City
Toronto mulls separated bike lanes for Wellesley Street
Toronto could have its first east-west separated bike lanes within a year if the public works and infrastructure committee accepts a new report calling for a total reworking of the cycling facilities on Wellesley Street and Hoskin Avenue.
If adopted and approved by city council later this month, new curved curbs like the ones presently found on Sherbourne Street could be in place between Parliament and Yonge by next year. A second phase would witness separated lanes installed on Hoskin Avenue with a connection between the two added to Queens Park Crescent in 2014.
The project will cost in the neighbourhood of $975,000 and will likely be tethered to planned resurfacing work on Wellesley scheduled for next summer. In what could be a controversial move, the new lanes will eliminate all street parking on the thoroughfare except at busier sections near Queens Park and Bay Street. New, accessible TTC bus stops on raised platforms are so part of the plan.
At major intersections along the proposed bike lanes, cyclists will be able to make two-stage left turns using special bright green painted areas. The city also plans to add bike boxes at the head of each set of lights and ban right turns at red lights for motorists.
Presently, the cycle lanes on Wellesley are identical to the ones about to be removed from Jarvis Street: painted road markings without any physical barrier to vehicular traffic. "Sharrows," markings telling bikers and drivers to share the road, are used in narrower sections of the street.
The proposal joins the already confirmed Queens Quay East lanes, a precursor to separated biking along the entire waterfront street, which should be open in the spring. Is this sudden surge in the number of in-construction and proposed separated lanes surprise you? Is this a good place to build the first major east-west cycle way?
Images: City of Toronto
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i'd love to see a cost breakdown of the cash the infrastructure committee burns through to 'mull' vs. actual implementation costs.
Also, can we please make construction on major roads/projects be 24 hours a day. Nothing is worse than driving on the 401 on workday evening to see all worksites empty.
If this goes through, I do hope the lane separators discourage illegal parking. But that would mean firetrucks and ambulances would be put at a disadvantage.
Further to the comment about the piecemeal nature of the bike network - building separated lanes is not a substitute for building more lanes. Where are the north-south lanes north of Davenport? Where are the bike-friendly ways of crossing the 401?
Good biking infrastructure is, in fact, a great way to reduce congestion. If it was possible for people of all ages and levels of fitness to get where they're going by bike without putting their lives at risk and competing for space with cars more people would make more trips by bike. It's already faster to travel over most of the old City of Toronto by bike than car.
I ride from East York almost all the way to Spadina and King. To get across the core, I have to rely on sharrows on Bloor or Wellesley, doubling back north if I take the Gerrard-College lanes, or riding with cars.
Also, Parliament is effectively the end of Wellesley. The usefulness is the connection at Sherbourne to get me up to the bike lanes on Bloor.
I'll never understand cyclists who bitch when bike lanes are blocked instead of changing their route, something cars/trucks/ttc have to do all the time.
The traffic on Queen's Park Circle is almost homicidal: when taking Can-Bike II, we had angry motorists yelling at our group for daring to use it!
very often bikes do not have a safe alternative.
They might not be able to switch routes without going directly into heavy traffic, OR on to a sidewalk with isn't a safe option either. When a road is blocked, there's usually a marked detour. When a bike path is block, cyclists are expected to find their own way though the mess.
No bigger scam going right now in post-amalgamation (i.e. extremely divided ideological) Toronto than these taxpayer-funded "studies". They know progress is stalled because the lefties get booted out/then the neocons come in/then the neocons get booted out/then the lefties come in... nothing ever gets done permanently, scumbag "consultants" still get to eat on our dollars. Someone needs to follow the damn money.
No less this design is reducing the available space for safely passing slower cyclists and with the inability to go into a general purpose lane to pass will only decrease safety and increase frustration with the use of the lane.
Either bollards need to be installed (Which emergency services is opposed to) or the entire bike lane needs to be on one side of the street with both directions right next to each other.
I for one refuse to ride in a separated lane for this design.
Also...curbed bumps don't work. Look at Sherbourne, its a mess. And dangerous, and people still park in it _all the time_
If you're going to separate a lane, use a better design.
SHEESH!
fact nice, all can effortlessly understand it, Thanks a lot.