Exit, Pursued by a Bear

Bremner and Spadina: Still no luck for cyclists

UPDATE: April 13, 2005: The white dots have been removed from the roadway, and the eastbound green light/northbound advance green now seems to cycle automatically, which solves the problem.

Back in the spring of 2002, I wrote to the city about the Waiting for Godot-style traffic light at Bremner and Spadina: the eastbound light is triggered by a magnetic detector loop that doesn't detect bikes. If you sit on a bike in the eastbound lane of Bremner and wait for the light to change, you will wait essentially forever - or until a car comes along, activates the magnetic plate, or 'detector loop', buried in the street, and solves the problem for you. Takes a while to figure this out, though.

This is a pity, as well as being illegal - Bremner is the key to a low-pressure way for cyclists to get under the Gardiner.

Anyway, I didn't use the intersection again until this week, when I found myself, with a powerful sense of deja vu, watching two rivers of cars take turns using the road: Spadina north/south, Bremner westbound to Spadina southbound, Spadina north/south, Bremner westbound to Spadina southbound, and so on - with never a green light for me. I rolled back and forth over the detector strips, hopped on them, stamped on them, but still there was a permanently red light.

Eventually, a car came along and tripped the detector loop, and off we went under our green light.

So: I've updated the Web page I published about the Bremner/Spadina situation two and a half years ago.

It answers these questions: