Cycling Chaos

More cycling follies. This time I watched as a cyclist who was approaching an intersection saw an opportunity to make an early left and took it. Instead of making his left at the intersection, he abruptly crossed to the other side of the road several car lengths before arriving at the intersection. He proceeded to ride against traffic on the wrong side of the road and then cross in front of the path of a driver who was about to turn right. Once past the surprised driver, the cyclist finally made his left.

In Toronto, many cyclists follow the traffic rules only when it is convenient or when they have no choice; i.e., when traffic is so heavy it would be impossible to do anything but follow the rules. I still see many almost daily examples of such make-it-up-as-you-go-along cycling.

Many cities in the world have looser approaches to traffic rules. Ho Chi Minh City is such a place. This short video made by Rob Whitworth shows some excellent examples of the wild traffic in this Vietnamese city.

My feeling is that it is more pleasant to observe such traffic from a bird’s-eye view than it is to take part in it at ground level. Unlike in Ho Chi Minh City, in Toronto cyclists are still in the minority of road users. While Whitworth’s video show traffic moving fairly easily, I don’t think this kind of functional chaos could be successfully transplanted to Toronto’s car and truck–dominated roads.

Toronto traffic is not yet Ho Chi Minh City traffic. In Toronto, traffic proceeds in a—usually—orderly fashion. Drivers and pedestrians still expect their fellow road users to follow the rules. As Toronto's population grows, chaos on the roads will increase everyone’s travel times and make their trips more dangerous and stressful.

Cyclist to Pedestrian and Back Again

One neat trick I often see cyclists perform is the instant transformation from cyclist to pedestrian. This often happens when a cyclist reaches a red light and then turns left into the pedestrian crossing area in order to get to the other side of the street. If cyclists dismount and walk their bikes across the street, I don’t see a problem. But I more commonly see them remain on their bikes as they turn into the pedestrian area.

This is a dangerous manoeuvre. Pedestrians are not expecting cyclists to do it; nor are drivers. I’ve seen cyclists swerve into walkways at a fair clip, then weave among the startled pedestrians. There is a good chance of running into someone this way. And what of the driver at the intersection who is about to turn right? This driver will expect a cyclist to stop, not abruptly cut into the car’s path.

Another sudden cyclist-to-pedestrian-and-back transformation occurs when cyclists approach red lights at three-way intersections. If the sidewalk is on their right, some cyclists will jump to the sidewalk, bike past the intersection, and then jump back to the road. I imagine this must be very irritating to the drivers (and cyclists) who are patiently waiting for the light to change. I think cyclists, if they are not going to wait for a green light, should not bother with the pretense of biking onto the sidewalk. No one buys their bogus cover act of “Hey, look! Suddenly I’m a pedestrian—and suddenly I’m not!” They might as well just own what they are doing and bike through the red light.

Cyclists in Toronto still have a reputation for ignoring traffic rules. Pedestrians and drivers alike regularly complain about this. I feel the situation has improved in recent years, but cyclists’ reputation for road-warrior like behaviour is still well deserved.

Transporting Children on Bikes

Riding a bicycle in the city can be a dangerous activity. Not hugely dangerous, but definitely somewhat dangerous. There is no doubt about it. You have to be smart and cautious to avoid being a statistic. But cyclists, for the most part, are only risking themselves. In a typical collision, the cyclist may be badly injured or killed and the bike wrecked, but the driver will usually be uninjured while the car ends up with only a few dents or scratches.

Every once in a while, though, I’ll see cyclists risking not only their own lives, but their children’s too.

The other day as I walked down Woodbine Road in Toronto, I saw a woman and her young child bomb by on a bike. It’s hard to say how old the child was because the bike flashed by me at such high speed. The child was behind the woman, held in a rear-mounted child seat. Woodbine is a major, four-lane road. At the time of day when the woman and her child passed me, traffic is fairly light on this road and, therefore, cars and trucks sometimes travel at fairly high speed. Moments after the bike went by I saw a truck rocket by at what must have been 60 kmh or more. This truck would have passed the woman and her child moments later, very likely in the same lane.

Believe me, I’m all for people using their bikes in town, but I feel that if you want to take your kid with you, either on a bike seat or in a trailer, you really should keep to bike paths and side streets. If you have to cross a major street, dismount and briefly become a pedestrian.

