Ward 19: Trinity-Spadina

Monday Aug 13 6:30-8PM

Present: Herb, Rob, Sheryl, Tristan, Dave (ward19)
Liz, Bruce, Brian, Ellen (Ward 18) and Joey ( Ward 13/14)

Herb: There is a Joint 19/20/27/28 meeting Sept 19 CSI 215 Spadina 4th floor, to look at core issues such as John Street.

Our next Joint 18/19 meeting will be Sept 10, 6pm at CSI 720 Bathurst. We may hold part of the meeting in separate ward groups. If you come just before 6pm you will still have a chance of getting food and coffee from CSI Coffee Pub. (They are also getting a liquor license soon).

Rob: Cycle Toronto board is looking at making it easier for people to sign up as members during events, and ways remind members to renew their membership, so we don't lose them. We are currently at ca. 2300 members.

Rob: Board started the Advocacy Committee and currently Herb from Ward 19 has been invited to join.

Ellen: Sterling- Dundas intersection improvement proposal community meeting was well attended. The City is looking at the comments and will discuss the plan at the public works committee next month. It will then go before council hopefully in the fall, and if approved changes will be implemented in 2013.

Rob: Contra-flow lane letter has been sent to MPP Di Novo. The Advocacy Ctte will work on how to expand it as a campaign.

Herb: Ward 19 Group did a Bike Parking survey that covered all the commercial streets in Ward 19. Together with Michal Hay, from Mike Layton's office, Herb and Jared are putting together a budget proposal for more city wide bicycle parking. This will happen in September. Ward 19 is also presenting staff from Street Furniture and Cycling with a list of the bike corrals. There will still be future work to send post and ring priorities and ensure that the City is keeping up with our requests.

David made nice bussines-cards for the ward 19 Group, to hand out at events. We made some minor adjustments and he'll share update for next meeting.

Herb: Continuing with Ideas for future campaigns (Ward 19 or 18):

• Contact businesses (7-Eleven, Beer Store, etc) to improve their bike parking
• Lobby to make Toronto streets with streetcar-tracks safer for cycling.
• Think of ways to increase membership
• link an active ward group / friendly councillor with a ward group / hostile councillor

Other ideas:

• Invite Fiona (volunteer coordinator of CycleTO) to next meeting.

Hi Ward 19,

It's been fun setting up our Trinity Bellwoods Farmers Market booth this summer, with much help from Sheryl and Connor.  So far we've signed up around 10 Cycle Toronto members and added dozens to the mailing list.

http://www.tbfm.ca/

Unfortunately I'm out of town for a week, from tomorrow until late next Tuesday (August 7th).  I can't set up our next Market date on the 7th.  Anyone feel like taking charge for one week?

Details:

1. The market coordinator, Caroyln Wong, is expecting us on the 7th. Her contact info is on the TBFM webpage.
2. Jared Kolb (of Cycle Toronto) needs to be contacted on Friday to prepare a bag-o-swag and banner ready for us to pickup at the Centre for Social Innovation Annex (Bathurst) the day before (or day of)
3. We need to supply our own table.  Mine will be locked in my garage, I probably can't supply it.
4. Market setup is at 3:45pm (market starts at 4) and it runs until 8pm.  The hours has shifted 1 hour later than before.
5. The bag-o-swag and membership/mailing list forms need to be returned to Jared the next day.

That's it!  I'll be gone as of tomorrow, sorry for leaving this in the lurch!

So far in our bike parking survey we've covered Dundas West, parts of King West, Bathurst and Lakeshore. We have found a number of places which we perceived to be areas of high need for secure bike parking. We are working on a beta site to gather all the spots.

A number of these places are on private property, we particularly noted the condos along Lakeshore where every private bike stand was filled to overflowing. At one point all the post and rings were filled during a non-peak time which suggested that condo residents were using the temporary parking for their permanent parking needs.

We also found that since the reconstruction of Dundas West that there are fewer post and rings than previously. Some of this has been replaced with some artistic rings on side streets but there still seems to be many cyclists locking up to trees, gas meters, signs and other stationary objects.

The same was true with King Street West where the few blocks immediately west of Bathurst have almost no bike parking on the southside despite the sidewalk and boulevard being very wide. We found a number of spots that would be great spots for bike corrals. We will be suggesting these key spots to Councillor Layton since Street Furniture staff are investigating locations for bike corrals.

In our next survey we will try to cover the rest of the ward. We have two aims: to scout out the highest need areas, and to gather enough bike parking requests to shame City Hall into making bike parking a priority.

Street Furniture is only installing 500 post and rings this year, which we feel is way below the requirements. In previous years the City has installed about 1000 post and rings per year, so we may find that bike parking will get much worse before they get better unless we can do something about it.

This meeting will be an opportunity for anyone who's interested to come and discuss the modifications to the Dundas - Sterling intersection Transportation Services is recommending.   At the meeting, there will be information about changes we're recommending for installation asap.  We will also be discussing some longer term work that would impact the intersection (and the general area) when the next phase of the West Toronto Railpath is constructed.St. Helen's Church (1680 Dundas Street West - East of Lansdowne Ave.)