I’ve been frustrated by the number of people (not just Ford) saying “just put bike lanes on side streets” without knowing or caring whether that’s actually possible in Toronto. I think it shows how much of the debate is driven by people who just don’t have much experience with cycling in the city.
Why is not possible? Alot of city with smaller road do like in Copenhagen.. It called share road Is a wide share footpath that bike pedestrians and other slower road user can used.. Instead of another dedicated lane that only 1 road user can used.. Go to Japan or other big city in Asia even your GOD" not just bike"surprised.. Funny you say "debate that driven by people that don't have much experience with cycling in the city" while you make video worshiping Amsterdam long BEFORE you even go to Netherlands.
I am a 65 yr old white woman. I moved to Montreal from Ontario in 2016 BECAUSE I wanted to live in a city equipped with bike lanes. I sold my car in 2017 due to the difficulty of finding parking and the fact that it took so much longer to get anywhere by car amidst construction, traffic backed up, etc. For example, 1/2 hr to get to my daughter's apt. by car verses 10 minutes on my bike. Nothing is worse than sitting in a car, idling when the place you want to go would be quicker on foot or, in my case, on a bicycle. I don't need to go to a gym since my bike is my form of transportation and exercise rolled into one. Love your podcasts. By the way, I've recently become a Conservative. Culture is a big influence on this issue. I lived in Ontario for 50 years and riding my bicycle would bring sympathetic responses from people. One time, someone offered to put my bike in their van and drive me home. I had a car. I just preferred riding my bike. But it's a foreign concept for many Ontarions who view this choice as a denigration of oneself.
Fixing traffic involves creating alternate means to driving. Yet it seems the opposite is constantly being attempted again and again. Forcing more people to use cars to travel makes traffic worse not better.
Please don't make taking the lane seen as a move in the culture war. It's a tool we need to have for our safety. It would be a big big problem for people to start taking more offense to it than they already do.
I’m far too scared to do that. There are definitely a handful of psychos out there who would gladly bump into your bike with their car if you do that, and I would say more than half of drivers will definitely honk nonstop if you do this
Yo from the West coast. Sorry you folks in Ontario are continuing to have problems with Dougie Ford. My thoughts on bike Lanes.... There will always be congestion. Bike Lanes hopefully keep cyclists safe. That's what has been missing. The idea that taking a bike lanes is going to solve congestion is simply going to put cyclists back in danger again.
At least you have the skytrain. We have abysmal transit in comparison. Streetcars sit in traffic as much as any car… so losing bike lanes is Ford literally taking away the primary alternative to driving in a lot of parts of toronto
As driving becomes more and more expensive (parking, insurance, financing, maintenance), cycling will naturally continue to increase. Cycling is also increasing due to electric bikes. Cycling is cheaper than driving and cheaper than taking transit. Also, as winters continue get get shorter and warmer, this will also increase cycling.
Appreciate the video. Waste of time talking about the issue. We need to talk about the politics of this. This is just a distraction from the fact that Queens Park has no solutions for traffic, housing, health care, etc. If there were no bike lanes on these roads traffic would be the same and either Ford would have no excuse or he'd be picking something else to create a culture war. He knows that ppl have no speck of an understanding about traffic or how traffic works. this is why they try to say they have common sense solutions, but really they have no sense at all and are trying to dumb down complex issues because many can't comprehend the whole issue. Also Ford has no chance of winning these ridings with bike lanes in Toronto or even ppl who drive on these lanes, so he's not even doing anything to help ppl not affected by these lanes. It's sad. Regarding work from home, politicians should focus on pushing more ppl to work from home and approving more housing. Housing will support businesses in replacement of office workers and will bring more vitality to these areas day and night.
"politicians should focus on pushing more ppl to work from home". I've heard a few people say this and I have to say, it sounds like the dumbest idea. First of all, how would they do that? Second of all, why would it be a good idea to incentivize businesses to change their policy just to alleviate traffic? Third, it seems like it would be worse for employees (many people prefer not to work from home, especially people who live in small apartments in the downtown core). Fourth, would it even work? We have fewer people commuting now than before the pandemic.
The thing that grinds my gears is the total lack of evidence. Also: traffic calming/road safety projects that include "road diets" are going to get caught up in this, putting active transportation plans in jeopardy (see for example York Region).
You guys, your discussion is great as you cover so many good points. Thank you. Bike lanes are another mode of transportation; it is a reality so let's not turn the blind eye. Hey Mr. FORD! Perhaps we should remove the street parking spots to make room to your car? Population growth and thinking modes: I know of two new residents of Ontario. They arrived before and after COVID. Guess what. They each bought a car. I am an adopted Canadian and do not have a car (30 yrs in Turtle Island)
Ive commuted by bike over the last 10 years the entire stretch of bloor street from kipling to spadina when there was no bike lane, and now when there is....Traffic is EXACTLY the same. Congestion is in the exact same areas as usual. Nothing has changed when it comes to traffic. When they are removed nothing will change. Only time it gets even worse is from the pathetic slow construction for simple work. Pylons blocking sections for days with no work being done, while the blocked area is perfectly suitable to be driven on. IMO there will be a ton of more accidents involving bikes if they move them to side streets. The same people bitching will really be crying morewhen there is construction on their quiet street for months due to new bike lanes being built. Just wait and see.....people backing out of their driveway are gonna have fun lol
Someone should organize a bike bus for the streets in Toronto. Sit on your bike at one of the ends, gather together a bunch of people who want to ride together, and then take the lane in a mass. This should build community and give people experience in vehicular cycling.
When you talked about traffic jams in the Glebe, you reminded me of when my wife and I went to Carleton University in the 1990s, and it once took us over an hour to take the bus from Bank & Catherine to the university because of an event at the stadium. It was painful!
If you look at European cities like Utrecht, bicycling has significantly reduced traffic problems and from my perspective, cities like Utrecht are much more pleasant cities. What the motor vehicle crowd is not aware of is that there is going to be a major crisis in global oil supply in the not-too-distant future that will significantly increase prices. Most of the increase in global oil supply in the last 15 years has come from fracking shale plays in the U.S. The typical shale well produces most of its oil in the first two years of production. Producers are closing in on saturating the "sweet spots' within shale plays with oil wells in the U.S. Maybe the belief is that EVs will just replace ICE vehicles in Toronto and beyond. There are multiple problems with EVs that will limit their acceptance.
