The NOW Bike Forum Re-Cap

posted by Joe on 4/13/2007 | 0 Comments |

(photo courtesy of BlogTO)

Okay... I was going to write up a nice re-cap of the NOW Bike Forum on Wednesday night, but BlogTO has already done a great job - so read that. :)

A few observations from me:

1) The whole thing was generally optimistic. While cycling is often the forgotten child of Toronto road uses, and while at present we are perceived to be "losing the fight", there is enough optimism, enthusiasm, energy and planning in the cycling community that I believe most of us got a "dark cloud with a silver lining" vibe from the whole evening.

2) Adam Giambrone, although pretty unpopular with some segments of the cycling community, came off pretty well. He acknowledged that bike stuff is underfunded and that there has been political laziness when it comes to cycling issues, but also offered a lot of hope:

that community councils and opposition (Case Ootes comes to mind) can no longer halt bikelane creation because although a bikelane may be in one part of the city, it benefits the city as a whole.
that city cycling staff has recently been increased from 1 to 5 employees
that 25-28 km of bikelanes will most likely be built this year
that all new buses the TTC is getting now will have bikeracks - meaning every single bus in the system will have racks by around 2011.
that they are looking at ways to get bikeracks on the new generation of streetcars - either on the outside or the inside
that there are plans to incorporate temporary bikelanes into the temporary King St. Transit Mall planned for next summer
and, that he'd be totally fine with taking all the parking off of Bloor West in his Ward to allow for the first part of the Tooker Bikelanes to be implemented

Finally, if you haven't seen it yet, NOW Magazine is all about bikes this week - the post previous to this one has links to all the stuff.

Labels: events, news, politics

Post a Comment