At the Toronto Cyclist Union’s—sorry, Cycle Toronto’s—annual general meeting a few evenings ago, Andrea Garcia, Director of Advocacy and Operations, spoke about the need to change the conversation on bicycle infrastructure in this city from one of ideology and politics to one of public safety. At present, we have an administration that views each bike lane as a small siege waged by cyclists against beleaguered drivers who are called upon to rise up and defend their inalienable right to that road space (something the BBC has recently picked up on, too). The installation of a bike lane, bike boxes, and other cycling infrastructure, however, should be spoken about as a way to make the streets safer, not just for cyclists, but for all road users. And that is, in fact, what they are doing. Take Jarvis Street, for example. The Toronto Cyclists Union has drummed up a City staff report [PDF] that compares crash data in the three years previous to the bike lanes and the one year with the bike lanes. The report finds that the overall crash rate for Jarvis has actually decreased by 23 percent. That’s for all road users—bicycles, cars, and pedestrians. In fact, the report notes that "most of this reduction can be attributed to the reduction in collisions involving motor vehicle turning movements and collisions involving pedestrians." But the bike lanes have also been better for cyclists. While the number of bicycle-car collisions has increased from an average of 7 per year in the three years prior to the bike lane to 15 in the year with the bike lane, the report notes this still represents a drop in the rate of collision when you take into consideration the fact that the number of bicycles increased threefold post-bike lane implementation.

Installing a bike lane takes money, but uninstalling it can take even more. And sometimes, as with the case of the removal of the Jarvis bike lane, a lot more. The Toronto Cyclists Union, through a request to City transportation staff, has obtained numbers related to the cost of implementing the Jarvis bike lane versus returning the street to its former state. They noted that the installation of the bike lanes cost the City a total of $86,000, with $21,000 for removal of overhead wiring and signal hardware, and $65,000 for the lane markings. The reinstallation of the overhead wiring and signal hardware for the bi-directional fifth lane is pegged at approximately $200,000, while the lane markings will cost approximately $72,000. This adds up to a total cost of $272,000. Originally, the City had estimated the cost at only $200,000; the Toronto Cyclists Union says that the “increased cost is due to the installation of new overhead wiring hardware to comply with current electrical safety standards.”

I first saw the notice taped to the side of the Bixi station on Hoskin Ave and Devonshire Pl, saying that it was going to be relocated to allow for snow clearance. Now Bixi has announced that a total of seventeen stations will be relocated and used to expand the service area of a bike share system that has been unfortunately constrained since its inception to a relatively small area of the city (from Bloor St to the lake on the north-south, and from Jarvis St to Spadina Ave on the east-west). There were a few stations stuck outside of that initial service area. Some, like the one located in Bellevue Square in Kensington Market were only a block or two outside, while others like the one located at the CNE were farther out. A list of the new stations, and which are to be moved, can be found on the Bixi website, along with a schedule showing when this will happen (relocations started yesterday and continue until Friday). I’ve mapped 15 of the 17 new stations above, leaving off two stations that didn’t fit onto the map: one at Bathurst St and Queens Quay, and one at Wellington St and Portland St. Locating Bixi stations close to each other and creating a dense service area is crucial for a bike share system that is structured for relatively quick, under 30-minute trips. However, the realization that there are opportunities for stations outside the initial service area, while less densely located, is a welcome one.

There are bad ideas, and then there are really bad ideas. And then there is the idea mused about by Adriane Carr, a Green party candidate in Vancouver’s upcoming civic election, to create some bike-free streets to appease drivers who may be annoyed at the city’s downtown separated bike lanes. When I first saw the headline in Vancouver’s The Georgia Straight, I thought I had read it wrong. Surely, it didn’t read bike-free streets? This was a Green candidate, after all. Albeit one with a suspicious last name. Carr told the Straight that she had spoken with several frustrated drivers who had mentioned that it would make it better for them to have some bike-free streets. This seems to me like a very bad way to come up with a very bad idea. And this isn’t the only bad idea for bikes. There are many, but they all have one thing in common. None were created with the cyclist in mind.

Toronto Tempo from Ryan Emond on Vimeo. What is it about watching our urban lives on fast forward that fascinates us so much? I think about this every time someone sends me a time-lapse video of a city. Oh, another one of those, I think. Then I watch, rapt, as headlights turn into sinewy, golden strings and the crush of people at an intersection becomes so choreographed it seems fake. Toronto is no stranger to time-lapse. The latest being a video put out by Ryan Emond called Toronto Tempo, featuring some truly breathtaking shots of our city on speed. Emond focusses not just on the usual (the traffic, skyscrapers, and swarms of people), but also on the natural. We see the city receding as we head out into Lake Ontario. We see brooding clouds rush overhead. Toronto may not feel elegant on a day-to-day level, but watch it in Emond’s film and try not to inhale deeply.

