Takethetooker

Thur. June 10, 7 p.m.
NFB Theatre, 150 John St (at Richmond St W)
FREE

Directed by Alan Kohl, 2008, 74 minutes.

Alan Kohl’s documentary Roadsworth: Crossing the Line is about a Montreal stencil artist’s clandestine campaign to make his mark on the city streets. After all, who owns public space?

A panel discussion will follow on the topic of bike culture, with Greenspiration’s Angela Bischoff; Most Tenacious Cycling Advocate Award-winner Hamish Wilson of Take the Tooker, Michael Lewis Johnson of Streets are for People – and YOU!.

http://www.onf-nfb.gc.ca/eng/mediatheque/schedule.php?id=2074

Watch the trailer: http://films.nfb.ca/roadsworth/

Thanks to all those who rode; and to those who helped out, including Clay and Paper who helped with the spectacle, and musicians Wayne Scott, Michael J trumpet man, Richard Underhill, the percussion group at Christie Pits and a Kensington-based band at Ave. Rd.

Also new this year were Bells on Bloor T-shirts with the simple slogan Bike Lanes on Bloor on the back.

There’s been some controversy within some circles and troglodytes about putting bike lanes on our arterials, often the direct routes in our core. But direct routes, and in a good linked network (not a patchwork), are the clear way to provide real civic respect for cyclists, as we don’t need to be shunted up, then down, though yes, the side roads are often a nicer trip for some of us, some times.

Of all the direct, E/W, main roads, Bloor St. is the best for bikes in the core, and we’ve found that old 1992 study from Marshall Macklin Monaghan that did back us up, complete with Dan Egan’s name on the front cover, (though Dan’s at the mercy of the Council TOroglodyte majority – presuming that most of our Councillors tend to be drivers, though some of the suburban Councillors e.g. Glenn de Baeremaeker are the best cyclists on Council.)

Bloor St. also has the benefit of having the subway, and increasingly in this mayoral campaign, and the larger Class C EA study, we must think of how bike lanes can help our subway. The simple way is that if we had safer biking, and in a direct route along high travel demand (the subway), many people would likely forsake the subway for their bike, especially in the older urban core where the TTC is less of a deal.

And because of the subway, Bloor is the most equitable place for a bike lane, as merchants have a potentially greater number of patrons somewhat near them, and there’s a pattern of providing a lot of car parking atop the subway construction too.

Our Bike Plan is behind, and in Arrears. So we don’t need Plan A as much as Plan B, for Bloor. Plan Bloor is pretty obviously a good idea from this two-decades-old mapping of cyclist origins and destinations, and this mapping also supports some of the north-south routes too, like University Ave. bike lanes, also atop a subway.

Why do we not have any core part of Bloor with new bike lanes now? more than four years after first okaying a study of Bloor from High Park to Sherbourne?

…Shows that clear pattern still along the main E/W streets, and not just Bloor.

Here we see someone riding up along the left in Yorkville.

Check out Martin Reis’ photos from the Bicycle Blessing the other day.

As part of the anti-bike Bloor rebuild in Yorkville, the merchants near Bloor and Yonge to Bay don’t like having bikes cluttering up their vision. So the well-used post and ring bike parking in front of Manulife is being ripped out and won’t be returned. Along with really brutal riding conditions, lousy design and substandard travel lanes in the construction zone, this is yet another way of discouraging bike use.

Photo by Gabi Sarlay.

The protest of cyclists on the portion of Bloor where Darcy Sheppard was killed in late August last year was a clear demonstration of concern at not just the manner in which Sheppard was killed, but for some of us, highlighting how the City wasn’t really giving us a good degree of consideration in their plans for this long-studied piece of Bloor, which is now being narrowed to prevent easy bike lanes from going in.
It would be nice if somehow the City could be sued for contributory negligence in this death, but it’s much less likely at this point.
Please look at bryantwatch.wordpress.com for more info.

The parked cars on St. George St. below aren’t just parked in the bike lane, (with their correct parking spaces to the right of the bike lane in an indented bay,) they’re so far out they’re constraining the travel lane. And there is no bike lane, and cyclists have to take the lane to have a bit of safety.

Councillor Vaughan’s championing of the recent Bloor Visioning OPA – without seeing bike safety as any issue worth being concerned about – and thus approving both the status quo of risk but increasing!! risks with the indented parking bays while avoiding warnings of increased dangers to cyclists by increasing the constrained cycling conditions we face is irresponsible.

I also feel that the various Resident’s Association’s in the area have some responsibility and thus liability for making the risk both ongoing and in wintertime, making it worse.

Roncesvalles has also ignored these design issues, which have been raised before, with examples on College and Spadina. While this year, year-round cyclists have been very lucky with little snow, and the odds of climate change will mean more of this lightness, we also will still have some snow and judging by years of exposure to this inability to plow out indents, cyclists will be at risk from bad design and civic inability to do basic operations.

Yes, the snow has to go somewhere – but the degree of encroachment shown here is excessive, and presents too much unnecessary risk to cyclists.