Transportation - Cycling

Toronto Cycling

June 2005

... the saga continues ...

This year's Toronto Bike Week, May 30 to June 12, was launched with a lot of political hype in support of cycling as a sustainable mode of transportation, yet bicycle lanes have been a bone of contention for decades.

Just last month, May 19, the Toronto City Council, voted on narrowing bike lanes on a proposed street to less than the safety requirements allowed by the Transportation Association of Canada. TAC recommends that bike lanes be between 2 metres wide, with a minimum 1.5 metres. This sub-standard approval at the Council was given in fact by the same councillors, including our rhetorical Mayor, who offered cyclists a fanfare of speeches on the 1st day of Bike Week.

Interestingly, this type of rhetoric was proven empty by the very welcomed report by John Pucher and Ralph Buehler of New Jersey's Rutgers University, evaluating cycling programs in Canadian Cities. They reported that Toronto's cycling infrastructure lags behind other Canadian cities by far. It is literally stuck in traffic. Hopefully, this critical report will put our politicians on the defensive to spring into positive action. Restrictions to driving were never implemented here; in fact the opposite occured and congestion became a way of life. A life drastically compromised of health and quality.

It is high time we put a squeeze on cars.

The width of a car lane that takes the space of 1.1/2 car, should be the space to narrow down instead of endangering cyclists' lives in narrowed bike lanes. It is time for our politicians to show leadership and sincerity in this continuous clash and cease to accommodate the ever unsustainable automobile that has devoured and degraded our public space.