Morning Brew: April 25th, 2008

I am guessing Dukes owned the building and operated the shop in it?
They are getting hit with a large demo bill because he had no insurance on the building?

I'd love to know who signed the letter that wants to bill the Duke's bicycle shop for that amount of money.
I'd love to know who was responsible for such lunk-headed thinking.

Dems looks like some sweet carrots! I could use a box of those beside my desk!

Jerrold misses the point of the cycling study completely. The authors of the report have brought forward a benchmark to compare Toronto's progress to other cities: bike lanes by KM, bike lanes per capita, bike lanes as a ratio to land mass and spending on bike lanes per capita. There are other measures that could be used too, but if Toronto excels in those areas, chances are we'll also be pretty good at the other bike-related stuff.

When you try to be as snarky like Torontoist, maybe you should try doing it, ya know, well.

Where can I donate to Duke's?

Cyclist,

Toronto could create a zillion km of bike lanes to meet those criteria, but if those bike lanes are still unenforced lumpy, bumpy afterthoughts of go-nowhere sunken-sewer-grate trail, where's the progress except on paper?

I can't believe the city of Toronto is being so cold and callous to drop that bill onto Dukes. I'm not sure what fire insurance exactly covers, but I would hope that Dukes at least had some. I'll donate to Dukes as well, just let me know where.

@ Cyclist - Maybe Jerrold is being a bit snarky in his comments, but the statement is apt and not really a surprise to most cyclists. Toronto ranks 7th out of 10 cities for the number of km of on-street bikes lanes, but also ranks 9th out of 10 for km of on-street bikes lanes per km*2 based on the pdf chart linked to the Star article. These measure don't take into account continuity of bikes lanes over distances; safety of bike lanes (Montreal has some with curbs protecting cyclists from cars); and km of bike lanes in the core.

Rob, cyclists may know this stuff but obviously cyclists talking to cyclists hasn't got us anywhere. We need objective measurements to make the argument that Toronto's cycling infrastructure is difficient and thus deserving of investment.

I also agree that quality is an issue but when we compare with the cities that prioritize cycling in the measurements I referenced above, connectivity will have to follow.

If you insure the structure, it will cover the clean up costs

Nice discussion on the bike study. More detailed coverage is available at this new blogTO post.

@ Cyclist

I'm not trying to be anything but the brewer of the morning news on blogTO, delivered in my own style.

If Duke's were properly insured, they wouldn't be having this problem. If Wal-Mart had a fire and left the clean up costs to the city people on this forum would be going crazy, so why would it be different for Duke's?

@Dave - you can't blame Duke's for not having insurance. None of the owners of those buildings had insurance because the insurance companies refused to sell it to them.

Also, the owner of Duke's had a good point when he said his building burned to the ground - there was nothing left to demolish!