Drivers and especially upset drivers are furious about car congestion. Having a basic understanding of congestion can be helpful, it’s something they might listen to. Traffic planners use the V/C Index which uses daily traffic counts to measure congestion: Volume ÷ Capacity = V/C Index Multiply by 100 and it is expressed as a percentage. This is useful for overall calculations but it can put the “numb” into numbers for most of the public. Congestion happens moment to moment. You can always add more cars by drivers travelling on off peak times, like how you have a maximum amount of water that can go through a pipe but you can let the water run more often like at night. They see and get caught in congestion. They feel it. So using a rating system like the congestion scale is something they can relate to. THE CONGESTION SCALE 5 GRIDLOCK 4 BUMPER TO BUMPER 3 TAILBACKS 1 BLOCK LONG 2 “SMALL TOWN” TRAFFIC 1 LITTLE TO NO TRAFFIC What concerns drivers is Levels 4 and 5. We don’t get gridlock. It makes a great trigger word to inspire drivers to oppose bike lanes but we know this is exaggeration. Gridlock is where the whole neighbourhood gets flooded with cars and your car is locked in the grid of streets. You can’t go forward or backwards. Might as well turn your car off because you won’t move for 10 to as much as 45 minutes. We get this when a big event ends, like a world championship sports game. A solution to this is for the city to ask a venue to present a traffic mitigation plan, like host post-game activities that encourage attendees to linger and not leave all at once. Level 4 is where the street is saturated to capacity and traffic starts to fold in on itself. On streets like Bloor, it never reaches gridlock because the worst of it is just on Bloor, not on cross streets. But it’s this level that makes drivers get claustrophobic. When you’re caught in it, it feels like you are drowning. Having a rating scale to refer to is like touching the bottom of the lake and finding you can stand up with your head above the waves. When we see congestion from the sidewalk and actually surveying congestion on Bloor we notice this congestion ebbs and flows. So it fluctuates between Level 4 and 3 and often the whole queue of cars gets through before the red light. So we measure congestion by observing the level of congestion at specific parts of the street and we measure how long it stays at this level. When we do this, what looks like gridlock is not nearly as bad and it’s easier to tolerate. So the next step is to recognize the city wants to reduce car congestion. The highest Level Of Service (LOS) is at Levels 3 and 4, that’s the highest capacity of a street. That brings us to how to reduce congestion, what actions the city can do. Increasing Level Of Service is one way. The network of streets can accommodate more cars. But recent ways to calculate LOS include how do we move more people, not just cars? And, as long as people ride bikes and fill bike lanes, that can be more efficient than a car lane. Vehicle Miles Travelled (VMT), is an approach that’s been around for a while. Put origins and destinations like home, work, shopping and recreation closer together so people use the streets less. This recently got the name 15 Minute Cities. Encourage people not to drive by making other modes like biking more popular. Discourage people from driving, with left turn only, like on King St, car free streets, parks and neighbourhoods, road tolls and congestion fees. And odd licence plates drive every second day while even plates go the other times. When we add lanes to a highway, we ease congestion, so more people drive. We call that induced demand. But a secondary effect of more people using the highway is this means more trips at the beginning and end of the ride on city streets. So more local highway travel results in more congestion on city streets. There is one more we induce demand on streets. We work painstakingly to make our community more liveable. More homes, both businesses that create more jobs, more infrastructure like better streets. The result of our hard work is more people want to stay and more are invited in. Population growth is a good thing, right? Especially if you are a landlord or developer. But when you can’t afford rent let alone buy a home, you have a different perspective. And we see more congestion. What is the solution? Pretty soon we paved over the Green Belt and contaminated our fresh water supply as Toronto expands to Lake Simcoe the same way it did along the Golden Horseshoe. The reason why our population is growing is not just because Toronto is a great place to live. It’s because it’s better than everywhere else. So it’s in Toronto’s best interest for 2 things. Make places like Sudbury and Timmins better to move to. And do a better job promoting them. Toronto is still world class but so is Kirkland Lake and Nippising. We welcome refugees from Ukraine, over 100,000 of them. But a lot of these people are farmers and like farming. Setting them up with entry level jobs in Toronto might not be the best value for them or us. That’s population growth. A decade ago, experts talked about a world population explosion. But now they talk about a decline in birth rates, quoting country after country already having birth rates so low they don’t sustain the current population. At a time when communities age, riding a bicycle is a perfect way to get daily exercise to keep us healthy. Most drivers in Etobicoke who got upset with the Bloor bike lane extension just drive without considering these factors. If they do and if they know their thoughts and ideas are not just welcomed, they are needed to make Toronto better, they might not be so upset by the bike lanes. They might even try riding a bike!
People talk about bike lanes as if removing them will solve our congestion issues .. it will not..! Construction in the city is a larger issue than a few bike lanes. Today construction either for new condos, street repairs, or area rebuilds (Portlands, Gardener area) are some of the major reasons we see traffic grinding to a halt. Maybe we should be looking at what London or Paris is doing to control congestion in their city centers .. Also, on a side note has anyone brought up what trams do to contribute to congestion?? I know on Queen st they can back up traffic a lot, especially after 9am when you are allowed to park on Queen st. Bikes are not going away .. & getting rid of bike lanes is not the answer to the city's congestion problems and is a huge waste of taxpayer money!
Also, Public transiit has worse funding now than pre-pandemic, and is still running 71% capacity of pre-pandemic levels. So the government, mostly provincial and to some degree federal, is pushing people off public transit into cars. (I should note during rush in downtown I see about 1 in 5 actually taping in to pay fare. That makes me wonder if TTC even knows now many people are really using transit)
You don't even have to bring up the induced demand part of the argument. The capacity of any of these streets in question is limited by how cars are handled at intersections, not by how many lanes there are. Far too many intersections in Toronto have signalization controlled by timers rather than systems that respond to traffic flow. If the province has millions to throw at bike lane removal, they could spend it on smart signalization. One estimate coming out of U of T is that this could solve about 50% of Toronto's current congestion problem at a reasonable cost.
