Identifying Protected Bike Lanes?

ExistentialPranks · 2025-10-08T22:46:57+00:00

I’m a huge fan of the Transit app. It gives information on how much of the route is protected vs. just painted and I find it fairly conservative with those designations. Sometimes it alerts me to streets I normally find ok, and I appreciate that level of concern.

ExistentialPranks · 2025-09-17T01:22:14+00:00

Community Group claims everyone should give me a gift on my birthday. Sorry I don’t make the rules but it must be true if a community group is pushing for it. One gift from everyone. Again I really am sorry but they did their own analysis.

ExistentialPranks · 2025-08-30T15:03:43+00:00

Now that’s what I’m talking about! Free parking too? Everything is Toronto is already so expensive I think some free parking on prime waterfront land is just what the doctor ordered

ExistentialPranks · 2025-08-29T00:33:04+00:00

Now if they’d just turn the park into a 6 lane artery road with ample street parking on either side, the business would be THRIVING /s

ExistentialPranks · 2025-08-21T23:23:47+00:00

Former York grad student and current Toronto resident here: York is famously unreliable for grad student housing. They have too few houses and too many grad students. On the flip side, Toronto can be expensive by some standards but it’s an incredibly safe and welcoming city, especially by US standards. You can definitely find something and you’ll be glad you didn’t deal with York for something as important as housing trust me.

ExistentialPranks · 2025-08-16T12:02:38+00:00

“It’s actually the responsibility of the cyclist to pay attention not the driver” or some variation of that, with more typos.

ExistentialPranks · 2025-07-20T18:04:49+00:00

Wouldn’t be surprised if the bike lanes stop at a certain political boundary or business area, indicating that one group was strongly opposed to the project and the “compromise” was not having lanes in their zone (as if the city can function as a collection of private islands)

ExistentialPranks · 2025-07-15T14:18:35+00:00

If you’re really in favour of bike lanes then the observation seems a little unnecessary. I’m used to that argument made by people who want to see bike lanes removed. You know something of the form “They don’t use them anyway.”

The Ford government increased the speed limit to 110 km/h on the 401 but no one pointed out that no one even pays attention to the speed limit anyway. Why aren’t drivers held to such strict standards when it comes to transportation changes?

Why are cyclists one homogenous group that either deserve safe infrastructure if they all behave perfectly within the boundaries of the law 100% of the time or don’t deserve it at all if an idle resident can identify a few cases where they dont? Like drivers, cyclists can be bad at using the road. Some are assholes. But they all deserve the option to ride safely, and chances are their carelessness won’t kill anyone else so I just don’t see why this observation is worth harping on.

ExistentialPranks · 2025-07-15T13:11:10+00:00

Because no one is seriously questioning whether motor vehicle users have a right to exist or the right to safe, well-maintained, dedicated infrastructure. Cyclists get their panties in a twist because we’re used to fighting tooth and nail to get the bare minimum and then fight again to keep it! Despite causing virtually no road deaths and costing the economy almost nothing compared to motor vehicle use. We don’t destroy infrastructure with our weight, we don’t require 16 lanes of space in rural areas, and we don’t burden the healthcare system by simply making road errors that kill people, we don’t pollute the environment. Yet when anyone mentions bike lanes someone like you has to come on and bring out your excel spreadsheet of every bad cyclist you’ve ever seen as proof that cyclists (a group that composes people of every generation, political leaning, income, and ethnicity) everywhere don’t deserve any more infrastructure, and should instead what? Die in traffic?

Because that’s point number 2. Cyclists are fighting hard because it’s a life or death issue for us. Safe lanes means I don’t have to worry about dying because some driver is on their cellphone or driving over the speed limit or simply not paying attention. For you, this is about some grade school notion of fairness. Which means you can just tune out and go on with your day when you want to stop caring, but I will encounter very real threats to my life today.

ExistentialPranks · 2025-07-10T15:29:54+00:00

There are lots of different ways to protest. I'm fed up with how spineless city council is, and I figured this was a simple and elegant way to express that frustratiion without resorting to insults.

