Mayor Miller addresses the Toronto Residents assembled to give input on Toronto’s Climate change plan. (Photo courtesy of biketoronto.ca)
If you missed the Climate Change Action Forum at Exhibition Place this Sunday, you can still submit comments to the City by filling out this comment form. You can view the City’s “Change is in the Air” report here.
Compare this to New York City’s recently announced green plan, called “A Greener, Greater New York” here. (Warning large PDF.) Alternatively, you can visit the website here, and read it chapter by chapter. Note that in NY’s plan, cycling plays a prominent role. It is initiative number 9, outlined beginning around page 88 of the full plan PDF.
One of the main planks of this initiative is to complete the city’s 1,800-mile (2,898 km) bike master plan:
In order to reduce traffic and reach our clean air and greenhouse gas reduction goals, New Yorkers should be given the option of reaching their jobs and major city destinations through cycling. That is why we will dramatically accelerate the implementation of the City’s 1,800-mile bike lane master plan, to ensure that the entire system is in place before 2030.
The report also notes the progress made in Chicago:
By 2015, Chicago wants at least 5% of all trips less than five miles to be on bicycle. The city has discovered that shifting trips to bikes can become a congestion management strategy. It has already installed more than 160 miles of bike lanes throughout the city. Brean Martin thinks car congestion has already lightened up. “It used to be that I’d go flying on my bike through dead-stopped traffic,†saidMartin. “Now, the cars actually move.â€
Martin Koob attended and posted about the treatment bikes got on biketoronto.
You can also simply email your opinions to: changeisintheair@toronto.ca.
Update: the deadline for comments is actually May 31st.
16 comments
They must have changed the date on the comment form this morning. I checked it this morning when I was posting my article and at that time it said May 2nd. I will update the biketoronto.ca article later tonight. More time to get your feedback in.
Yeah, Access Toronto just called me again to say that there was an error and May 31st is, in fact, the deadline… so, although confusing – very good news for those of us with opinion!
Plans, plans, plans… Remember when things actually got done? Most of you are probably not that old.
What startled me about New York’s plan when it was announced last week was the whole “we’re going to plant 1 million trees” thing. I thought to myself, “Wow, that’s a lot of trees.” but there are already 7.5 million, who knew! With 40% tree canopy coverage in New York, I would say perhaps it already is an urban forest.
I boycotted the event for a few reasons – though I’m really bugged by climate change. But accelerating a flawed Bike Plan isn’t really progress. The major flaws are
– avoiding doing much of anything to fix the east-west biking hazards in the older core of the city especially the west end, and that’s why doing a big long bikeway on Bloor St. is a salient fix, and yes it was suggested during the Bike Plan consults c. 6 years ago
– relying on putting bike paths in parks for doing things for cyclists, which can be better than nothing but it’s only seasonal and perhaps for women, best in daytime hours though not necessarily vs. peopled roads
– the mesh density in the most natural setting, the core, is pretty coarse and inadequate
– there wasn’t the cross-connection of routes to any schools
I bet they claimed that Toronto was “green” too, but there’s one city stat showing we’re at least 20% over the mere stabilization the exact opposite of the Toronto Target at Target date.
This is correspondence between myself and the mayor’s office.
Dear Andy:
Thank you for your email concerning cycling in Toronto. The mayor appreciates the time you have taken to express your concerns. Why is it that everything that comes out of the mayor’s office a “proposal”, or couched in double maybes, might, possibly. Stand up and take somme action already.
The Mayor’s commitment to bike lanes is shown in the recently launched Change is in the Air (www.toronto.ca/changeisintheair), the City’s framework for action on climate change and air pollution, in which it is proposed to complete the bikeway network by 2012. The City has also changed its Council procedures to ensure that local opposition does not prevent new lanes from being approved.
Thank you for writing and sharing your concerns. Should you require further assistance, please do not hesitate to contact this office again.
Yours truly,
Brendan Agnew-Iler
Policy Advisor
Office of Mayor David Miller
Toronto City Hall
100 Queen Street West, 2nd Floor
Toronto ON M5H 2N2
p: (416) 397-2489
>>> “Andy Wood” 2/13/2007 1:41 PM >>>
During the recent election campaign, you said,
“…next year the bicycle infrastructure budget will double to $ 6.2 million. For as long as I am Mayor of Toronto we will continue to pursue an aggressive bicycle promotion strategy.”
However, the City of Toronto 2007 Capital Budget recently presented to the Budget Committee, included only one mention of cycling — “Introduce traffic calming measures and bicycle lanes on various streets throughout the City ($3.000M) “. Not only is this $3.2 million short of the $6.2 million promised, it doesn’t seem to be the “aggressive bicycle promotion strategy” promised in the election campaign.
What’s going on?
“Why is it that everything that comes out of the mayor’s office a “proposalâ€Â, or couched in double maybes, might, possibly. Stand up and take somme action already.”
Andy, is this part of Brendan’s response or something you wrote?
Andy – I am curious as well if that is something that Brendan actually wrote!
I can share my correspondence with the Mayor’s office as well… it is similar!
thanks for the comments all.
Dear Tammy:
Thank you for your email concerning cycling in Toronto. The mayor appreciates the time you have taken to express your concerns.
