politics

[img_assist|nid=3185|title=|desc=|link=node|align=none|width=471|height=400]
[img_assist|nid=3186|title=|desc=|link=node|align=none|width=338|height=450]

"Will You Be My Bicycle?" HotShot Gallery | Group Show

June 19 - July 3 | Opening June 20 | 7-9 PM
HotShot Gallery | 181 Augusta Avenue (in Kensington Market)

There’s a feeling “out there” that because motorists pay “user fees” for licences and registration as well gas taxes and insurance, that they somehow have more “rights” to the road than everybody else. And that because motorists pay for those things, somehow motorists are more “responsible” that the rest of society which includes lowly cyclists.

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.

Thank you Vic Gedris for this fine video.

Transportation is important to us because it's not only how we get around, but it's also how we move goods. I like to eat, so I'd like to get food in to the city somehow. We like to trade and have things to buy, and so we have to move goods in and out of our city.

Long ago, the waterways were our major highways. In Ontario, we still have the Trent-Severn system, the Rideau Canal, the St. Lawrence Seaway, and the Welland Canal as great working examples from our history. We still move people and goods on these, but to a much lesser extent now than in previous years.

For those who hold that the terms "great expectations" and "TCAC" (Toronto Cycling Advisory Committee) have long since proven themselves mutually exclusive, the rumblings and ramblings emanating from Committee Room 2 of City Hall last Monday may give cause to reconsider. The regular bureaucratic tedium -- accountants' conventions are Roman orgies by contrast -- belied the significance and scope of the schemes underway. There is truly cause for (cautious?) excitement.

Tamils have taken the Gardiner. What does that have to do with cyclists? Nothing, except for the comparison that is happening (and will happen) between Critical Mass taking the Gardiner last year in whimsy, and the current Tamil's protest which is doing the same.

Here's one example:

8:24 p.m.—Members of Toronto's Tamil community have taken a page from Critical Mass' books, and have effectively shut down the Gardiner Expressway