It would be a very, very good time to use those lanes if you do not want to lose the lanes. Also, I would strongly suggest trying some smart politics and ask people to try the lanes before supporting their deletion. I would argue that the people who live near the lanes want the lanes, and of course, the people who live elsewhere don’t necessarily see the value. Every neighborhood is going to be outnumbered by all the other users. You know what would really help traffic? Pushing more thoroughfares through all the neighborhoods, and eliminating all the cul de sacs to replace them with through streets. Local owners should have more say in these things. I wouldn’t argue too heavily against the idea that bikes should be pushed to side streets. That’s a nuanced issue that will just be polarizing. It often is more appropriate to put in bike routes on side streets, but often it isn’t. How much less convenient does a bike lane need to be before it’s not really a benefit though? I’d talk about the money being wasted over a culture war from the angry reactionaries. This isn’t a conservative or right wing thing to waste money undoing something that’s actually working. You don’t want to fight everyone on the right of center. Conservatives don’t want to waste money ripping up nice infrastructure.
Now, I don't know what the problem is with the traffic in Toronto since I live in Ottawa too, but I've seen very agressive drivers here. It seems like all of the sudden eveyrone forgot what those bike lanes are for. There is a certain predatory instinct in almost every driver.
The best way to solve the car traffic is going the "market way" (that driving demographic usually is a staunch supporter of it): right now drivers aren't paying the real cost of roads and especially the parkings they're using. Charge them the market cost, and bike lanes will be indispensable!
At 6:45 Cara makes the point that cyclists won't just disappear, they'll move to other modes of transportation (motor vehicles), which are even worse. I think she's forgetting that in fact the demand to travel at all is elastic. There are some trips that cyclists are doing now, which will just not be done anymore. Cyclists will, shift some of their trips to alternative routes, they'll shift some of their trips to transit, some to driving, but overall they will probably just do less trips overall.
@@JoshLemerpretty sure she acknowledged that some cyclists will decide not to take a trip. But either way the wider point still stands. Even if a low percentage of cyclists switch to driving, it will make traffic worse because roads have a very low capacity and even a few extra cars can jam things up for everyone
The real solution to Toronto's traffic congestion is leveraging transportation mode efficiencies to scale up transportation infrastructure. This means walking, biking, and transit. Cars are an inefficient mode and also require parking. The other modes are far more efficient in all aspects. It's not about cars or bikes; it's about moving people.
So bike don't need parking? When you have excellent public transport like alot of great Asian city do, biking is just relegated to what it intended to be used' local mode of transport'.
@anubizz3 Bike parking is extremely efficient in comparison to car parking. My comment was about greater efficiency being the real solution to traffic congestion.
@@anubizz3 because motorcycles have the speed and power to ride in traffic. However, if we saw mass conversion of drivers to scooters as in some Asian areas, then it may make sense to reallocate car lanes to that purpose. We have a lot of options to scale up North American transportation, but cars are not the solution. We can't afford increased allocation of valuable public space to cars in downtown Toronto.
@@rotary65 Not a single country in Asia have motorcycle lane... And yes they also rarely have dedicated bikelane most of them have wide share lane for slower mode of transport.. This also highly implemented in Europe.. The irony is you said Toronto don't have the space but dedicated 1 lane just for 1 mode of transport... No one scream we need wider pathways because every single mode of transport is a pedestrian once they get off from their preferred mode of transport. Public transport expecially heavy rail by far the most efficient mode of transport... But hey we want more bikeline..
Ahhh, doodoog fordswine the great... Him and his brother surely never pedaled a day in their life. They'd rather move around like the human characters in Wall-E, lying on floating beds... Some would say "terminally carbrainef". Between this morning's election results and Toronto's possible u-turn on bike lanes, it feels like the world is regressing. Greetings from Paris.
I showing up to vote this ford clown out of office and I hope to never see him again, after him black face needs to go. Bike and EV ridership will only increase from here, and not you have the bike share program that is help many use the bikes to get around down town when I think it a great idea. Want to fix the car problem, have more 1 way streets DT and introduce toll coming into the city. However as soon as any more space become available it will soon be full of car because driver are just selfish.
I'm a middle-aged white guy and I do not agree with the guy making comments. I've cycled all my life up to 24 km to work and have enjoyed it. Mike, where the heck did you grow up that you have such a negative view of cycling. The idea that only the unemployed or the ones addicted are the ones that cycle or certainly not something that I grew up with in the 1960s and 1970s. I don't know, maybe it's because I'm from the West coast.
A few things might help us understand what’s behind Bill 212. It was inspired by residents complaining about the bike lanes on Bloor when they got extended into Etobicoke. For some reason when this one bike lane gets extended, locals get upset about the new section in the same way they got upset when bike lanes got first installed. It seems to go like this: Cycling advocates talk with other cyclists about bike lanes. Then they spoke with key decision makers with the city, to get them installed. But cyclists didn’t focus much on talking with drivers. So drivers rightly felt they were not in the loop. You can understand this because for decades drivers blocked bike lanes. Now that bike lanes are being rolled out it’s tempting for cyclists to say suck it up just like we had to before. But that isn’t helpful at all. The city proposes bike lanes and sends out flyers to homes. Drivers see the flyers and say this is about cycling. I don’t have anything against cycling but it has nothing to do with me. So the flyer goes in the recycle box and they get on with their lives. Then the city installs the bike lanes and drivers suddenly see a bit more car congestion. Now that they are in their neighbourhood, they notice the bike lanes. They still haven’t educated themselves on bike lanes or congestion so they just see the congestion and want the bike lanes gone. And that happened in Etobicoke. See this from the Conservative government’s view. They got thousands of complaints in person, on the phone and by email. The essence of responsible government is to respond to people’s concerns. And constituents did share their concerns. Add to that, bike lanes were a downtown “problem.” Now that the Bloor bike lanes were extended into Etobicoke, it can feel like the city came over and pooped in their backyard. After Ford and Christine Hogarth spent 3 decades in local politics, they can use this issue as one of the last big causes to fight, to cap off their political careers. So this is personal, not just political or academic. But there’s more: When the city removed the Jarvis Street bike lanes, not much consultation went into installing them and ZERO consultation was used to remove them. Rob Ford and council relied on gut instinct and their own judgement to decide to remove the Jarvis bike lanes. Since then, the city uses a robust consultation process to install bike lanes: Councillors and the council want the bike lanes. Grass roots support from residents, residents’ associations and BIAs support bike lanes. And the city routinely invites traffic planning agencies to have experts inform us on best practices and more city staff have knowledge on bike lanes. Doug Ford is still functioning in the old style that relied on their own judgement and what they heard from residents. But even when they talk about how this issue is the number one issue for constituents and they never saw any issue the residents were so unified over, they haven’t bothered to get counts on how many people complained and what the specific complaints were. And they seem to ignore locals who share they want the bike lanes. They just say lots complained. And this bill does not suggest other ways to reduce “gridlock” except to remove the bike lanes. So it’s a lot more about opposing bike lanes than it is about fighting car congestion. So it falls to cycling advocates to inform drivers about not just bike lanes but also about congestion for cars and its cures. Including talking directly to drivers in Etobicoke. These drivers are mad. They won’t want to listen, they just want to hear the words, We will remove the Bloor bike lanes and do it ASAP. So any dialogue needs to be done in very short sound bites that are meaningful to them. Like understanding congestion.
