I received an e-mail yesterday from a cycling contact at the City with the request to pass the information on to my readers. However, instead of simply posting the information, I want to share my frustrations with the position the City keeps taking on the subject of cycling.
Here's the text of the e-mail:
During the 2011 - 2012 winter season a pilot project will test enhanced maintenance activities for a specific section of the "on-road painted" bike lanes to measure the benefit and cost of extending availability of bike lanes further into the winter season. The enhanced activities include additional inspection, ploughing, anti-icing, and street sweeping when warranted and feasible (excluding snow removal for the specific benefit of the affected bike lanes). This pilot project includes the bike lanes on Sterling Street, Longwood Road, Dundurn Street, and Sanders Boulevard. The pilot will be assessed and recommendations developed for future consideration.
To provide feedback on this project, please access the web survey:
https://www.surveymonkey.com/s/winterbikelanemaintenance It should only take about a minute to complete.
This pilot project, this test, is indicative of the regard the City has for cycling and cyclists. Very little. And though the City, via its website, gives some lipservice to encouraging active lifestyles, likely because looking like they care about the health and well-being of the people is good branding, very little is being done on the ground to indicate that the true benefits are understood and that they actually want to facilitate active lifestyles. Instead of providing an optimal environment for cycling by building good cycling infrastructure and then maintaining it so as to make cycling throughout the year safe and appealing, they test enhanced winter maintenance only on specific routes, favouring a specific population, to gauge the benefit and cost of doing so.
The City is clearly taking its position as follower, doing only as much as it deems necessary to placate a generally privileged demographic--students, staff and faculty of McMaster University and the hospital. There are people throughout the city who ride bicycles, all of whom would benefit from good cycling infrastructure implementation and enhanced year-round maintenance, but many of them live in neighbourhoods that don't have as strong a voice and consequently don't need to be placated. So the City focuses on building infrastructure and testing enhanced services for privileged demographics and neighbourhoods while allowing conditions, physical (inadequate infrastructure) and cultural (inadequate awareness), that result in unsafe and unlawful riding--riding on sidewalks, against the flow/direction of traffic, on the wrong side of the street, without lights, etc. I hold the City largely responsible for this. And yes, I am saying there is institutionalised systemic classism involved.
If the City really wanted to study the benefits and costs of making cycling safe and convenient year-round, creating conditions that help people choose active modes of transportation throughout the year, I would advise that they study places that have already done so. There are lots of examples, and not just Copenhagen, Amsterdam and other European cities, but also North American cities. Study all of them. Study the benefits--both in terms of quality of life and well-being and of economics--cycling infrastructure has had on populations in these cities. Study cold cities, as that seems to be a frequent concern around here, cities such as Minneapolis, MN and Montreal, to see what they have done and how people have benefited. Much of this research will be qualitative. Talk to the people whose lives are being changed, who are living more active lives, are healthier, more energetic, more social, because of the implementation of good infrastructure. Then talk to shopkeepers as well in areas where the transition to pedestrian- and cycle-friendliness has been completed. The City need not even go everywhere to conduct primary research as a great deal of this research has already been done and is available. There are consultants and advocacy organizations that would love to educate and engage the City to build infrastructure and mount awareness campaigns to promote an active citizenry.
So I call on the City to take a leadership position and create the conditions, and do so across the city rather than just in certain neighbourhoods, that will encourage and facilitate active lifestyles. We already know that designing urban environments to facilitate the efficient movement of people rather than cars is good for our collective well-being. Instead of conducting this kind of a limited and superfluous test, a City taking a leadership position would instead implement good infrastructure across the city and maintain it throughout the winter so that the choice to live a more active lifestyle, to walk and ride rather than drive, is made safe and appealing.
Please take some time to fill out the survey, and please fill in the text boxes as well with your comments. Feel free to write to your councilor and the mayor as well.
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