G20 Healing With Positive Memories

All Photos by James D. Schwartz / The Urban Country

The outrage over how our government handled the G20 weekend in Toronto in June has begun to subside now that several reviews are under way to investigate how the Police handled the summit.

In light of these positive developments, I thought it would be appropriate to share a more positive side of the G20. The following photos were taken during a peaceful G20 bike rally on Sunday afternoon that I participated in.

Spirits were high while thousands of lovely Torontonians exercised their right to freedom of peaceful assembly using the best form of transportation – bicycles.

Many of the peaceful protesters that took part in the bike rally were protesting the G20 or advocating for the environment. Others were advocating for better infrastructure for cyclists, and some were just out enjoying a wonderful ride around the city.

After all, It’s not often Toronto cyclists have the streets to themselves. Why not enjoy it?

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Protesting Helmet Legislation in Australia

Photo courtesy of CycleStyle.com.au

This coming Saturday, fellow cycling advocate and renown documentary filmmaker Mike Rubbo will be leading a group of cyclists on a ride in Melbourne Australia to promote bike sharing on Melbourne’s new BIXI system “Melbourne Bike Share”.

Mike and his crew will ride in regular clothes to highlight how these urban sit-up bicycles need not require a change of clothes or special equipment to operate. Controversial however, considering Australia’s mandatory helmet legislation. But a ticket for cycling without a helmet is a small price to pay for promoting utility cycling in Australia.

Australia has a disorder that is unfortunately making it very difficult to make bicycles an accepted mode of transportation. Its mandatory helmet law creates a barrier to cycling, and its hunched over lycra-clad racing monoculture makes relaxed European sit-up cycling seem out of place.

Melbourne’s bike sharing scheme – as Mike likes to refer to as “Mixi” – can help treat this disorder. It can help make European sit-up style bicycles mainstream and encourage Australians to use a bike for transportation in regular clothes.

But Australia’s helmet law could prevent the bike sharing system from being successful. The primary benefit of bicycle sharing is convenience – you can hop on or off a bike at any time (or you can walk, or take transit, or drive or take a taxi without having to worry about leaving your bicycle behind).

But helmet legislation all but eliminates this convenience because you need to carry a bicycle helmet with you if you ever plan to hop on a “MIXI”. Suddenly this convenient bike sharing system isn’t so convenient anymore.

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Making The Case Against Cottages

All Photos by James D. Schwartz / The Urban Country

In the same way wealthy New Yorkers head to the prestigious Hamptons on summer weekends, many wealthy Torontonians have their “home away from home” known as a cottage where they spend their summer weekends. A typical drive for a cottage dweller is anywhere from 1 to 4 hours each way to relax on a quiet lake for a weekend.

In reality, the lakes in Muskoka are far from quiet, with high-power speed boats constantly zipping past – the smell of fumes in the air and discoloured, oil stained water below. Cottage dwellers themselves likely spend more time maintaining their cottages than actually enjoying them – but they will argue that is half the fun.

In my younger years I dreamt of having my own cottage. There was a time when I could envision myself hopping into a truck, motor boat in tow and heading to a cottage every weekend.

Needless to say, my perspective changed over the years and now I almost find it comical that people are willing to sit in traffic for several hours only so they can get to the cottage and clean their boat, cut the grass, pour gas into the boat, spew pollution in the air and then go back to sitting in traffic again for another 3 hours Sunday night.

But there is a reason they do it en masse – and it’s not just to secure a place in the upper class of society. No, they will tell you they want to get out of the concrete jungle for the weekend - they want to enjoy nature.

For the last few years I have been making the case for enjoying nature without stepping foot in an automobile. Last May I posted the article “Finding Mecca in the Toronto Islands”. This year I will reiterate how we have much to be thankful for in our own back yard.

The following photos were taken last Saturday afternoon while I toured the Toronto islands on my kayak. Instead of sitting in a car for several hours, it takes 10 minutes to reach my kayak by bike, and I can paddle to the island in about 20 minutes. You couldn’t even pack your car that fast, and anybody can certainly afford it.

Enjoy the photos, and experience the nature and the wildlife in the heart of Canada’s biggest city!

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My Toronto Wish List

Earlier this evening I had a conversation with Ward 19 candidate and Rogers Sportsnet host Sean McCormick. He told me about his platform, and I briefly told him what would win over my vote.

Unfortunately, it’s not very efficient for Mr. McCormick to have a 30 minute conversation with me about what I would like to see change in the city and in my ward.

So consider this post a “wish list” for a Toronto City Councillor. These are the things that I would like my councillor to fight for on behalf of me in exchange for my vote. For like-minded readers, please feel free to add your own suggestions through comments or e-mail and I will update the article.

