and tells you what you should be buying. They were designed in Belgium.
According to the bus stop sign, an articulated bus was meant to arrive at the stop in 1 minute. It doesn't show up. I get picked up by a short bus after waiting about 15 minutes. It moves along Highway Seven, getting us all quickly to Yonge Street. At Yonge Street this bus turns south to head to the subway. Rounding the corner, we pass two articulated buses that are stranded on the ramp. Police are eyeing the buses, and I'm half expecting them to make a chalk outline if it would have shown up in the snow.
We pull onto Yonge and crawl underneath the 407. The traffic is heavy. We crawl. And crawl. It takes us about 30 minutes to go 400 metres. The bus is jam packed. While we're crawling, my neighbours and I are talking about European history. Yeah, right. We were talking about how slow we were going.
I start working out how far it is from the next stop to Finch Subway Station. I make a few errors and calculate that it's 3.5 km to 4 km away, which I declare is very walkable, and in fact if I jog, I would get to Finch Station in 40 minutes and beat the bus there. If I had GMap Pedometer handy, I would have seen that I was way off, and the real distance was 5 km. Not having a map, I figure I'll be a genius and start jogging.
I hop out of my short bus at the next stop and start running. Despite having listened to my reasoning, none of my fellow passengers decided to follow. It turns out, when a bus is going slowly because the street is covered in snow, it means the sidewalk is covered in snow too. Wearing a winter coat, back-pack, and my boot-like shoes doesn't really help me keep a good 10 minute-kilometre pace.
I leave my bus behind and run past an articulated bus that's sitting at a bus stop. I wave to the bus driver confidently to say I don't need to get on. He's stuck in traffic anyways. Casually jogging down a big valley leads to the somewhat predictable challenge of making my way up the other side of the valley. Traffic is opening up a bit here and I notice the articulated bus catching up to me. The short bus is still well back, so no problem. I still made the right decision.
At the top of the hill, the articulated bus passes me and the short bus catches up. I see that I can still reach the articulated bus up ahead at the stop, and if I get on it, I'll still have gained by getting on the earlier bus. I'm pretty much out of breath at this point, so I hop on the bus. This is probably the exact scenario that Viva imagined when they formulated their hop-on-hop-off-for-2-hours policy.
The bus goes about 100 metres at a good pace (faster than a jog), then it's back to a crawl. I'm too tired at this point to do anything about it, so I settle in. Just after the next bus stop I see two articulated buses at the bottom of the hill, empty and off to the side.
I figure the buses didn't make it up the hill, so this could be where I part ways with this bus. My driver was evidently thinking the same thing, so he let the short bus go past us and disappear into the mess of traffic. The next sentence covers about 30 minutes. We pass the two articulated buses.
Whew! We made it. Well I won't celebrate yet, since we're still going up hill. I see another bus up ahead stuck on the right side and another one in the middle of the road. I keep thinking that I'm going to see the short bus, but it appears to be long gone. All the buses I see are the articulated ones.
I must have had a very good driver, or a lucky one, because we make it up the hill, passing a total of 7 (seven!) other articulated buses on the way. We moved about 1 foot every 30 seconds, but eventually made it to the top. I clap for the driver and so does a guy sitting behind me. The two other passengers didn't seem interested. (There were 4 of us. I think everyone else in York Region has already learned to only ride on short buses when the weather is bad.)
We do well for a kilometre, then reach a red light on a tiny slope. The light turns green and we inch forward. Pedestrians are gawking at us. By the time the light turns red, we haven't even crossed the pedestrian walkway. We're all shocked that we're stuck on this slight slope, after our driver displayed such skill getting us up the big hill. Cars pass in front of us, and we keep spinning. The light turns green. We slowly work our way into the intersection. The light turns red while we're spanning both lanes. Pedestrians, eager to cross, look at us and aren't sure what to do. We're still inching forwards. Clearly confident we aren't going anywhere, they start to pass in front of us. A woman carrying her baby even walks in front of our bus with the engine revving.
More time passes and we make it to Finch Station, where I start an uneventful trip on the subway. My total travel time was about 2.5 hours instead of 45 minutes.
Labels: public transit