Moratorium on Toronto bike lanes? Speak truth to power!

I'd be hard-pressed to put a good spin on this, though mayoral candidate Smitherman is certainly trying his best. Smitherman is jumping on the rhetoric bandwagon and is calling for a 'moratorium' on bike lanes in Toronto. In the meanwhile the 2011 money for bike lanes will go to repaving the bike lanes that are deteriorating such as Sherbourne.

Smitherman is reading the polls and figures that it's better to appease the loud car-centrists who are getting a lot of play in the media, rather than accommodate the needs of 8-years and 80-years old folks on bikes.

One the one hand, Smitherman certainly understand the importance of bike lanes on arterials and isn't promising to remove them, but on the other hand, it becomes increasingly hard to maintain the already very slow progress on bike lanes and infrastructure when a moratorium is put in place. And it certainly begs the question: if this is mainly a communication problem, why not just communicate better (or work better at winning the rhetoric war in the media) while improving the cycling infrastructure?

Someone needs to call Smitherman on this bullshit approach. Mothers, children, elders and all, are you willing to get in the face of Smitherman and Rocco to let them know you exist and want to feel safe cycling on the roads?

I usually prefer to maintain some degree of decorum on this blog, but this pisses me off to no end. So I'll float this slogan as a rallying cry:

read more