[URBAN NOTE] “Toronto’s first dedicated bike lanes on Sherbourne start of bigger network”

The Toronto Star‘s Andrew Livingstone writes about the new bike lane on Sherbourne.

[A]s part of $4.1 million upgrades along the street, the $2.5 million bike lanes will provide a necessary dedicated north-south route for the growing number of cyclists in the downtown area.

“We use them all the time,” said Meldon Lobo, 27. “Sherbourne is in much better condition than it used to be before.”

[. . .]

Sherbourne was touted as a safer route for cyclists than Jarvis St., where painted bike lanes, added in 2010 under former mayor David Miller, have been a hot-button issue for drivers.

Council voted 24-19 in October to remove the $59,000 bike lanes to restore a reversible fifth lane at a cost of $300,000 to improve commute times for drivers.

The Sherbourne lanes are the east route in what Minnan-Wong said will be a square network of dedicated lanes in the downtown core. Designs for Wellesley St. have been completed and he said construction will begin later this year.

[BLOG] Some Wednesday links

• In one of his first posts since moving back to Toronto, Acts of Minor Treason’s Andrew Barton describes coming across the immediate aftermath of a terrible accident (or “accident”) at Union station and wondering about the lack of empathy expressed by commuters.
• Bag News Notes features a post from South Side Chicago resident and photographer Jon Lowenstein, who caught the immediate aftermath of a shooting in his neighbourhood.
• Centauri Dreams’ Paul Gilster describes the dreams of American rocket pioneer robert Goddard of interstellar migrations.
• At Crooked Timber, Eric Rauchway documents that Keynes’ concern about the consequences of war indemnities on the economies of Germany and central Europe long predated any sexual affair with Germans.
• Daniel Drezner notes how off-base Marc Lynch’s statement that the ongoing war in Syria undermines a pleasant narrative of the Arab Spring is, since there was plenty of suffering beforehand.
• Extraordinary Observations’ Rob Pitingolo doesn’t like it when cyclists are in too much of a hurry pay attention to red lights, other vehicle drivers too.
• At Lawyers, Guns and Money, B. Spencer argues that guns in the United States are much more a fetishistic icon of belonging than anything else like resisting government oppression.
• Mark Simpson reposts his 2001 review of Niall Ferguson’s book The Cash Nexus.
• Marginal Revolution’s Tyler Cowen notes that Jamaica has seen sustained austerity for decades and also flat economic growth. Connection? And what of Europe?
• Torontoist notes that plans for a proposed shopping centre in Kensington Market along Bathurst Street have been released. Controversy will ensue.
• Window on Eurasia notes statistics suggesting that only 3% of Russians attended the Russian Orthodox Church’s Easter services.

[URBAN NOTE] “Should TTC take over Toronto’s Bixi bike program?”

The Toronto Star‘s Tess Kalinowski introduces the idea of the TTC taking over the Bixi bike-sharing program. I have to say that while the idea does appeal to me thematically–why not integrate all of Toronto’s transit networks?–I wonder whether the TTC can really take on Bixi with its debt of four million dollars. Noteworthy is the fact that the mass transit agency of Montréal, the city that introduced Bixi to Canadians, has chosen not to take on that city’s Bixi network despite its higher ridership (and, apparently, its own debt).

[Toronto Transit Commission chair Karen] Stintz said she will make a motion at this week’s council meeting requesting staff explore the idea.

“I absolutely see Bixi as being an integral part of public transit in the city,” the councillor for Eglinton-Lawrence told CP24 on Sunday.

It’s a natural fit, said Jared Kolb of Cycle Toronto.

“When you look at trips within our city, what public bike systems like Bixi do is they fill in the gaps for trips that are too short to take transit or too far to walk – that two-kilometre sweet spot,” he said.

Once the Presto fare card is launched across the TTC – something that’s supposed to happen by the Pan Am Games in 2015 – it could also be used to access Bixi bikes, suggested Kolb.

[URBAN NOTE] “Bike station at Toronto City Hall shelved after $650,000 already spent”

The Toronto Star‘s Patty Wimsa reported on the ongoing controversy about building a bike station at Toronto City Hall. This sound decision, like so many, has apparently been politicized by the city’s mayor Rob Ford and his brother Doug. (So says the strongly anti-Ford Star, at least.)

The city spent $650,000 on a bike station under Nathan Phillips Square before the project was quietly shelved by staff in 2011, a decision some councillors say should have come back to council for approval.

“That seems very strange,” said Councillor Paula Fletcher. “The scope of work for the Nathan Phillips Square revitalization is part of a pretty public restoration. That should have been reported out.”

The station, with secure parking for 380 bikes, was a signature element in the revitalization and would have been one of the biggest in North America.

Council approved $1.2 million in funding for the station in 2010. The $650,000 was spent on design as well as electrical and mechanical servicing. The remaining money, $550,000, is still sitting in the budget, said city spokesperson Natasha Hinds Fitzsimmins.

[. . .]

Both Mayor Rob Ford and Councillor Doug Ford have said they will try to kill it when it comes up for approval at city council this month. They say the facility — complete with four shower stalls — is a waste of money and deprives the city of revenue-drawing parking spots. (The staffed station would charge fees for users but not earn a profit.)

“The Ford brothers should actually look at the drawings,” says Andrew Frontini, a member of the architectural team who won a design competition for the square. The showers are made of concrete blocks and finished inside with the “most economical porcelain tile you can get but that you can still clean,” said Frontini. As well, the storage area for the bikes is basically a metal cage.

