BIA selected by advocacy group for foundational work

By Fox Oliver
By Fox Oliver
By Dianne Saxe
The first month of the new year has been an eventful one at city hall. I am pleased to report that two crucial issues have successfully moved forward.
Tags: General
By Fox Oliver
The Bike Lane and Road Safety Upgrades on Davenport Road involve an upgrade plan which will take place over three phases, and the second phase is scheduled to begin this month.
In “The Pothole”, the award-winning 150th episode Seinfeld, Cosmo Kramer adopts a one mile stretch of the Arthur Burghardt Expressway after running over an abandoned sewing machine. Kramer decides to make his newly adopted section of a highway a more luxurious experience for drivers by reducing four lanes to two extra-wide ones. What results — to great comedic effect — is mass confusion and chaos and, a lesson in how not to manage a highway.
Tags: Annex · Editorial · General
By Annemarie Brissenden
Do bike lanes make cycling inherently safer?
That question was up for debate at January’s Grounds for Thought, which runs the last Tuesday of every month at the Green Beanery at Bloor and Bathurst streets. With free coffee on offer, Grounds for Thought is an homage to the coffee houses of old, places where dissent and unconventional ideas were not only welcomed but encouraged.
By Geremy Bordonaro
It’s been a long time coming but the Bloor Street bike lanes are now a permanent fixture of the community.
By Albert Koehl
What if Bloor Street merchants — especially those who believe the bike lane is bad for business — could magically create a new supply of parking spots for their motoring customers?
The data is in on the Bloor Street pilot bike lanes, and it seems to support keeping the lanes. (Now that the bike lanes are in, even on a pilot basis, it’s a little surreal to me that anyone actually wants to pull them out.) But speaking of data, it’s worth thinking about which data gets included, as well as how the data itself is interpreted.
When confronted with the question of whether or not to support the city’s pilot bike lanes on Bloor Street, the Bloor Annex and Korea Town Business Improvement Areas (BIAs) commissioned a study on the economic impact of the bike lanes. The comprehensive evaluation yielded clear results and also found a discrepancy between the attitudes of merchants and the positive impact the lanes appeared to have on their bottom lines.
PHOTO BY GEREMY BORDONARO/GLEANER NEWS: Attendees at the third public consultation on the Bloor Street Pilot Bike Lanes annotated a map with comments on the pilot project. The annotations devolved into a war of words, in which one resident found himself battling another over the viability of businesses and bikes.