Dear Prospective Councillor, here is my wish list:

• Complete the West Toronto Rail path to Strachan Ave, and then to Union Station

• Install protected bike lanes on Strachan Ave to provide safer access to the Martin Goodman trail

• Install protected bike lanes (bi-directional) on a main east-west arterial downtown (Richmond or Adelaide)

• Add more contra-flow bike lanes on residential one-way streets (or provide exemptions to designated residential one-way streets for bicycles)

• Add protected left hand turns from bike lane on major roads (in China, cyclists can turn from the right side of the road safely with traffic signals)

• Support a by-law that makes it mandatory for apartments and condos to allow bicycles inside the units to make it more convenient for cyclists

• Implement "bike counters" on major biking streets to showcase the number of daily cyclists

• Support bike sharing programs, and in particular the upcoming BIXI program

• Push for better enforcement of cars parked in bike lanes + increase in fines

• Support pedestrian-only streets - Queens Quay, Kensington Market or Yonge Street are good candidates to start with.

• Support a revenue-neutral carbon tax at the provincial level to help discourage unnecessary driving

• Push to remove downtown restrictions on pedal taxis (currently they can't operate on parts of King, Queen, Gerrard and Front)

• Support the 3-foot passing law being proposed by the NDP at the provincial legislature

• Support hiring of a cycling ambassador to the City of Toronto

• Support strict liability to protect the most vulnerable users on our streets

• Implement "Idaho stops” (yield) for cyclists

• Install bike boxes at "tight" intersections - Queens Quay is a good example (westbound at Spadina) where cyclists get "squeezed" by cars

• Implement more "no right turns on red" (for automobiles only) at major intersections to protect pedestrians and cyclists

• Support congestion tolling on cars entering the city

• Support and encourage Toronto businesses to be more bicycle-friendly

Our Reader’s Wish List:

Kevin Love:

1. Bloor Street bicycle lanes. Fully separated Dutch-style lanes. Yes, this means the car parking has to go.

2. Seamless multi-modal transit. This means bicycles on the subway during rush hour in a dedicated bicycle subway car. Which means capacity on the Yonge line being freed up by beefing up the parallel Richmond Hill GO line so that GO trains run every five minutes during rush hour.

3. The Eglinton and all other Transit City lines to be built with fully-separated bicycle lanes as part of the LRT right-of-way.

4. Restore the BIXI program to its initial launch of 3,000 bicycles, instead of the current BIXI-lite of only 1,000. As Paris demonstrated, there is tremendous synergy in going big right away.

5. TAXES!! GIVE US TAXES!! Road tolls of 25 cents/km. Parking lot tax of $2 per car parking spot per day. Increase the existing Toronto Personal Vehicle Tax of $60 per year to $600 annually. A congestion charge of $10 to drive a car into Toronto. Use the money to build Transit City and the bike infrastructure.

6. I remember when Yonge Street went car-free during the summers in the 1970's. It was great. Bring back a car-free Yonge!

James D. Schwartz is the editor of The Urban Country. You can contact James at james.schwartz@theurbancountry.com.

Toronto-Related Articles:

• A Beautiful Morning in Toronto (Jun 2010)
• Toronto Inches Forward At Record Speed (April 2010)
• Bicycle Friendly Workplaces (Jan 2010)
• Winter Cycling in Toronto (Jan 2010)
• The Bike Path That Almost Was (Jan 2010)
• Toronto Yearns For Bicycle Superhighway (Dec 2009)

Making The BIXI Pledge

Photo by James D. Schwartz / The Urban Country 

The City of Toronto originally planned to bring year-round BIXI bicycle sharing to town in 2010 with 3,000 bicycles at 300 stations. It then encountered some funding complications and postponed BIXI Toronto’s inauguration to the spring of 2011 with a reduced fleet of 1,000 bicycles for rent.

Now we are close to making BIXI in Toronto a reality – but we need your help. A condition for bringing BIXI here is that the city will need to get 1,000 people to pledge for a BIXI membership by November 30th.

I am happy to contribute my 1/1000th to help ensure BIXI becomes a reality for Torontonians and I hope some of our readers will consider making a pledge as well.

A new website at toronto.bixi.com is being built to allow prospective users to sign up for memberships or obtain more details about the Toronto BIXI program. Our friend and fellow cycling advocate Herb over at ibikeTO.ca has posted some detailed information and is calling out for 50 “community leaders” to help spread the word to others in the city. If you are interested in contributing as a community leader, email me or contact Herb for more details.

The way BIXI works in a nutshell is you insert your credit card into the solar-powered station to purchase a membership – at a cost of approximately $5/day, $35/month or $95/year. You are then entitled to use the bicycle for free as long as you return the bicycle to another station within 30 minutes. This enables the system to support a high capacity of users on short trips around the city.

We first took BIXI for a test drive in Montreal and thoroughly enjoyed the convenience of hopping on a bicycle anytime and dropping it off almost anywhere.

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