[BLOG] Some Wednesday links

• Dan Hirschman, Budding Sociologist, takes issue with Michael Shermer’s claim that the left is as anti-science as the right.
• Daniel Drezner strongly disagrees with the contention of Roger Cohen that American diplomacy is impossible. It’s simply more complicated than before, with more and more transparent actors.</li
• Far Outliers compares policies towards indigenous languages in the early Spanish and English empires, noting that in Spanish territories native languages like Nahuatl and Quechua were promoted for evangelism’s sake while in New England English was pushed on the indigenous populations.
• At A Fistful of Euros, Alex Harrowell notes the ongoing capital shortage in central Europe and has a news roundup from the region.
• GNXP’s Razib Khan reviews two books on the spread of Christianity in the Roman Empire, noting that it was as much achieved through fiat on the part of the elites as it was through mass conversions.
• Lawyers, Guns and Money’s Scott Lemieux makes the point that arguably worse than Lance Armstrong’s cheating was the fact that he treated people who pointed out his cheating viciously.
• Strange Maps introduces its readers to the five types of territorial morphology of states.
• Window on Eurasia’s Paul Goble has three posts about policing the fringes of the Russian ethnos, starting with the desire of some inhabitants of the Russian-populated province of Stavropol in the largely non-Russian North Caucasus Federal District to gain status as a Russian republic, to charges of treason levied against a Pomor activist fron a distinctive Russian subgrouping on the White Sea to controversy surrounding Cossack patrols.

[URBAN NOTE] “Judge Punishes Man for Blocking Bike Lane Removal By Allowing Him to Volunteer With Cycle Toronto”

Desmond Cole’s Torontoist article is funny.

Dr. Tomislav Svoboda (he’s the one in the black blazer) poses with family and friends at the College Park provinclal court yesterday.

When Dr. Tomislav Svoboda used his body to block the removal of the Jarvis bike lanes last November, he knew his act of civil disobedience would result in criminal charges. Yesterday afternoon, a judge agreed to drop those charges—namely, mischief and obstructing a peace officer—if Svoboda completes 50 hours of community service and writes a letter explaining his actions to the court within two months. Appropriately, Svoboda has chosen to do his community service hours with Cycle Toronto, a local bike advocacy group.

The agreement, formally known as “direct accountability,” means that for the next two years, the Toronto physician will be on record as having gone through a court diversion program. As long as he stays out of trouble during that time, he’ll walk away with no further record.

About two dozen of Svoboda’s supporters, including family, friends, and cycling advocates, showed up. They were too numerous to fit into the modest courtroom. To the astonishment of the crowd, the judge exchanged barely two sentences with Svoboda’s lawyer, Peter Rosenthal, before the deal was reached. His bewildered entourage shuffled loudly out of the courtroom, as court security officers scolded them.

[. . .]

Health care professionals and active transportation advocates have seized on Svoboda’s arrest to condemn the removal of the Jarvis lanes and call on city council to speed up the implementation of bike thoroughfares across the city.

[BLOG] Some Friday links

• Centauri Dreams’ Paul Gilster writes about long-lived artifacts, such as we or extraterrestrials might make to last for eons.
• Daniel Drezner writes about the ongoing question of what the United States should do in Mali. (Apparently it has to be asked.)
• The Dragon’s Tales links to a study suggesting Titan has an active geology, with its carbon sand filling in craters.
• Far Outliers reports on the fine mechanics of racism in colonial Spanish America.
• The Global Sociology Blog notes the many ways in which the Arab Spring does not resemble protests against same-sex marriage in France.
• Marginal Revolution’s Tyler Cowen speculates that cultural tourism will be more resilient than scenery-oriented tourism, on account of the limits of the digital world.
• Torontoist reports on the call by a group of Toronto physicians for more bike lanes sooner.
• Window on Eurasia notes that, after the 1969 Sino-Soviet clashes, landmarks on the Russian frontier with China were given new Russian names.

[URBAN NOTE] “Council kills off Jarvis bike lanes”

NOW Magazine‘s Ben Spurr reports on Toronto city council’s decision to remove the bike lines on downtown Toronto’s Jarvis Street that had been installed at great expense just a couple of years ago.

Council rejected a last-ditch attempt to save the controversial bikeways Tuesday, voting 24-19 against a motion from Councillor Kristyn Wong-Tam that would have kept the street in its current configuration.

Instead, the city will now proceed with council’s original direction, made last July, to remove the bikeways and reinstall a reversible fifth car lane on Jarvis. The work will begin after the completion sometime next month of the separated bike lane on nearby Sherbourne.

Going into Tuesday’s meeting, the vote on Jarvis was expected to be close. But despite a flurry of lobbying on the council floor, left wing councillors couldn’t convince enough of their colleagues to come onside.

In the end council members like Josh Colle, Ana Bailao, and Michelle Berardinetti, whose votes some thought could be swayed, sided with Mayor Rob Ford, who led the push to take out the lanes last summer.

[. . .]

Supporters of the Jarvis lanes argue that they’re a model of how drivers and riders can safely coexist. City data indicate bike ridership on the street has tripled since the bikeways were installed in September 2010, and rates of accidents involving cars, pedestrians, and cyclists have all declined. Meanwhile, car travel times have only increased by two minutes.

They also argue that, at an estimated $280,000, reinstalling the fifth car lane is a waste of money.

[PHOTO] Capital Bixi

I had no idea before I came here that the National Capital Region had a Bixi bike-sharing service of its very own, and yet, as clearly visible in this photo I took of of a Bixi station on Bank Street, it does.

[PHOTO] Capital Bixi

I had no idea before I came here that the National Capital Region had a Bixi bike-sharing service of its very own, and yet, as clearly visible in this photo I took of of a Bixi station on Bank Street, it does.