petition

Councillor Mike Layton and the Toronto Cyclists Union have started a petition for expanding Bixi Toronto. People have been calling Layton every day since Bixi launched almost two months ago, according to a NOW article. The call is to expand Bixi to the original 3000 bikes planned when the program was originally proposed.

I've heard that things are looking so good that Bixi may beat expectations by reaching close to 1 million trips by the end of the year.

Some of you may have heard about the auditor general's somewhat negative report on Bixi in Montreal. Such troubles don't affect Bixi Toronto since it is incorporated separately and has a business model that doesn't rely on subsidies from Montreal.

Sign the separated bike lanes petition if you are interested in seeing a leap forward in appropriate infrastructure for cyclists downtown. Councillor Minnan-Wong, head of the Public Works and Infrastructure Committee, had presented the idea to the media last month. It's not a done deal by any means since local Councillor Vaughan and residents need to be on side, and some public consultation is already going on to change some streets such as Richmond/Adelaide. The petition calls for pilot projects to being in 2011. If that is politically possible it would give us a good idea of the options and would be reversible if not a good idea.

The final plan might look sort of what is described here and here. There will be plenty of time and space for public consultation to figure out the exact details, so sign if you approve of this in principal.

To: All City Councillors and Mayor's Office

I support the immediate implementation of a connected separated bicycle lane infrastructure with pilot projects beginning in 2011. This single step can greatly enhance the safety and efficiency of Toronto streets at a very low cost.

The current issue of Momentum Magazine of Vancouver (also distributed in Toronto) features the petition that one Chris Tomasini got rolling to ask parliament for a tax credit on bikes. MP Olivia Chow of Trinity-Spadina in Toronto (and also a bike commuter to her work on the Hill as well as in Toronto) presented the petition to the Conservative government (who is better known for their dubious tax credits on gas/ethanol guzzling behemoths as an environmental "solution"). Needless to say Chris is a bit realistic of his chances with this government:

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"One single petition which isn’t followed up by others is probably useless. If you go into the House of Commons debates page and type in ‘cycling’ you’ll get a couple of hits I think. But if you type in ‘gay marriage’ you’ll get hundreds of hits from all these very conservative people asking the government to outlaw gay marriage again.