City ignores regional transit authority Metrolinx on Front Street

In February Metrolinx submitted its reservations regarding the Front Street Environmental Assessment in front of Union Station which excluded any specific bicycle infrastructure. Yet the City chose to ignore it when making its decision at City Council. Cycle Toronto has asked the City and Province to rethink Front Street (as well as John and Jarvis).

Metrolinx's letter, however, didn't seem to have much affect on City Council's decision on Front Street. City Council did not delay the decision even though the Public Works and Infrastructure Committee had asked staff to consider changes to the plan. Staff came back with nothing, claiming to be unable to arrange the appropriate meetings. It's not clear if they knew about the Metrolinx letter. The Front Street EA went to City Council with no input on improvements for cyclists.

It's strange that Metrolinx, the provincial transit authority, seemed to have no effect on City Council's decision. Metrolinx is clearly concerned that the EA had ignored Metrolinx's key "mobility hub" objectives, prioritizing pedestrian and bicycle access to transit stations. Union Station is the largest and most important of hubs and close to some of the highest mode shares for walking and cycling in Ontario. The Metrolinx letter, written by Leslie Woo, Vice President of Policy, Planning and Innovation:

As the busiest transportation hub in Canada, Union Station plays a critical role in the Greater Toronto and Hamilton Area rapid transit network, serving more than 200,000 passengers daily. Planning for the station and surrounding area should reflect this importance, and emphasize seamless integration of all modes of transportation.

In 2011, Metrolinx released Mobility Hub Guidelines to clearly communicate the mobility hub concept and provide guidance on developing mobility hub plans and incorporating mobility hub objectives into other planning activities, including environmental assessments. A key objective of the Mobility Hub Guidelines is to prioritize pedestrian and bicycle access to stations, including the provision of a range of bicycle parking options and bicycle sharing in proximity to station entrances.

It is encouraging to see an emphasis in the EA on pedestrian priority and safety; however, I would encourage the City to consider this opportunity to concurrently improve access to Union Station for cyclists. In particular, the preferred concept identified through the EA provides minimal dedicated on-road space for cyclists. With the introduction of a greater number of taxi and loading zones, there may be a greater number of points of conflict between cyclists, pedestrians, and motorized vehicles. On Front Street, the consideration of on-street bike lanes or dedicated cycling facilities may help to reduce conflicts, especially in high activity areas, such as adjacent to taxi stands and loading zones.

I understand that BIXI station locations are currently planned for the north-east corner of Front and Bay Streets and the north-west corner of Front and York Streets. These stations are relatively far from station entrances, and do not provide clear and short connections for Union Station customers using BIXI. Providing additional BIXI bicycles in the plaza directly in front of Union Station would provide better access and visibility, creating a seamless connection between transit and bicycle sharing. In addition, the City should consider providing more bike parking directly adjacent to the station building itself and its entrances. Locating additional post-and-ring facilities on the north side of Front Street does not provide bicycle parking close to station entrances, and reduces convenience to station users arriving by bicycle.

I would like to comment the City for their work through this environmental assessment to improve pedestrian access to Union Station. The suggestions offered here provide greater consideration for cyclists using the station, and to provide more balanced access to the station by a wider variety of modes. Thank you for your consideration of these suggestions.

herb : 13 years 1 week ago
Tags: bike infrastructure, environmental assessment, Front Street

Reducing injuries is important but not at expense of public health: Provincial Coroner's helmet recommendation misguided

The Provincial Coroner came out with his long-anticipated recommendations for reducing cycling deaths today. Alongside recommendations asking for a provincial cycling plan, complete streets, education and sideguards for trucks, he also recommended mandatory helmets for all age groups. His mandatory helmet recommendation is outdated, misguided and overshadows is otherwise (though somewhat broad) set of recommendations. The media has latched onto the helmet recommendation like it is the magical talisman that will solve all that harms cyclists. Drivers won't have to change anything, it's all up to the cyclists! Almost every headline is: "Ontario Coroner calls for mandatory helmets for cyclists..."

