Loser Lane

January 10, 2025 7:20 AM

"..there’s no beating the game, no cheat code or special technique — you always die." Toronto artist Marie LeBlanc Flanagan created a video game in response to Ontario Premier Doug Ford's plan to rip out three busy bike lanes out of the Toronto core.

You can play the game here.

posted by Kitteh (42 comments total)

Removing infrastructure is social murder
posted by eustatic at 7:31 AM on January 10 [16 favorites]

The hatred towards bikes and bike lanes is just one of those facets of right-wing culture that is so obviously self-defeating that it's baffling from the outside. Yes! I want to live in a more congested, noisier, and more polluted city! For no good reason! I hate having a decent environment!

I'm so stupid that I think adding more cars to the road will help with congestion!
posted by Kutsuwamushi at 7:40 AM on January 10 [21 favorites]

Here's where I say again: he may be the Premier of the entire province, but that motherfucker hates Toronto so much for not electing him mayor like his brother that he spends all his time punishing them (and by extension, everyone else who cycles) instead of actually giving a shit about anywhere else outside the GTA.
posted by Kitteh at 7:43 AM on January 10 [9 favorites]

The cruelty is the point
posted by Jon_Evil at 7:43 AM on January 10 [15 favorites]

Eh, the car dependency is the point. They hate the urban low-car lifestyle and they can't stand allowing it in "their" space. And "their" space has no boundaries — urban spaces must kneel before suburbanites' whims.

Also, Oh the Urbanity! reminded me that it's not just bike lanes. Also on the chopping block are Dutch-style protected intersections, like the ones at Bloor/St. George, installed too late to prevent a 58-year-old grandma from getting killed by a flatbed truck.
posted by daveliepmann at 7:56 AM on January 10 [6 favorites]

car brain convinces people that cyclists and pedestrians are the enemy
posted by BungaDunga at 7:58 AM on January 10 [5 favorites]

"Video games that can't be beaten" describes pretty much every arcade game released before the mid-80s, and quite a lot of them since. I used to tell my games students that Space Invaders onwards all had an embedded story, and it was "You die, and Earth dies with you." Eventual failure was designed in. Games like Missile Command, with its infamous THE END screen made it explicit.
posted by Hogshead at 8:10 AM on January 10 [3 favorites]

I'm pretty sure Superman, preferably slightly unhinged Silver Age Superman, does not approve of people who say "Loser Lane".
posted by Ashenmote at 8:11 AM on January 10

Video games that can't be beaten" describes pretty much every arcade game released before the mid-80s,

Video games in the 80's were endurance exercises. Like, "how far can you run?" Given infinite energy and no muscle fatigue and magic, one could potentially run forever! Except if it were a video game, there would be progressively steeper hills and worse weather and less pedestrian infrastructure and more rabid dogs etc. And even those games that could be beaten, like Double Dragon, Bubble Bobble et al, got so ridiculously difficult and required so many quarters that they were as good as unbeatable.
posted by grumpybear69 at 8:38 AM on January 10

Arkanoid (1986) had a finish. It was possible to win.
posted by Nancy Lebovitz at 8:50 AM on January 10 [2 favorites]

How about a video game where you beat up doug ford, ala Mortal Kombat. I can think of a few other shitty white men to put in there also.
posted by seanmpuckett at 9:02 AM on January 10 [3 favorites]

Arkanoid (1986) had a finish. It was possible to win.

I'd be funny if the ending made you feel bad. Congratulations Mario, you rescued the princess but you put the walking mushroom population on the brink of extinction. Your next task is to save their species. Good luck. The ability to run fast and spit fire will not help you here.
posted by The_Vegetables at 9:03 AM on January 10 [1 favorite]

The removal of bike lanes isn't restricted to Toronto, they're 'under review' everywhere.

Here in the Hammer, one of the bike lanes on the chopping block is the one that leads to the GO station. Because why would people need a bike lane connecting to a transit hub?

When that lane was installed, it meant taking out a drop-off lane on the station side of the street, and moving it to the other side of the street, and drivers just lost their fucking minds over it. The city has installed a fancy new traffic counter to count all the bikes using the lane every day, and my strong suspicion is that the counter will be called on to show the opposite, that the bike lane isn't being used as much as a third lane for cars would be.

