From the mouth of Gil Penalosa

If we're running a bit late at Velo-city Global 2012, blame Gil Penalosa, the uber-enthusiastic urban planning consultant and cycling advocate from Toronto who turned two back-to-back presentations this morning into one inspiring injection of pro-cycling joy juice.

Lots from him:

The move among American cities to consider slower speed limits in residential areas (to 20 mpm -- roughly 32 km/h);

About Toronto: They are trying to do things right but aren't doing the right things;

"Each cyclist killed in a street with no protective bicycle lane is the government's fault."

He got the only standing "O" so far.

Comments

[Ryan]

I'm in full support of the reduction in speed limits to 30km/h.
I live on a residential road which connects two major roads. Many people use it as a shortcut and just race back and forth...What's worse is the road has no sidewalks and lots of kids walking/playing.

Also agree with what he said about the government.

[Evan Rosamond]

What does Gil mean when he says "Each cyclist killed in a street with no protective bicycle lane is the government's fault."?
Does he mean a bike lane "protected" by a curb between the bike lane and the motor lane? This might be OK in some places, but certainly not on every street.
When a curb like that is used, the bike lane has to be wide enough so that a bike can overtake another bike, since it can't use the lane to the left because of the curb.
The cost of installing these curbs on every street would be many millions, just for Toronto.
There would have to be a curb cut at every driveway, allowing motorists to get their right-hand wheels into the bike lane.
The curbs would also make it more difficult for cyclist to make a left turn. It's already hard enough, let's not make it worse.
Gil seems to forget that there are about 15 pedestrian deaths in Toronto for every cyclist death. Pedestrians already have a "protected" sidewalk, but it doesn't protect them very well. Most of the deaths happen at intersections where the curbs will not exists.
But sometimes the government can be blamed. In the case of Jenna Morrison, I would argue that the government should never have allowed 53-foot trailers, because they can not be safely driven around a right-hand turn between city streets if one of those streets is only 2 lanes wide.