Want more bike lanes? Look to Toronto’s train tracks.<\/p>\n
That’s the crux of a new proposal from a local pair of architects, who say using the extra space around existing railway corridors to build lanes for cyclists could help the city create a new, conflict-free cycling network.<\/p>\n
“With this idea, we get over 100 kilometres of bike lanes across the city,” says architect and urban designer Naama Blonder from the firm Smart Density, who developed the plan with her\u00a0colleague\u00a0Misha Bereznyak.<\/p>\n
“We can serve not only downtown\u00a0and the core of the city, but areas that don’t enjoy this infrastructure.”<\/p>\n
The\u00a0proposal\u00a0is one of the seven 2019 projects selected for the first-ever\u00a0SHIFT Infrastructure\/Architecture Challenge\u00a0from the Ontario Association of Architects.<\/p>\n
The gist? Many rail corridors have extra space running alongside them.\u00a0Blonder says those areas could provide room for low-cost, separated bike lanes\u00a0\u2014\u00a0or cycling “highways” \u2014\u00a0stretching beyond the city’s core and away from traffic.<\/p>\n
In a video promoting the idea, her team notes the “generous width” alongside rail tracks currently used by provincial transportation agency Metrolinx.<\/p>\n
Dubbing the concept\u00a0“GO Bikes,” Blonder\u00a0believes it’s something the agency\u00a0could actually explore.<\/p>\n
“Once you eliminate conflict, you get not only a very safe bike lane, but a fast one,” she says.<\/p>\n
But\u00a0Metrolinx<\/span>\u00a0says it’s easier said than done.<\/p>\n According to a statement from\u00a0spokesperson Matt Llewellyn, the proposal “seems to present numerous safety concerns.”<\/p>\n The agency also only owns 80 per cent of the rail network, he continued. “On the corridors we do own and control, it’s important we set aside land throughout the Greater Golden Horseshoe, for the needs of our GO Expansion project.”<\/p>\n Still, cycling advocates say this kind of innovation\u00a0needs to be embraced\u00a0\u2014\u00a0with some pointing to the success of the West Toronto Railpath, a two-kilometre stretch of pedestrian and cyclist-friendly trails adjacent to a north-south\u00a0line where GO\u00a0and UP Express trains are running.<\/p>\n Nancy Smith Lea, a road safety advocate and director of\u00a0the Centre for Active Transportation, says both that project and the High Line in New York City\u00a0\u2014 a public park built on an elevated freight line\u00a0\u2014 are instances where community-driven ideas eventually became reality.<\/p>\n “If we just shut these ideas down from the beginning, we’re never going to achieve them,” she says.<\/p>\n Coun.\u00a0Joe Cressy, an outspoken advocate of bike lanes, agrees\u00a0but says when it comes to innovation, beefing up the city’s core network needs to be a higher priority.<\/p>\n “Do we need more bike lanes? Hell, yes. Where should they be built? They should be built as part of a grid,” he says.<\/p>\n Commuters travelling from home to work to errands and back again need a road-like system to get around the city, Cressy explains.<\/p>\n And so far, even that’s lacking, with only six per cent of the network in the city’s 10-year cycling plan built over the first three years. “Key arterials” are missing, Cressy says, including extending the Bloor\u00a0Street bike lanes west and filling in cycling gaps on the Danforth.<\/p>\n “You can’t have bike lanes to nowhere,” he adds.<\/p>\n Even so, Blonder says her team’s concept could round out the system\u00a0\u2014\u00a0if there was ever a willingness to explore it.<\/p>\n “It’s extremely practical … and it’s so simple,” Blonder says.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Want more bike lanes? Look to Toronto’s train tracks. That’s the crux of a new proposal from a local pair of architects, who say using the extra space around existing …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":32,"featured_media":3658,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[3538],"tags":[3553,6076,4862,5842,6077,4703],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/mileniostadium.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/10\/Bloor-with-bike-lane-after-option-1.jpg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mileniostadium.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32528"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mileniostadium.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mileniostadium.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mileniostadium.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/32"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mileniostadium.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=32528"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mileniostadium.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32528\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mileniostadium.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/3658"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mileniostadium.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=32528"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mileniostadium.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=32528"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mileniostadium.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=32528"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}‘Key arterials’ missing in the city<\/h2>\n