City of Portland
Uncounted millions of Canadian kids and those around the world have grown up with the survival knowledge that streetcar tracks will take control of your bicycle and then usually hurl you to the pavement. Police records are replete with cases of fatalities related to injuries caused this way. But today, the CBC reports with wide-eyed wonderment on an academic study that says (um) streetcar tracks make cyclists fall down. Well then, that clinches it. More than a century of cries to “watch out for the tracks” and dangerous dipsy-doodling to skirt deadly rail switches were not just childhood imagination. Of course, things have gotten better for much of the world as the streetcar was replaced by more sensible transportation. In Toronto, however, streetcars are more important than almost anything. Human life, money, faster traffic — hey, into each life a little rain must fall, right? CBC