Much has happened for cycling in Vancouver since I left a year and a half ago. With new separated lanes, Vancouver has created the back-bone of what is hoped to become a robust downtown network. When I left, the city had just completed separated lanes on the Dunsmuir viaduct—a piece of leftover infrastructure for the downtown highway that never materialized. Then came the ones on Dunsmuir Street and Hornby Street—allowing cyclists to ride through the downtown core completely in separated lanes. Going back to Vancouver this summer, I found myself riding many of the streets on which I learned how to be an "urban" cyclist. I had biked when I was younger, but it was of the, "OK kids let's throw the mountain bikes on the car and go drive to some trails" variety. As anyone who has made the jump from riding in the forest to riding on the roads can tell you, there is a bit of a learning curve. Now I had to worry about things like stop lights and pedestrians. Oh, and all those pesky cars.

The Big Apple has jumped into the bike share game, and, true to form, has immediately catapulted itself to the top of the list in terms of the size of the program. With 10,000 bikes spread out over 600 stations across Manhattan and Brooklyn in 2012, the program dwarfs other North American cities. (Toronto currently has 1,000 bikes while Montreal has just over 5,000). But even New York City’s huge roll-out won’t be enough to surpass Paris’ 20,000 bikes and Hangzhou’s over 60,000 bikes. The program is privately-funded and operated by Alta Bike Share, Inc. with bikes and stations supplied by Public Bike Share Company—otherwise known as Montreal’s Bixi. The system looks to be similar to Toronto’s bike share, however trip limits of 45 minutes are being considered as compared to Toronto’s 30 minute limit. A yearly pass will cost less than $100, with the option for daily or even weekly passes.

On my recent trip to New York I found myself walking Broadway on a sweltering Saturday afternoon, negotiating the sidewalk amidst hordes of people and attempting to stay out of the way of what I have come to think fondly of as the dance between New York’s homicidal drivers and its suicidal pedestrians and cyclists. So it was with much relief that my travelling partner and I stumbled upon the fourth annual Summer Streets, a Saturday shut down of Park Avenue and connecting streets between Brooklyn Bridge and Central Park (roughly the equivalent distance of shutting down Yonge St from Front St all the way to Eglinton Ave). As a Streetsblog NYC video shows, shutting cars from the street allows for cyclists, pedestrians, joggers, rollerbladers, and parents with children from all over the city and the surrounding area to flood out into the normally hectic street and enjoy themselves.

When one thinks about cycling friendly cities in the United States, it's cities like Portland or perhaps New York, with its recent high-profile bike lanes additions, that come to mind. However, Minneapolis has also proven to be a great cycling city (and was, in fact, named the number one cycling city in the United States by Bicycling Magazine in 2010). It ranks, according to the US Census Bureau, as the second highest percentage of bicycle commuters among the 50 largest cities in the US, with 3.9% of commuters using their bikes. Bike commuting has also doubled since 2000, with a drop of 20% in bike-car collisions recorded since the 1990s [PDF]. So I was excited when a few weeks ago I found myself in Minneapolis with ten days to kill and a fresh subscription to their public bike share program, NiceRide (supplied by Montreal’s Bixi, the same company that does Toronto’s). A one-year subscription to the system of 95 stations cost a mere $60, but as luck would have it was on sale for $30 during my trip.

Just a few days ago, Catherine Porter from the Toronto Star asked the question: Will John Street be the next Jarvis? A more appropriate question can now be asked: Will Jarvis St. be the next Jarvis? Yesterday, at the Public Works and Infrastructure Committee meeting, a surprise motion by Councillor John Parker to remove the Jarvis St. bike lanes passed in committee, as did recommendations to remove the bike lanes on both Birchmount Road and Pharmacy Avenue. (In positive news, the committee also voted for a separated bike lane trial on Richmond Street between Sherbourne and Simcoe streets). Mayor Rob Ford, who seems to be on a contradictory quest to at once listen to and respect the taxpayers of Toronto while simultaneously attempting to make them obsolete, spoke about how he had received calls from people who wanted the Jarvis bike lanes gone and so he’s just doing what the taxpayers want. Apparently, in Rob Ford’s city, there are two tiers of taxpayers. Ones to listen to, and ones to ignore. Guess which ones cyclists are?