Life is dangerous on a bike, by design
It’s easy to die in Toronto.
I was reminded of this on a perfectly calm and warm night last week on a ride home from Fort York. I pedalled past the open and subdued Rogers Centre, where the Kansas City Royals were beating the Blue Jays, and turned up Simcoe St., one of the few streets with bike lanes that pass under the rail corridor in the central core.
I rolled north past quiet King St. where just the week before George Clooney, Lady Gaga and Angelina Jolie walked a gauntlet of stargazers, then towards the stop sign at Richmond St. There, just before the intersection, construction had closed the bike lane and a confusing sign directed cyclists to keep left, and pedestrians right. A steel fence was set up, dividing what was the northbound car lane in half, and as per the sign, I rode to the left.
I stopped at Richmond before the crosswalk as I was supposed to. The construction blocked the view east so the private company garbage truck that roared around the corner was a surprise. It turned south from Richmond onto Simcoe quickly, cutting into the northbound lane where I was.
The big truck was all torque, barrelling forward. The driver had to see me, I looked up at him a couple feet away as he passed, but perhaps he was going too fast. As the truck continued to turn south the back tires cut into my lane more and rolled towards me.
That’s when I felt death, when there is no time to think yet all the time to feel. It’s physical, like all my skin tightened up in an effort to make myself smaller. Somehow, instinctively, I jumped to my right along with by bike underneath me, pressed up against that fence, not able to move further. Those massive tires passed as close to me as I’d ever want them to, rolling heavily over where I was just standing and quickly went down the block, turning into the Shangri-La hotel without pause.
Big trucks in small-scaled, people- filled cities make for a bad combination. Like many trucks, the garbage vehicle didn’t have side guards that can prevent cyclists from going under trucks when they turn like this. The trucking industry has resisted efforts to make them mandatory. Those vehicles, as well as our street design that encourages fast driving and lazy skills, are killers.
On Simcoe, I was legally where I was supposed to be and yet if my legs didn’t work as quickly as they did, I’d be dead or permanently injured right now. Yet it was just another day in the life of Toronto, where the mayor and his hand picked councillors on the powerful Public Works and Infrastructure Committee (PWIC), all people who could make needed changes happen, pay lip service to “Vision Zero,” a Swedish project that aims to eliminate traffic fatalities and injuries on our roads.
If you dig through Toronto newspaper archives and look through any city section you will find decades of traffic fatalities. If you look at the newspaper last week you will see an 86-year-old woman was killed crossing Broadview using her walker. You’ll see a 5-year-old boy was killed last May when he fell into traffic from the waterfront trail that runs next to speeding traffic. Today, there’s a temporary barrier along that stretch, not unlike the one I pressed up against to avoid the truck. It took a child’s death to get even that flimsy level of protection.
On Wednesday night, a mother and her 5-year-old daughter were killed crossing a stretch of Warden Ave. near Continental Pl., where there isn’t a pedestrian crossing for half a kilometre.
Downtown and in the suburbs, the killing goes on.
Few other killers, whether disease, animal, machine or human, would be allowed to lurk among us so unchecked as our road design and the vehicles on them.
The Simcoe St.-area councillor, Joe Cressy, says his office mandated a physically separated bike lane during construction, and was working to correct the implementation. However, a week later, the changes had not been made. He also said a new traffic light there was approved by city council in June and is coming to replace the notorious stop sign that forces pedestrians and cyclists to dodge Richmond St. traffic.
The Simcoe lane itself ends at Queen St. W. and instructs riders to only turn right. It’s yet another of the city’s disconnected bike lane stubs. Simcoe would be a natural path north behind the U.S. Consulate along University Ave. as it’s already pedestrianized at Queen.
Logical connections such as this remain provisional and ad hoc, but all cyclists have their own routes through the city where they know they’ll be safer until a proper protected network is built. A connected network, something other cities like Montreal seem to do without epic battles, is a constant fight in Toronto. Already some councillors are circling like buzzards over the Bloor bike lane pilot project: its final report goes to the PWIC next month.
There are a few interesting things to watch for in this coming debate. One is opponents will place no value on the safety the lanes provide humans and instead focus on commute times for cars and argue that not enough new cyclists have started using the as-yet noncontinuous lanes.
More absurdly amusing is the general disdain for bikes and bike infrastructure some have. Would opponents of bike lanes prefer each cyclist be in a car? That would be a fun exercise, but ultimately futile. In the identity politics of car-oriented city design, other cars are not the problem: when driving we “fight traffic,” but we never think we are traffic.
In theory, car drivers should be the loudest champions of bike infrastructure. Bikes take up much less space. Whatever minor “inconveniences” things like bike lanes cause can’t compare with fighting ever more cars on the roads.
That the safety angle isn’t enough to convince opponents of the need for equitable infrastructure is a failure of their humanity. That getting more cars off the road doesn’t convince them is a failure of their intellect. That they don’t see bicycles as even being legitimate transportation choices, equal to cars, is a failure of their grasp of reality.
Even Amazon asked cities bidding for their new massive headquarters, as Toronto and its GTA partners are doing now, to demonstrate a commitment to transit, cycling and pedestrian infrastructure in their proposals. If lives and limbs don’t matter, maybe the jobs and billions of dollars at stake will, but likely not.
The bikes aren’t going anywhere, but unless there’s political courage, the killing on the streets will continue. Shawn Micallef writes every Saturday about where and how we live in the GTA. Wander the streets with him on Twitter @shawnmicallef