I do have to point out that what I am saying in this post is based on a gut reaction. I was unable to find any numbers for crashes, injuries, or deaths involving children riding in bike seats. An article in The Boston Globe dated May 24, 2014, says: “Statistics about the dangers of biking with children are hard to find. No health or safety agency has information broken down that way.”

I also wondered which of the two methods of transporting young children on bikes was safer. Every source I found said that trailers were safer than rear- or front-mounted child seats. Please note, though, that it is very important to have a high-flying orange flag attached to a trailer to make it more visible to drivers.

An article posted by Parachute reported, “bike trailers are considered somewhat safer because children are lower to the ground and have less of a distance to fall in a crash.”

ConsumersReports.org had this to say: “trailers can tip over if you turn abruptly or turn when one wheel is going over a bump.” But they went on to say that bicycle trailers provide “some protection to passengers since kids are seated, strapped in, and usually enclosed in a zippered compartment. Trailers have a rigid frame enclosed in durable fabric, which offers some protection for young passengers if the unit rolls over”

The American Academy of Pediatrics says that “preferably, children should ride in a bicycle-towed child trailer.”

Please consult the web pages I mentioned for detailed safety instructions on using bike trailers.

January Cycling in Toronto

On a couple of recent bike rides, I was pleased to note that there seemed to be noticeably more cyclists braving the January cold than I remember from previous Januaries. I counted perhaps a dozen people on bikes during both of my 12 km round trips, downtown and back. I guess this still isn’t a large number, considering all the cars on the roads, but it strikes me that more cyclists are continuing to use their bikes through the winter this year.

This is a hopeful sign. After all, it has been pushing -10 degrees Celsius these days, and yesterday there was a stiff wind in my face for the downtownward part of my journey. Enough cold and wind to ensure in other years that the roads would be almost completely cyclist free. Perhaps cycling in the winter is becoming more normalized?

Still, a nurse at the hospital where I was visiting a patient exclaimed, “You’re brave to be out riding today!” A commonly voiced sentiment still these days. I always explain that the secret to staying warm is wearing extra layers of clothing—double socks, t-shirt under winter shirt and sweater, long johns, etc. Ideally, cycling in the winter would be considered no more unusual than skiing is in the winter.

While I was glad to see an increase in the number of cyclists out this January, I was disheartened today to see an example of cyclist behaviour that I hope is going away: I watched a man ride straight through a red light, this after only briefly slowing down to check for cross traffic. I can only imagine how irritated the drivers stopped at the intersection must have been. Certainly I was irritated. Why must these selfish cyclists continue to give cycling in the city a bad name?

During my trips downtown, I have been stopping off at the apartment complex where the patient I am visiting lives. This complex is huge: it comprises three large buildings, each of about thirty stories. As far as I can tell, there are no bike racks provided at all for the entire complex. I recognize that many tenants would prefer to keep their bikes in their apartments, to avoid having their bikes stolen, but surely such a large number of tenants should be provided with at least a few bike racks.

Winter's Return

On November 11, Toronto was unseasonably warm. Temperatures climbed to 17 degrees. I biked downtown that day, and while I was on my way it occurred to me that it might be months before the next time I cycled without having to wear hat and gloves.

Now, ten days later, I definitely have to bundle up when I ride. Toronto recently had its first snowfall of the season, and it is more wintry out.

I don’t enjoy the cold when I ride in the winter, but what I like even less is all the salt on the roads. The salt and slush sprays up on my bike, making it filthy after only a short time. Just a few centimetres of snow fell the other day, but after my ride yesterday I had to clean a significant amount of salt from my bike.



You sometimes have no choice but to go through the slush.



A danger when snow and slush are near the curb is that cyclists will ride farther out in traffic to avoid the slush.



Only one brief ride caused this salt to be deposited on my bike. After I took this picture, I cleaned the bike as well as I could with a wet rag.

I will doubtless have to reapply chain oil soon. Without being frequently lubricated during the winter, a bike’s chain will seize up due to salt and rust in no time.

New Pedals

Recently, I found an inexpensive way to dramatically improve my ride. I replaced my pedals.

