Aother Of Comrade Miller's Legacies...

Base bike lanes on the facts: Editorial

City Council is certainly within its rights to put two bike lanes on University Ave. this summer as an experiment, as long as it remembers a few key points.
First, that this must be a genuine trial run to determine whether the idea is viable and not simply a sneaky way of imposing a permanent decision.
Second, that the final decision on this proposal properly rests with the next council — the one elected after Oct. 25.
Third, that the “Stakeholder Advisory Group” the city will consult within evaluating the project must include motorists.
Fourth, council needs to remember that what may work for 12 weeks in the summer from July to September could prove to be a disaster in the dead of winter.
There’s a lot at stake here. University Ave. is a major north-south arterial road, vital to moving traffic in and out of the downtown core.
Closing down two of its lanes and physically separating bike riders from motorists with poles and lane markings may indeed make the street safer for bicyclists. But what’s the point if it turns University Ave. into a demolition derby for motorists?
As mayoral candidate Rocco Rossi notes, there are already bike lanes just three blocks west of University on Beverley-St. George. Similarly, the city’s plan to put bike lanes on Jarvis St. ignores the fact there are already bike lanes just two blocks east on Sherbourne St.
Such examples raise the question of whether the current council’s real interest is in establishing a workable system of bike lanes across the city — a valid idea — or in making a grand political statement that bike lanes are good and then imposing them on the public, regardless of the facts.
Coun. Glenn De Baeremaeker, council’s leading bike booster and chair of the Public Works And Infrastructure Committee, has already predicted the University Ave. proposal will be “a great success.”
Rossi condemns it as “madness” which will lead to “total gridlock” in the downtown core.
They both can’t be right, but the way to determine who’s wrong isn’t to accept either view on blind faith.
It’s to honestly evaluate how the University Ave. experiment works this summer, and move forward from there.