West End Bikeways Meeting # 2

The second meeting of the West End Bikeways planning was tonight. This was a follow up to the Original meeting in November, which sought public consultation for bike routes that would be easy to get approved politically.

This meant that the usefulness of any new infrastructure would be limited. People weren't happy with this, but cyclists are used to compromising with local merchants and City Hall. The most desired bike infrastructure in Toronto is a new major east - west route on the west end. Take The Tooker and Bells on Bloor have shown that a Bloor street bike lane would be very popular with cyclists, and there was a lot of noise at the first meeting about a Queen West bike lane. These two bike lanes would also be the hardest to get put in politically.

Since neither of these things will happen in 2009, the idea of sharrows on College St. west of Euclid is quite tantalizing. Nobody really likes sharrows, but as more of them are woven into the urban fabric they should become more accepted and useful. Currently College goes from being a half decent bike lane to being some of the worst Toronto cycling has to offer: being forced to ride in the door zone next to a street car track and busy traffic. If anything can be done to improve that, it would be great.