[This content first appeared on LinkedIn on 27 November 2024]
This week, Doug Ford, Ontario’s premier, wants to remove three cycle lanes in downtown Toronto to ease traffic congestion. The rationale for this is apparently based on ‘anecdotal evidence’ – the best and most reliable kind, obviously – that the cycle lanes are exacerbating travel problems.
This in a city where six cyclists have been killed in the past year: five on streets with no cycling infrastructure, the sixth having been forced into vehicular traffic by a construction waste bin blocking a cycle lane.
He also believes that traffic congestion could be mitigated by building more roads and wider streets. Hmm. And a road tunnel! Don’t forget the road tunnel! This is somewhere up there with Robert Moses’ plans for the Lower Manhattan Expressway. Thankfully, Bob’s plans were scuppered by a housewife with a penchant for cycling.
Anyone with a modicum of sense intrinsically knows that building more roads just equals – *checks notes* – more cars. You simply cannot build your way out of this mess. Build it and they will drive. To think otherwise is insane – and stupidly expensive and disruptive.
But hey, let’s give Doug the benefit of the doubt for a split second and assume that more and wider roads are indeed the answer the Toronto’s car-related woes.
Let’s accommodate those cars to the max! Let’s put on our sincere faces and accept the destruction of buildings, severance of communities, noise and pollution and potentially fatal danger to anyone outside a vehicle as being an unfortunate necessity to give drivers on University Avenue the increased freedom to back up a few inches.
Well, I don’t know about you, but I have yet to meet anyone who’s just come back from a holiday anywhere in the world waxing lyrical about the high volume of fast-moving or idling traffic in the city centre and how wonderful, relaxing and safe it felt to be close to the cars at all times, shouting to be heard and choking in the smog.
Conversely, some travellers recall the intimate, walkable street network, the astonishing baroque architecture, an unexpected hidden square with a cute pavement café selling the best cakes in town or the peace and quiet of a car-free environment where you can actually have a conversation with the person next to you without needing to resort to semaphore or Aldis lamps to communicate because the din of the cars and juggernauts is so loud.
So the cure to Toronto’s car addiction problems is not more roads or wider roads or tunnels. It’s actually more cycle lanes, better public transport and viable, convenient sustainable travel choices for everyone. I can assure you that no-one will be visiting Toronto to breathe in the increasingly polluted air or marvel at the number of traffic lanes that can be squeezed onto Bloor Street.
It’s time for the housewives of Toronto to get on their bikes and unite, just give me ‘two tings’ if you agree.
#urbandesign #placemaking #streets #streetdesign #cycling #cyclelanes #janejacobs #toronto #twotings