April 14, 2010

Is Toronto City Hall spinning its wheels?

I am an avid cyclist that supports bike lanes, but only when developed to make cycling safe and easy and not to impair current traffic patterns. I like to ride 4 or 5 times a week for exercise and when the weather became suitable for riding last month, I pulled out my TO cycling map to look for routes to explore and enjoy the city. What a frustrating experience this was, as there is no rhyme or reason as to where the lanes and paths start and end. Ideally, you should be able to move from your starting point to your destination using a grid system that is totally connected. Unfortunately, the mandarins at city hall continue to complicate matters by announcing solutions one at a time. First they choose Jarvis St. for dedicated bike lanes and now University Ave. What impact will this have on traffic and more importantly what impact will this have on the relationship between auto drivers and cyclists? In an effort to improve cycling in the City, they have created a situation where the auto community hates cyclists even more. Where is the strategy about cycling in Toronto? You can’t start executing a plan if there isn’t one. While I applaud the City’s focus on cycling, maybe more councillors and decision makers need to hop on a bike and see what the current system entails. Then they can develop a sound strategy and implementation plan.


Why can’t City Hall see this …citizens are asking; “are they all brain dead?” As a Board member of one of Toronto's 70 plus BIA's I get to see how the city makes decisions first hand and by and large most of the city managers I have met are hard working, dedicated people that want to make the city a better place. However, I see a lot of middle managers that only have the power to say no, no one seems to have the ability to say yes and everything requires a committee. Committee’s certainly have a role to play in decision making, but when all decisions must be made by committee, the end result is a slow process and resultant decisions that are negotiated compromises. I remember many years ago my mentor asking me; “what is the definition of a camel?” The answer; “A horse designed by a committee!” Why have we gotten to this position? Is it the system and/or top leadership that is the problem? I believe the solution is one where both the City Council and the bureaucracy needs to be trimmed, the deadwood removed and processes put in place that can make simple decisions quickly.

Hopefully our next mayor will have a large broom, so that they can sweep away the deadwood that has kept Tdot's growth and development mired in cement for the past 30 years. Which mayoral candidate has the chutzpah/cajones to do this right?

Finally, with regard to the current bike lane dilemma, should they also accommodate wheel chairs? I hope so, because my fear is that I will be in a wheelchair long before we see a good bicycle grid plan. City Hall are you listening?

3 comments:

  1. I disagree Greg.

    Elsewhere in the world, major cities haven't been designed to accommodate everyone driving everywhere. Why? Because owning a car and using it to go everywhere isn't considered a god-given right in those places. Here in North America, we treat it as such.

    We need to change this culture. For the environment and simply to make our cities more livable. Toronto will never be a world class city until we do so. Unfortunately, the driving population will never make the change willingly. They have numbers (most boomers drive cars, but other demos have the same sense of entitlement), they have lobbying power (auto manufacturers, petroleum companies) and they have traditional thinking on their side.

    The only way these people will ever change is if they're forced to. Only when driving a car in the city becomes too expensive and too inconvenient to possibly justify it, will people finally change their lifestyles to include alternative modes of transportation. Even then, most people alive today won't change, but future generations will understand and adapt.

    I've lived in London, England where the streets were originally arranged for travel on horses and drivers have to pay a congestion fee to drive in the city centre - their culture is changing because it has to. I've been to Barcelona, Spain where major streets have been converted to gorgeous pedestrian-only walkways with grass in the centre and electric transit vehicles humming along - the culture is changing. I've been to Amsterdam where parking garages are jammed full of bikes, not cars and a person on foot can walk down the middle of every street and the biggest risk is a collision with a cyclist - They never had a car culture to begin with. There are countless other examples, those are just the ones I've seen.

    I live in Toronto and I hate the car culture. I hate the stinking air, the road rage, the honking horns and revving engines. After seeing the places I've seen, I'm deeply saddened that we've allowed our city to be designed to cater to people driving everywhere. It's unhealthy, unsightly and completely impractical.

    I see bike lanes as a not only dedicated space for cycling, but as a place where cars CAN'T go, and the more of these the better. As more people bike and more bike lanes are established there will be less room for cars and that's just fine with me. Bike lanes aren't just for people on bikes, they make the city better for everyone.

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  2. Hi Charles ...thanks for the great comments. I think that we are both looking for the same end result, but maybe getting there by different ways. The key to the bike centric cities that you talk about is that they were never designed for cars. Unfortunately most cities in North America were designed for cars and commuting. I believe that it doesn't make economic sense to jam cycling lanes down the throat of the city without a well thought out plan. We still need to move several million people a day, so we need a true transit, road and bike plan to take us through the next 50 years. Miller has been in office almost 8 years and he didn't have a 12 month plan, let alone a long term plan. This was the point I was trying to make.

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  3. The reason this city is so fixated on bikes lanes, is because this city is run by CUPE. It's a decoy. Every election there's an issue that has zero to do with running the city, with fiscal responsibility. And it's the unions that put up this decoy. Ask the "paid" advocates, where their funding comes from. Here's what they'll tell you.. "Anonymous Donations". Uhh yeah..right.

    Lest we forget..a bridge was the main decoy during the last city election..A BRIDGE??? CUPE generated Decoy.

    Without these decoys, the candidates could assure the eligible voters that many of the (CUPE ) services we pay for, and need to at times, beg to get, could in fact be sourced to the private sector. CUPE needs the decoy.

    JW

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