I can’t remember what brand my previous pedals were, but I wasn’t very happy with them. They had two problems: they were too slippery and they were too narrow.

My old pedals were made of a hard nylon that did not sufficiently grip my shoes. My feet would sometimes slip off, usually when I was climbing a hill. Needless to say, this was an annoying problem. A bit dangerous, too. It was more likely to occur when the pedals were wet.

I particularly noticed the narrowness of the pedals when I was really digging in to climb a hill. My feet are a little on the wide side, so when I pushed on the pedals with extra force, the outer edge of my feet would curl over the edge of the pedal. This drove me crazy. I didn’t like the sensation at all.

My replacements are Evo “Freefall” pedals. They are made of metal and have a cleated surface that firmly grips my shoes. There is zero slippage. I haven’t rode in the rain with them, but I’d be surprised if my feet slipped on them even in the rain.

The pedals are 10 cm wide, a width that supports the whole of my foot, with no curling over. They are wider than most pedals; I would definitely recommend wide pedals to everyone, even those whose feet aren’t particularly wide.

I’ve only had them on my bike for a day (two rides), but so far they’re working out well.

Driver's Perspective

I much prefer to cycle to my destination in the city, but occasionally I have to carry more than is possible on my bike and am forced to drive. During these trips, I always find it instructive getting the driver’s perspective of using the roads.

When I am driving behind a cyclist who is going slower than I am, as is usually the case, my reaction is that I want to pass the cyclist as soon as possible. Cyclists should always be aware of this. Drivers want to pass you, and they want to do it right away. And some of them will resort to less than ideally safe practices when they do it. It’s amazing how often a cyclist’s life and body are treated with reckless disregard so that a driver can save a few seconds.

The lesson for cyclists here is that they need to cycle in as straight a line as possible and at a steady speed. The driver who is trying to imitate Gilles Villeneuve while passing you is assuming that your speed and trajectory will not vary. You may be hit if you don’t move as the driver expects you to.

Right turns are one of my least favourite driving manoeuvres, especially at busy intersections. Drivers have to observe and process a remarkably large amount of information in a very short amount of time while deciding when to make a right. They are often a bit stressed while doing this. If you are cycling up fast behind a car that is signalling right, don’t assume the driver will see you. If you go past on the right, you may be hit. Always assume the driver doesn’t see you in these instances, and act accordingly.

Cyclists who put themselves in the driver's position will be much safer.

Sneaking Ahead

Lately, the concept that bikes are vehicles, and so should behave as such, is seeming to sink in with more and more of my fellow cyclists: I see an ever-increasing percentage of them signalling turns and stops; fewer red lights are being run; and incidents of other types of rule-flouting behaviour are also becoming rarer. Still, I do occasionally see, for example, cyclists riding against the direction of traffic on major roads or weaving wildly around cars as though they were part of a circus act. And the odd cyclist will still brazenly ride through a red light.

But on the whole, cyclist behaviour on city streets is much improved nowadays.

A bit of a throwback to the days of rampant red-light running, though, is what might be described as the red-light sneak. This is when a cyclist is temporarily stopped at a red light but then starts to slowly ease through the intersection after the red light has been showing for a while. Drivers, and most cyclists, know that you can’t proceed until the light has actually turned green. But some cyclists seem to think it is okay for them to run a red light because the light will be turning green soon and because they aren’t speeding through the intersection. It is as though they are thinking that because they are moving slowly, running a red light doesn’t count as a traffic-rule violation. I mean, hey, the light was about to change, wasn’t it?

An awful lot of bad blood still exists between drivers and cyclists. This sort of red-light running doesn’t help matters.

New Bike or Old?

Winter is not kind to bicycles. The dirty, salty water that gets splashed all over them at that time of year turns clean bikes into ones that looks like filthy, derelict wrecks. Every spring, when I take my bike in to the shop for general maintenance, I’m given a list of parts that need to be replaced after the winter. And often it is suggested to me that I might as well buy a new bike because the repair costs are so high. As much as I’d enjoy having a new bicycle, I don’t think this is a good financial strategy.