It's maddening.
posted by Capt. Renault at 9:23 AM on January 10 [4 favorites]

(I should add -- moving the drop-off lane to the other side of the street now means that cars occasionally drive in the separated bike lane to drop people off on their preferred side.)
posted by Capt. Renault at 9:27 AM on January 10 [1 favorite]

Capt. Renault, car-owning Kingstonians are thrilled about this development as somehow cyclists are responsible for the loss of 12 inches of curb down Division Street. (Our bike lanes are sad and laughable but at least we have them...for now.)
posted by Kitteh at 9:31 AM on January 10 [2 favorites]

Eh, the car dependency is the point. They hate the urban low-car lifestyle and they can't stand allowing it in "their" space.

It’s politically self-reinforcing: driving keeps you from interacting with strangers on a personal level, building anger and fear of others, and it keeps you listening to media where the right-wing money holds sway.
posted by adamsc at 9:45 AM on January 10 [12 favorites]

Ironic that Ford was in an automobile accident a couple days ago. I don't wish injury on anyone, but as someone who was injured hit by a car on my bike, it has given me some perspective on the effects of cars that I might not otherwise have.
posted by They sucked his brains out! at 9:48 AM on January 10 [2 favorites]

On a recent November morning, both lanes of a downtown stretch of Bloor Street were clogged with passenger vehicles while a string of bikes and electric mopeds sped by in the cycle lane. That evening, there was a similar scene: cyclists moved freely while drivers fought for inches.

I want to highlight this from the The Guardian article. Consider this scene - there's one bicycle lane and two car lines, and perhaps four bikes are zipping by for every two cars.

If you remove the bike lane to add a third car lane, maybe you get 50% more cars. So now you have zero bikes, and three cars. Which _halves_ the number of people that can commute on that street!
posted by LSK at 10:09 AM on January 10 [4 favorites]

The city's worse for everyone, but at least you made the hippies and minorities suffer.
posted by subdee at 10:27 AM on January 10 [4 favorites]

As far as I know, they aren't removing any bike lanes in Ottawa, probably because Ottawa removes them itself every winter by using them as snow storage lanes.
posted by jacquilynne at 10:34 AM on January 10 [1 favorite]

Suburban living is designed to vampire off urban living.

Bike lanes are urban infrastructure that isn't useful to suburbanites. Walkable communities is urban infrastructure that isn't useful to suburbanites. All urban infrastructure must serve suburbanites, even if the suburbanites don't pay for it, because the cheap/free access to urban infrastructure and the culture and services and jobs it provides is what makes the sururban life quality (and land value) as high as it is.

Suburbia vampires by producing uncompensated traffic in urban areas, by having minimal services and infrastructure (how many homeless shelters? hospitals? government buildings? etc) and relying on "you are near the city" to provide for the gap.
posted by NotAYakk at 10:39 AM on January 10 [10 favorites]

can think of a few other shitty white men to put in there also

Combine it with the programming behind the anime girl prison allowing customizing the target and you could make some serious money.
posted by Mitheral at 10:47 AM on January 10

Suburban living is designed to vampire off urban living.

One of the ways I describe people who move into urban areas from the suburbs is that they want Urban Lite, not Urban Life. They want all the cool stuff they see but they want it and the surrounding areas these places are located in to be non-threatening.
posted by Kitteh at 10:58 AM on January 10

I think the danger of bike riding in Toronto is overblown, and car drivers are generally nice people trying to do their best in a challenging traffic environment.
posted by Flashman at 11:08 AM on January 10

And which auto-driver has not felt the temptation, in the power of the motor, to run over the vermin of the street – passersby, children, bicyclists? In the movements which machines demand from their operators, lies already that which is violent, crashing, propulsively unceasing in Fascist mistreatment.

-Adorno
posted by doctornemo at 11:32 AM on January 10 [4 favorites]

6 cyclists and 24 pedestrians were killed in traffic collisions in Toronto in 2024. 22 cyclists and 76 pedestrians were seriously injured.
posted by Gerald Bostock at 11:52 AM on January 10 [1 favorite]

I think the danger of bike riding in Toronto is overblown, and car drivers are generally nice people trying to do their best in a challenging traffic environment.

It varies a lot by neighbourhood but overall that was my experience living in the Beaches.