Any new development pisses people off but they get over it. Same thing happened when downtown Vancouver added all their bike lanes 10+ years ago: everyone complained about the removed car lanes but now a decade on it’s a point of pride for the city to be so bike friendly. People just hate progress because they hate any change, in any direction.
We just don’t have enough infrastructure, there is a lack of highways and public transit, we need a bypass highway for gta. I think the biggest issue is the job concentration downtown, the mayor needs to stop forcing people into offices and we need to incentivize companies to locate outside of the city.
Stupid ass take, highways don’t make anything better, there are plenty of them and there is still traffic. If you wanna work downtown then take the GO train, your suburban life doesn’t get to determine the life of people who live in old Toronto. Cars are fundamentally unsustainable as a form of transport, especially as toronto’s population continues to increase
It’s also not the fault of toronto of having jobs lmao, it’s literally inherent that cities have more jobs. Density, and proximity drive business growth, suburban areas will just never have the same number of jobs as a dense city. The mayor of toronto isn’t forcing all the jobs in toronto.
@@PAPADRACOLIN Olivia is forcing people into Toronto, when they could wfh. The province needs to incentivize companies to hire people outside the city, Toronto is so terrible because of the population growth
Since Brampton has started building bike lanes I have counted how many bikes I hacve seen on said bike lanes, over the past 10 or so years I have counted exactly 14, two of which were motorized. This is not Denmark or Holland, the culture, the winters and the city layouts are intirely different. We have bike lanes taking over turning lanes so the wait with cars running is longer at intersections, in other places two lane streets are reduced to one for a bike lane which no one uses(sorry less than 2 a yesr I have observed). This causes much more CO2 expelled into the air not less. The great transformation that bike enthsiests have claimed is not and I think will not happen. I have seen lots of bike enthusiests, on country roads, km from cities, hardly any in cities. The fact is the great transition to bikes is not happening and will not happen no matter how miserable you make driving.
It has happened though. Everywhere that has added bike lanes has seen an explosion of cycling. Your weird claim that bike lanes will cause more emissions is bizarre, more cycling will reduce emissions overall. You counting is an anecdote, let’s use hard data, not anecdote. The Canada isn’t Europe argument is also bizarre. European cities also were car centric in the 60’s, they just had more political will to change faster.
I bet we can all count on your accurate counting of traffic on a single road for a 10 year stretch - you must lead a boring life /s. Now to be more serious of your comment - your city planners may still be building the cycling network. Perhaps you're looking at a section that doesn't really connect to anywhere yet? Do this for yourself - plot out a route from where you live to a grocery store, a hospital, where you work or a hardware store - as if you were on a bike. Then, go do it directly on a bike - inspect it on Google Maps or use your knowledge of the city. Now answer this question: Would you feel safe riding on the shoulder of those roads where there's no bike infrastructure or even a painted lane? Maybe, just maybe, you haven't seen many cyclists inside Brampton it's probably because it's outwardly hostile to cyclists trying to get around. So no one wants to try because they don't feel safe enough. So no one thinks to even consider it, until they see someone else doing it. Give cycling a try and get back to us.
People do use bike lanes mostly in the period May to October and mostly in the inner city. Increasingly I am also seeing electric bikes and scooters in those lanes. I also like to use them when biking. Many of them are underutilized by cyclists. Its hard to justify them when you see 500 cars and two cyclists. But lets understand something there is a lot of commerce being conducted with trucks and automobiles and that contributes a lot the the local economy. Cyclists do not.
Ahh, I forgot that cars and trucks transact and create things themselves (besides their emissions) that people riding bikes do not. I hope the pro-bike movement keeps that little secret on the down low. 🤐
@@olamilekanakala7542 I guess someone should explain to you that Canada, according to official figures is responsible for 1.5 to 1.7 % of green house gases. Basically a rounding error. I also like the city to increase the distance of the west Toronto rail path. Why does it stop at Dundas when it could go much further down into the city. It would provide a fast, safe path for cyclists instead of putting bike lanes on streets.
@@rifleman4005First, GHG emissions aren’t the only emissions from automobiles, and Canada's worldwide impact does not have any bearing on the local impact on people in the area. Lastly, I was simply challenging your idea that automobiles drive the economy and not the people in them.
I get it that trades people and deliveries need motor vehicles. But to say that only commercial vehicles are part of the economy is uninformed. People are going to work, going shopping, going out for a meal. That’s all part of the economy.
@@olamilekanakala7542Certainly bicycle use goes down in the colder months, but it doesn’t disappear. It’s necessary year round. Most infrastructure has ups and downs in use: parking lots are empty most of the time, parks see fewer people in winter months, arenas and stadiums are empty most days, schools are empty during June and July, …
I’ve been frustrated by the number of people (not just Ford) saying “just put bike lanes on side streets” without knowing or caring whether that’s actually possible in Toronto. I think it shows how much of the debate is driven by people who just don’t have much experience with cycling in the city.
it also isn't what people on bikes need. It just creates inconvenient circuitous routes that don't take you to your destinations
@@evanr1940 Yup which further deincentivizes people to cycle.
Why is not possible? Alot of city with smaller road do like in Copenhagen.. It called share road Is a wide share footpath that bike pedestrians and other slower road user can used.. Instead of another dedicated lane that only 1 road user can used..
Go to Japan or other big city in Asia even your GOD" not just bike"surprised..
Funny you say "debate that driven by people that don't have much experience with cycling in the city" while you make video worshiping Amsterdam long BEFORE you even go to Netherlands.