I quite like my bike. It has served me well over the years. But aside from the frame, it doesn’t have many of its original parts left. If I were to tally the cost of all the replacement parts I have ever put on it, I would end up with an amount that would more than cover the cost of a new bike. The people at the bike shop suggest I get a new bike in part because they don’t think it is wise to spend so much on an old bike. They are also thinking of all the money I have already put into it. (And of course they’d like to sell me a bike...)

But that is applying old-car thinking to old bicycles. Car owners know that when a car reaches a certain age, a decision will have to be made about whether to pay for an expensive repair or sell the car. With old cars, selling rather than repairing often makes financial sense. Do you want to replace the transmission of an older car when the car’s resale value is plummeting?

With bikes there are no hugely expensive repairs looming in the future that might persuade someone to buy a new bike to avoid having to pay for those repairs. A well-maintained and newly repaired older bike is almost like having a new one. So, for an annual maintenance expense that isn’t really all that much, I can have a bike that is almost like new. If I were to buy a new bike to avoid having to pay for repairs on my old one, those repairs would still have to be made after the same amount of time on the new bike. The end result would be that I would have a bike in the same condition as my old bike, generally, but would have pointlessly put out a large amount of money.

Of course there are other reasons for buying a new bike. I wouldn’t mind getting a lighter bike, or one with narrower tires. But repair costs won’t motivate me to buy a new bike.

Too Cold

This January the weakening of the Polar Vortex is allowing a mass of frigid air to stray south. Toronto often avoids the very low temperatures that occur in most other parts of Canada. But not these days. When I awoke this morning, the temperature was -24 degrees; add in the wind chill and the reading was -39. Perhaps a bit too cold for cycling...

Each winter is the same. Through October, November, and December, as the temperature sinks, I continue to ride regularly, gradually getting used to the cold. But the cold I refer to is usually in the -10 to +10 range. If I dress properly, I’ll be fine.

In January or February, though, there is usually a cold snap that breaks my, and most other people’s, cycling routine. When I have decided that it’s too cold or snowy for cycling, I'll notice a few hardy types still riding their bikes for another day or two. (I’d tip my hat to them, but by that point I’d rather not remove it because of the cold.) But eventually, even these tough people have had enough, and the streets are temporarily without cyclists.

It’s not just the cold that prevents cycling. When it gets really cold, there is just too much ice on the streets. It really would be dangerous on a bike. Throw in the stiff arctic wind we had today, and cycling is out of the question.

I look forward to getting back on my bike. It is so convenient and is such a good way to exercise. The forecast shows I might be able to ride again in two days. But riding today is right out.

O'Connor Drive Bridge

The O’Connor Drive bridge crosses over the valley through which Taylor Creek flows. It is a concrete bridge that is in pretty good shape, having been repaired and rehabilitated during the winter of 2012/13.



The arch of the bridge reminds me a little of the Gateway Arch in St. Louis. This is a view of the bridge as seen from the south.




These pictures are of Taylor Creek where it runs under the bridge. When I first moved into the area, the creek used to smell unpleasant. The main sewage pipe was old and in poor condition. The creek would smell particularly bad after a heavy rain. Repairing the tunnel was deemed too expensive and dangerous, so construction of a new bypass tunnel started in April 2010. This tunnel is now operating, and the creek smells fine. As you can see, it is a pleasant place to be.



View from the north.



Part of the support structure of the bridge.



The bridge is quite long. I have biked over it many times, but this is an experience I find a bit unnerving. There are no reserved bike lanes, and there isn’t much space at the sides of the road for cyclists. Cars tend to move quickly on the bridge. I rarely see any other cyclists when I am on it.





The bridge doesn’t currently have a great deal of graffiti on it, but I did notice an area on the underside of the bridge at its far eastern end that warranted a look. I had to walk off-trail to get up to this area. The ground was quite wet, and I ended up having to walk my bike through a fair amount of mud to get there.

I was slightly nervous being in the area where this graffiti was, because it seemed possibly like a place where a gang might hang out. As I approached I watched carefully for signs of people. It turned out that the place was deserted, and I was able to snap a few pictures. I was glad to be on my way, though, as I left.

Cycling in the Rain

I occasionally enjoy riding in the rain. I don’t love it; I won’t say that. But as long as I am dressed for it, and the rain isn’t coming down too hard, cycling in the rain can be an enjoyable experience.