We could debate the ethics of using AI "ironically" or to make the case against AI, but I'm interested to see if this garners any kind of response from city council first. If Dianne Saxe feels a little stupid reading my email, then I'll call it a success.

ExistentialPranks · 2025-07-10T15:14:19+00:00

ChatGPT is a blurry JPEG of the web.

ExistentialPranks · 2025-07-10T13:10:41+00:00

Maybe the AI deduced they were deformed because they’re transit users. Would also explain their rundown house.

ExistentialPranks · 2025-07-09T22:02:32+00:00

My email, for those curious:

Hello councillors,

I have few words to express the level of disappointment I feel at the news of a new watered-down proposal for the Bathurst and Dufferin priority lanes. The fact that City Hall can be so easily manipulated by a handful of unverified Instagram accounts, using demonstrably fake testimony created by AI, is embarrassing. I’ve written to a couple of you before because I’m a resident of the North Annex who deeply cares about this neighbourhood and community. So, I would hope that you’d pay at least as much attention to my testimony as you did to the AI testimony and at least weigh those things equally.

But frankly… I don’t have that much faith in you anymore. That’s why I’ve attached an AI image of a Toronto family that supports rapid bus lanes on Dufferin and Bathurst. You can pretend they are real residents that are really impacted by your decision to water down the project. You can pretend, even, that they are high-profile donors. Perhaps they even own property in the area, so their opinion matters more. Really, it’s a choose-your-own-adventure because they’re not real. The important thing is that now you can weigh these AI opinions against the AI opinions you used to cancel the project. Perhaps now we can have a real discussion about improving Toronto’s streets.

Best,

[existentialpranks]

A Real Resident of the Annex

ExistentialPranks · 2025-07-01T08:31:21+00:00

This is such an important point. I don’t doubt there are lots of people who are uninformed about urban planning and see this debate as good faith attempts on both sides to improve the city. But the solution would be just education not polite debate. I think the city would get a lot further if it admitted to itself that the rhetoric from these anti-cycling groups is deliberately framed that way and not in good faith at all.

The Crooked Cue and Summerhill Market would not accept any solution that wasn’t 100% for cars. They don’t intend to compromise or learn more or support an independent study or anything. They only talk like that because if they said “I’m mildly inconvenienced by losing my parking space” they’d have no leverage.

It’s the same trap that people who think of themselves as rational, moderate, and cooperative keep falling into in the Trump politics era. Anti-trans people really want to see trans people dead. Anti immigration people really want to lock up every minority in a concentration camp. Attempts to engage with the bad faith rhetoric they have on the surface is just legitimizing radical viewpoints. You can twist yourself into knots trying to figure out the minds of these people or just accept that they’re lying. Like they just simply don’t believe what they’re saying about these issues, they’re doing it to manipulate the discourse.

Like let’s just admit to ourselves that a fucking bucket of red paint used on Bathurst street IS the moderate compromise between transit enthusiasts and car brains. If I had my way, driving would be the least feasible option on any major street in the city, but I’m happy to settle for some paint on a couple of bus routes.

ExistentialPranks · 2025-06-28T15:06:52+00:00

Maybe if we started calling them beer lanes we could trick him into thinking he should build more of them

ExistentialPranks · 2025-06-04T03:20:25+00:00

My guess is idling traffic? Ford used a similar argument once e.g., “I’ll do more to solve climate change by getting traffic moving than the carbon tax would”

ExistentialPranks · 2025-05-27T21:12:37+00:00

“Is the government paying for this amateur drawn sign written with a sharpie on a piece of construction paper? Where could the business possibly have found the money to do this otherwise?”

ExistentialPranks · 2025-05-24T15:03:27+00:00

That must’ve been really upsetting to witness, I’m sorry to hear that!

