January 20, 2011

Removing the parking spaces from Sherbourne street to upgrade the bike lanes is definitely a bad ideal in my opinion. The current bike lanes on Sherbourne street allow both cars and bikes to co-exist and that is a wonderful thing. A recent memo I received in the mail from the city said they are making the upgrades to better protect bikers from cars and I can definitely understand the safety issue but the problem is that there are not allot of cyclists on Sherbourne street to begin with. I can understand that cyclists want safer streets to ride on but people who actually live in the area also need a place for themselves and their visitors to park conveniently.

The high rises for example south of Dundas street between Shutter and Dundas need parking spaces on the street for their visitors, this should be obvious. Where will their visitors park when the spaces in front of their building are reduced? Parking on Shutter street is already a nightmare because it is always full. To add insult to injury, parking on Shutter street has a 3 hour limit which is not clearly marked for anyone parking there to see. The city says they will be adding 27 new parking spaces near Sherbourne Street when the bike lanes are upgraded however, that will not be enough. When parking spaces are eliminated, access to buildings, houses and stores are reduced. On Jarvis street for example, access to the Rabba Fine Foods grocery store was severely restricted due to the lack of nearby parking spaces. As a customer I stopped shopping at Rabba because parking was so bad and I’m sure many other residents did as well. That’s not good for businesses in the area and nobody seems to be talking about that issue.

I have always liked how some of the bike lanes are integrated with the parking spaces on Sherbourne, I think it was nicely planned out. Currently parking in the area is extremely bad for residents and the bike lane upgrades will only make it worse. Bike lane upgrades in the area should be geared towards streets like Gerrard where there is a natural flow of cyclist from areas like Riverdale to the east and Dundas street.
North – south upgrades like the one to Jarvis street are barely used in my opinion.

However whether bike lanes are upgraded in the city or put in for the first time, there should always be a balance between the needs of cyclists and the needs of residents who need a convenient place for themselves, their visitors and people doing business in the area to park.