|
Morons!
 Posted
7/27/2010 3:00:00 PM
First of all, let me just say that I have a bike - a relatively new one - and a helmet - and one of my favourite things to do on a summer weekend is ride the trails of the Don Valley. You can bike from Edwards Gardens all the way down to the Lakeshore and connect with the Martin Goodman trail for even longer rides. But that's not the point.
This week, bike lanes were installed on Jarvis Street from Charles down to Queen - taking away the reversible middle lane for vehicular traffic and adding to the chaos in and out of the downtown core.
There's no question that our city needs good alternatives to cars when it comes to moving people. The TTC and Go Transit are a good start but the idea of thousands of Torontonians riding bikes to work is naive. By the city's own account, 27,000 cars use Jarvis Street during the peak morning rush hour - while only 100 cyclists use the bike lanes hourly on Sherbourne. So, why have we shut down a third lane on the major north/south artery in our city? Blame Mayor McTwo-wheeler and his band of Bozos at City Hall.
How many times have you seen one of the TTC buses equipped with bike racks on the front, actually carrying one? How many of the newly-installed bike racks inside Union Station get used everyday? How many of us actually want to arrive at work with sweaty clothes and helmet hair? If you answered, "Not many" to any of those questions, you're right.
The Executive Director of the Toronto Cyclists Union is thrilled with the new lanes. Well, of course she is. It justifies her position. She should be more interested in improving bike safety instead of trying to convert the thousands of us who don't live close enough to our jobs to make biking to work a reality.
As for the Jarvis Street lanes - the fact is, we already have north/south bike lanes in place, just one block east on Sherbourne Street. And they stretch even farther north and south than the Jarvis ones do - going from the lake to well north of Bloor. Will they become a ghost town now? And what happens to the bike lanes the 4 months of the year when no one will be using them? Good place to pile snow.
Toronto has to grow up and realize that it's never going to be Holland - other than the one day a year we shut down the Gardiner and the DVP for the Ride For Heart. And don't even get me started about the Mayor wanting to tear down the Expressway. Thank God he's not running for re-election. Let him pedal his body somewhere else!
Blog Magee
And if you're collecting VIP Bonus Points - try "Theatre" at Vinyl953.com.
|