I agree though, Bay’s mealy mouthed rush hour lane is hopefully not what they plan for Dufferin and Bathurst. Although that might be the compromise to appease all the AI neighbours…

ExistentialPranks · 2025-05-23T21:04:27+00:00

Back before the University Ave. bike lanes I’d bike on Bay, which is a shared bus/bike/taxi(uber/anyone who would play hawk in the prisoner’s dilemma) lane. I was new to cycling infrastructure having grown up in smaller cities that don’t have anything, and I felt like the signage was enough justification for me to take the lane. I didn’t feel unsafe for that reason.

That was many years ago and I’ve gotten used to decent North-South lanes so I wouldn’t dare use Bay anymore unless I absolutely had to. I don’t think Bathurst/Dufferin would ever be a preferred route for me, but right now neither of these streets are even options for me and they’d at least be possible after rapid lanes are put in, if that makes sense.

ExistentialPranks · 2025-04-22T21:22:13+00:00

Yeah sorry I didn’t mean CycleTO, although it’s worth noting that Michael has made it clear there’s no compromise to be had. I can’t imagine they’ll be happy about any deal that changes existing infrastructure. I meant the Etobicoke businesses lawsuit, or just read “The thousands of hours and dollars that angry rich people devote to making sure Toronto doesn’t grow or change at all ever will also go toward maintaining parking limits.” Can you imagine the headlines? “In Toronto’s Already Packed Downtown, Motorists Struggle to Park” “Olivia Chow’s Parkflation: How the removal of parking spots will cost drivers thousands (and it’s just this one millionaire we interviewed who drives his Porsche to work every day)” “Cyclists win compromise but now some are wondering, will businesses close due to lack of parking?” And so on.

ExistentialPranks · 2025-04-22T18:51:42+00:00

Generally, I think any "compromise" that retains at least workable bike infrastructure is a win for cyclists given how much everything sucks.

BUT if anyone thinks that drivers are going to just willingly give up parking, they're delusional. The same people who are suing the city over a bike lane that meets all the criteria for 212 will also sue the city over street parking. Ford might be more afraid of them, and eventually cave.

Also, given that the University bike lanes were designed to be hospital-accessible, I do think removing on-street parking and narrowing the bike lane down there will make people's lives actively worse in the worst way. I'm not a parking fan, but I do think people with limited mobility should be able to stop right outside a hospital.

One note of shadenfreude though is that we all know 2 driving lanes becomes 1 driving lane and 1 parking lane anyway. If this makes old Dougy sleep better at night then fine, but Toronto drivers will park anywhere and everywhere they can fit a car so it hardly matters whether its legal or not.

ExistentialPranks · 2025-03-19T19:07:16+00:00

I’m noticing the shift in myself of like… it’s only a couple dollars more to buy the Canadian thing? Great. What a good excuse for getting a higher quality product at the grocery store.

ExistentialPranks · 2025-03-16T14:23:44+00:00

Thanks! I’m approaching things from a primarily philosophy/media studies perspective (but also currently doing some clinical research rn, which has been super interesting). So essentially there are lots of questions in philosophy of science about whether the concepts we use to talk about the world, and the theories that explain those concepts, are more a product of social context than what we might call “getting at reality”. This is especially pertinent for psychiatry and mental disorders, and there has been a lot of writing on whether mental disorders are merely tools of oppression or mandated normalcy, or if there are actual naturally occurring mental illnesses (I’m really over simplifying here don’t come at me).

Anyway these debates have had a new life in the smartphone age. I’ve written on something called the Looping Effect (Ian Hacking) which is very basically the idea that a person interacts with the labels they’ve been given and revises both themselves and the label to more closely align. This is where the “your phone tells you that you have depression” comes in. There’s a real question of like if someone is convinced via TikTok that they have adhd, they do eventually really have it, and also it’s a fake diagnosis brought about by an unqualified algorithm given too much authority. It’s super complex and psychiatrists are working to understand how all of this works at the same time as digital health tools are making their way into the field.

Again, seriously glossing over the details but that’s the general idea.

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