motorists

True words by Albert Koehl in Rabble of how Mayor Ford is doing more harm to drivers than good with his archaic, anti-city approach to moving people:

Don Cherry has a lesson to teach Toronto Mayor Rob Ford.

Cherry has spent a career promoting the hockey fighter, sometimes known as the enforcer or goon. The problem is that the science of brain injuries has caught up with (and passed) his assertion that the violence of these bare-knuckle encounters doesn't really hurt anyone, and helps the game. Indeed, the very fighters whose role Cherry has championed are increasingly turning out to be the game's victims.

The cause that Ford championed most loudly during the election was that of motorists. On taking office he declared that the war on the car was over. He eliminated a small vehicle registration tax, then moved forward on his congestion relief plan by getting transit out of the way of motorists. Two of three streetcar lines approved by the previous administration were shelved and a third line would go underground at significantly higher cost. He even promised to build a new subway line. Cyclists, too, were targeted. The council he leads voted to eliminate three bike lanes at a projected cost of $400,000.

Science, and experience, makes it clear that Ford's solutions won't work -- and the main victim will be the motorist.

This will create a tough situation for some (and by some, I mean mostly myself): whether to buy a membership in the southern Ontario CAA to take advantage of their roadside bike assistance program, Bike Assist, or to refuse to support the CAA financially because of their anti-bike lane stance. I suppose a third option would be to keep the CAA membership but vote to change their knee-jerk response to bike facilities.

The goal is to fix the bike on the spot. If that is impossible, the bike and driver can be transported up to 10 km with a Basic membership, up to 200 km with a Plus membership, and up to 320 km with a Premier membership. There is no extra charge for the service, which began on May 1, 2010 and which is available anywhere in CAA SCO territory.

And if that's not mind-boggling enough, the CAA is now offering their own "bike squad" to go around helping out cyclists. Their first appearance this year will be at the Bike to Work Day to City Hall on May 31.

From the CAA:

Weird Canadian Driving Laws and Other Strange Rules of the Road

October 21st, 2008

"2.) In Ontario, the average speed limit for cars on most roads is 80 km/hour, but bicycles have the right of way. Those bicycles have to be fast!

Because a lot of the laws in Ontario are from the past, some of them have to do with driving non-motorized forms or are about more public forms of transportation. Because they have something to do with the roads on which you drive, we still thought they were worth including.

Please note: This is posted in a blog. Feel free to comment and offer corrections. I know of no roads with 100 kph (or greater) speed limits that allow bicycle or pedestrian access. It is also curious to note the CAA does not offer bicyclists an alternative for getting to destinations other than those roads they appear to express issue with bicyclists using. Furthermore the CAA appears to lobby against bicycling infrastructure at every opportunity.

Globe and Mail writer Nathan Whitlock finds a worthy debating opponent in himself:

Dear driver: How about we share the road?

followed up by ...

Dear cyclist: How about trying to share?

The comments that follow the articles might make you worry about who gets drivers licenses or question the whole concept of democracy.

2007 brings a new Driver's Handbook. This is the same book that all new drivers and those wanting to upgrade their licence must get. It's somewhat of a distillation, and usually a good explanation, of the Ontario HTA (Highway Traffic Act) and the regulations with some good advice thrown in.

I, perhaps like others, learned to ride my bike on the roads by studying a copy of the Driver's Handbook, and also by experience. Programs like CAN-BIKE or Effective Cyclist were not yet invented.

Why a new handbook? From a cyclist's perspective, the old handbook, copyright 2002, was lacking. It also doesn't hurt that the HTA has changed.

So what, from a cyclists perspective, in the HTA has changed? Well, there used to be a section in the law that required bicycles to always "stay as far to the right as practicable". In the old handbook, on page 30, it stated that "bicycles that cannot keep up with traffic should drive as close as possible to the right edge of the road."

That section of law is now gone. What's left is section 147(1)