I am a 65 yr old white woman. I moved to Montreal from Ontario in 2016 BECAUSE I wanted to live in a city equipped with bike lanes. I sold my car in 2017 due to the difficulty of finding parking and the fact that it took so much longer to get anywhere by car amidst construction, traffic backed up, etc. For example, 1/2 hr to get to my daughter's apt. by car verses 10 minutes on my bike. Nothing is worse than sitting in a car, idling when the place you want to go would be quicker on foot or, in my case, on a bicycle. I don't need to go to a gym since my bike is my form of transportation and exercise rolled into one. Love your podcasts. By the way, I've recently become a Conservative. Culture is a big influence on this issue. I lived in Ontario for 50 years and riding my bicycle would bring sympathetic responses from people. One time, someone offered to put my bike in their van and drive me home. I had a car. I just preferred riding my bike. But it's a foreign concept for many Ontarions who view this choice as a denigration of oneself.
Fixing traffic involves creating alternate means to driving. Yet it seems the opposite is constantly being attempted again and again. Forcing more people to use cars to travel makes traffic worse not better.
ATTENTION #CYCLISTS 🚨
#TakeTheLane , the vehicle lane (legal) and show motorists what congestion looks like w/o #bikelanes #CriticalMass
Now that's spiteful... I like it 😈
You should never compromise your safety for the convenience of others on the road.
@@Denny-i4c It's not spiteful, it's empirically far safer for the cyclist.
Please don't make taking the lane seen as a move in the culture war. It's a tool we need to have for our safety. It would be a big big problem for people to start taking more offense to it than they already do.
I’m far too scared to do that. There are definitely a handful of psychos out there who would gladly bump into your bike with their car if you do that, and I would say more than half of drivers will definitely honk nonstop if you do this
Yo from the West coast. Sorry you folks in Ontario are continuing to have problems with Dougie Ford. My thoughts on bike Lanes.... There will always be congestion. Bike Lanes hopefully keep cyclists safe. That's what has been missing. The idea that taking a bike lanes is going to solve congestion is simply going to put cyclists back in danger again.
At least you have the skytrain. We have abysmal transit in comparison. Streetcars sit in traffic as much as any car… so losing bike lanes is Ford literally taking away the primary alternative to driving in a lot of parts of toronto
As driving becomes more and more expensive (parking, insurance, financing, maintenance), cycling will naturally continue to increase. Cycling is also increasing due to electric bikes. Cycling is cheaper than driving and cheaper than taking transit. Also, as winters continue get get shorter and warmer, this will also increase cycling.
Traffic is bad in Toronto because it is a city built for cars surrounded by cities built for cars
Appreciate the video. Waste of time talking about the issue. We need to talk about the politics of this. This is just a distraction from the fact that Queens Park has no solutions for traffic, housing, health care, etc. If there were no bike lanes on these roads traffic would be the same and either Ford would have no excuse or he'd be picking something else to create a culture war. He knows that ppl have no speck of an understanding about traffic or how traffic works. this is why they try to say they have common sense solutions, but really they have no sense at all and are trying to dumb down complex issues because many can't comprehend the whole issue. Also Ford has no chance of winning these ridings with bike lanes in Toronto or even ppl who drive on these lanes, so he's not even doing anything to help ppl not affected by these lanes. It's sad. Regarding work from home, politicians should focus on pushing more ppl to work from home and approving more housing. Housing will support businesses in replacement of office workers and will bring more vitality to these areas day and night.
"politicians should focus on pushing more ppl to work from home". I've heard a few people say this and I have to say, it sounds like the dumbest idea. First of all, how would they do that? Second of all, why would it be a good idea to incentivize businesses to change their policy just to alleviate traffic? Third, it seems like it would be worse for employees (many people prefer not to work from home, especially people who live in small apartments in the downtown core). Fourth, would it even work? We have fewer people commuting now than before the pandemic.
“But at least deres beer in da corner stores now eh!”- your typical Ontario conservative
The thing that grinds my gears is the total lack of evidence. Also: traffic calming/road safety projects that include "road diets" are going to get caught up in this, putting active transportation plans in jeopardy (see for example York Region).
You guys, your discussion is great as you cover so many good points. Thank you. Bike lanes are another mode of transportation; it is a reality so let's not turn the blind eye. Hey Mr. FORD! Perhaps we should remove the street parking spots to make room to your car? Population growth and thinking modes: I know of two new residents of Ontario. They arrived before and after COVID. Guess what. They each bought a car. I am an adopted Canadian and do not have a car (30 yrs in Turtle Island)
Ive commuted by bike over the last 10 years the entire stretch of bloor street from kipling to spadina when there was no bike lane, and now when there is....Traffic is EXACTLY the same. Congestion is in the exact same areas as usual. Nothing has changed when it comes to traffic. When they are removed nothing will change. Only time it gets even worse is from the pathetic slow construction for simple work. Pylons blocking sections for days with no work being done, while the blocked area is perfectly suitable to be driven on. IMO there will be a ton of more accidents involving bikes if they move them to side streets. The same people bitching will really be crying morewhen there is construction on their quiet street for months due to new bike lanes being built. Just wait and see.....people backing out of their driveway are gonna have fun lol
Someone should organize a bike bus for the streets in Toronto. Sit on your bike at one of the ends, gather together a bunch of people who want to ride together, and then take the lane in a mass. This should build community and give people experience in vehicular cycling.
When you talked about traffic jams in the Glebe, you reminded me of when my wife and I went to Carleton University in the 1990s, and it once took us over an hour to take the bus from Bank & Catherine to the university because of an event at the stadium. It was painful!
If you look at European cities like Utrecht, bicycling has significantly reduced traffic problems and from my perspective, cities like Utrecht are much more pleasant cities.
What the motor vehicle crowd is not aware of is that there is going to be a major crisis in global oil supply in the not-too-distant future that will significantly increase prices. Most of the increase in global oil supply in the last 15 years has come from fracking shale plays in the U.S. The typical shale well produces most of its oil in the first two years of production. Producers are closing in on saturating the "sweet spots' within shale plays with oil wells in the U.S. Maybe the belief is that EVs will just replace ICE vehicles in Toronto and beyond. There are multiple problems with EVs that will limit their acceptance.
Drivers and especially upset drivers are furious about car congestion. Having a basic understanding of congestion can be helpful, it’s something they might listen to.
Traffic planners use the V/C Index which uses daily traffic counts to measure congestion:
Volume ÷ Capacity = V/C Index
Multiply by 100 and it is expressed as a percentage.
