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Ask Torontoist: What Happened to the Spadina Avenue “Bike Lanes”?

By Steve Kupferman

Ask Torontoist features questions posed by you, and answered by our elite team of specially trained investigative experts (also known as our staff). Send your questions to ask@torontoist.com.
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Reader Fabio asks:

I biked to work on October 8 (High Park to King Street West) and noticed that the bike lanes (or, better saying, the curb lanes) on Spadina are gone. Do you guys know what’s going on? Rob Ford isn’t the mayor yet…


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Black erasure marks are all that remain of Spadina Avenue’s shoulder lanes. Photo by Harry Choi/Torontoist.

Torontoist answers:

No, Rob Ford―whose stance on bike lanes is confusing at best―is not mayor yet. And yes, those curb lanes (they weren’t actual bike lanes) are gone. All that remain of them now are black lines, where the white ones were presumably pressure-washed away.
But word from the City is that the missing shoulder lanes will soon be replaced by another type of bike-friendly road marking: as some have already surmised, sharrows are on the way.
Sharrows are those white arrows with bike symbols beneath them. One recent rogue installation put a different spin on the design.
Sharrows already exist on sections of the shoulders of several of downtown Toronto’s big traffic corridors, including part of Bloor Street, and College Street west of Manning. They aren’t the same thing as bike lanes; they don’t mark out exclusive space on the road for cyclists. They’re intended only to indicate to drivers that the right-of-way is to be shared with bikes, and also to provide a visual cue to help cyclists mind their positions on the road, so they don’t get whacked by the opening doors of cars parked on the street.
Daniel Egan, Manager of Pedestrian and Cycling Infrastructure at the City’s Transportation Services division, told us in an email that sharrows will be coming to Spadina Avenue in late October, “weather permitting.”
The Spadina Avenue sharrows are only one of several road-marking projects planned this fall as part of the City’s ongoing efforts to expand Toronto’s bikeway network. A list of the rest is available on the City’s website.
Ask Torontoist illustration by Sasha Plotnikova/Torontoist.

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Comments

  • http://undefined Tina

    That’s not very good. I much prefer having a whole lane to myself on such a busy street. I feel safer that way.

  • http://piorkowski.ca/ qviri

    The curb lanes were about half of the regular bike lane width, and awkwardly split into asphalt and concrete at that. They might have felt safer than Spadina without any markings, but they definitely didn’t feel safe. A full lane would be great, but I’m not sure if the road is wide enough.

  • http://undefined thelemur

    But it was never really a whole lane – it was barely wider than a bike’s handlebars, the traffic is fast and the gutter is full of junk and garbage juice. I would rather see bike lanes on adjacent streets and facilities to let bikes cross Spadina at different intervals.

  • http://undefined thelemur

    See, Rocco? Pressure-washing – no need to buy black paint.

  • http://undefined thomas.owain

    Hmm… might have to suck it up and ban cars on major arterials. I mean, I’d love to have them on every road if there was room, but we must face mathematical reality here.

  • http://undefined spacejack

    Does anyone remember biking down Spadina before it was rebuilt with the streetcar-only lanes? The entire road was a massively wide mix of cobblestone, potholes, leftover streetcar tracks and asphalt patches. The painted lines had long faded away with people making up their own lanes. Cars and delivery trucks parked at crazy angles with the Spadina bus windows rattling as it bounced over every bump in the road. You could have a 3rd world experience without leaving Toronto. Now that was cycling!

  • rek

    Pressure washing is much more expensive when you factor in the gas or diesel or battery power used to run it from the truck idling up and down the street. Compare it to black paint on a roller or brush used for painting asphalt.

  • http://undefined InscrutableTed

    Yay! Spadina is an ideal place for sharrows because it doesn’t have parking in the curb lane. On other streets, parked cars can park on top of the sharrows.
    (Parking on Spadina is in parking bays.)

  • http://flickr.com/aged_accozzaglia accozzaglia

    You know, if I didn’t know better, I’d be on side with maintaining the ultra-narrow sharrows on Spadina, except for one experience that happened a few years ago which landed me in Women’s College ER. The sharrow markers terminated around Spadina Crescent and then restart at points north and south.
    On the morning I was on my bike, heading south, and just at the end of the Crescent where the switchback near Scott Street Mission occurs, a Maple Leaf taxi minivan — now driving for Co-op, last I saw his licence plate and taxi tag numbers — cut across the left, centre and into the right lane (to minimize the steering he’s need to stay in his lane). In short, he sandwiched me between his minivan panel and the convex curb switchback, leaving about 20cm of road. This forced a decision to be hit by him or hit the curb. I went with the latter, sending me flying. Despite people hearing my scream as he came closer, no one saw the incident: car commuters where on the other side of the minivan, so they couldn’t see what was going on, while the Scott Street Mission patrons had been looking the other way before hearing me.
    Ultimately, my bike was badly damaged, I was scraped up badly and checked for possible head impact injury (I was fine), and despite the taxi driver jumping out of his van and immediately saying, hands flailed out, “I didn’t touch her,” the transportation police did not issue him the citation for one reason: “there are no bike lanes there, so he was not really in ‘your’ lane.”
    Ever since, when I take the Crescent, I move to the left side of the right lane and own it outright until back to the straightaway. It’s resulted in a few honks and hand-birds, but I’d rather be safe, not dead. Without the sharrow, the provincial traffic by-laws do not forbid bicyclists from using the whole lane. Ever since, those sharrows are just a rude reminder of how hostile it can be for bicyclists — knowing that the police won’t charge drivers, and knowing that that driver still roams Toronto with reckless abandon.
    I’d mention his taxi number, but that would be sorta rude, wouldn’t it? Or would it?

