The Cup is Half Full

One man says the cup is half full. Another man says the cup is half empty. The Toronto Sun says Jarvis street is being “SQUEEZED” on today’s cover. I say Jarvis street is being widened; turning 1 car lane into 2 bike lanes. Torontoist’s Marc Lostracco sums it up nicely in this comment in his response to another reader’s comment on Lostracco’s article:

“As someone who lives, drives, and cycles on Jarvis, I couldn't disagree with you more—and I'm someone who benefits by using Jarvis as a car thoroughfare to get out of the city.

It's never a good thing to just keep expanding to accommodate an increase in cars (widening the DVP, for example, wouldn't decrease traffic—it would encourage more of it and become just as congested). As far as Jarvis is concerned, "choking" it won't push much traffic off of it because it will still remain the north-south artery that it currently is, and relatively underutilized streets like Church could handle it. The inconvenience of waiting a few more minutes in your car to get to your home in Rosedale or Moore Park is not a convincing enough argument, and the notion that cars must be accommodated above all else is offensive.

But traffic flow concerns aside, the bottom line is this: we should actively be trying to undo some of our past mistakes, as well as our current ones (not enough space allocated for bike lanes, for example), and as a resident of the area that Jarvis ruthlessly cuts though, I don't believe for a blinkin' second that people complaining about the additional commute could give a shit about the health of the neighbourhoods along the Jarvis route. Because they don't live there; they just wanna get home quickly. If the same sort of ugly and highly-trafficked street was merely suggested today through Rosedale in order to provide quicker access to growing neighbourhoods north of it, people would be storming the gates with torches and pitchforks.

The expansion of Jarvis was a tragic mistake that will never be restored, yet the removal of one car lane to make way for two bike lanes is so incredibly minor that I am baffled by why people are so opposed to it. From what I've seen, I can only chalk it up to selfishness.

As a cyclist who uses Jarvis all the time to get to the bike lanes on Gerrard, I can tell you that riding a bike down Jarvis is an exercise in terror, and considering that the curb lanes are used for parking and thus bikes have to take up the entire lane (which is their right anyway), you'd be amazed at how incensed some drivers can get when the cyclist in front of them makes them miss a green light).

And as a driver on Jarvis who hates sitting in traffic, I still kinda say, "so what?" We shouldn't be driving as much as we do anyway. I consider the infuriating rush hour traffic jams not the fault of poor urban planning, but rather because we like moving around by ourselves in big machines that take up a lot of space. Traffic jams suck, but that's what we get for being infatuated with personal automobiles. [Shrug]”

Cover Rating: NEUTRAL NEWS