Road design, safety and Vision Zero

[danbrotherston]

So it looks like a large group of cycling advocates stopped traffic on Lakeshore Blvd in Toronto:

https://twitter.com/samwightt/status/157...8228249600

I see this in the same vein as the tire deflators campaign. (Both are primarily an inconvenience only and delay people collectively about the same order of magnitude of time).

But this is the kind of thing I think we are going to start seeing more of. I have no surprise to see it happen in Toronto given the Mayor and Police abhorrent campaign of harassment and oppression of cyclists.

And of course, no surprise, but there are clear parallels to the protests in Amsterdam in the 70s.

I actually consider this much more appropriate than the deflators. It’s an actual protest, with people congregating on the scene and making their demands known, rather than simply doing what is indistinguishable from random mischief other than the leaflets left behind. Also, if any one protester goes too far, they can be admonished by their fellow protesters or, if necessary, arrested; whereas if a tire deflator decides they’re not doing enough and smashes a window, it’s a lot harder for their compatriots to tell them they’ve crossed the line.

My only concern is that they don’t seem to be leaving any way for the stopped drivers to leave. If the car in front, for example, is just stuck there for hours (days? weeks?) I can’t agree with that. Street closing protests need to open a lane to allow stopped cars to leave. Better yet, block the entrance to a road segment, not the exit. It will cause traffic chaos, but not effectively imprison some people.

On the second paragraph...they were not stopped for weeks, nor days, nor even hours...it was all of a few minutes. But even if it was hours, this kind of thing happens all the time with car crashes. If they did block it for hours (never mind days or weeks) and drivers somehow miraculously did not choose to just murder a couple dozen cyclists instead of be delayed, they would have been able to turn around and reverse out, as would happen if there was a crash closing a road for an extended period.

Honestly...I don't know what to make of this paragraph, to me it sounds like fear mongering claiming people were "imprisoned". the only thing they were imprisoned by are their cars.

On the first, I'm not surprised you feel this way, but I'm rather surprised by the reasoning you give. I find it to be rather strange reasoning...protests do not have to look a certain way. I'll admit the reasoning for protests looking a different way is usually a result of an oppressive government that limits public gatherings, but it doesn't mean that different kinds of protests aren't legitimate protests.

We see in this country, constant leaflets and advertising against abortion, and I feel that's a legitimate form of protest...I don't agree with the message of course, but I don't think it's not protest.

I also disagree with the assertion that it's easier to control a large protest. It's far easier to control a smaller group of people committing targeted mischief outside of view than it is to control a large crowd of people. Very simply, US police are very effective at encouraging violence in protests for example by kettling the crowd. There's nothing the organizers can do to stop that. A group of people cornered and threatened in a high intensity dynamic situation will respond exactly as any animal would.

The reason I would expect you to see it differently, is because of the North American toxic combination of ownership and vehicle identity. While the effect, I believe is identical (delaying people collectively about the same amount of time), the tyre deflators are both more targeted (a few SUV drivers are delayed a lot of time individually, rather than everyone in a car delayed only a dozen minutes or so), and they do so in a way that probably most people will feel more violated in...a lot of people fly off the handle at the idea of someone touching their car. You know, despite it being outside and around people.