When we are children, we sometimes want to play in the rain. Most people develop an aversion to being in the rain as they get older. We’ll hurry from the door to the car with an umbrella over our head, trying to minimize the amount of time we spend in the rain. Choosing to bike somewhere even though it is raining is a way to relive the childish enjoyment of just being out in the rain.

Here are some tips for cycling in the rain:

Don’t bike in a downpour. If it starts to rain hard enough, being out on the streets becomes dangerous. You are harder to see, and drivers may not expect cyclists to be out in such a heavy rain, and so may not be on the lookout for them.

Rain jackets that are meant for cycling come in bright colours, often red, blue, or yellow, and have reflective strips on them. If you cycle in the rain, make sure to wear one of these cycling rain jackets, or at least wear a brightly coloured rain coat. I recommend jackets specifically sold to cyclists, because they usually have reflective strips.

You may not enjoy riding in the rain if your clothes are soaked, so make sure you are dressed properly. To keep your legs dry, you can wear rain pants. Or, at least bring a change of pants that you can get into once you have got to your destination.

Keeping your feet dry is also an issue. If your shoes are just water resistant, your feet are going to get wet. Make sure to bring a change of socks, or wear waterproof shoes or boots. Cycling shops sell overshoes for wet weather.

Bike shops also sell rain hats for wearing either under or over your helmet. An over-the-helmet hat is a good option if you would rather not put a tight cap over your hair.

When cycling in the rain, you may come across the odd puddle in your path. Puddles are common on the sides of roads, where we often cycle. Some of them can be a few centimetres deep, and you may wish to avoid going right through one. If you are cycling in traffic, be very careful about swerving to avoid puddles. If you notice that you are approaching a puddle, slow down (but not suddenly) to minimize the wash of water that will be thrown up. Or, you can go around the puddle, but only after you have checked over your shoulder to make sure no cars or other cyclists are coming up.

Enjoy being out in the rain, but be safe and dry while doing it.

Leaside Bridge

One of the more impressive sights on the Lower Don Valley Recreation Trail is the Leaside Bridge. (The most impressive sight on this trail would have to be the Prince Edward Viaduct.) The Leaside Bridge, which opened in 1927, connects Millwood Avenue, to the north, with Pape and Donlands Avenues, to the south. Pape and Donlands meet at the southern side of the bridge.

I envy the lucky people who use the Lower Don Valley Recreation Trail to commute. It is an interesting ride through its entire length: a place where the wilderness and urban join. The Leaside Bridge is a good example of this.







Underneath the bridge it is quite overgrown and wild.







The bridge looms overhead as you approach it.



There is a lot of graffiti on the bridge. Most of it is within easy reach, but someone went out of their way to add “FRENS.” I don’t know what “FRENS” refers to.







Some examples of graffiti at the feet of the concrete pillars supporting the bridge.



The pillars are covered in concrete patches.



Here, the Don River makes its way under the bridge. The concrete footing here doesn’t seem altogether well supported to me. Incidentally, I acquired a three-centimetre nail through my rear tire as I rode off-trail to take this picture.

Bridge Open!

Anyone who uses the Taylor Creek/Seton/Serena Gundy parks, in Toronto, to cycle will be well aware that the bridge linking Taylor Creek and Seton parks had been out of commission for almost a year. This morning I was happy to find the bridge renovation finally completed.

Here are some pictures I took of the bridge:



The original bridge was not removed where it crosses over the railroad tracks, but new aluminum “boards” were installed.



Here’s a view of the tracks, looking west. The bridge in the distance supports the Don Valley Parkway. While I was at the bridge a GO train went by, but I didn’t manage to get a picture of it.



The ramps leading up to the bridge were entirely replaced. The ramp on the west side of the bridge goes under Don Mills Road.



The ramps used to be surfaced with wood slats, which had become quite worn. Asphalt is now used.



This is looking up the ramp that leads to the bridge from the west side.



Someone added a silhouette of a walking person on the footing at the east side.



More graffiti under Don Mills Road.

