Getting Around: Bikes

I think Toronto has done a good job making biking possible for commuting, fun, or exercise (at least with no snow – I’ll have to comment in the winter on how things look) since many of the main streets have bike lanes, there are places to chain your bike everywhere, and there are bike paths around the city.  The city’s website  is comprehensive providing a handy tool to plan your bike trip, information on taking your bike on public transit, as well as information on the new bike boxes intended to make lights safer for bikers.  

There are many places to rent bikes for the hour, day, or week if you don’t own one.  And, they are attempting to bring BIXI (sort of like Zipcar for bikes) to Toronto in the spring.  I’d love to see this happen; it I would be a great addition to the transportation options in the city.

However, the biking etiquette here is frighteningly similar to that in New York.  I don’t know how many times I almost got run down by a biker in NYC going the wrong way on a one way since of course I didn’t look the other way before crossing the street – because it was a ONE WAY!!  Man those people made me mad, and unfortunately it isn’t any different here.  Bikers in Toronto constantly ride the wrong way down one-way streets, and while they seem to be somewhat better than NY riders they also fail to obey traffic laws like stop signs.  When driving, the bike lanes are on your right so you need to be very careful when turning since the bikes will definitely keep going straight no matter what you do. It is a little scary to be driving when surrounded by the bikers, and I can imagine bikers feel even more so - I hope to get up the courage to give it a try next spring.