Potholes a serious issue — especially for cyclists
If driving a car into a pothole can rattle your teeth, imagine what it’s like to hit one while clipping along on a bike. And if confronted with a split-second decision — pedal over loose gravel in the curb, mix it up with cars and trucks to veer around a pothole, or ride into it and pray — the choices are calamitous.
Everyone loathes potholes, but they’re far more dangerous for cyclists, who can’t absorb the shock of hitting one on a bike, or ride around them without exposing themselves to other dangers.
With four cyclists killed on city streets this year, and many injured in losing dust-ups with vehicles, along with 18 pedestrian fatalities, there’s a growing demand for safety measures to reduce the carnage.
A good place to start — and dead easy — is to make patching potholes close to the curb a priority on high-traffic streets such as Danforth Ave.
Brad Hubley emailed to say he’s an “avid cyclist” who commutes on a bike from the Scarborough/Pickering border to Avenue Rd. and Bloor St., about 30 kilometres each way. Avid? That’s selling it short. “I frequently encounter potholes that make my ride difficult, some of them even forcing me into traffic which is not where I want to be, as I prefer to ride no more than one metre from the curb,” Hubley said.
“But in some places potholes make even that dangerous,” he said, referring to several near the curb on eastbound Danforth, at the point where Danforth Rd. curves off to the left, west of Warden Ave.
On June 15, he took photos of three potholes and posted them to SeeClickFix, which is monitored by Toronto 311 for pothole reports.
Last Wednesday, “on my ride home, I noticed some fresh asphalt had been put down. But wait, only one of the three holes had been filled. I’m not sure of the rationale for not completing the job; perhaps the workers ran out of time, or asphalt.
“I’m kind of curious and dismayed as to why in this instance the work was not done per the city’s usual excellent standard of repair,” adding that he’s reported potholes before, which were always patched quickly. Status: We sent a note to Edison Alexander, the road operations manager in that area, on Saturday night. He replied within minutes, saying, “Thanks for the heads up. It will be filled Monday morning.” And when Alexander tells us something, he means it. What's broken in your neighbour
hood? Wherever you are in Greater Toronto, we want to know. Send an email to jlakey@thestar.ca. Report problems and follow us on Twitter @TOStarFixer.