Democracy Gone Astray

Democracy, being a human construct, needs to be thought of as directionality rather than an object. As such, to understand it requires not so much a description of existing structures and/or other related phenomena but a declaration of intentionality.
This blog aims at creating labeled lists of published infringements of such intentionality, of points in time where democracy strays from its intended directionality. In addition to outright infringements, this blog also collects important contemporary information and/or discussions that impact our socio-political landscape.

All the posts here were published in the electronic media – main-stream as well as fringe, and maintain links to the original texts.

[NOTE: Due to changes I haven't caught on time in the blogging software, all of the 'Original Article' links were nullified between September 11, 2012 and December 11, 2012. My apologies.]

Thursday, July 21, 2011

Sherbourne a no-go for bikes

The avenue being touted as the north-south alternative to Jarvis will require some radical rethinking to make separated bike lane plans a reality. The hazards and obstacles are many.

Bloor bottleneck


The top of Sherbourne at Bloor is a traffic nightmare. Cars lining up to make rights and lefts onto Bloor and dropping off or picking up passengers at the subway station block the bike lane going north, making navigation of this section hazardous for everyone. Prohibiting cars from turning onto Bloor may be part of the answer, but that would mean pushing car traffic through Rosedale, and weren’t they the folks who opposed bike lanes on Jarvis?




Offloading 


The commercial sections of Sherbourne south of Queen, where condos are also going up, throw another wrench in the works. There, space for the day-to-day business of delivering goods, etc, is severely limited. And we haven’t even begun to talk about how to fit in snow clearing and garbage pickup.



Big-time barriers


If the idea is to link Queens Quay to Bloor, a must given future development at East Bayfront along the lakeshore, then city engineers and planners will have to get creative about how to get bike lanes underneath the rail overpass and Gardiner Expressway at the foot of Sherbourne. Solving that one could blow the entire bike budget.



Transit complications


Regular bus service on Sherbourne presents another challenge. Right now, buses block bike lanes when they have to pick up passengers. Bus bays would alleviate the problem, but that would mean putting bus stops much further apart, where road width would accommodate bays.



Parking problems


Parking is still allowed on long stretches of Sherbourne even during morning and evening rush hours. No getting around this one: the only solution would be to remove parking, which is easier said than done.



Space case


Unlike Jarvis, Sherbourne is a minor arterial with two lanes of car traffic compared to Jarvis’s four. In long stretches, like here, between Carlton and Gerrard, the street is too narrow to accommodate separated lanes – unless the plan is to steal space from sidewalks and do away with existing parking.

Origin
Source: Now magazine 

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