Get on Your Bikes and Ride

I’ve written about how pedestrian access makes a city better. Ditto plants and trees. I’ve written about what a dog-friendly city looks like. All those things, I believe, are just about 100% upside (although I’ll admit the dogs do have a little, shall we say, dollop of a downside). Likewise, bicycles.

Bicycles are starting to abound in Toronto, but like many aspects of modern living, by their very existence they create an “us and them” divide: you’re either a driver or a rider, seldom both. You either disparage the drivers as destroyers of the environment, hoggers of resources, and angry idiots capable of inflicting extreme pain or worse with the turn of a wheel, or revile the riders as selfish, grandstanding granola crunchers who ride like pedestrians when its suits them, and take on the cars when they’d rather. Why can’t we just get along?

But the fact is that while bikes might be divisive, they can still be a huge contributor to a thriving, sustainable city, especially one like Toronto where “The Official Home of Gridlock” should be on the flag.

I figure, like PC and NDP supporters at the same dinner party, why try to change them? Just seat them at separate tables. But that means shelling out for separate spaces, and car owners pay a lot more in licences, fees, and taxes than bike riders too, which gives them a louder voice. Heck, those crazy bike riders get away with the cost of a bike, and that’s about it. But dead citizens stop paying taxes pretty quickly, and obese, heart-attack-prone, high-blood-pressure drivers cost everyone.

We all know bicycling is a good cardio workout, don’t we? But how many of us actually make time for it? Using a bike as transportation, not just recreation has numerous health benefits. As a low-impact cardio option, it puts little strain on joints and causes fewer injuries than many others. You don’t even have to be in particularly good shape to start riding. All you need are enough gears to help you up the hill. (There are some great hybrid-electric ebikes around now, too, that for under a grand offer a little assistance when you need it most.) Cycling increases not just aerobic fitness but also strength and stamina, and you can ramp it up to a demanding level once you get better at it. Plus, coasting down a hill makes you feel like you’re 10 years old again. Wouldn’t that be a great way to start each day? It also has a huge time advantage over walking, and with downtown traffic such as it is, very often over a car or a streetcar too. It decreases stress and improves posture, fights fat and helps reduce symptoms of anxiety and depression. The Australian government claims regular cycling even reduces incidents of bowel cancer. Sold? Me too. So why don’t we do more of it?

Last year, Business Insider ran a ranking by Copenhagenize, a consulting firm that specializes in all things bike-related, of the top cycling cities in the world. Needless to say, Toronto didn’t make the list. Among those that did were Paris (for its political vision that includes a flourishing bike-share culture), Barcelona (for its bike share system, its protected infrastructure, and its commitment to 30 km/h zones), Nagoya, Japan (for the 15% of its population who ride and the national government’s stated goal of 25%, as well as the fully protected lanes modelled on Copenhagen’s cycle tracks), Tokyo, Dublin, Munich, Malmo, and, no surprise, Copenhagen and Denmark in second and first, respectively. “Amsterdam does almost everything right,” says Business Insider. Our own Montreal, which tied for 11th, was named North America’s premier bicycle city, with tracks dating back decades, a successful bike share system (Bixi, which Mayorish Ford poo-pooed unmercifully here), bi-directional cycle tracks and committed leadership. I guess the fact that we live in a cold climate is a poor excuse. Neither the Netherlands or Denmark are exactly tropical.

There is not just almost no place to ride a bike safely downtown, and few secure parking places for when you get there, but if we even tried to get any of the downtown streets to post speed limits of 30, you’d hear the squealing rage all the way to Brampton. The fact is that making Toronto a safe and desirable place to ride takes vision and leadership, as well as perhaps a generous corporate benefactor, and we are sorely lacking in all of the above.

With a few notable exceptions such as Ajax Mayor Steve Parish, we just don’t care enough to make it happen.

But we should. Given the infrastructure we already have (or don’t have), the lack of visionaries, and the firm foothold of car culture we have in the GTA, how would you make bicycle travel more viable for the masses?