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The Loneliness of the Urban Cyclist
Martino Reis, one of Toronto’s embattled cyclists, pointed us to Rutgers University professor Philip Pucher’s paper on cycling trends and policies in six of Canada’s cities.
Pucher digs up many surprising insights. Despite ratifying the Kyoto protocol, greenhouse gas emissions grew 20% from 1990-2002 and GHG emissions from vehicles grew by 24%! Bikes would be a cheap and effective way to reduce this figure but they only make up 1.2% of the 13.5 million work trips made each year in Canada.
What’s even worse is that support for biking is a patchwork of policies, funding and support. Here in Toronto, the city tries its best to support cyclists but doesn’t have the money to do simple things like add more bike lanes, encourage cycling and enforcement of parking by-laws in bike lanes. But the province does nothing, nor the federal government.
Quebec’s provincial government does support cycling and that’s translated into more cyclists on the road which has also resulted in fewer accidents because drivers are more familiar with seeing bikes on the road. The best place to bike in Canada? Victoria, BC where almost 5% of all work trips are on bikes.
So how do we turn Toronto into another Amsterdam or Coppenhagen, European cities where cyclists make up a quarter of all commuters? Some of Pucher’s solutions are head-smackingly simple, more bike racks at key transit terminals (subways, bus stations, etc.) others actually require some political will (bike lanes) and others will require a massive reworking of our urban centres (curb sprawl, encourage higher density developments).
In the end, the question is not whether we can afford to implement some of these solutions. With the increasing number of smog deaths, loss of productivity due to traffic gridlock and a myriad of other car related problems the question becomes can we afford not to?