Taylor Creek Recreational Trail

I recently went for a ride on the Taylor Creek Recreational Trail in Toronto. This is a trail I often use. I haven’t been on it in a while, though, due to a bridge being replaced. This construction has blocked the trail just to the west of where it goes under the Don Valley Parkway. A friend told me that it is possible to make your way through the construction and continue on the trail, but I haven’t tried this.

According to the City of Toronto’s website, the new bridge was supposed to have been completed by April 30. So, on May 1 I decided to see if the bridge was in fact finished. Well, it wasn’t ... At the bridge construction site I asked a worker when he thought the bridge might be finished, and he said it would be “two or three weeks” yet.

I don’t know exactly when construction began on this bridge, but it must have been pushing a year ago. The previous bridge was a well-worn wooden structure that was fun to bike on. It is being replaced with a metal one. The bridge goes over some railway tracks.

It was a beautiful day for a ride—warm and sunny, about 20 degrees. Taylor Creek Recreational Trail has many interesting things to look at. Here are a few of them:



This is a large concrete bridge that supports O’Connor Drive.



There are wetlands along the trail that are being encouraged and protected.



Every square centimetre of this shed used to be covered in graffiti. Workers painted over the building about a year ago. Not surprisingly, it has been tagged again. I wish they had left it as it was. The graffiti that used to be there was much nicer. Perhaps as the shed gradually picks up ever more graffiti, it will eventually regain its former look.

Post-and-Ring Update

In October of last year I wrote a blog that favourably reported on the number of post-and-rings, used for locking bikes, in Toronto. I think it is time to slightly amend that view. The city still has the same number of posts; it is just that the number of rings is decreasing.

Places where post-and-rings are located now often have one or two posts with the ring removed. And they don’t seem to be getting replaced. For instance, the area at the southwest corner of the Toronto Reference Library has seen the disappearance of rings, but not one has been replaced.

I suppose they are being removed by bike thieves. Makes you realize that there is no completely safe place to lock up a bike out of doors.

We are in a time of municipal government belt tightening. But I can’t imagine that the cost of replacing these rings would be that prohibitive. Still, I certainly understand that other areas of spending are more important than replacing bike rings.

But on the other hand ... Leaving aside the ever-present possibility of getting hit by a car door, we should remember that cycling is a healthy activity. I am sure there are savings in health care costs associated with cycling. (Granted, health care is not a municipal responsibility.) Also, cyclists don’t clog up streets nearly as much as do cars, and they don’t emit exhaust. So the city should be interested in doing what it can to encourage cycling. Replacing missing bike rings would be one way of doing this.

Our current mayor, Rob Ford, is famously unfriendly toward the cycling community, and I imagine that his attitude is not helping matters. But if cyclists were to contact their local councillors in sufficient numbers when the rings go missing, perhaps some of them might start to reappear.

Riding Bare-Handed

I ran some errands yesterday morning on my bike. As I was leaving, the temperature stood at around three or four degrees (C). Not a cold to bring Amundsen or Franklin to mind, but it still felt mildly winterish out.

I wore a toque under my helmet and had on my winter-weight gloves. I was ready for the cold. But in the time it took me to go to the first store on my list and make my purchase, perhaps half an hour, the sun had come out and the cold was going away.

Because I had forgotten a receipt I needed for another of my errands, I briefly returned to my house. While there I switched my toque for a Lycra tube (I think it is meant to be worn around the neck, but I like it around my head and ears when I need something to cut the wind). I also ditched my scarf and switched my heavy gloves for lightweight ones. As I got on my bike to start part two of my trip, I decided that I should probably unbutton my coat. At this point I was wishing that I had gotten around to repairing the zipper on my windbreaker last fall…

By the time I got down to Queen Street it was feeling downright spring-like. It was very sunny and the temperature had risen to ten degrees. As I got on my bike to return home I removed the Lycra tube from my head and even took off my gloves. It felt unusual to ride with no gloves for the first time in months. Riding bare-handed is a sure sign of spring.

Licence to Ride

The other day I witnessed an almost comic example of clueless cycling. A man slowly glided his bike across Danforth Avenue, a major Toronto street, forcing a driver to have to slow down and then change lanes in order to avoid the cyclist. I’m not sure what was going through this man’s mind as he slowly made his way across Danforth, but I can make a better guess at what was going through the driver’s mind...

