This year Toronto is witnessing a mayoral race between the worst mayor the city has ever seen and a few people who want his job. Not one candidate has come out to support bicycle based transportation (instead they debate how to better get cars through the city and not people). This isn’t a good thing. Last year in Toronto roughly 40 people were killed by car drivers, more than murdered by non-car homicides.
Local online press, Torontoist, has reacted to this by calling for people in the city to bring back “the war on the car”. People in Toronto ought to join this growing chorus of people demanding an end to car-dominiated culture and crack-smoking mayors.
Toronto should learn from every other major city in the world and build for people-not cars. Just look at all this good news about bicycles and all this good news related to reducing car use.
The hard lesson from New York and dozens of progressive European cities is that you can’t make gains for cyclists, pedestrians, and the life of the city as a whole without restricting car use—removing lanes, widening sidewalks, lowering speed limits, and redesigning intersections. And as JSK and others have proven, that is not a politics for wimps: we need warriors.
Olivia Chow said she will announce cycling policy in the 1:16 comment.
Nice! Thanks for sharing that.