Daily insights for city builders, delivered every morning at 6 AM ET. I’m Brandon Donnelly — a Toronto-based real estate developer and founder of Globizen. I’ve been writing here since 2013.
This is a fun circuit.
Go west to the Humber Bay Arch Bridge.
Shoot up the Humber River and pass under various bridges and subway tracks.
Arrive in Weston (which, by the way, was established in 1796). Go west on Lawrence to Royal York (there are a couple of hills here that will get your bum up).
Then bomb down Royal York as fast as you can until you arrive at San Remo Bakery for coffee, donuts, cured meats, and other wonderful things that I don’t normally order.
The circuit:
The Dutch now believe that the number is 230cm. This is an increase from a previous recommendation of 200cm. The thinking behind this number is roughly as follows. Apparently there are Dutch laws stipulating that bikes can’t be wider than 75cm. So this is the starting point.
But since it’s impossible to always ride in a perfectly straight line, there seems to be a generally accepted rule that, at an absolute minimum, cyclists need about 100cm of width to themselves.
If you now double this so that two people can ride side-by-side, you’re at 200cm. This is an important design criteria because the Dutch also seem to believe that (1) cycling is a social activity and (2) a child should be able to ride beside their parent. (Love this!)
Finally, add in a bit of buffer so there’s room to pass slower cyclists and/or nobody feels like they’re going to crash into oncoming cyclists, and you get to 230cm as the ideal width of a single bike lane.
I’m not sure I had given this much thought before, so I look forward to scrutinizing (and possibly measuring) every bike lane I ride in going forward.
I’ve always loved cycling, but never before have I had a bike like this:
And boy does it make a world of a difference.
Here’s my inaugural ride (excluding the night ride I did last week where I mostly couldn’t see where I was going):
The High Park loop was a lot of fun. The entire park is closed to cars on the weekends (though I understand that some people are upset about this feature).
I want to do a ride like this at least once a week, which means I’m probably going to need to get something from Pas Normal Studios to pad my ass. I’m also working my way up to clipless shoes.
Cycling is fun and Toronto is a great city for it.
I did it. I finally got (well, ordered) a new and more serious road bike.
I have been planning to do this since last year. I almost bought a friend’s Cervelo a few weeks ago, but I took it to Gears on King Street and they immediately told me it was too small for me. The frame was 58cm and apparently I need 60cm.
So I instead ordered a new Cannondale CAAD13. It’s one that my serious cycling friends — people like Jeremiah Shamess — tell me is a good “starter bike.”
I’m excited to get going. In the winter, I am, as most of you know, all about snowboarding. But I need something active/challenging for the summer that I can be equally fanatical about. Maybe that thing will be cycling.
The one thing I do need to give some more thought to is cycling to the office. I know a bunch of people who do this, but they tend to go to the gym and then shower before heading to their desk. I’m not sure I want to make this my morning routine.
Either way, I guess it’s time to dust off my Strava. If any of you are into cycling, hit me up on Twitter/X.
Photo: Cannondale
What is the case for having parking minimums? (i.e. Mandating a certain number of parking spaces in new developments.) I guess the argument is that if you don’t require developers to build it, they won’t build enough. And then people will not have parking and so they will be forced to park on the street somewhere. This might annoy the incumbent residents, who will in turn complain, and so it is best and safest to just to build a lot of parking.
This is pretty much the only reason that I can think of for why a city might want to maintain parking minimums. Because, what’s the worst thing that could happen if you didn’t build enough parking? In the best case scenario, the developer builds fewer parking spaces and people are fine with it. This is ideal because it means people are getting around in other ways: walking, cycling, taking transit, and/or using car share. So it is the most sustainable outcome!
A bad scenario would be that the developer builds too few parking spaces, nobody will rent the spaces, and then goes bankrupt. This would be very bad for the developer; however, it would be a lot less of a concern for the city. The developer is the one who screwed up. Too bad for them. So when I see new transit-adjacent developments — like this one here in Burnaby, BC with 14 levels of below-grade parking — one can’t help but think: WTF!
To be clear, this is not a criticism of the developer. I don’t do that sort of thing on this blog. This is a criticism of parking minimums. They are so last decade. And I’m even being generous with this timeline.
We have spoken many times over the years about Paris’ investments in cycling infrastructure and about its plans to become a 100% cycling city. And my twitter feed (see above/here) seems to suggest that it’s working really well.
Between 2015 and 2020, the city saw a doubling of its bike lanes. And from September 2018 to September 2019 alone, the city saw a 54% increase in cycling usage, with its street meters recording about 840,000 daily bike trips in the center of the city.
