ON active transport news 2024-04
Ontario Bike Summit
The Ontario Bike Summit 2024 happened this April. Taking place over 3 days in Waterloo, it featured dozens of speakers from around the world. Check out some of the comments.
The common themes seemed to revolve around how to encourage more use of active transportation, how to make it safer, and ultimately how to improve the life experience of everyone. Some of this content will certainly make its way into ONAT over the coming months…
One of the big announcements this year is that Share the Road has revamped Bicycle Friendly Communities (BFC) programme. This is to make it align with the League of American Bicyclists BFC. The programme is based around 5 ‘E’s: 1. Engineering, 2. Education, 3. Encouragement, 4. Evaluation & planning, 5. Equity & accessibility. Participants must target a certain tier for certification and fill out a 90 page questionnaire regarding aspects of the community, recent improvements, and strategic plan. They are then given feedback on what improvements need to be made to achieve the next tier.
Check out the current status of cycling with the Current Bicycle Friendly Community Designations in Ontario. Pickering has the dishonourable distinction as being the only Ontario city (designation, population over 50k) without enrolling in the BFC programme. Smaller cities or non-city designated municipalities over 40K that do not enroll in the programme are Chatham, Kawartha Lakes, Quinte West, Timmins, and Woodstock. If you are a citizen of these and care about the health of your city, then please consider encouraging council and staff to enroll in the BFC programme. This includes both the economic health and the health of its citizens. It provides excellent guideposts for improving your city, making it safer and more convenient for all street users.
More on OBS: Cycling makes a city more livable. Building more than just real estate. Waterloo is proud to be the first mid-sized city in Ontario recognized as a Gold Bicycle Friendly Community by Share The Road.
For anyone involved with city planning or interested in active transportation, consider attending the OBS conference next year.
Motivations for active transportation
The focus of this April story will be about improving urban design. Here is a collection of recent related news.
The core why behind encouraging active transportation comes down to both money and quality of life. Cycling boosts the local economy, increases retail activity, attracts top talent, reduces health costs, and improves safety.
Based on the Annual Collision Report [1], in 2018 there were:
- 6370 collisions
- 6 fatalities
- 1893 persons injured
- 110 involving pedestrians
- 79 involving cyclists
- 70% at intersections
Roughly speaking, this is about 1 G$ to 4 G$ of economic cost per year, including lost income and the health care costs. 92% of collisions involving a pedestrian are either fatal or result in a serious injury (e.g. lifelong requirement for wheelchair).
It can’t be done? Nearly all cities were created without the consideration for cycling. Either these were old and build before, or recent and designed for automobiles. Many American cities were destroyed to accommodate automobiles. Yes, even the cities that are now known as cycling meccas: Amsterdam, Paris, Montreal, and Copenhagen. These all needed concerted effort and controversy to make streets safer and more welcoming to active transportation.
The Dutch have a long history of cycling safety. Car safety was so bad that in 1972, there were protests in Amsterdam as the city was overrun by automobiles and unruly drivers. This kicked off more than 50 years of safety efforts and continuous improvements, especially for vulnerable road users.
After a number of street design experiments in the 1970s, the Dutch came to an important conclusion in Delft: The only way to permanently increase cycling is build a dense network of high quality infrastructure, within reach of every home and destination. There are typically 3 major grids overlaid within each city: cycling, public transit, and automobiles. Of course these often intersect and even may occupy the same space at times. However, there is a clear goal that each must be complete and have reduced conflict points with the other modalities.
Women are roughly twice as likely to ride along a major roadway if there is a cycle track according to a city-wide poll conducted by City or Toronto (ref).
How to find room for cycles in a city? It comes down to reclaiming space, prioritization, bringing back humans, and rethinking old ideas. Could the Paris transformation be replicated in Canada? (ref) Find out more with this video from Shifter, 14m31s.
Funding
The Canadian federal government announced that it will stop investing in large projects, such as boondoggle expressways. Instead, it will divert investment into active transportation infrastructure. (ref)
Waterloo has received funds from Infrastructure Canada for active transportation projects (ref):
- 2 road separation projects on Davenport Road & Lexington Road
- rehabilitation and replacement of a pedestrian bridge in Waterloo Park
Economics of active transport
Cycling has been found to boost retail sales by 49% (ref). Individual cyclists spent 24% more per month at shops than those who drove, but they are also more likely to stop in at a shop. When the person doesn’t even own a car, think of the amount of money it frees up for them to put into the local economy: about 16K CA$ annually (ref). To put it succinctly, “Cars don’t shop, people shop” Shifter, 2024–03–13.
The Region of Waterloo Neuron Mobility programme (ref) had a positive impact on the local economy. It’s estimated that 64% of all trips resulted in a purchase with an average spend of 46$ per trip. In a media release, Neuron said the E-scooters brought 8.2 M$ into the local economy after gathering data from riders.
Have your say
The Region of Waterloo is looking for feedback on Franklin Boulevard with this survey: https://www.engagewr.ca/franklin-blvd-improvements
Share it with others: https://twitter.com/Cycle_WR/status/1781332982629908730
References
[1] Region of Waterloo — Annual collision report
Links
Previous monthly story: https://medium.com/on-active-transport/on-active-transport-news-2024-03-7b2df2d9c28a
Features from April:
The hope of ONAT (this publication) is to help promote cities be designed for people, not for cars. These monthly news rollups are just one approach to this, and more in-depth content will also be published.
Hope you like this news rollup on active transport. If so, please clap; and subscribe for future updates. Have a suggestion or a lead for a future story? Please comment.
