Even The Left Wing Media Challenging Miller's Abilities

How hard is it to paint a line on the road?
By Dale Duncan

Happy Bike Week, Toronto! Toronto is already currently ranked as one of the five most-clogged cities in North America, and with 3 million people moving to the GTA between now and 2031, our streets are only going to get more congested – unless we change our attitudes towards cars.

But the increased congestion is not nearly as troublesome as the increased carbon emissions all these new drivers will bring. Fortunately, combatting the causes of climate change is one of Mayor David Miller's No. 1 goals. Unfortunately, his failure to build bike lanes doesn't do much for his credibility.

Toronto's Bike Plan is starting to become a symbol of council's inability to accomplish things they deem important. Money or no money, the Bike Plan's perpetual stall doesn't bode well for all those new initiatives (such as doubling the tree canopy, implementing green building standards and building a network of light rail transit) that have recently been announced.

How are we supposed to have confidence that our local government has what it takes to fight climate change when they can't manage to paint a white line down the side of a road? Having a council-approved strategy seemingly hasn't helped. Toronto's Bike Plan, passed in 2001, called for over 1,000 km of bike lanes to be built within 10 years. In the last five years, however, a mere 48 km of lanes were completed. If our representatives can't pull together to build bike lanes (following a plan that most of them voted for six years ago), how do they expect us to believe that they'll double the canopy of our urban forest (which will require a strategic management plan that has yet to be completed), convince money-hungry developers to build green or stand up to the NIMBYs who'll fight portions of the Transit City plan, a 120-km network of dedicated streetcar lines? Each one of these proposals will present many more challenges than creating new bike lanes. We have a lot of hard work ahead.

If Miller is serious about tackling global warming, he's going to have to buckle down and prove to us that he means business. Showing real progress on the Bike Plan would be a good place to start.