Bike Lanes: commentary for CBC Radio Ken Greenberg interview
With my provincial cycling advocacy hat on, I just returned from Velo City in Brussels -- a global cycling conference -- where the theme was "Re-Cycling Cities" and the message from virtually ever speaker from across the globe was that livable societies, livable communities are those which offer to their citizens -- who are ahead of their political leaders on this by the way -- a choice of transportation mode. Multi-modal transportation is now, and it is the way of the future, not just in cities in Europe but around the globe.
Our love affair with the automobile -- and I'm not anti-car by the way -- has led to a systematic under investment in alternative transportation and we are all paying for it now. Worse, we're playing catch up with jurisdictions south of the border, and around the globe who have legislative constructs, funding and political champions. And we have none of those at the provincial and federal levels.
And it is going to harm our competitiveness -- if it hasn't already. Supporting bikes lowers congestion, improves productivity, health outcomes (especially in our children where obesity is epidemic according to the Ontario Medical Association) lowers pollution, helps with road maintenance, is cheap and its faster.
Yet why are our politicians lacking the courage to make these decisions? One of the reasons for this is that we lack data which makes the connection between the economic, health and anti-congestion benefits of cycling which means that the debate is not grounded in sound, evidence-based thinking. Consequently, we get irrational debates -- and even worse, cycling is used as a political football as it is currently at Toronto City Hall. The economic benefits of cycling are not fully understood and we must address this.
Mr. Greenberg (CBC Metro Morning: June 3, 2009 - Bike Lanes, wma audio runs 7:05) was right on the money when he said that cities who rise to the occasion are the ones who get it -- and that indeed we may all be forced to rise to the occasion. What I saw in Europe at the conference was an internalized acceptance of climate change and societies who have already re-engineered themselves, where cycling is viewed and accepted as a mainstream mode of transport. In areas where this is not the case there is systematic under investment in cycling and to Mr. Greenberg's point this is a societal project. Change can be painful for some, and it is coming -- and we need or governments, our political leaders to help us prepare for it, nay embrace it.
This is where the province comes in. Right now, our province does not -- unlike Quebec and B.C. -- have an imbedded public policy which includes supporting and encouraging cycling as a mainstream mode of transportation. In my travels across the province, the message from municipalities has been clear: they want dedicated funding from their provincial government which targets active transportation -- cycling -- as exists in B.C. and Quebec; they want the Ministry of Transportation to end its intransigence and embrace cycling as a bona fide mode of transportation and they want a framework which will guide their investment decisions.
Share the Road is working diligently to develop and encourage this and in September will host the Ontario Bike Summit where we will bring speakers in from Europe and the United States, jurisdictions which are bicycle-friendly -- to help us shape the debate regarding and the role for our provincial government whose task includes assisting municipalities in getting there. It is absolutely critical that we help our municipalities as they try to "rise to the occasion" as Mr. Greenberg aptly put it -- or Ontario will continue to lag behind.
I have told the Premier this, I have told Jim Bradley this. A few hundred stakeholders from across the province -- including the leaders of the Opposition parties who we have invited -- are going to tell them the same in Waterloo this September.
I hope they are listening.