I remember reading a letter to the editor by someone who thought cyclists should be licensed and tested just as motorists are. This seems like a sensible idea to me. A report by Ontario’s coroner that was released in June 2012 found that of the 129 cycling deaths that occurred between 2006 and 2010, 44 were blamed on the actions of the cyclists involved.(1) I think it is time to bring some seriousness to the way cycling on city streets is approached.

Although I have noticed an improvement in cycling behaviour over the past several years, there still exists a Wild West mentality to cycling in Toronto. Some cyclists take the rules of the road seriously, but many still don’t. I don’t think obeying traffic rules should be optional. In fact I would be happy to see police handing out tickets to cyclists, an event I have yet to witness. Police do occasionally launch ticketing blitzes directed at cyclists, but I would rather see them enforcing the rules every day.(2)

Testing and licensing cyclists would ensure that all cyclists are aware of the traffic rules, and would hopefully reduce the number of deaths and injuries.

1. http://www.nowtoronto.com/news/story.cfm?content=187427
2. http://www.cp24.com/news/police-dish-out-tickets-in-bicycle-safety-campaign-1.949200

Waiting for Spring

As I write, Toronto is covered in a mess of slush and has been for several days. Even the most indefatigable cyclists are having to find other ways to get where they’re going. Like everyone else at the end of February, cyclists are starting to look forward to spring. For one thing, the thought of riding in warmer temperatures is starting to seem more and more enticing. It’s always a great feeling to be out on your bike in shorts and a T-shirt. Especially the first few times you are able to do this in the spring.

And it’ll be a happy thing when a few rains have washed the salt from the streets. My bike has taken a beating this winter. It is covered in grime, salt, and grease; I’m looking forward to a warm day when I can thoroughly wash it. In fact, it needs a bit of a tune-up as well, but I would be too embarrassed to take it into the shop this dirty.

This winter in Toronto has been a little more wintry than usual. During the last few winters, we had almost no snow, but this year we have had quite a lot. And the snowfalls we’ve had haven’t immediately melted away--a common occurrence in recent years. While Toronto does not get the snow that surrounding areas typically get, or other parts of the country for that matter, we’ve had enough this winter that cycling has been an on-again, off-again activity. Before this year, I had grown accustomed to being able to ride more or less all winter. While I am happy to see some snow for a change, the cyclist in me is waiting for spring.

Rough at the Edges

One of the things I least enjoy about biking in the city is having to be on the sides of roads. The conditions of the surfaces at the sides of roads can be extremely poor and are usually much worse than conditions in the middles of roads.

For example, the other day I was riding eastward on Lawrence Avenue and then southward on Bayview Avenue, two Toronto roads much in need of repair in the area of that intersection. The surfaces at the margins of these two roads, particularly Lawrence, are terrible. They have been patched so many times that the pavement is like a bumpy asphalt quilt. There is even the occasional pothole. Gutter is definitely an appropriate word to use!

Riding on surfaces like these is a bone-jarring experience, especially if you are travelling at all quickly. And not just bone jarring but also bike jarring. I’m reasonably sure that riding on these roads caused my crankset to be loosened. I’m going to have to take my bike in to the shop because of this.

Not only are the surfaces at the sides of roads a problem; so too is all the debris that ends up there. The sides of roads end up being covered in pebbles, broken glass, nails, etc., and sometimes even larger bits of trash such as the piece of metal that gauged one of my tires the other day. And let’s not forgot sewer grates that are often sunk many centimetres below the level of the surrounding asphalt.

Anyone who rides on roads like these had better invest in good-quality, flat-resistant tires, preferably ones with a layer of Kevlar. But even these will not be a guarantee against flats, as I found out the other day when a nail caused a flat on my front tire, the first I had had in a long time.

I am often tempted to swerve around potholes or sharp-looking debris, but if there is much car traffic where I am cycling, that isn’t a safe option. Unless I want to risk getting struck by a car, the only choice I have is to slow down and bike carefully through the problem area.

One of the many reasons I enjoy riding in the bike lanes that exist here and there in Toronto is that while there may still be a certain amount of debris on these lanes (though rarely as much as on the sides of roads without bike lanes) the pavement is usually in better shape.