Letter to Stephen Holyday

Last night, February 28, Councillor Holyday convened a meeting to discuss the Bloor Street bike lanes. The discussion revealed a number of things, including some of the illusions cherished by advocates for the car in this city. One thing the meeting made particularly clear was the extent to which transportation has evolved into a political and cultural issue, the way so many issues, in so many people's minds, have fused together into a picture they project, to themselves and others, of who they are. Thirty years ago, the fiercest cycling advocates I knew were ardent conservatives; today, despising bike and cycle lanes has become part of a prepackaged identity labelled "conservative". It doesn't have to be this way.

 In response to my observations at this meeting, I have written an open letter I am sending to Councillor Holyday, my own city councillor, and the mayor of Toronto. You can read it after the jump.

Councillor Holyday:

Last night, February 28, you convened a public forum to discuss the Bloor Street bike lanes, specifically the lanes running from the Humber to Aberfoyle Crescent. You asked people to write to members of council, and so I am writing this open letter to you, my own councillor (Amber Morley), and the mayor's office, as well as posting it publicly.

To start with the positive: the Bloor Street bike lanes  represent a set of compromises, which have resulted in a design with flaws in both the safety they offer cyclists and the congestion they impose on other road users, particularly first responders. Put simply, the cycle lane design used for much of the Bloor bike lanes, having the bicycle route "protected" by a line of parked cars, both makes it difficult for turning motorists to see cyclists, creates a risk to cyclists from opening car doors, and a corresponding risk to people crossing the lanes to board their cars. In the case of the Kingsway, where a median divides the road, this design clearly has the unacceptable side effect of narrowing the road. 

The criticism directed at modifications to low speed local roads also had considerable merit: some of these installations seem to have little to no purpose beside adding to the length of cycleways installed by the city. 

All that said, the general tenor of the meeting suggests some profound delusions about the future of transportation in this city. Put simply, the population continues to swell, even if it will grow more slowly in the future, the number of people here will grow more quickly than we could expand road capacity, even if we wanted to. If we want to avoid complete gridlock, we have to provide alternatives to the car, and we have to make them safe. If you want criticism of the current bike lanes, their design, routing, and effectiveness to succeed, you must have some alternative to offer. I saw no such willingness to offer or even consider alternatives to the current Bloor lanes. Instead, I saw hostility to the whole idea of cycling as urban transportation. This rests on a fundamental misunderstanding of the value of automobiles to this city, both as a matter of geometry and of economics.

It's clear the private car offers the least space efficiency of any form of transport, but that doesn't capture the scope of the problem. Toronto has an estimated 1.1 million cars registered. For that many cars to drive downtown at 60 km/h, we would have to pave the entire city from Jane to Woodbine, Steeles to Lake Ontario. We can't solve the congestion in this city by expanding the road network in any way. We can only reduce congestion by driving less. 

Finally, one outburst at the meeting clearly exposed, for anyone paying attention, both the cultural problem with our automobile dependence, and the reason so many Toronto residents have less problem with congestion that you might expect. One of the individuals at the microphone spoke of his desire to hit cyclists who (as is quite legal and safe) rode in the lane on streets such as the Queensway. This violent and irresponsible attitude among motorists causes many people to not only ignore congestion, but to desire it as one of the few ways to slow down people who treat cars as weapons to enforce their own ideas about who belongs, and act out their own tantrums. 

As an example, consider Parkside, one of the connecting streets between Bloor and Lakeshore. Recently, we have seen a push for bike lanes on these roads. This push does not come primarily from cyclists; we already have a the High Park road network. The primary pressure for bike lanes on Parkside comes from the local community, in an effort to make the street safer. A few years ago now, a speeding motorist killed two elderly and respected members of the community; their friends and relatives, naturally outraged, resolved to calm the traffic on Parkside. As long as such irresponsible attitudes in Toronto's motoring community exist, as long as those who claim to speak, culturally and politically, for Toronto motorists let these attitudes pass without a rebuke, then the rest of us will work to protect ourselves. If motorists won't exercise self control, we will do it for them, with bollards and k-rails if we have to. 

All in all, it was an illuminating meeting, and confirmed both the need for attention to the designed cycling facilities, and the importance of improving, and extending, the alternatives to car dependence in this city. 

Best regards,

 John Spragge