Don't kill the cycling committee!! - take action!!
Today the agenda for next week's Executive Committee came out. With it came a report from the city manager's office suggesting that the city not recreate the Cycling Advisory Committee (TCAC).
See:
http://app.toronto.ca/tmmis/viewAgendaItemHistory.do?item=2011.EX5.3
Not everyone was enamoured with the committee, but it did give citizens of Toronto a place and a means to publicly present and discuss ideas about cycling, and give feedback and recommendations on infrastructure.
The cycling committee is not the only committee affected; the report also recommends the cessation of the Pedestrian Committee.
If the city is adamant about killing these committees then it must implement other means for citizens to present, discuss, and provide feedback on these issue. Standing committees are not enough.
You can write a letter to the committee, make a deputation, and also contact your own councillor to let your own feelings on the matter be known.
The Toronto Star has picked this up, see
http://www.thestar.com/news/article/974064--toronto-s-citizen-committees-on-the-chopping-block
On one hand, cycling committees haven't been all that effective, but that tends to be as much the politicians ignoring advice over the years vs. committees and members not wanting to do things.
The TCAC was weakened by Miller and Heaps, but we shouldn't let this go away without a batch of fussing, as it represents one of the few ways to get things onto the agenda, and I don't trust the CU to be the only way for things to be presented, and I don't like the type of back room/less public ways that it might operate, or be operating. Most councillors won't necessarily respond to a few cyclists, even if they are in their ward, and a public meeting means minutes, deputations, and a liability trail, even if the Chair, like Heaps, tries to keep it quiet and contained.
If anything, we should be expanding the TCAC up to 13 members, including a CU rep.
This may be lost at the Executive Cttee, but Council could, and hopefully will, reverse any true stupidity that a cancellation would mean. This would follow what the Execute Cttee under Mayor Eggleton tried to do about 20 years ago.
However, it's also ridiculous to have to spend time and energy fighting for a basic thing in this day and age. I've spent much of today putting things up to the provincial level, saying that given the peak oil, energy issues, equity of bikes, anti-democratic trends, public and private health co-benefits of biking as a province we should simply mandate such a bike committee for all municipalities over 50,000.
Simple, clear, clean - and necessary.
Please fuss with your councillors; don't forget to stress the civic liability for civic failures to provide safety for an entire class of road users on the public highway.
In terms of the provincial mandating advisory committees eg. a Cycling Cttee, Geoff pointed out last night that there is a precedent with the LACACs, the local architectural conservation AC on heritage preservation matters.