  • http://undefined Nathan

    Not the bike lane-ettes! I was wondering what happened to these.

  • http://undefined thelemur

    You know, if I didn’t know better, I’d be on side with maintaining the ultra-narrow sharrows on Spadina
    Ultra-narrow sharrows, or ultra-narrow lanes?
    Ever since, when I take the Crescent, I move to the left side of the right lane and own it outright until back to the straightaway. It’s resulted in a few honks and hand-birds, but I’d rather be safe, not dead. Without the sharrow, the provincial traffic by-laws do not forbid bicyclists from using the whole lane
    I apply the same policy to Simcoe south of King. I need to get in the left-most southbound lane by the time I get to Front and am not going to stay on the right and then cross two lanes at the last minute. I wish I’d remembered that part about the whole lane when a cop asked me if there was ‘any particular reason’ I wasn’t over by the curb.
    I’d mention his taxi number, but that would be sorta rude, wouldn’t it? Or would it?
    Well, if you catch him doing anything else, you could always post his photo to mybikelane.com.

  • http://undefined thelemur

    I had a closer look at them just now – at one point the line is so close to the curb that it goes right over the sewer grate. It was never really a lane, just a line to suggest a trajectory …

  • http://undefined thelemur

    Just rolling or brushing on black paint is not going to provide lasting coverage. Sooner or later the white lines will show through and then where will we be? No, if they have to paint stop lines using a generator and a high-powered spray (as they did outside my window at midnight a few months ago), they’ll be using the same kind of power to remove the paint.

  • http://flickr.com/aged_accozzaglia accozzaglia

    Yeah, well, I’ve posted quite enough on toronto.mybikelane.com concerning parking. What he did was a flat-out moving violation. He’s 3390, fwiw, but chances are you’ll find it on a minivan of Chrysler provenance. I’ll withhold his plate number because I’m feeling generous. Both were committed to memory pretty much on the spot, and I’ve run across him a few times since.
    As to sharrows, I’m not a huge fan of them, but have sorta resigned to the notion that they will probably exist somewhere for the foreseeable future. I did mean “ultra-narrow sharrow,” which is what Spadina uses. As a courier, I used them as a baseline, but often travelled just outside them to allow myself safe berth from the curb or illegally parked cars with potential doors ready to swing open. I consider what others call “bike lanes” to be just “sharrows,” such as those on Death Trap Road (look up toronto.mybikelane.com if you’re wondering which road that is).

  • http://undefined Craig C

    I absolutely hate that narrow lane on Spadina. I’ve gone down it a couple of times and during heavier traffic. It wouldn’t be TOO bad if cars would respect it. Instead quite a few feel content hugging the edge of it such that I have to be very careful not to hit their side mirrors.

  • http://flickr.com/aged_accozzaglia accozzaglia

    Oh, never mind! Someone already took care of that before this discussion. Wow. Christ. Now I’m pissed off again.

  • thelemur

    I had no idea that was the same cab, obviously, but I did wonder. Thanks for adding the tags and sorry for re-opening old wounds (so to speak).

  • http://piorkowski.ca/ qviri

    Hey, totally! Main streets shouldn’t be arterial streets. Let’s start with Queen from University to Bathurst. It’s even got a convenient detour immediately to the south in Richmond/Adelaide.

  • http://flickr.com/aged_accozzaglia accozzaglia

    Hahaha. Don’t worry about it. I was sort of gobsmacked to see that there, and it brought a massive smile to my face. I haven’t logged into mybikelane.com in at least the time since I started my post-grad work — so summer 2009. But it sort of underscores just to the extent this guy has a track record of being a prick. I hope no one else gets hurt by his driving behaviour.

  • http://undefined s’rose

    I agree with Tina.

  • http://undefined andrewpmk

    Don’t bike on Spadina. It’s too dangerous.

  • http://flickr.com/aged_accozzaglia accozzaglia

    Although not as dangerous as College.

  • http://undefined Svend

    Sharrows are useless, a real waste of money that don’t make anyone safer.
    ALL roads that don’t have bikelanes are meant to be shared.

  • http://undefined Pop

    Bike lanes are safer. What does an image of a bike on pavement mean anyway? That there are bikes around? Well, no shite.

  • http://undefined Nick

    We tried to get real bike lanes on Spadina during the community consultations around the Spadina LRT in the early 1990s. A die-in protest in the Fall of 1992 was held at Dundas and Spadina, complete with tire marks on t-shirts. That may be Lorraine Segato on the right in the linked photo! It’s hard to believe it’s almost 20 years since then and that cyclists are still so poorly served. That said, the City did provide bike lanes along St. George/Beverly as a sop to us but we’re still way behind progressive biking cities, such as New York and Montreal.