That being-run-over feeling
Politicians get foot-in-mouth disease when it's time to put cash behind pedestrian promises
By MIKE SMITH
Toronto the green and the clean: not necessarily easy to achieve in a region driven by auto manufacturing especially since much of our street design is still clinging to the 1950s and a few councillors insist on waxing downright Mesozoic.
A remake will take leadership, creative planning and money. And City Hall would very much like to offer those things in the near future.
Sure, council is coming to a slow consensus on the importance of a real transit network. But we're in danger of seeing transit go it alone. Is pedestrian and cycling infrastructure also primed to grow at the same pace?
The city's bike plan calls for 484 kilometres of bike lanes in a 2,074K overall network, including parks and shared lanes. Currently, there are 68.6K of bike lanes. Last year, 5.6K were "installed".
A staff report last year made clear the reasons for delay: no funding, no planning staff, no political support. It called for the bike lane budget to be doubled, to $6 million.
Last week, the budget committee recommended and the executive committee signed off on the status quo: $3 million in capital funding. Enough for just over 25 kilometres.
Makes you wonder why the members of the budget committee and the mayor publicly supported a $6 million budget in last year's election survey by the Toronto Coalition for Active Transport (TCAT).
"The stalling of the Bike Plan hasn't been a money problem," says Gord Perks, who points instead to the lack of planners. "Last year we could have shown up with wheelbarrows of money and no more would've been done."
Should've written that in the survey, Gord there was space for comments. Still, $3 million that gets spent is better than $3 million that doesn't, like last year.
He assures me that more staff will be funded in the coming operating budget, a promise that has temporarily extended the already excessive patience of cycling activists.
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