1. Donald Southbound at Portage. My question: Why can't the kerb extensions at the main entrance to the MTS Centre at the SW corner of Donald at Portage be pared back so that cyclists can have the 1.5 m of space?
Currently riding on the west side of Donald southbound is OK - i.e. the block alongside the "Planet" sign in the photo. Negotiating through the Donald/Portage intersection is tricky given the volume of traffic and the potholes, and then you find you've run out of road because the kerb extension didn't take into account cyclists. The MTS Centre was finished around 2004 and subsequently I measured the distance between the white line and the edge of the kerb extension at about 28 inches 28 inches (0.711 2 meter) The difference between that and 1.5 meters would make all the difference - and cyclists wouldn't have to merge into the fast-moving line of vehicles.
At the Donald/Graham intersection (the back end of the MTS Centre) the kerb extension also needs to be pared back. It's not as large as that at the entrance.
The length of the side of the MTS Centre (between the kerb extensions at the front and back) there's restricted parking so usually there's no vehicles there (unless there's a show in town), so riding this block is no problem, apart from the kerb extensions. The road opens up on the next block southward (Graham to York) with an additional kerb lane, so biking's fine from there.
2. Smith Street at Notre Dame: You'll see from the two photos the view facing NW and facing South on Smith Street (just by the Burton Cumming Theatre). Last year the City put a kerb extension in here also, and you can see from the photos that there's been no accommodation for cyclists made. They just needed to have make the kerb extension about a meter narrower and everyone would have been accommodated. :-) This one particularly irks me as the kerb extension was only done last year.
3. Hargrave at William: - The first photo shows that intersection around August 2009. There are only two vehicles waiting to turn right. Usually there were more in the evening rush hour - tailing back along the bike lane. To me what needed to be done was the parking space (blue vehicle) needed to be no-parking between 3:30 and 5:30 p.m. So, then the bike lane would be clear of vehicles as they'd be in the curb lane (this is alongside Western Paint and Glass).
What the City did is shown in the 2nd photo... so now the bike lane disappears under the line of rush hour vehicles turning onto William.
I find the curb extensions along "PortageScape" (Portage between Main and Vaughan) to also be problematic. The parking is not recessed enough. If cyclists remain "as close as practicable" to the curb extensions, and travelling in a straight line, they end up being in the door zone of the parked cars. So there the bulbouts should be wider. But I agree, on Donald, at Portage, the bulbout should be reduced since there is a bus stop immediately after that, and there are no parked cars.
ReplyDeleteI should also mention that the bulbouts are much better on Graham -- the parked cars are recessed much more than on Portage.
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