At a ceremony to open the Walk21 conference in Toronto on Monday night (Oct. 1), Mayor David Miller proclaimed October to be Walking Month under the title “Toronto Walks On.” It’s a good idea — Octobers were already the month of the “Toronto Trails Festival”, they start with International Walk to School Week, and end with that most walking-oriented of special days, Hallowe’en. A walking month in the fall acts as a kind of complement to Bike Week in the spring.
Unfortunately, the sum total of publicity or organization for “Toronto Walks On” is a photocopied pamphlet, available at City Hall, that sums up walking events during the month (including, charmingly, the “Toronto Zombie Walk“). There wasn’t even a press release. You can, if you really search hard, find a pop-up of the proclamation on the City website, but there’s not much else about it to be found online.
To be fair, City staff who work on these issues have been incredibly busy organizing the Walk21 conference itself. So the proclamation can be seen as a start — and, next year, we can hope that there will be some budget and staff time allocated to publicity and coordination.
Under the radar, City staff have also been hard at work developing something far more substantial — a series of practical steps that can be taken quickly to make Toronto a more walkable city, as well as a more bikeable and transit-friendly one. The proposals (PDF) go before the Works Committee tomorrow (Wednesday, Oct. 3), and if they pass unmolested, these measures will mark a substantial step towards implementing pedestrian-friendly policies in Toronto. It’s a little disconcerting to find the City putting more effort into its deeds than into its words for a change, but it’s a welcome development. Better to invest effort in real changes on the street than in the good public relations of walking month, however worthy — but hopefully next year, we’ll see progress on both.
Altogether, it’s looking like a good month for pedestrians. And I haven’t even talked about the release of the Toronto Walking Strategy discussion document yet.