This is useful for overall calculations but it can put the “numb” into numbers for most of the public. Congestion happens moment to moment. You can always add more cars by drivers travelling on off peak times, like how you have a maximum amount of water that can go through a pipe but you can let the water run more often like at night. They see and get caught in congestion. They feel it. So using a rating system like the congestion scale is something they can relate to.
THE CONGESTION SCALE
5 GRIDLOCK
4 BUMPER TO BUMPER
3 TAILBACKS 1 BLOCK LONG
2 “SMALL TOWN” TRAFFIC
1 LITTLE TO NO TRAFFIC
What concerns drivers is Levels 4 and 5.
We don’t get gridlock. It makes a great trigger word to inspire drivers to oppose bike lanes but we know this is exaggeration. Gridlock is where the whole neighbourhood gets flooded with cars and your car is locked in the grid of streets. You can’t go forward or backwards. Might as well turn your car off because you won’t move for 10 to as much as 45 minutes. We get this when a big event ends, like a world championship sports game. A solution to this is for the city to ask a venue to present a traffic mitigation plan, like host post-game activities that encourage attendees to linger and not leave all at once.
Level 4 is where the street is saturated to capacity and traffic starts to fold in on itself. On streets like Bloor, it never reaches gridlock because the worst of it is just on Bloor, not on cross streets. But it’s this level that makes drivers get claustrophobic. When you’re caught in it, it feels like you are drowning. Having a rating scale to refer to is like touching the bottom of the lake and finding you can stand up with your head above the waves. When we see congestion from the sidewalk and actually surveying congestion on Bloor we notice this congestion ebbs and flows. So it fluctuates between Level 4 and 3 and often the whole queue of cars gets through before the red light. So we measure congestion by observing the level of congestion at specific parts of the street and we measure how long it stays at this level. When we do this, what looks like gridlock is not nearly as bad and it’s easier to tolerate.
So the next step is to recognize the city wants to reduce car congestion. The highest Level Of Service (LOS) is at Levels 3 and 4, that’s the highest capacity of a street. That brings us to how to reduce congestion, what actions the city can do.
Increasing Level Of Service is one way. The network of streets can accommodate more cars. But recent ways to calculate LOS include how do we move more people, not just cars? And, as long as people ride bikes and fill bike lanes, that can be more efficient than a car lane.
Vehicle Miles Travelled (VMT), is an approach that’s been around for a while. Put origins and destinations like home, work, shopping and recreation closer together so people use the streets less. This recently got the name 15 Minute Cities.
Encourage people not to drive by making other modes like biking more popular.
Discourage people from driving, with left turn only, like on King St, car free streets, parks and neighbourhoods, road tolls and congestion fees. And odd licence plates drive every second day while even plates go the other times.
When we add lanes to a highway, we ease congestion, so more people drive. We call that induced demand. But a secondary effect of more people using the highway is this means more trips at the beginning and end of the ride on city streets. So more local highway travel results in more congestion on city streets.
There is one more we induce demand on streets. We work painstakingly to make our community more liveable. More homes, both businesses that create more jobs, more infrastructure like better streets. The result of our hard work is more people want to stay and more are invited in. Population growth is a good thing, right? Especially if you are a landlord or developer. But when you can’t afford rent let alone buy a home, you have a different perspective. And we see more congestion. What is the solution? Pretty soon we paved over the Green Belt and contaminated our fresh water supply as Toronto expands to Lake Simcoe the same way it did along the Golden Horseshoe.
The reason why our population is growing is not just because Toronto is a great place to live. It’s because it’s better than everywhere else. So it’s in Toronto’s best interest for 2 things. Make places like Sudbury and Timmins better to move to. And do a better job promoting them. Toronto is still world class but so is Kirkland Lake and Nippising. We welcome refugees from Ukraine, over 100,000 of them. But a lot of these people are farmers and like farming. Setting them up with entry level jobs in Toronto might not be the best value for them or us.
That’s population growth. A decade ago, experts talked about a world population explosion. But now they talk about a decline in birth rates, quoting country after country already having birth rates so low they don’t sustain the current population. At a time when communities age, riding a bicycle is a perfect way to get daily exercise to keep us healthy.
Most drivers in Etobicoke who got upset with the Bloor bike lane extension just drive without considering these factors. If they do and if they know their thoughts and ideas are not just welcomed, they are needed to make Toronto better, they might not be so upset by the bike lanes. They might even try riding a bike!
People talk about bike lanes as if removing them will solve our congestion issues .. it will not..! Construction in the city is a larger issue than a few bike lanes. Today construction either for new condos, street repairs, or area rebuilds (Portlands, Gardener area) are some of the major reasons we see traffic grinding to a halt. Maybe we should be looking at what London or Paris is doing to control congestion in their city centers ..
Also, on a side note has anyone brought up what trams do to contribute to congestion?? I know on Queen st they can back up traffic a lot, especially after 9am when you are allowed to park on Queen st.
Bikes are not going away .. & getting rid of bike lanes is not the answer to the city's congestion problems and is a huge waste of taxpayer money!
Also, Public transiit has worse funding now than pre-pandemic, and is still running 71% capacity of pre-pandemic levels. So the government, mostly provincial and to some degree federal, is pushing people off public transit into cars. (I should note during rush in downtown I see about 1 in 5 actually taping in to pay fare. That makes me wonder if TTC even knows now many people are really using transit)
You don't even have to bring up the induced demand part of the argument. The capacity of any of these streets in question is limited by how cars are handled at intersections, not by how many lanes there are. Far too many intersections in Toronto have signalization controlled by timers rather than systems that respond to traffic flow. If the province has millions to throw at bike lane removal, they could spend it on smart signalization. One estimate coming out of U of T is that this could solve about 50% of Toronto's current congestion problem at a reasonable cost.
It would be a very, very good time to use those lanes if you do not want to lose the lanes. Also, I would strongly suggest trying some smart politics and ask people to try the lanes before supporting their deletion.
I would argue that the people who live near the lanes want the lanes, and of course, the people who live elsewhere don’t necessarily see the value. Every neighborhood is going to be outnumbered by all the other users. You know what would really help traffic? Pushing more thoroughfares through all the neighborhoods, and eliminating all the cul de sacs to replace them with through streets. Local owners should have more say in these things.
