Cyclists share T.O. drivers' discontent
By Mike Strobel
Toronto Sun, October 27, 2003
Some dimwit has taken two lanes out of Dundas St. E. and turned them over to bicycles. This chokes off a major escape route from downtown for billions of us in Scarborough and other points east.
I've tried Dundas a few times since. I have crept in that single file of cars. I have seen not one cyclist in the new lanes.
The logic escapes me. But it is the logic of cycle zealots and city planners: Traffic is a mess, so make the roads narrower.
It's Orwellian. Two wheels good, four wheels bad.
Can someone explain why we drivers are lepers? Why we are spat upon by the very people we elect and pay?
Why do cyclists hate us, plot against us?
Turns out two words sum it up.
"Door prize," says Nappy Claremont, 39. "When you hear that car door pop, there's nothing you can do. You're done for. You get the door prize."
Door opens. Cyclist is doomed. Nothing is more feared. How can drivers be so stupid? Let's lay another bike lane on 'em.
We're on Temperance St., the belly of the bike culture.
At Breadspreads, two doors in from Yonge, couriers land for a beer and a bite between deliveries.
"I got doored by the same guy two mornings in a row," Nappy is telling me. "At 145 King. The (gentleman) let his girlfriend out and I almost bought it in a snowbank. Next morning, I'm on the same route, I hear a door pop. Bang, same thing. Same (feller) in a silver Jetta."
Nappy is now an ex-courier, a bike shop owner and a sort of philosopher prince for the Temperance St. mob.
The decor in Breadspreads is bicycle repair shop. Spokes grin from the walls, alongside Bob Marley and Willie Nelson.
Canadian Girls Kick Ass, reads one poster. Cabs Make Good Speed Bumps, reads another.
Bicycles line the front fence. A chap in pinstripes hurries by on his way to some meeting. I watch him swing out a foot as he passes the bikes. One clatters to the sidewalk.
"No need to apologize," says its owner, dryly. Pin Stripes is smirking. I'll bet he drives to work on Dundas St. E.
"Drivers won't share the road," Nappy says.
"Everyone's in such a goddamn hurry. They're thinking about the mortgage, their idiot kid, their idiot boss, the guy behind them, the guy who cut them off four miles back.
"Then they see a cyclist going by them, weaving in and out, making better time than them ..."
Before long: "Infernal cyclists. Get 'em off the road!"
Hang on, hang on. "Under the Highway Traffic Act, bicycles have as much right to be on the road as cars do," says Steve Brearton, 37. He is an envoy from ARC, Advocacy for Respect for Cyclists.
He insists he, ARC and the cycle crowd at large don't hate drivers. Sure, there are regular rallies called Critical Mass, where cyclists swarm like angry bees. But the Toronto chapter is tame. In San Francisco, Critical Mass riders spit on and hurl urine bottles at motorists.
Okay, you don't hate us, Steve. But you're no friend.
"You'll continue to lose by sheer volume," he says. He does not have a licence, though his wife drives a station wagon.
"Motorists cannot be accommodated anymore. Part of the city strategy, and we agree, is to make it more and more unpleasant to drive, partly by doing nothing."
Heel. Take transit. (From Markham and Kingston Rd.?)
So the pro-car notion of widening the DVP draws hysterical laughter from the City Hall bicycle faction.
So bike lanes grow like weeds. So diamond lanes snarl traffic on Eglinton and elsewhere and cause normally law-abiding commuters to turn to crime, glancing around for the cops.
So City Hall strangles Dundas St.
Of course, cyclists are casualties, too. Steve Brearton broke his collarbone on a passenger door.
Everyone at Breadspreads has scars. Rick Hoffele, 40. Broken femur. Hit 30, 40 times in two decades as a bike courier. Leah Hollinsworth, 24, broke three ribs and a car door mirror when a woman turned in front of her.
A door prize broke Dennis "Pops" Keena's collarbone. "A door prize is a baptism in this business. You get it over with and you never ride the same again."
Pops, 46, was a truck driver and an exterminator before he got into the courier trade.
Funny thing: Couriers see a pecking order in the streets of Toronto. Cars, motorcycles, bike couriers, recreational cyclists, skateboarders/Rollerbladers, pedestrians ...
Rickshaw pullers. Bike couriers say they don't go fast enough and they get in people's way.
Mmm. You hear that a lot from drivers these days, though not about rickshaw pullers.