In Scarborough it used to be worth your life to bike on roads like Lawrence Ave E but interestingly that is shifting a lot. E-bikes, bicycle food delivery, the commitment of the Meadoway and the red bike/bus lanes are all contributing a lot and it's improving.
posted by warriorqueen at 11:54 AM on January 10 [1 favorite]

I think the danger of bike riding in Toronto is overblown, and car drivers are generally nice people trying to do their best in a challenging traffic environment.

Yeah, I live in the suburbs (North York) and commute to Scarborough. I've adjusted my route over time so that I'm on the main roads as little as possible but whenever I bike downtown it feels like easy mode for me because all the cars are moving so slowly anyway. On the other end when I go up to Markham or Richmond Hill where everyone drives faster I really feel like I'm playing with my life, but I don't ride up there very often.

I wouldn't be surprised if a large segment of bikers on Bloor, Yonge, and any other city street that ends up losing a bike lane won't just take the whole lane, thereby slowing cars down even more. That's what I'd do anway.
posted by any portmanteau in a storm at 12:03 PM on January 10 [1 favorite]

Drivers, repeat after me: You aren't stuck in traffic. You ARE traffic.

Want less gridlock? Drive less. Carpool more. 99% of the time I'm in slow-moving traffic I can't help but notice how many cars are empty except for the driver (and I'm American, so pretty much every vehicle around me is capable of holding 5+ passengers)
posted by caution live frogs at 12:11 PM on January 10 [3 favorites]

I was driving on Queen Street in the Parkdale neighbourhood this past summer and it was nerve-wracking because of all the cyclists who didn't have a bike lane to ride in. They rode between the cars parked on the side of the road and the line of very slow-moving cars. I sure wished that there was a bike lane there because I really don't want to hurt anybody by running into them or them hitting me.

Not wanting bike lanes and/or removing them is the equivalent of being resistant to change, resistance to "otherness", resistance to doing things differently from how they used to be done, and get-off-my-grass behaviour.
posted by ashbury at 12:24 PM on January 10 [1 favorite]

Cities should be non-threatening, our designed environments should be generally, but “suitable for distracted driving and no noncommercial interaction” is a terrible definition of non-threatening.

Doesn’t work when suburbanites move to rural areas either.
posted by clew at 12:34 PM on January 10

I wouldn't be surprised if a large segment of bikers on Bloor, Yonge, and any other city street that ends up losing a bike lane won't just take the whole lane, thereby slowing cars down even more. That's what I'd do anway.

Certainly that's what you'll see. But there are lots of people who will use a bike lane that won't embrace vehicular cycling. The people who won't cycle like that become traffic. IE I have no problem getting out there and taking a lane but I'm not going to bike there with my 10 year nephew.
posted by Mitheral at 1:45 PM on January 10 [3 favorites]

"Want less gridlock? Drive less. Carpool more. 99% of the time I'm in slow-moving traffic I can't help but notice how many cars are empty except for the driver (and I'm American, so pretty much every vehicle around me is capable of holding 5+ passengers)"

It can get worse: Self driving taxis, where half the time there are zero passengers.
posted by chromecow at 1:57 PM on January 10 [6 favorites]

I think the danger of bike riding in Toronto is overblown

You're wrong three times over on this.

First, statistically, people in cars kill a whole lot of people outside of cars. I'm open to specific citations if you want to disagree.
Second, to the extent that the danger is in fact overstated, that's missing the point: people riding bikes deserve pleasant, safe-feeling bike infrastructure in the same sense that they deserve nice sidewalks, and it's fairly high up on the list of dick moves to say that they should suck it up.
Third, you're missing another point: cars are by far the most space-inefficient ways to move people. In urban centers where space is at a premium (as well as air quality, noise, yadda yadda), it's a fool's errand to prioritize a car lane over high-quality installed networks like we're talking about.

The last two overlap: even to the extent that you are a bad person who only cares about people in cars, you should want to build attractive, safe, safe-feeling bike lanes because you should want more people to ride bikes so they don't drive their cars and slow all the cars down.
posted by daveliepmann at 2:14 PM on January 10 [7 favorites]

I think the danger of bike riding in Toronto is overblown, and car drivers are generally nice people trying to do their best in a challenging traffic environment.

