Safety: Why Toronto Must Install Bike Lanes on Bloor

Tomorrow at 9:30 AM Toronto City Council will decide if pilot bike lanes will be installed on Bloor Street between Avenue Road and Shaw Street. The plan before council is extremely well designed, supported by all local resident groups, will lead to increased local business profits, and generally provides greater transportation options that will reduce congestion in the city. However, the single most important reason why the pilot must move forward is simple: cyclists have a right to be safe on roads.

In this post, I share a simple analysis and mashup of two datasets: 1. the number of cyclists on Bloor and the surrounding areas (as recorded using the Toronto Cycling App that records GPS data), and 2. the location of safe cycling infrastructure that is currently in place. There are many drawbacks to the Cycling App data since it is not necessarily representative of all trips but given there are several thousand trips I would argue it does provide a valid proxy measure of general cycling behavior in downtown areas.

The Bike Land Pilot Area and the total number of cycling trips per road segment are illustrated in the map below - shades of pink show areas with a relatively high total number of cycling trips.




Next, the map below illustrates where there are safe cycling routes in place.




And finally, the map below combines these two datasets, to show the number of cycling trips on roads where there is currently no safe cycling route. This map makes a clear argument for why the City Council must not miss this opportunity to install bike lanes on Bloor Street and close a dangerous gap in the current cycling network.

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Transportation Options for Liberty Village

Liberty Village is a new residential neighbourhood in Toronto that emerged within the past 10 years. The area also has a rich industrial history and has recently evolved into a new hub for creative and technology start-ups and established businesses.

Despite this growth, there have been virtually no new transportation investments. Therefore, congestion on the 504 King streetcar and parking shortages are hot topics at water coolers across the city. To gain an evidence-based understanding of this problem, I conducted a substantial amount of spatial analysis related to transportation options to and from Liberty Village.

Where people who live in Liberty Village work, and

how they get there - see slide 30 for more information.

The presentation included below describes the history of urban development, summarizes relevant transportation planning policies, reviews current transportation behaviour, and a provides a detailed assessment of current and future infrastructure that supports walking, cycling, transit use and driving to and from Liberty Village.

This presentation is an expanded version of an interim presentation delivered to a studio course in the Master of Planning in Urban Development Program at Ryerson University. Findings of this report reflect the opinions of the studio group, and do not represent the opinions of the City of Toronto. All data are presented as drafts for review only, please send questions, corrections or comments to Anthony on twitter @HealthCityMaps. I would also like to thank my group members for the extensive involvement in this project.

Transportation Options for Liberty Village, Toronto from Anthony Smith

This short video clip includes a portion of this presentation focused on the current supply and demand of transportation options.

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Design Review of Hinge Park Based on The Seven Cs Framework for Evaluating Natural Play Environments

Photos from PWL Partnership

This presentation provides an introduction to a new community park that is generally referred to as Hinge Park, although has not been formally named by the Vancouver Parks Board. This park is located next to the 2010 Olympic Athletes Village, or what is now known as the Southeast False Creek Neighbourhood. Overall this park is a wonderful example of a master planned site that provides unique elements for play and relaxation.

The presentation includes a unique site tour created using Google Earth Pro, and it describes the park design elements and how they support the broader design goals of the community. There is also discussion of the artificial habitat island (or beer island as it is often called), the planning policies of the city that are supported by this project. The presentation also describes the Seven Cs, an evidence-based framework for evaluating the quality of natural outdoor play spaces for children. Several lessons for the City of Toronto are also suggested.

This presentation was delivered in an urban park planning class in the Master of Urban Planning program at Ryerson University in Toronto.





The following slide summarizes my own personal evaluation of this space:

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Healthy Built Environment Indicators of Community Wellbeing

I am currently working with DIALOG Design in Vancouver to create a new tool to measure how community wellbeing may be increased through evidence-based urban design, land use and transportation decisions. This decision support tool uses a Geographic Information System (GIS) to evaluate ten themes of healthy built environment indicators. Each indicator includes several sub-components such access to a grocery store or community center, access to a protected cycletrack or frequent transit network, and the total area of public parks and natural forest area per capita.

Each indicator is also linked through peer-reviewed literature to physical, social, mental and spiritual, financial, and ecological health outcomes. Results from this tool will be presented along with specific thresholds for each indicator to ensure results can be easily translated into real world impacts that can inform healthy planning decisions.



I am sharing this early draft to collect feedback on the content and wording. What do you like, what would you change? what do you think is missing? Please share your observations in the comment section below. I look forward to sharing much more of this work over the next six months as I develop this work into my masters research project.

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Mapping Bicycle Accidents in Greater Vancouver

About three years ago I obtained an open data file from ICBC with the intersection coordinates for every cycling accident that involved a motor vehicle in Metro Vancouver between 2006-2010. This was an era before any separated cycle tracks. It is amazing to think how far we have come! For example many cyclists who travel north over the burrard bridge now ride north on the separated bike lane on Hornby instead of staying on Burrard, so I expect there will be a large drop in the number of accidents on burrard between pacific and Davie streets where there used to be the highest accident density in the City. I am very interested in producing a comparative map showing data for the past year or two sicne ICBC now has an actual open data portal, check back soon or subscribe to this blog for an updated comparative analysis.



For the cartographers out there, this map is is created using the kernal density function of ArcMap. I encourage you to zoom into the image below where I have posted a 110" x 85" map canvas using zoom.it that allows for deep-zoom map so that you can view the whole city but also zoom in to see streets with labels...I hope you enjoy playing with this! Double-click on the map to zoom in and click the home icon in the bottom right corner to zoom back to the original extent.



I also created a more detailed view of the accidents in Kitsilano, to help support approval of the new intersection at Burrard and Cornwall and seaside greenway to Jericho Beach. This project was approved last year and the construction work at Burrard intersection is now almost complete. I have included one picture below to show the beautiful new intersection at Burrard and Cornwall that I expect will reduce the number of crashes in this area. I ride through here every day and love the new route.



I believe proportional symbols as shown above are a more effective and honest way of representing the data since they display the real value instead of a kernal-based visual representation. However, when looking at the data for all of metro Vancouver, proportional symbols were more challenging to use effectively. What do you like better?

Please leave a comment below or send me a message on twitter to let me know what you think about this maps design, the accident data itself or using zoom.it as a map viewing platform. Let's have a conversation about what has been done over the past five years and what still needs to be done to make Vancouver a safer city for cyclists like you, your mom and your children.

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