The limitation of this coroner's review is that it only looked at a relatively narrow perspective, that of deaths and injuries while cycling. The Coroner never considered were the broader public health implications. Nor did he consider, it seems, whether other jurisdictions saw a reduction in injuries and deaths. Nor how it is that some jurisdictions such as the Netherlands as pictured above can be very safe while most cyclists young and old don't wear helmets. When it comes to mandatory helmet legislation, it is widely considered by experts now to have either no impact or a negative impact on public health. I spelled out the broad issue yesterday. It is one thing to promote helmet use while still leaving the option open for people, but it has been shown that once you try to enforce helmet use many people just decide not to bother. The experts have shown that the health benefit of cycling is much greater than the risk of injury or death.

Even the Toronto Coroner's report on cycling fatalities in 1999 recognized that mandatory helmet use could backfire:

...helmet use is not a panacea for drastically reducing cycling related fatalities or serious head injuries. Stricter bicycle helmet legislation and mass helmet usage in other countries (U.S.A., Australia, and New Zealand) have failed to produce any statistically significant reduction in the rates of fatalities and head injuries, despite optimistic projections. In addition, compulsory helmet use may result in reduced bicycle usage.

Did you get that? Mandatory helmet legislation showed NO statistical evidence that it reduced fatalities and head injuries!

One could ask too why there is so much of an emphasis on helmets for cyclists when drivers and pedestrians also suffer head injuries that could be prevented with helmets? I personally have suffered a head injury sustained in a car crash. But I'm sure requiring helmets for drivers and passengers would create a loud outcry.

It's not clear if the Coroner took any consideration of the impact of this on the public bikesharing initiatives such as BIXI Toronto or Capital Bikes in Ottawa. Bikesharing in Melbourne, Australia is struggling because of mandatory helmets and Vancouver is having trouble launching its own service because of mandatory helmets there.

A bicycle helmet law came into effect in Ontario in 1995. It was originally meant to be applied to all ages but was amended by regulation to exempt adults. Helmet usage among children increased after the legislation but eventually dropped off because of a lack of enforcement.

I wish the Coroner had considered the public health aspect of his review before making any recommendation, but instead he had decided to forge ahead with a misguided recommendation. If the Liberal government takes up this recommendation I believe that it will put a big dent in cycling promotion in this province and put us even further behind. If Australia is any indication then we could see reductions in cycling by 20 to 40%! That is a hugely negative impact on public health, especially considering how Toronto celebrates when the number of cyclists increased by 6% in the decade from 1999 to 2009. Maybe the reductions won't be as large here, but even a small drop would likely overshadow any positive impact.

herb : 13 years 1 week ago
Tags:

Helmets may protect your head but mandatory helmet laws will likely make cyclists less safe

Some BC citizens are ramping up a campaign to get rid of the mandatory helmet law in British Columbia. Next year Vancouver will be launching a bikesharing system and this would be a good time to either get rid of the law or exempt bike-sharers. One of the only poorly performing bikesharing systems happens to be in mandatory-helmet haven Melbourne, Australia.

The anti-mandatory activists in BC may be making a very good point as economist Charles Komanoff explained on Streetsblog recently. Mandatory helmet laws are unlikely to make cycling any safer and could actually make things worse by turning people off from cycling (by as much as 20 to 40% in Australian states and cities!). The head protection that helmets give are then outweighed by the poorer health of those who decide not to cycle and a worse 'safety-in-numbers' effect for those still cycling.

Komanoff points out three key areas which helmet legislation proponents ignore:

  1. They ignore the possibility that some non-helmet wearers will cycle less or will refrain from taking up cycling in the first place rather than use a helmet or risk being cited for riding bareheaded.
  2. They ignore safety-in-numbers, or, in this case, its inverse, by which having fewer cyclists on the road tends to raise per-cyclist crash rates with motor vehicles, as cyclists’ diminished presence on the road leads drivers to treat them as aberrations rather than as part of traffic.
  3. They overstate helmets’ protective value in reducing injury severity in the event of crashes.

