More bike lanes, more bike sharing and new directions: public works committee

Yesterday the public works committee of the City approved a number of bike lanes; accepted the request by Transportation Services staff for "New Strategic Directions" for an updated Bike Plan, including studying a bike lane on Bloor/Danforth; and authorized sole source negotiations for a bikesharing program with the Public Bike System Company of Montreal that also runs Bixi. All these items now go on to City Council for approval.

Gloria Lindsay Luby wrote to council saying that she supported the bike lane on Rathburn, but not on The Westway. With no good reasons to not move ahead, both were approved by the committee. Her token effort was not enough to thwart The Westway's Bike Lines.

Councillor Peter Milczyn had a very good reason to delay the bike lanes on The West Mall; there's an EA going on to bring North Queen to intersect with the West Mall, and he asked staff to both continue this year's rebuild of the road to include the potential for bike lanes, and to include the bike lane planning and implementation as part of the EA process. While this will delay the bike lanes, as long as we continue our push, there's no reason why these won't go in next year. I would suggest contacting Milczyn's office to find out more about that EA.

Only Councillor Holyday objected. But his objections are, at least, mostly justifiable. Holyday wants to see the value; he wants to know that the new bike lanes will be used -- especially in Etobicoke. And he needs to know that the expected, and actual, usage is enough to be worthwhile. That's a fair stand, and also on today's agenda was a report from staff asking permission from council to do the cyclists counts because they currently cannot answer these questions for Holyday, nor for anyone else who would like to know. Councillor Perks addressed all of the other issues that Holyday brought up.

I do like talking with, and debating, Councillor Holyday. However, he seemed a bit grumpy today. I hope he'll be in better spirits the next time I see him.

Because of Councillor Holyday's questioning we are getting a picture that the spending that we're doing on the Bike Plan is in line with the current number of regular cyclists and our overall modal share. At least we're getting a fair share of the dollars spent on us. We'll have to do some digging, and probably also do some math, just to make sure.

There were 85 pieces of correspondence on the bike lane item! That's a lot for any item on a public works item agenda. Second, only 11 of the 85 were against bike lanes, and most of those were against a specific bike lane. This is incredible! This only encourages many of us to keep up the good fight. A big thanks to all of you who took the time to shoot a note to the committee! Please keep up the great work!

All of us who spoke were asking to push the bike plan forward, and we all asked for more. No one who came out to speak was opposed. This was also really great to see. I also enjoyed the short video by Vic & Tino of this year's Bells on Bloor ride.

In a report called "New Strategic Directions", which was received by the committee, staff are asking for new directions on the Bike Plan. Included in this is a request that staff be allowed to hire an external consultant to help consult and plan whatever bike infrastructure will go on Bloor & Danforth. This will effectively delay any movement, or even any public debate, of bike lanes on Bloor until after the next election. Although the committee indulged us by letting us speak to Bloor today, they didn't debate it because it was not on the agenda.

That same report also asks that staff be able to place special emphasis to be placed on getting more bike lanes downtown, especially within the core, primarily in anticipation of Toronto's public bike program. If we want people to use public bikes then we'll have to provide safe, comfortable places for people to use the bikes. Several new routes have been proposed, including University and Queens Park. Many in the cycling community are hoping that by enveloping Queens Park in a bike lane that the Province will finally pick up the bike file, and hopefully stop shitting on us by classifying electric motorcycles as legally equivalent to human powered pedal bicycles. I think that a safe passing act would be a great place to start.

Lastly, the committee authorized (pending council approval) sole source negotiations with the Public Bicycle System Company for a public bike program to be operated at no costs to Toronto. However I suspect that the initial outlay will come from our tax dollars. This sounds like a bargain!

I'm glad to see that the National Post has somewhat softened its stance against bikes, and our struggle for a share of the road, as you can see for yourself from this article about today's meeting:
http://network.nationalpost.com/np/blogs/toronto/archive/2009/06/03/more...

Perhaps it has something to do with this news?
http://spacing.ca/wire/2009/06/04/torontonians-mostly-content-with-city-...