Comment 33285

By Meh (anonymous) | Posted September 08, 2009 at 14:15:35

Yeah, I often think that many of those capable of rational argument have given up on the city and moved on to seek better employment and life-style options elsewhere, leaving the rest of us (me included) to turn out the lights.

That said, when I bike I currently use a combination of backstreets, park paths and sidewalks, especially as I find many sidewalks empty of pedestrians along busy streets. Fact is, cars have so dominated local planning that they've established many of the rules for bikes and pedestrians whether or not the rules actually suit the bikes and pedestrians, and, sometimes, even car drivers. Take those stop signs. On slow side streets on my bike I approach corners slowly enough and high enough to see any cross-intersection traffic approach. If there is none, I keep going. If there is some, I'll wait until all other vehicles clear the intersection rather than risk the penalty of the driver of a two-ton vehicle misunderstanding the first-to-enter, first-to-depart rule. I tend to cross busy streets at lights, sticking close to pedestrian crosswalks, but my point is that when I come to a full stop it also takes me a bit longer to get going again, delaying other traffic at the intersection as well as myself.

It may sound fair if all commuters, regardless of their transportation medium, would obey all the rules but the fact is, I don't need car drivers' permission to ride my bike on the roads. If I followed all the rules I'd be making lefts from the middle lanes, risking injury and delaying car traffic in the process. And although, being a slower moving vehicle I keep to the right, I'm not obligated to hug the curb or parked cars, risking being "doored" to give way to faster vehicles. Just the opposite, as I understand.

I think some people have been spooked by the city PR that something like 50 million dollars will have to be spent to add bike lanes to city roads. As an absolute figure on its own that seems like a lot, but it's a fraction of of the cost of building, say, the Linc and Red Hill Creek Expressway. I expect it's less than the annual cost of just maintaining existing roads for automobiles and trucks. It's the car, not the bike, that require expensive and expanding infrastructure. Bikes require less fuel, too, and don't cause nearly the same amount of damage in accidents, even when the accident is between a bike and a pedestrian. As it is, a recent CBC news show informed me that thousands of bike riders have been killed in Canadian cities as a result of colliding with cars and trucks. I doubt many car drivers were killed in those same collissions. Aside from the sentiment, there's a public cost to indiscriminately killing commuters.

It's not The Spec editors that are misleading the debate so much as our civic administration, when making their public announcements, failing to estimate the alternative cost of expanding our civic road system to keep pace with growing numbers of auto commuters. A similar point could be made about the cost of public transit. Right now the city's west harbour is an area that has developed mostly by building facilities along a trail closed to motorized vehicles. What would be the cost, and probability of success, if that trail had been a four-lane roadway?

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