The Mayor’s commitment to bike lanes is shown in the recently launched Change is in the Air (www.toronto.ca/changeisintheair), the City’s framework for action on climate change and air pollution, in which it is proposed to complete the bikeway network by 2012. The City has also changed its Council procedures to ensure that local opposition does not prevent new lanes from being approved.
Thank you for writing and sharing your concerns. Should you require further assistance, please do not hesitate to contact this office again.
Yours truly,
Brendan Agnew-Iler
Policy Advisor
Office of Mayor David Miller
Toronto City Hall
100 Queen Street West, 2nd Floor
Toronto ON M5H 2N2
p: (416) 397-2489
Hello Councillor Carroll, Mayor Miller et al.,
I have to express my massive disappointment in this budget, as it gives cyclists the shaft (if you’ll excuse my vernacular.)
The mayor said that the cycling infrastructure budget would increase to $6.2 million, and, “For as long as I am Mayor of Toronto we will continue to pursue an aggressive bicycle promotion strategy.”
HAH! This budget isn’t even *passive*-aggressive. It’s a straight-up slap in the face.
Councillor Carroll: I was under the impression, based on our conversation in October that you cared deeply about cyclist safety. You told me that; “We must ramp up the cycling campaign this year.and; The woefully behind bike plan must include more education (re: safety.) I want to get past creeping incrementalism and move on to momentum.”
There *is* momentum in this city right now for cycling issues. By refusing to supply the promised funds to cycling, council is essentially BLOCKING that momentum.
I would also note, the TCC’s proposal to fund a cycling safety and education campaign on sidewalk cycling was apparently not even considered.
In fact, none of the recommendations from the Toronto Cycling Committee to accelerate the Bike Plan appear to be in the initial budget documents.
…(note – I removed my personalized pleas to Perks, Heaps and Rae)….
Finally, ALL of you said “Yes” in the TCAT pre-election survey to increase funding for the bikeway network.
So, what am I to think? I would love to hear any explanation as to why – in the face of more smog-related deaths, under-performing transit and an upcoming world-renowned active transportation symposium (Walk 21) – you would abandon Toronto cyclists so cavalierly?
It just doesn’t make sense….(again edited for space…)
Thank you for taking the time to read this,
Tammy Thorne
tammy@spacing.ca
My reply to Brendan in the Mayor’s office (see above) in part…
…Although I do appreciate your reply, I feel that it is somewhat hollow.
If the City will complete the Bike Plan by 2012 it would need to install at least 78 km of on-street (I am NOT including off-road paths or signed routes here) bike lanes per year. As I understand it, we will be lucky to get 30 km this year – not even half of the proposed target – and many of those are held over from last year.
Perhaps the “new†promise for completion by 2012 doesn’t kick in until next year?
What is the actual plan and who is accountable for making it happen?
It certainly doesn’t bode well that the mayor said he’d double the budget but didn’t.
Piecemeal planning and the “take what you can get†attitude cyclists get from City Hall isn’t cutting it anymore.
Thank you again for your attention to these issues….
thanks for chasing city wall on bike issues folks.
Me, I like the Bloor St. bike lane idea right across the city as a quick, cheap fix eg. c. $200,000 for 8kms right beside the subway with its major mobility and access, as the Bike Plan is flawed and incomplete, especially for the west end of the old core.
So it isn’t just the money that is spent, it’s also what we get.
Hey tt–
Just when I was beginning to get the “hang” of those kwazy kiwometers, you go and mess with me! “1,800 miles?” What gives?
bb
Hey BBlobby,
Yer right – it would’ve had a lot more POW! power if I had put in that 1,800 miles (that’s the NY plan we’re talkin ’bout) is 2,898 kms total for NYs plan, I believe.
So to put that in perspective: Our flawed and incomplete (agreed, Hamish!) bike plan proposes a total of 1,074 kms (that includes signed/shared rds, off-rd and of course bike lanes.)
thx
tt
Green Plan is no good without money. New York City has a municipal sales tax of 4% which given its size and the number of high rollers probably brings in squillions, plus another 0.375 for the Transportation Authority. The City of Chicago gets about 2.75pc I think. This means as the City grows, revenue grows.
In Toronto there is a land transfer tax on home buyers, which hammers young couples who already pay thousands to the province and whose property tax is reassessed by purchase price – whereas the freezing of in-place assessments means older people who live in upscale neighbourhoods and are unlikely to “trade up” will pay no more than they do now.
We need some of Dalton McGuinty’s 400million dollar surplus to green the city, not build a Sorbara subway to Vaughan.
We need the PST to be raised to cancel the federal GST cut and for that 1% (at least) to go to the municipalities, in line with the Province’s constitution responsibility.
(I believe the only reason the City Mayors are looking for GST is because the Alta. mayors don’t want to campaign to re-introduce Alta. PST)
Gah – I meant to say “In Toronto a transfer tax is being proposed”.
We could consider charging the cars a bit more eh? as Citizen June MacDonald once figured that the annual avoided cost/subsidy to private automobility was about $400 Million p.a., and there’s been a range of estimates of the avoided cost/externality/subsidy of between $1,000 and c. $4,600 per vehicle a year from all of us and future generations.