MyBikeLane

It is not your bike lane. You share the bike lane with other motorists. There is a white line, which means it is legal to cross over it. What the cabbie doing is just and legal. After all, he is making a living by driving people who refused to drive, which is pro green way of living. If there are no cabs, many people will choose to drive their own cars.

I have talked to many cab drivers and they told me that it is part of their training to share the road with cyclists.

What do you expect a cab driver should do when someone flags down? Avoid the bike lane and stop in the middle of the road? If yes, and the door opens, the passenger and the cyclist would most likely clash. Safest option is the driver to pull in to the bike lane, pick up the customer and move when it is safe to do so. In the meantime, if there is a cyclist behind the cab, wait till the cab moves(less than a minute), or just pass over the cab when it is safe to do so.

Very simple. Taking pictures and listing plate numbers does what?

Does he look like he's picking anyone up? No, he was PARKING there to go pick up a coffee at Starbucks. Is that part of his job? No. Could he have parked elsewhere? Yes, there is a parking lot behind Starbucks (about 10 feet behind where he parked). Not only that, across the street there is parking ALL ALONG Beverley.

So, he had lots of choices. I was on my bike. What choice did he leave me but to have to swerve out onto the roadway? Should I have waited there 10 minutes while this guy did personal business, like you so foolishly suggest?

And, to answer your question, taking pictures of people parked illegally in a bike lane shows exactly how much people like this care about everyone else on the road. Which is not at all, obviously.

I have seen cabdrivers in Tim Hortons, but not in Starbucks. This guy could be going into the store to pick up a delivery package. Stores use cab companies to courier their merchandise. Also, sometimes, cabdrivers respond to customer calling from a store. Part of driver duties is to go inside the store and get his/her customer. This is so, especially, when the customer is a special need customer(blind for example).

You seem to be careless of all the posibilities that this guy is doing a service. How much time do you need to pass over a non-moving vehicle?

If you honestly think that you need 10 minutes to pass a non-moving car, you shouldn't be riding.

No one suggested that you need 10 minutes.

If everything else were a lot better I think cyclists would be more sympathetic to more genuine bike lane bloackages. But reality is, bike lanes can make riding a bicycle more dangerous.

And a position I have maintained in order to be sympathetic to all parties is that it is unfortunate that solutions to problems are easier to implement then implementing it correctly in the first place.

The car vs bicycle vs pedestrian relationships are certainly unfortunate ones in deed that tend to bring out the worst in people.

It is unfortunate that our city was built for cars because all other forms of transportation do and and should have equal ability to move.

A few times I have considered maybe it would be best for bicycles to occupy the left hand side of the lanes opposed to the right seems to me it would solve a lot of things

"Share the bike lane with 'other motorists'"?
#1- a cyclist is not generally called a "motorist", and
#2- 'motorists' have no business being in a bike lane at any time. I would consider emergency services the only exception to that rule. Cities that are serious about cycling learned quite a while ago that there needs to be a physical barrier to prevent people from blocking bike lanes. Depending on individual judgement is usually a mistake.