Toronto’s new cycling committee chair Councillor A.A. Heaps recently announced that he is revising the committee’s Terms of Reference. Among other things, he plans to cut citizen membership from 15 members to 8. Much has been written about this already. The most thorough analysis can be found at biketoronto.ca by Martin Koob. Hamish Wilson also gives us his succinct thoughts in NOW. And Darren Stehr has much to say on Toronto Cranks, including: “I thought no politician could mess things up more than Giambrone. I was wrong.” Even the Globe’s John Barber chimed in, ending his column by asking: “So how many pancakes will it take till the lanes start appearing? After such a promising start, the current paralysis is embarrassing.”
The first question that comes to mind is: how, exactly, does reducing the number of citizen members on the committee ensure that the committee assumes a more active role in advocating the needs of the cyclists? If Heaps is willing to give up the varied volunteer expertise that already does its best to inform and represent the many communities in our city, he is off to a bad start. I also wonder why Heaps would suggest reducing the roll of committee members to simple consultants.
The revised Terms suggest replacing all of the sub-committees with “working groups” that would have “ad hoc” meetings, but isn’t that already happening? Groups such as BikeFriday, Bike Pirates, CBN, ARC, TBN, I Bike TO, Take the Tooker, Streets are for People, TCAT meet regularly.
Let’s be clear: it is the job of council to implement the bike plan. Even if cycling committee meetings were notoriously long or disruptive, even if they found it difficult to achieve quorum, I am unsure as to how it would affect council’s ability to fund, promote, and implement cycling infrastructure. At the end of the day, the committee is helping, not hindering, the City’s efforts. Heaps has also proposed reducing the number of meetings to 4 times per year, a change that will seriously hinder the committee’s ability to advise the Planning and Growth Management Committee, which meets 10 times a year. Would you not want your group to meet at least the same number of times as the committee it reports to, and in advance of their general meetings?
Writes Martin Koob on Bike Toronto:
The sad fact is both the Mayor and Council have not done a good enough job in this regard over the past six years and the volunteers on the TCC have tried to fill in the gaps. If the Mayor and Council took their responsibilities relating to implement the Bike Plan seriously, and just did what they have promised to do there would be less for the cycling committee to do and maybe they would not need to meet as often nor need to work so hard trying to rally the public to convince Council to do what they said they would do.
Let council know how you feel about the proposed changes — submit comments to the Planning and Growth Management Committtee at or before its meeting coming up on Thursday, May 31. Or better yet, make a deputation in person. To register, contact the committee’s clerk Merle MacDonald at 416-392-7340 or email mmacdona@toronto.ca You can also contact Councillor Heaps at councillor_heaps@toronto.ca.
6 comments
Like the photo. Cheers!
I read your whole article on this subject on iBikeTO.
I agree. Getting rid of advocates will not help in improving the current state of cycling affairs.
Still in the end, the TCC is no more than advisory group. One should not place to much hope in its ability to affect change anyways. You’d need political will and a backbone for that.
thanks for this, fuller comments at I Bike TO at
>http://www.ibiketo.ca/node/250 titled “Happy Bike Week! And, here’s a sharp stick in the eye…”, or more accurately perhaps in between the spokes…
The TCC sure has critics and with cause, and it’s not a fun deal really, but it helps keep biking on the agendas and fills a role for information sharing and a public discussion of many bike issues beyond the blogs etc. etc.
But the Planning and GM cttee isn’t necessarily so bike friendly so folks that wish for respect to be given to cyclists should certainly be in touch with their local councillors, especially those that are in the old core of TOronto where half of us ride and reside.
I worry that in the pursuit of “equity” we will see an imbalance of reps from outer areas, which do need a lot of work and attention, but so does the core which already has huge bike numbers.
What about a down-sized # of 15, or should we push for a bike rep for every ward, including Rob and Case’s turf?
And don’t underestimate how editing aids being succinct, thanks.
What about
I just want to correct one bit of information. The comment about the TCC having difficulty with quorum has been repeated in a few different places. In my 6 years on the TCC I can’t recall a meeting that was cancelled due to a lack of quorum or one that had to be adjourned early due to a loss of quorum. This in spite of the fact that the meetings would run sometimes till 10:00 at night.
The volunteer members have been conscientious and have worked hard over the years developing recommendations regarding cycling policy, programs and budgets. Sometimes those recommendations had a real impact – a cycling budget line was increased or a policy was modified to serve cyclists better – and that was heartening. Many times our recommendations were ignored and that was disheartening.
The TCC’s job was to give City Council advise on cycling issues and by that measure I think it was very effective. Council got more advise than it could take, or rather, was willing to take.
A little off topic but related.
It looks like Councillor Heaps is going to be announcing an expansion of the bike locker program.
Then again, if history is any indicator, he could also be announcing that they’re reducing the number of bicycle lockers in a bid to help streamline services for cyclists.
Thanks for the comments all.
>Martin, I should have been more explicit about my status as a non-member of the TCC and the purely anecdotal “quorum” comment (I was in the original on I Bike TO, I think)…
I included it purely as an anecdotal comment based on people’s quips in passing, because, frankly, it was the ONLY reason I could see FOR cutting the citizen membership. Again, I think I was explicit in the original blog post about how even if quorum WERE an issue I don’t see the direct link between that and stalling, say, implementation a bike lane…etc…
But, as you’ve stated here, it is not really an issue.
I’m still waiting for a call back from Heaps.
>Adam – thanks for the laugh. Just found out the presser is at the same lockers that Giambrone announced already… but they will be announcing “more new lockers” somewhere …the press spox doens’t know where or how many though. I may go.
TT, I’m not surprised that they’d use already announced bike lockers as a photo-op. It takes quite a bit to get City Hall reporters out of Nathan Philip Square. My guess is that they’ll be around municipal buildings. My hope is that they’re at subway stops but chances are Adam Giambrone would also be involved in the announcement if that were happening.