Then you don’t bike in Toronto.
posted by mhoye at 2:37 PM on January 10 [5 favorites]

Your life or their lifestyle — which will they choose to sacrifice?
posted by jamjam at 3:27 PM on January 10 [1 favorite]

On a recent November morning, both lanes of a downtown stretch of Bloor Street were clogged with passenger vehicles while a string of bikes and electric mopeds sped by in the cycle lane. That evening, there was a similar scene: cyclists moved freely while drivers fought for inches.

I'm 100% certain these days that the frustration felt by the drivers watching others have a better time in an activity they've decided is a bad idea contributes to the overall hatred felt by many drivers, especially ones who then become town planners, that drives these decisions. I don't drive at all and the sheer fury in the faces of people stuck in gridlock while I, on foot, am making better time up the footpath can't be stated. If they get rid of us they don't have to reconsider their position that cars are better or the suburbs are better or whatever and can instead stew in peace.
posted by Jilder at 5:22 PM on January 10 [1 favorite]

This is sadopopulism combined with anger redirection. Driving in a car traffic jam creates anger which is projected onto low-status safe targets. It's a zero sum mindset.
posted by anthill at 5:48 PM on January 10 [1 favorite]

I had a glorious layover in Toronto in summer. Walked all over, had the best vegan meal of my life, was handed a free, cold, non alcoholic beer by the big needle thingy, and spent an hour each way in traffic to and from the hotel which wasn’t that far out. If there was a bikeshare from the hotel I would have been much happier - don't take away the joy I witnessed on those bikes zipping past!
posted by drowsy at 7:37 PM on January 10 [1 favorite]

car brain convinces people that cyclists and pedestrians are the enemy

I'm required to yield to them! It adds several seconds to my trip I have to spend sitting in my car's comfortable seat and wonderful climate control. Intolerable!

It's the same thing that made people bonkers about being required to wear a mask to enter a building.

I've never had a problem yielding to pedestrians and bikes but after getting into cycling and putting on a lot of miles on my bikes I am SO MUCH more cautious now.

Between people being inattentive generally and others being assholes behind the wheel I've rarely felt more vulnerable on the road.
posted by VTX at 10:12 PM on January 11 [1 favorite]

I just think this emphasis on the danger of cycling, this collective back-slapping that to just to get on the saddle in Toronto is a heroic act of defiance, that 'all the cars are trying to kill me', is negative and counterproductive: it discourages the bike-curious, parents from letting their kids ride bikes, partners from letting their partners ride to work. Of course there is some objective danger to being in traffic, just as there is when you're driving or walking. Some skill and caution is required - don't ride in the door zone, don't ride where there isn't enough room for you and a speeding car to pass (i.e. Jarvis, Dupont), ride like you're invisible, don't assume that technically having the right of way means you aren't going to get squashed by a right-turning dump truck - bike lanes are great, I use them when I can, but they don't protect cyclists from cars and trucks at intersections, where most accidents happen.
I think a lot about a woman I heard interviewed on the CBC afternoon show about the danger of cycling in Toronto, who said she'd only started riding a year ago but had already been doored 6 times.
I moved away a couple of years ago, but my last bike commute from the upper Beaches was 26km round-trip (bliss!), before that I was riding to work from Cabbagetown and then Seaton Village year-round because the TTC option would have taken 3 times as long; before that I biked to work or school in Montreal, Calgary, Ottawa, London UK (Elephant & Castle roundabout, twice a day!), Oxford, Halifax. I got minorly right-hooked by a Magicwagon on Sherbrooke Street circa 1992 but apart from that I can't think of a single negative interaction with a driver. A little zen goes a long way. Look at how delivery riders deal with Toronto traffic; when they come across some dickhead parked in the bike lane, are they banging on his hood and calling Dave Shelnutt on speed dial? No, they just check that it's safe, ride around and carry on their way. Sooner or later he'll get the $400 fine.
posted by Flashman at 9:51 AM on January 12

I'm really glad you came back and clarified, Flashman. I couldn't tell whether you were a hate-filled driver or a high-confidence cyclist. I came in hot for my last comment so I just want to ask:

How many times have you ridden with a child, elderly person, or low-confidence rider in Toronto? I don't mean recreational rides, I mean getting somewhere with a kid in a cargo bike, a grandparent riding despite being a little wobbly, or a real scaredy-cat.
posted by daveliepmann at 10:41 AM on January 12