This morning I got up at 7:30am and met a good friend of mine at the St. Lawrence Market for breakfast.
Market Street is closed to cars today so it’s pedestrian-only. It should be this way all the time. They had a pig roasting on a spit when I walked by and a big stage set up.
Below is a photo of what it looks like. Keep in mind that this photo was taken just after 8:00am, which is why it’s not all that busy, yet.
When Market Street was redone a few years ago, the original vision for the street was for it to be pedestrian-only. But somebody told me that the city didn’t want that. Too bad. It strikes me as a perfect candidate for that.
After breakfast, we then biked out to the Scarborough Bluffs in the east end of the city. If you click here, you can see the path we took via Strava. It’s only about 15km from downtown. The ride through the Beaches was by far the best stretch. The water was on my right hand side. The pavement was smooth and continuous. And I had George FitzGerald on my headphones for pacing.
When we got there, this was the view we were presented with:
It honestly doesn’t feel like Toronto. The water is turquoise and there’s a beautiful beach at the bottom of the cliffs. It felt like paradise.
If you’ve never been to the Scarborough Bluffs, do yourself a favor and get out there on a beautiful summer day. It’s the dog days of summer and Toronto is a magical place right now.
The Vanhawks Valour smartbike has been making the rounds on the internet over the past few weeks. They’re a Toronto based startup and they’ve just raised $820,000 on Kickstarter to build and sell the first connected smartbike. The bike will eventually retail for around $1,000.
Here’s a video that explains it all. If you can’t see it below, click here.
I’m pumped to see a Toronto startup doing so well and attracting so much attention globally. I hope they continue crushing it. Good luck guys.
This past Sunday night I was out for a bike ride with a few friends all around downtown Toronto. According to Strava, we did almost 22 km. Click here to see our route. During the ride, one of my friends said something to me that stood out. He said that when he’s on a bike he wants all cars off the road; but when he’s in a car, he wants all bikes off the road.
Now, this may seem like a fairly banal statement, but I think it demonstrates a number of things about people and the way we interact with cities. First, we’re all probably pretty selfish. We want what we want at a specific moment in time and we easily forget what it’s like to be on the other side of a situation.
Second, I think it reinforces what I wrote a month ago in a post called: Every street can’t be everything to everyone. If we want to improve the user experience for a variety of different use cases (driving, biking, walking and so on), we should decide when and where we’re going to optimize for each.
The reason my friend said what he said was because we were riding on a road with no bike lanes. We were swerving in and around cars. And when the street is shared like this it naturally becomes a competition of who can be the most aggressive and dominate the road–bikes or cars. But as exciting as that might be, it’s probably not an ideal way to build our cities.
This morning I got up at 7:30am and met a good friend of mine at the St. Lawrence Market for breakfast.
Market Street is closed to cars today so it’s pedestrian-only. It should be this way all the time. They had a pig roasting on a spit when I walked by and a big stage set up.
Below is a photo of what it looks like. Keep in mind that this photo was taken just after 8:00am, which is why it’s not all that busy, yet.
When Market Street was redone a few years ago, the original vision for the street was for it to be pedestrian-only. But somebody told me that the city didn’t want that. Too bad. It strikes me as a perfect candidate for that.
After breakfast, we then biked out to the Scarborough Bluffs in the east end of the city. If you click here, you can see the path we took via Strava. It’s only about 15km from downtown. The ride through the Beaches was by far the best stretch. The water was on my right hand side. The pavement was smooth and continuous. And I had George FitzGerald on my headphones for pacing.
When we got there, this was the view we were presented with:
It honestly doesn’t feel like Toronto. The water is turquoise and there’s a beautiful beach at the bottom of the cliffs. It felt like paradise.
If you’ve never been to the Scarborough Bluffs, do yourself a favor and get out there on a beautiful summer day. It’s the dog days of summer and Toronto is a magical place right now.
The Vanhawks Valour smartbike has been making the rounds on the internet over the past few weeks. They’re a Toronto based startup and they’ve just raised $820,000 on Kickstarter to build and sell the first connected smartbike. The bike will eventually retail for around $1,000.
Here’s a video that explains it all. If you can’t see it below, click here.
I’m pumped to see a Toronto startup doing so well and attracting so much attention globally. I hope they continue crushing it. Good luck guys.
This past Sunday night I was out for a bike ride with a few friends all around downtown Toronto. According to Strava, we did almost 22 km. Click here to see our route. During the ride, one of my friends said something to me that stood out. He said that when he’s on a bike he wants all cars off the road; but when he’s in a car, he wants all bikes off the road.
Now, this may seem like a fairly banal statement, but I think it demonstrates a number of things about people and the way we interact with cities. First, we’re all probably pretty selfish. We want what we want at a specific moment in time and we easily forget what it’s like to be on the other side of a situation.
Second, I think it reinforces what I wrote a month ago in a post called: Every street can’t be everything to everyone. If we want to improve the user experience for a variety of different use cases (driving, biking, walking and so on), we should decide when and where we’re going to optimize for each.
The reason my friend said what he said was because we were riding on a road with no bike lanes. We were swerving in and around cars. And when the street is shared like this it naturally becomes a competition of who can be the most aggressive and dominate the road–bikes or cars. But as exciting as that might be, it’s probably not an ideal way to build our cities.
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