I wouldn’t argue too heavily against the idea that bikes should be pushed to side streets. That’s a nuanced issue that will just be polarizing. It often is more appropriate to put in bike routes on side streets, but often it isn’t. How much less convenient does a bike lane need to be before it’s not really a benefit though?
I’d talk about the money being wasted over a culture war from the angry reactionaries. This isn’t a conservative or right wing thing to waste money undoing something that’s actually working. You don’t want to fight everyone on the right of center. Conservatives don’t want to waste money ripping up nice infrastructure.
Now, I don't know what the problem is with the traffic in Toronto since I live in Ottawa too, but I've seen very agressive drivers here. It seems like all of the sudden eveyrone forgot what those bike lanes are for. There is a certain predatory instinct in almost every driver.
Ohhh I love your Atari 800XL and 400!!!
Thanks so much! I'll have to post a picture of the entire set-up sometime. - Mike
@@MissingMiddlePodcast Well hell, I'll have to subscribe.
The glebe should have NO on street parking on Bank. Drives me nuts and I don't live anywhere near Bank
The best way to solve the car traffic is going the "market way" (that driving demographic usually is a staunch supporter of it): right now drivers aren't paying the real cost of roads and especially the parkings they're using. Charge them the market cost, and bike lanes will be indispensable!
I agreed with you.. Same with bike parking.. Also end of journey facility should not be free..
At 6:45 Cara makes the point that cyclists won't just disappear, they'll move to other modes of transportation (motor vehicles), which are even worse. I think she's forgetting that in fact the demand to travel at all is elastic. There are some trips that cyclists are doing now, which will just not be done anymore. Cyclists will, shift some of their trips to alternative routes, they'll shift some of their trips to transit, some to driving, but overall they will probably just do less trips overall.
"but overall they will probably just do less trips overall." which is also a bad outcome
@@joeturner9692 Yep, completely agreed. Just saying, her argument doesn't work.
@@JoshLemerpretty sure she acknowledged that some cyclists will decide not to take a trip. But either way the wider point still stands. Even if a low percentage of cyclists switch to driving, it will make traffic worse because roads have a very low capacity and even a few extra cars can jam things up for everyone
The real solution to Toronto's traffic congestion is leveraging transportation mode efficiencies to scale up transportation infrastructure. This means walking, biking, and transit. Cars are an inefficient mode and also require parking. The other modes are far more efficient in all aspects. It's not about cars or bikes; it's about moving people.
So bike don't need parking? When you have excellent public transport like alot of great Asian city do, biking is just relegated to what it intended to be used' local mode of transport'.
@anubizz3 Bike parking is extremely efficient in comparison to car parking. My comment was about greater efficiency being the real solution to traffic congestion.
@rotary65 Bike parking not much more efficient than motorcycle parking. The why don't we make motorcycles lane only?
@@anubizz3 because motorcycles have the speed and power to ride in traffic. However, if we saw mass conversion of drivers to scooters as in some Asian areas, then it may make sense to reallocate car lanes to that purpose. We have a lot of options to scale up North American transportation, but cars are not the solution. We can't afford increased allocation of valuable public space to cars in downtown Toronto.
@@rotary65 Not a single country in Asia have motorcycle lane... And yes they also rarely have dedicated bikelane most of them have wide share lane for slower mode of transport.. This also highly implemented in Europe..
The irony is you said Toronto don't have the space but dedicated 1 lane just for 1 mode of transport... No one scream we need wider pathways because every single mode of transport is a pedestrian once they get off from their preferred mode of transport.
Public transport expecially heavy rail by far the most efficient mode of transport... But hey we want more bikeline..
The NDP and Green Parties have been showing their Opposition to this new proposed bill.
Ahhh, doodoog fordswine the great...
Him and his brother surely never pedaled a day in their life. They'd rather move around like the human characters in Wall-E, lying on floating beds...
Some would say "terminally carbrainef".
Between this morning's election results and Toronto's possible u-turn on bike lanes, it feels like the world is regressing.
Greetings from Paris.
I showing up to vote this ford clown out of office and I hope to never see him again, after him black face needs to go. Bike and EV ridership will only increase from here, and not you have the bike share program that is help many use the bikes to get around down town when I think it a great idea.
Want to fix the car problem, have more 1 way streets DT and introduce toll coming into the city. However as soon as any more space become available it will soon be full of car because driver are just selfish.
Removing bike lanes is a horrible idea and it won't help traffic at all
It does if it's replaced by bus lane..
Biking in downtown Vancouver has exploded in the last 20 years. All thanks to the awesome mayor who built bike lanes
I'm a middle-aged white guy and I do not agree with the guy making comments. I've cycled all my life up to 24 km to work and have enjoyed it. Mike, where the heck did you grow up that you have such a negative view of cycling. The idea that only the unemployed or the ones addicted are the ones that cycle or certainly not something that I grew up with in the 1960s and 1970s. I don't know, maybe it's because I'm from the West coast.
He doesn’t have a negative view. He’s trying to give insight into the people who do hold these negative views.
A few things might help us understand what’s behind Bill 212.
It was inspired by residents complaining about the bike lanes on Bloor when they got extended into Etobicoke.
For some reason when this one bike lane gets extended, locals get upset about the new section in the same way they got upset when bike lanes got first installed. It seems to go like this:
Cycling advocates talk with other cyclists about bike lanes. Then they spoke with key decision makers with the city, to get them installed. But cyclists didn’t focus much on talking with drivers. So drivers rightly felt they were not in the loop. You can understand this because for decades drivers blocked bike lanes. Now that bike lanes are being rolled out it’s tempting for cyclists to say suck it up just like we had to before. But that isn’t helpful at all.
The city proposes bike lanes and sends out flyers to homes. Drivers see the flyers and say this is about cycling. I don’t have anything against cycling but it has nothing to do with me. So the flyer goes in the recycle box and they get on with their lives. Then the city installs the bike lanes and drivers suddenly see a bit more car congestion. Now that they are in their neighbourhood, they notice the bike lanes. They still haven’t educated themselves on bike lanes or congestion so they just see the congestion and want the bike lanes gone. And that happened in Etobicoke.
