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“He wants bikes in traffic lanes. Give him what he wants”: Cyclists urged to “slow every street down to bicycle speed” and ride in middle of lane amid premier’s war on cycle paths + more on the live blog
SUMMARY
“He wants bikes in traffic lanes. Give him what he wants”: Cyclists urged to “slow every street down to bicycle speed” and ride in middle of lane amid premier’s war on cycle paths
As you may have seen on yesterday’s live blog, over in Canada, Doug Ford’s been at it again.
The Ontario premier is forging ahead with his longstanding aim to rip out Toronto’s cycling infrastructure, with work beginning this week on removing 19 kilometres’ worth of bike lanes from the Canadian city.
Ford, as who back in 2022 rather wisely conducted a TV news interview on road safety while driving through a snowstorm, has made it his mission in recent years to limit the construction of cycle lanes in Ontario and rip out some recently installed ones, which he colourfully described as “absolute insanity right now”.
According to the Progressive Conservative Party politician, Toronto’s cycle lanes need to be removed because motorists should have priority on busy city streets – and that cyclists should simply be shunted onto “secondary roads”.
In 2024, Ford’s government passed legislation (the Reducing Gridlock and Saving You Time Act, in case you forgot) giving itself not only the power to remove the 19km of protected lanes and replace them with car lanes, but also to block municipalities from building any new bike infrastructure that ‘reduced space’ for vehicles.
“These are some of the busiest streets in all of North America. We need to restore them to vehicle lanes to stop the congestion. That’s exactly what we were elected on and that’s the exact mandate we got,” his transport minister Prabmeet Sarkaria said a few weeks ago.
Despite a concerted legal effort by cycling campaigners to stop the removal, work began on Tuesday to rip out the doomed cycle lanes. And that’s where things got messy (or exciting, depending on your point of view), as local cyclists gathered on the infrastructure to physically block the work taking place, leading to two arrests for “mischief”.
And while that method proved extremely effective, albeit briefly, one Toronto cyclist has a longer-term plan to prove Doug Ford and his cronies wrong.
“Doug Ford is not getting rid of bike lanes, he is turning all lanes into multi-vehicle lanes,” Mike Palecek suggested in a post on Facebook, which has attracted quite a bit of attention both in Canada and across the pond at home.
“Bikes, take the lane. Ride in the centre where it is safest. Slow every street down to bicycle speed. This is completely legal.
“Doug Ford wants bikes in traffic lanes. Give him what he wants.
“If every cyclist did this, Toronto would be closed for business. And Doug Ford might realise bike lanes were not just for the safety of cyclists, but for the convenience of motorists.”
Thoughts?
‘Well Nigel, we know you hate cyclists. But you also love blaming everything on immigration. This is a tough one…’
You know times are tough at Reform UK HQ when Nige is pretending to care about bike theft:
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Looks like another cheap sound bite to try and win votes from niche sectors. He would never offer anything like safer routes or better cycling infrastructure because he knows that would upset drivers, so fins a nice little area that effects cyclist without upsetting anyone else. But we know that this would never actually come into being. it would get lost in the noise of all the other rhetoric surrounding immigration, youth unemployment etc etc. shameless click bait politics
Mike Palecek has a point, and I hope his plan works, and that Doug Ford reaps what he has sowed. Even if it works though, Doug will pass another act prohibiting cyclists from the main roads, after all, he did get the most inaccurately titled, misleading act ever passed: the 'Reducing Gridlock and Saving You Time Act'. Straight from the Trump/Farage play book: promise everything, deliver nothing and blame someone else.
Frog faced moron herder jumps on bandwagon. It doesn't matter which bandwagon is passing by, Farage will jump on it. Never has there been such a blatantly self-serving politician in this country, someone who will do anything, promise anything to advance his cause. His cause being the same as his hero's (Trump) self-enrichment. Unfortunately, there is one thing that can be cast iron guaranteed about Nigel's promises: they're never going to happen, and the latest polls are showing that that realisation is finally dawning on the gullible.
@Doctor Darabuka I agree that using a single button for such an array of tasks does necessitate a bit of complexity. But I guess my points are that it wasn't too bad once you get your head around it and practiced a few times; and also the changes made haven't really helped to reduce the complexity, just reduced the amount of functionality that can be achieved. On a small model like the Sirius, it would be a squeeze to try and have more than one button, and would lead to a risk of accidentally pressing the wrong one (especially with gloves on).
I suppose one should expect race-baiting from the batrachoidal oaf but I did leave a comment on his Facebook post of this asking why it was indicative of "Third World decline" when the two miscreants are quite obviously white (and to save Nigel's time, our Nigel that is, yes we all know there are a few majority white countries that can be economically and/or socially classed as Third World; equally we all know what Farage is implying with that language). Surprised he didn't say "what do you expect with the population of London made up the way it is?"
Everyone knows that "advisory" cycle lane just means "residents' parking spaces. It's unbelievable that Active Transport cash has been spent on this, but you only have to travel around Exeter to realise how anti-cycling and anti-public-transport it actually is. Better fix would be to make the bus lanes 24/7 and extend them all the way from the Park and Ride to the city centre / hospitals.
@MountainsofSussex Some great questions. With regards to frame sizing, you certainly could use it to run a larger frame size as you'll be able to gain around 20mm of reach over a 40mm stem plus the a couple more millimetres from the increase height. I guess the question is, what are you trying to achieve with a larger frame size? If the reach has effectively not changed with the new stem, you're only going to increase front-centre which could be changed with an angleset or rear-centre if the frame you run has size proportionate rear-triangles. On the suspension side of things, although I could feel the fork working a little better underneath me I didn't feel the need to change my suspension settings. The rearward weight shift is subtle but no doubt there are situations where some suspension fettling would be beneficial to account for the new riding style.
The "Commuters and Nigel Farage" image is giving me the ick.
Is this another ploy to distract the media from crypto funding sleaze and racist attitudes of many Reform UK candidates? Presumably he will claim that all bike theft is committed by small boats asylum seekers.
I guess a Reform govt could achieve their twin objectives by banning bicycles entirely, and then also not need to stump up the cash for additional prison places.
1 thought on ““He wants bikes in traffic lanes. Give him what he wants”: Cyclists urged to “slow every street down to bicycle speed” and ride in middle of lane amid premier’s war on cycle paths + more on the live blog”
Mike Palecek has a point, and I hope his plan works, and that Doug Ford reaps what he has sowed. Even if it works though, Doug will pass another act prohibiting cyclists from the main roads, after all, he did get the most inaccurately titled, misleading act ever passed: the ‘Reducing Gridlock and Saving You Time Act’.
Straight from the Trump/Farage play book: promise everything, deliver nothing and blame someone else.