The Lakeshore Boulevard Activeway is Real, and It’s Spectacular

Posted by Richard on Sunday, 5 July 2020

As soon as it was announced in May, I couldn't wait to bike the sections of Lakeshore Boulevard to cyclists, runners, walkers and others who want to exercise and stay physical distant. My position is: As long as the gyms are closed, the city needs to open up as much public space to move around as possible. I've gone every weekend it has been opened, missing only one day. (After I missed that day, I realized I wanted to go each day the road was open.) I even went on a day when I assumed it was open, but it was closed to active participants because the Gardiner "Expressway" was closed due to repairs.

I don't own a bike, mainly because I don't want to have to lock it up. Instead, I have a monthly membership with Toronto Bike Share. It's a 10-minute walk to the nearest bike share dock (more like the dock that's most convenient to depart from), and after that, it's about an hour of biking. That's from the time I take out my first bike share bike to the time I dock. My yearly membership gives me unlimited 30-minute rides, and as long as I dock at a station. Each day I go, I take a photo to memorialize a moment, add a tweet to the above thread, and I keep track of the rides through Strava. Some days I try to get a personal best, and some days I go for a leisurely ride. The days with a headwind are usually followed by days with a light breeze, so I don't let it demoralize me.

While I appreciate the branding of and the effort into SafewaysTO1, since it refers to roads that have reduced or no car traffic on them, I'm trying to make 'activeway' a thing. That's especially true of Lakeshore Boulevard.2 It hasn't caught on yet.

I still don't know what to make of people using motorized vehicles, like e-bikes and scooters. I guess they're getting some freedom on the open road and outside time, but I don't think that was the idea.

On my rides, I take along my $50 Anker speaker and play music as loud as it will go. Inspired by Roland, I use the Volumatic app to control my volume based on my velocity. As soon as I'm biking full speed, the speaker is at full volume, but when I slow down (such as at a stoplight), it turns the volume down to about 70%. It's especially nice for when I have to dock a bike, since the music still plays, meaning no pausing and unpausing, and no manually having to adjust the volume for nearby ears.

It has been my way to stay active, see the lake, and see other people, which reminds me that we're not locked down even if restrictions on large gatherings are still in place. I haven't yet ridden on the other sections that are open to active users, and that's something I hope to do by the end of summer. Toronto has recently entered Phase 2, meaning patios are open for service and we can get haircuts now. I'm not happy with how long it has taken to flatten the curve, and I think it could have been a lot flatter, but opening up streets to people on weekends has been such an inspired idea that I hope we learn from it, and I hope it can be made a permanent feature of summers in Toronto.

  1. I'm very fond of maps and mapping, but found, to my surprise, that I didn't find the SafewayTO map useful. It has spurred some thinking on how useful I find maps to begin with. I now have more questions than answers, like "What do I use maps for most?" and "What story is any particular map trying to tell me?" and "Is a map the best way to display this?" A map like the SafewayTO map would be very useful in an app like MapinHood and, don't worry, I told them so. ↩︎

  2. I prefer the spelling Lakeshore to the official Lake Shore. It feels like it should be one word rather than two. ↩︎