Roads

A report released this week by Transportation for America titled Dangerous By Design: Solving the Epidemic of Preventable Pedestrian Deaths (and Making Great Neighborhoods) ranks the most dangerous metropolitan areas in the U.S. for pedestrians (Florida has the top 4) and the safest (Seattle, Portland and Minneapolis-St Paul.)

Roger Geller, bicycle coordinator for the City of Portland, Oregon, recently gave an inspired presentation to a standing-room only crowd at the Centre for Social Innovation.

A recent BBC podcast is worth checking out. Public Places, Private Lives is a series of portraits of well known places that reveal the lives and stories of those people who come to a famous spot not to gaze as tourists, but for work or for their own private reasons.

This episode is about Times Square in New York City and among the voices of irrepressible New Yorkers we hear Tim Tompkins of the Times Square Alliance talking about what happened when they put out the lawnchairs in the pedestrian zone. It will make you want to hop on the train for Penn Station.

Convincing city planners and engineers to consider ALL users of a road when it's being redesigned or built from scratch shouldn't be too hard right? You may be surprised to hear all the nitty-gritty of what the Complete Streets working group is digging up about why such a simple concept isn't already common practice at City Hall. Read Val Dodge's recent Torontoist article to find out more.

As reported in a recent Washington Post article, Virginia is taking aim at one of the most enduring symbols of suburbia: the cul-de-sac. The state has decided that all new subdivisions must have through streets linking them with neighboring subdivisions, schools and shopping areas and will maintain only new subdivision streets that meet its connectivity, road and sidewalk requirements.

Disappointing news last week for the Safe Cycling Coalition
and other cyclists hoping for a second chance to convince the City to
plan for full bike lanes on the transformed Bloor Street between Avenue
Road and Church Street.

As reported in TCAT News,
the group representing cyclists joined a group of Merchants led by
William Ashley China who petitioned the courts to reverse the City's
classification of the reconstruction project, which did not require a
full environmental assessment study and public consultation.

Last September, TCAT made a deputation to Toronto and East York
Community Council in support of a proposal to study an alternate
crossing for the current at-grade crossing of the rail corridor on
Strachan Avenue. We stressed the fact that any new crossing design
should meet the safety needs of cyclist and pedestrians first, since
this is a major connection to the waterfront.

Last Thursday in Ontario Divisional Court, cyclists joined a very
powerful contingent of litigants trying to reverse a City decision made
almost a decade ago. In the submission by a group of Bloor Street
merchants, aptly named Concerned About Bloor,
they argued that the City mis-classified the Bloor Transformation
process as a Schedule A roads project, thus negating the need for a
full environmental assessment. The Safe Cycling Coalition acted as intervener in the case, and also had the opportunity to support the argument made by Concerned About Bloor.

A group calling itself the Safe Cycling Coalition has
been granted the right to intervene in the recently launched court case
involving some members of the Bloor-Yorkville Business Improvement
Area. The court case is challenging the decision by the City not to
conduct a full Environmental Assessment (EA) for the Bloor
transformation project. Below is an excerpt from last week's press
release.