Let’s say you were a member of the Ford team, and you were tasked with suppressing cycling and rolling back existing cycling infrastructure. How best to accomplish this?
Try this:

  • First, get some authority. PWIC chair would be a nice whip hand to have.
  • Get some credibility – learn to cycle, and become the poster child for the newly converted.
  • Join the local advocacy group and wave your new Cycling Union membership card every chance you get.
  • Scrap the existing official cycling plan. Work with the Union to come up with a new plan and get their endorsement.
  • Request a Status Report from city staff on cycling infrastructure. Use this as a mechanism to introduce your changes.
  • Announce that the new administration is going to spend twice as much on cycling infrastructure as the old one. Wave your membership card, get good press, get the Union to claim some success.
  • Blow some of the new spend on rolling back existing infrastructure, arguing that it is not supported by the local communities, or was poorly planned by the previous administration, or is not widely used. Ignore anything in the Status Report that does not support the these statements.
  • At the same time, announce plans for new infrastructure spending to distract the press and give the Union something to cling to. Offer to trade upgraded infrastructure in one location for eliminated infrastructure in another. Then amend the direction-to-staff motion so that there is no enforceable link between the two.
  • Make sure that any money proposed for actual construction will not be spent on expanding the network. Instead, ensure that it merely upgrades existing infrastructure – especially in places where it is not particularly needed (e.g. Beverley, Hoskins, etc. – amongst the most bike-friendly streets in the city).
  • Where possible, push projects that will act as a wedge issue with existing cycle-friendly communities (Beverley St. / Grange Community Association), institutions (Hoskin Ave. / U of T), or councilors (John St. / Councillor Vaughan).
  • Get the press to rationalize that some of the old infrastructure has to be sacrificed for the new (because cyclists only deserve a zero-sum game).
  • Let the KPMG reports torpedo the rest for you.

Looks like a pretty good plan – I guess the hardest part was learning to ride the bike.

Comments

Sun, 07/17/2011 - 11:26

Better still, revise The Bikeway Network 2011 Update Report directing staff “to take all steps required to revert Jarvis Street to its pre-existing operation” (Motion 11). That way the cost to reinstall the 5th lane on Jarvis will be counted as a cycle infrastructure spend.

Mon, 07/18/2011 - 20:17

Pretty good commentary and analysis there Debra.

The KPMG work is suggesting that the City "consider reducing the scale of bicycle infrastructure being developed" p. 39 as the "Bicycle Plan and Program are more extensive than warranted by bicycle volumes". p. 38 and maybe they mean the paths in the parks/corridors eh? And maybe that was always the Plan, to promise all these new paths as a shiny bauble for us/press, and yet, there is this financial hole, some of it being real as we continue subsidizing motorists, and we can't have any user fee for them can we?

Do you think they will notice the record heat? or make any links to climate change? Will our press? Thank goodness for the blogs and indy media....thanks Herb, and, and, and....