I attended ExpoCycle, Canada’s
annual bicycle dealers trade show, in Toronto a couple of weeks ago.
Afterward I had a few days to explore the town on my bike.
First, (or actually by now, second)
let me tell you Toronto is big. Compared to Miamitown… well even
Cincinnati, for instance. Toronto is way bigger. In Toronto EVERYBODY
rides a bike… well except everybody drives too, and takes taxi’s,
and walks, and rides streetcars, subways, trains and busses... Yes, I
know it doesn’t seem to add up... let me explain…
If you took everybody in greater
Cincinnati and cloned them 9 fold, and put each iteration on one of
the aforementioned transportation modes, then took the last batch and
divided them up to travel by skateboard, roller blades, roller
skates, and “other” (I’m not exaggerating, there really are a
number of commuters in the streets with traffic, using skates and
skate boards), I think you’d have an idea of what’s happening out
on the streets of Toronto.
When I’m stateside, I commute the
vast majority of the time to work via bicycle, I’m no newbie at
this game. Most days I bet I have to interact with a dozen cars, as
well as an occasional pedestrian or squirrel, in my 3.5 mile journey
to and from Miamitown. A couple times a week I even see another
commuter on a bike on Harrison Ave.
In Toronto I had to interact with
dozens of cars, pedestrians, cyclists, skaters, boarders, and
“others”, just to get out of the parking garage driveway, then
dozens more as I plowed my way to the first intersection, all the
while overtaking and being overtaken by cyclists traveling various
speeds on and amazing array of bicycle styles.
But it’s more complicated than
that. Bike lanes come and go. Street car tracks seem to be everywhere
just begging your tire to slip on the steel track or get wedged in
the gap between the track and pavement. Pedestrians are swarming the
sidewalks and oozing onto the streets at intersections.
There are a
separate set of traffic lights for the street cars right next to the
lights for the rest of traffic so at times you are simultaneously
faced with a red light AND a green light. Cars parallel parking, or
pulling away from curbs, car doors opening and closing. Cabs diving
from left lane to the curb just inches in front of you to grab a
fare. Roads end, or become one way “Do not enter”, no left turn,
no right turn, road construction… it all comes at you so fast...
From my description you may think
that it’s bumper to bumper gridlock... no, actually it’s not even
what one might call “crowded” much of the time. There’s lots of
traffic moving but it’s a sort of roomy traffic like on a busy
college campus… except on the “expressway”, there it’s
grid-lock. Could the prohibition of bicycles be a contributing
factor?… Hmmm…
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