Fine line between lane space
There’s a one-block stretch of Davenport Rd. where the car is king and the cycling lane is much less than it appears.
It is legal to park cars in it, as long as you buy a dashboard ticket from a pay-and-display machine. And if a driver who parks there is hectored by passing cyclists, they’d be on the high ground.
The ongoing tension between riders and motorists often focuses on parking, specifically in dedicated lanes created for cyclists. But there is a unique area on Davenport where drivers have the right to park along a stretch that has likely deceived many cyclists into thinking it’s a bike lane.
John Fuller sent us a note saying, “there is a spot in Toronto where it is ‘legal’ to park your vehicle in a reserved bike lane,” adding that if we went to 515 Davenport, we’d see it.
We went there and were confounded by what appears to be a combination cycling lane and parking area along the south side, between Spadina Rd. and Madison Ave.
Signs indicate that parking must be paid for between 9 a.m. and 4 p.m., from Monday to Friday. The pavement markings include a bicycle and a white line to separate the cycling lane from vehicular traffic.
Cycling lanes run along both sides of Davenport, and the lane between Spadina and Madison appears to be a continuation of the one on the south side, except for one curious difference: The pavement markings are “sharrows,” which are meant to tell drivers to share the road with riders, instead of indicating the space is exclusively for cyclists. Status: Jacquelyn Hayward-Gulati, who’s in charge of city cycling infrastructure, confirmed that it is indeed a parking area and not part of the cycling lane. The tipoff, she said, are the sharrows, which are different from cycling lane markings. We pointed out the white line between the parking area and vehicle lane is in the same place as the line for a cycling lane, making it look even more like it’s a dedicated cycling space. The line is there to encourage drivers to park as close as possible to the curb, she said, adding that the road is too narrow along that stretch to allow for both parking and a cycling lane.
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