Of course, if you’re a cycling skeptic, you’re probably thinking at least two things right now. One, Paris is Paris. Not all cities have the benefit of such a compact urban form. And two, Paris doesn’t get real winters. So sure, it’s easy to cycle there. Where’s the snow?
While it is true that density is a key ingredient for walkability and active transport, the real catalyst for Paris was its cycling network. A lot more people are cycling in Paris today because it is now safer and more convenient to do so.
It is also true that Paris generally doesn’t get as cold as, say, Toronto.
However, Helsinki does. It has the same humid continental climate (and a lower average annual temperature). And if you look at the Copenhagenize (Cycling) Index, you’ll see that, in 2019, Paris had a bicycle modal share of under 5%, whereas Helsinki had a modal share of 11% (plus a near equal gender split).
Maybe it’s the over 1,300 km of bicycle infrastructure.
Right now my typical morning commute consists of a 15 minute walk and a quick stop off for a coffee. I must admit that I’m spoiled. But next year I’ll be moving to the Junction and so that means I’m going to need to make some minor adjustments to my routine.
I fully expect that on warm summer nights I’ll probably still walk home on occasion. But broadly speaking, my loose plan is a combination of cycling, e-scootering, and taking the Union Pearson Express train.
Then this evening I was out for drinks with one of our partners and two of the guys were talking about how they cycle to work each morning and compete on Strava to make sure everything gets properly logged. One of them actually lives near the Junction and his regular route is down through High Park and then across along the lake.
Naturally I got inspired and decided — after two beers — that I too should join this competition. So I have now obligated myself to cycling to the office starting next year. That said, I could probably use a new bike, and I’m hoping that some of you will have recommendations.
My criteria is as follows: it should look impossibly cool, it should work for a daily commute, and it should be at least somewhat suitable for tight-fitting clothes and long rides through the French countryside (even though I currently have no concrete plans of doing such a thing).
Any thoughts?
I love High Park. It’s the second largest green space in the City of Toronto and right beside the Junction neighborhood. But there are some problems. Despite having a subway line on its northern boundary, we’ve gotten the built form along its edges all wrong.
There’s very little functioning retail. The densities and heights are not nearly high enough. The streets aren’t great walking streets. And we’ve even gone and created undignified bus stops like this one here.
On top of all this, we’re now doing this silly thing where police are ticketing cyclists for riding around the park with too much vigor and enthusiasm. I’m sure somebody called to complain and this is all reactionary politics, but an even bigger reaction has now been set off.
For those of you who haven’t been following or aren’t from Toronto, hundreds of cyclists took to the streets this week to peacefully protest what has been going on in High Park.
The Globe & Mail then followed it up with this important piece calling for an end to cars inside the park. The boundaries currently house about 5 km of roads and almost 600 parking spots.
Given all this, I figured now is probably a good time to revive one of Casey Neistat’s original YouTube videos called “bike lanes.” The story is that he gets a ticket for not riding in a bike lane. And so he films a video of himself only riding in bike lanes — even if there are obstacles in his way.
It’s an awesome video with nearly 30 million views. And I’m sure that many of you have felt like doing exactly what he does when faced with this same situation. I know I have.
It’s one thing to have bike lanes. And it’s another thing to have really generous bike lanes. The above video by Streetfilms does a good job of comparing Paris to New York City, and showing just how far Paris has come in terms of cycling infrastructure. Some of you might remember that in the fall of last year, Paris announced plans to become a “100% cycling city.” This was a follow-on to their plan vélo 2015-2020, which saw a doubling of the city’s bike lanes. The current plan, which covers 2021-2026, includes 130 km of new bike lanes and 52 km of pandemic lanes that have been (or will be) made permanent. But again, it’s one thing to have a lot of bike lanes. And it’s another thing to have a lot of wide bike lanes that look like the ones in this video.
Electric scooters are an unsanctioned form of mobility here in Toronto, mostly because people think they’re dangerous, but also because I think people are worried about them cluttering up our sidewalks.
The problem with this position is that electric scooters are also a lot of fun to ride and people seem to find them useful. The last time I rode one was in Paris and it seemed perfectly safe to me, though it may have been because there were two of us on it and we were kind of overloading the thing.
In any event, lots of cities either have them or are piloting them. Seattle just finished year one of its pilot program and here’s what they learned:
As much as I love riding a bike, it’s a bit more of a commitment compared to riding an e-scooter, which is why I think the numbers look the way that they do here. Not everybody wants to bring a change of clothes and shower at the office.
So I think it’s really too bad that Toronto just shut these down before exploring ways to make them both safe and useful.