In the following two photos it's actually the father and daughter without helmets on Dutch separated lanes, and not the woman with the helmet and safety vest in the middle of Brussels traffic who are likely to be safer. Infrastructure and behavioural changes (such as in the Netherlands) have had a bigger impact on safety for cyclists then mandatory helmet legislation (such as in Australia).

Sat, 04/02/2011 - 08:44 - Wary Brussels cyclist ©Wary Brussels cyclist
13 years ago ago by IBikeTO.

Fri, 04/08/2011 - 15:02 - Bike path alongside road ©Bike path alongside road
13 years ago ago by IBikeTO.

Helmet legislation certainly has the intended effect of increasing helmet usage. But as Komanoff shows in his chart, it can be easily offset by the decrease in the safety-in-numbers effect. Part of the confusion in all this lies in the fact that proponents have assumed what is true in case-control studies is also true across a society. Case-control studies have suggested that cyclists who choose to wear helmets usually have fewer head injuries than non-wearers. The same is not true for a society where helmets have been made mandatory. Before and after data show enforced helmet laws discourage cycling but produce no obvious response in reducing the percentage of head injuries. Dr. Dorothy Robinson looked at all jurisdictions that had introduced legislation and increased use of helmets by at least 40 percentage points within a few months: New Zealand, Nova Scotia (Canada), and the Australian states of Victoria, New South Wales, South Australia, and Western Australia. When looking at head injuries he found that there was no clear evidence that the reduction in head injuries can be attributed to helmet laws. In all cases head injuries were dropping anyway. Robinson also found that in Australia cycling rates were increasing before helmet laws put the brakes to it.

The reasons helmet laws aren't working may be partly due to risk compensation where people feel that they can take greater risks when wearing a helmet; they might be wearing the helmet incorrectly. Some of the researchers also made incorrect adjustment for confounding variables in case-control studies where they misjudged how much of the effect was due to helmets.

Helmets also aren’t very effective in reducing injury damage to cyclists who are struck by cars, one of the main reasons to wear one in the first place.

The most authoritative epidemiological analysis of helmet efficacy to date, a study of 3,390 cyclist injuries reported from seven Seattle-area hospital emergency departments and two county medical examiners’ offices, summarized in Injury Prevention in 1997, found that helmet-wearing conferred only a 10 percent reduction in severe injury rates; and even this small differential fell below the threshold of statistical significance. What makes this analysis especially noteworthy is that it effectively invalidated the authors’ premature and incomplete conclusion in their decade-earlier study that helmets were spectacularly effective in reducing the chances of head and brain injuries; it was that “finding,” which has reverberated around the medical echo chamber ever since, that catapulted helmet promotion to the fore of bicycle “safety.”

And this isn't even taking into account the health benefits of cycling. A person who decides to avoid cycling is likely a person with an increased health risk due to inactivity and obesity. As Professor John Pucher points out:

“All scientific studies find that, even using conservative, understated estimates of the health benefits of cycling, they far exceed any traffic risk,” explains Pucher.

The exact ratio varies from city to city and from country to country, but the health benefits of cycling are at least five times higher than the traffic risks, and in some countries, such as the Netherlands and Denmark, the ratio is almost twenty-to-one.

So here's to having the choice of wearing a helmet or not. You can reduce the risk of a head injury for yourself by choosing to wear a helmet (though helmets are less effective when you're involved in a collision with a car). However let's not turn away people from a healthier lifestyle just because they don't want to wear a helmet. The risk of bad health is much higher for those who are sedentary than for those who cycle, helmet or no helmet.

herb : 13 years 1 week ago
Tags: helmet law, helmets, statistics