Comment 119241

By jason (registered) | Posted June 10, 2016 at 09:33:11 in reply to Comment 119227

I cycle and own a car. As for helping the provinces finances, look at how much is spent repaving and rebuilding roads annually in every city in Ontario.

Now imagine if we saw 5-10% mode shift towards cycling in our large/mid-sized cities. Look at how rarely a cycle path needs to be re-paved and rebuilt. Over a 50 year period it would be phenomenal to find out how many billions we would save by having less roadways and paths to rebuild year after year.

Also, cycling (like any physical activity) leads to greater health and greater awareness of health.
Again, let's go 50 years into the future, and you can be sure we'd be saving billions in health care costs province wide.

Many cities have seen their auto use remain relatively flat or even decrease as they've invested heavily into transit, walking and cycling. All 3 of those modes have proven good impacts on health due to the physical nature even something as small as walks to and from the bus stop have day after day.

Imagine Hamilton could see it's auto use remain flat over the next 50 years with transit, cycling and walking picking up the increase...how many billions would we save during that time by not needing to build new roads all over the place and widen current roads all over the place like we currently do.

The financial impacts of active transportation are known world-wide. Hamilton has fully embraced the car-only status quo and not surprisingly, we are going bankrupt and can't keep up with infrastructure repairs.
The answer certainly isn't to spend the next 50 years remaining a car-only city.

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