See this from the Conservative government’s view. They got thousands of complaints in person, on the phone and by email. The essence of responsible government is to respond to people’s concerns. And constituents did share their concerns. Add to that, bike lanes were a downtown “problem.” Now that the Bloor bike lanes were extended into Etobicoke, it can feel like the city came over and pooped in their backyard. After Ford and Christine Hogarth spent 3 decades in local politics, they can use this issue as one of the last big causes to fight, to cap off their political careers. So this is personal, not just political or academic. But there’s more:
When the city removed the Jarvis Street bike lanes, not much consultation went into installing them and ZERO consultation was used to remove them. Rob Ford and council relied on gut instinct and their own judgement to decide to remove the Jarvis bike lanes. Since then, the city uses a robust consultation process to install bike lanes:
Councillors and the council want the bike lanes.
Grass roots support from residents, residents’ associations and BIAs support bike lanes.
And the city routinely invites traffic planning agencies to have experts inform us on best practices and more city staff have knowledge on bike lanes.
Doug Ford is still functioning in the old style that relied on their own judgement and what they heard from residents. But even when they talk about how this issue is the number one issue for constituents and they never saw any issue the residents were so unified over, they haven’t bothered to get counts on how many people complained and what the specific complaints were. And they seem to ignore locals who share they want the bike lanes. They just say lots complained.
And this bill does not suggest other ways to reduce “gridlock” except to remove the bike lanes. So it’s a lot more about opposing bike lanes than it is about fighting car congestion.
So it falls to cycling advocates to inform drivers about not just bike lanes but also about congestion for cars and its cures. Including talking directly to drivers in Etobicoke. These drivers are mad. They won’t want to listen, they just want to hear the words, We will remove the Bloor bike lanes and do it ASAP. So any dialogue needs to be done in very short sound bites that are meaningful to them. Like understanding congestion.
Any new development pisses people off but they get over it. Same thing happened when downtown Vancouver added all their bike lanes 10+ years ago: everyone complained about the removed car lanes but now a decade on it’s a point of pride for the city to be so bike friendly. People just hate progress because they hate any change, in any direction.
We just don’t have enough infrastructure, there is a lack of highways and public transit, we need a bypass highway for gta.
I think the biggest issue is the job concentration downtown, the mayor needs to stop forcing people into offices and we need to incentivize companies to locate outside of the city.
Stupid ass take, highways don’t make anything better, there are plenty of them and there is still traffic. If you wanna work downtown then take the GO train, your suburban life doesn’t get to determine the life of people who live in old Toronto. Cars are fundamentally unsustainable as a form of transport, especially as toronto’s population continues to increase
It’s also not the fault of toronto of having jobs lmao, it’s literally inherent that cities have more jobs. Density, and proximity drive business growth, suburban areas will just never have the same number of jobs as a dense city. The mayor of toronto isn’t forcing all the jobs in toronto.
@@PAPADRACOLIN idiot ass take, cars are fine, highways are good look at Texas roads
Don’t am are about sustainability
@@PAPADRACOLIN Olivia is forcing people into Toronto, when they could wfh.
The province needs to incentivize companies to hire people outside the city, Toronto is so terrible because of the population growth
@@NK-fe3mdDumbass take. Texas is not a good example for anything good in this world.
Since Brampton has started building bike lanes I have counted how many bikes I hacve seen on said bike lanes, over the past 10 or so years I have counted exactly 14, two of which were motorized. This is not Denmark or Holland, the culture, the winters and the city layouts are intirely different. We have bike lanes taking over turning lanes so the wait with cars running is longer at intersections, in other places two lane streets are reduced to one for a bike lane which no one uses(sorry less than 2 a yesr I have observed). This causes much more CO2 expelled into the air not less. The great transformation that bike enthsiests have claimed is not and I think will not happen. I have seen lots of bike enthusiests, on country roads, km from cities, hardly any in cities. The fact is the great transition to bikes is not happening and will not happen no matter how miserable you make driving.
It has happened though. Everywhere that has added bike lanes has seen an explosion of cycling. Your weird claim that bike lanes will cause more emissions is bizarre, more cycling will reduce emissions overall. You counting is an anecdote, let’s use hard data, not anecdote.
The Canada isn’t Europe argument is also bizarre. European cities also were car centric in the 60’s, they just had more political will to change faster.
I bet we can all count on your accurate counting of traffic on a single road for a 10 year stretch - you must lead a boring life /s.
Now to be more serious of your comment - your city planners may still be building the cycling network. Perhaps you're looking at a section that doesn't really connect to anywhere yet?
Do this for yourself - plot out a route from where you live to a grocery store, a hospital, where you work or a hardware store - as if you were on a bike. Then, go do it directly on a bike - inspect it on Google Maps or use your knowledge of the city. Now answer this question: Would you feel safe riding on the shoulder of those roads where there's no bike infrastructure or even a painted lane?
Maybe, just maybe, you haven't seen many cyclists inside Brampton it's probably because it's outwardly hostile to cyclists trying to get around. So no one wants to try because they don't feel safe enough. So no one thinks to even consider it, until they see someone else doing it.
Give cycling a try and get back to us.
People do use bike lanes mostly in the period May to October and mostly in the inner city. Increasingly I am also seeing electric bikes and scooters in those lanes. I also like to use them when biking. Many of them are underutilized by cyclists. Its hard to justify them when you see 500 cars and two cyclists.
But lets understand something there is a lot of commerce being conducted with trucks and automobiles and that contributes a lot the the local economy. Cyclists do not.
Ahh, I forgot that cars and trucks transact and create things themselves (besides their emissions) that people riding bikes do not. I hope the pro-bike movement keeps that little secret on the down low. 🤐
@@olamilekanakala7542 I guess someone should explain to you that Canada, according to official figures is responsible for 1.5 to 1.7 % of green house gases. Basically a rounding error.
I also like the city to increase the distance of the west Toronto rail path. Why does it stop at Dundas when it could go much further down into the city. It would provide a fast, safe path for cyclists instead of putting bike lanes on streets.
@@rifleman4005First, GHG emissions aren’t the only emissions from automobiles, and Canada's worldwide impact does not have any bearing on the local impact on people in the area. Lastly, I was simply challenging your idea that automobiles drive the economy and not the people in them.
I get it that trades people and deliveries need motor vehicles. But to say that only commercial vehicles are part of the economy is uninformed. People are going to work, going shopping, going out for a meal. That’s all part of the economy.
@@olamilekanakala7542Certainly bicycle use goes down in the colder months, but it doesn’t disappear. It’s necessary year round. Most infrastructure has ups and downs in use: parking lots are empty most of the time, parks see fewer people in winter months, arenas and stadiums are empty most days, schools are empty during June and July, …