Bike lanes - an answer to traffic woes?

Just in case you were wondering what is all the hoopla with bike lanes when traffic is already so bad in our city, here's fresh new proof that this helps alleviate the problems.

Second Avenue's bike lane.

The main point of building protected lanes was to make biking in the city safer. But when the NYC Department of Transportation recently studied the impact of the lanes, they found a secondary benefit: on several different avenues in Manhattan, the lanes actually helped speed up car traffic.
The new report, spotted by Eric Jaffe at CityLab, found that on Columbus and 8th avenues, the time it took a car to traverse a specific distance dropped significantly after the installation of the lanes, while on 1st Avenue, it increased only slightly. At the same time, rates of bicyclist injuries declined steeply on all three streets, along with Broadway, 8th, and 9th avenues.
So how did the bike lanes speed up traffic? It seems that two factors were important. One is that, for the most part, driving lanes weren't actually eliminated when they bike lanes were built — they were simply narrowed. Additionally, the design of the bike lanes included a dedicated left-turn lane at most intersections, allowing cars to wait to turn left without holding up traffic.

Sources / More info: Bike lanes have actually sped up car traffic in New York City, /.

Comments

Water quality tests data shows elevated lead levels in Toronto homes | Toronto Star

Councillor Karen Stintz (Ward 16, Eglinton-Lawrence), a mayoral candidate whose riding had an 18-per-cent failure rate on nearly 1,000 tests, said financial incentives for homeowners who want to replace their lead pipes is worth consideration. “If that’s the reason people aren’t replacing the pipes, then I think we have an obligation to look at that,” she said. “People expect that when they turn on their taps, the water is safe to drink. It’s a reasonable expectation and one we need to make sure we deliver on.”

Mammoliti found again to have flaunted rules

Not long ago, many pundits were shocked to see former Conservative MP Dean Del Mastro in handcuffs after having been found guilty of running afoul of election spending rules. In our beloved City of Toronto, a similarly ignoramus of ethical rules gets a mere slap on his wrists, where the handcuffs should have been.

Trump, Clinton and the urban-rural divide

Ever since the #amalgamation, #Toronto has its own culture clash, pitting suburbanites vs downtown core hipsters on issues such as social housing and public transportation. It is therefore useful to see how this culture clash plays South of the border.