Toronto’s War on the Bike

Today Toronto city council voted in favor of spending $440,000.00 to remove existing bike lanes from Toronto city streets. Somehow spending that kind of coin to actually remove progressive infrastructure has become the “conservative” thing to do. While Toronto struggles to balance their budget with looming cuts proposed to everything from child care to other basic services, Council believes this expense to cut bike lanes is justified. This type of thinking falls under the category of wasteful “gravy train” spending. How do you tell a single mother living on a low fixed income that her child care subsidies are being dropped because Rob Ford wants to get rid of bike lanes? This whole mess coined “the war on the car” was created by sensationalist journalists who believed that “the war on the car” made for great headlines. Rather than challenge this divisive, backward thinking, the media repeated this message over and over again until the greater public actually believed there is a war on the car. The simple fact is that these bike lane detractors cannot wrap their brains around the concept that the more cyclists we have, the less cars there will be on the streets, making it easier for cars to travel. That’s just one of many collective benefits of encouraging bike riding as means of transportation. Its mind boggling that we are even debating this point. I would like to know how many councilors who voted in favor of this expense actually consulted with the local communities who will be affected by the removal of these bike lanes.  My guess is none; however Mayor Ford did say he is responding to people “calling into his office.” The reality today is that Toronto, like it or not, has intensified residential properties everywhere downtown. This means more and more people call downtown home and they have a right to have a say on the future of their local communities. What Mr. Ford and his minions at city hall don’t understand is that there are many residents who have no car and rely on public transit or their bike to get around. Rather than rewarding cyclists for making streets more open to cars, they are punishing them by making it more dangerous for bike travel. It seems our current Mayor and council prefers to look backwards instead of looking to the future. Toronto will continue to grow in population – this we know. A forward thinking mayor should realize that one day every street in this city will have bike lanes and streets like Bloor, King and Queen will have no parking. This is what every other large city around the world has already done. Why? Simple, to relieve car traffic congestion (perhaps a little too simple for Mayor Ford’s brain to handle).  To the journalists out there who believe in headlines over sustainability – thank-you for dividing our city. To the people out there who actually believe that bikes are best off the roads – get used to it. As the population continues to grow in Toronto, there will inevitably be more cyclists choosing a bike over a car.  And to the cyclists, keep riding and thank you for setting a positive example to everyone in our city.



 

Thanks to good old Don Cherry, the world has another word to refer to cyclists.



Stupid Is What Stupid Does - Stop the Quarry Now

For many years politicians, urban planners, professors even journalists have condemned urban sprawl. They say the popular model of paving over the landscape indiscriminately into suburban pockets of housing is just not sustainable. This view is widespread among many groups and organizations and yet we continue to allow the ongoing, systematic destruction of valuable land. In places like the GTA (greater Toronto area), urban sprawl is out of control. Municipal leaders who lack vision continue to be bought by land developers. They are convinced that the predicted population growth in southern Ontario needs to be met with more of the same suburbs we’ve condemned for years.  These mayors and councilors have been bought into believing traditional development is the only way and if you don’t build it, they will simply go over to your neighbouring municipality, and they will. It’s time to put a halt to this madness. Municipalities have not recognized past failures and are not willing to change development towards more sustainable approaches. Because of this and how easy it is to buy politicians (by developers), we need to take the powers of appropriating land away from municipalities. We need a provincial plan that looks far into the future and ensures independent, sustainable communities.

It’s extremely concerning that Ontarians import some $4billion worth of food more then we export. Our dependence on other jurisdictions for our food supply has grown to an extremely dangerous level. In the event of a natural disaster, a pandemic, terrorist attack or a blackout (like the 2003 blackout) even the abrupt closing of the US boarder for whatever reason, the city of Toronto would have just 3 days of fresh food supply. We can’t simply ignore these facts; we have been confronted with these alarming stats for some time now but fail to respond.

One could argue that we have protection in place today with the creation of initiatives like the Green Belt protection plan. While the Green Belt does protect valuable farm land, wetlands, forests and watersheds, it says nothing about the massive shortfall of farmland needed to support our own needs let alone this valuable land now being swallowed up by urban sprawl. The point here is to use the land we do develop in a more sustainable manner and build our communities so that we do have access to local food, public transit and amenities.

To meet the needs of developers and their urban sprawl, the Ontario government is proposing to build the second largest quarry in North America.  This open pit limestone quarry will be 1 by 3 kilometers in size and as deep as 200 feet below the water table – that’s the size of about 200 football fields as deep as Niagara Falls! Because it falls at the headwaters for 5 major rivers, the company bidding the proposal will have to pump 600 million liters of groundwater each day – the equivalent of a ¼ of what the entire city of Toronto consumes daily. If built the people of Ontario will be adding 300, 40 tonne trucks along HWY’s 124, 10 and 89 EVERY HOUR. This will inevitably cost us millions in highway upgrades and maintenance and create massive amounts of dust and pollution, which in turn will cost you and I in our health (and the expenses associated with health care) not to mention the unknowns as to water supplies to literally millions of Ontarians. All these issues arise and there has been no environmental assessment.  The Minister of Natural Resources (MNR) can simply say yes or no without the valuable information garnered by an environmental assessment.

Do you want to do your part in helping to stop urban sprawl while protecting valuable land and a precious water supply? Here’s how…

Compliments of Rob Strang, Candidate, Dufferin Caledon, Deputy Leader – Green Party of Ontario

There are four days left to register a comment to MNR in opposition to the quarry via the Environment Registry. Please submit your comment under the Environmental Bill of Rights here before July 11.

You can also write John Wilkinson, Minister of the Environment, asking him to designate this project for a full Environmental Assessment.  A sample letter is available here and may be sent to the address below.

Notes

The comment period on the mega quarry has been extended until July 11, 2011.  To submit formal comments to the MNR’s posting on the Environmental Registry, please visit www.ebr.gov.on.ca and search under posting #011-2864. For information about the posting, please contact Mr. Craig Laing, Aggregate Resources Officer, Midhurst District, Ministry of Natural Resources, at 705-725-7532.

Request that the mega quarry be subject to a full environmental assessment by writing:

Hon. John Wilkinson, Minister

Ministry of Environment

11th Floor Ferguson Block

77 Wellesley St. West

Toronto, ON M7A 2T5

Jwilkinson.mpp.co@liberal.ola.org

416-314-6790

There are various organizations working to fight against this project, including:

http://www.ndact.com/NDACT/Welcome.html

Citizens Alliance for a Sustainable Environment (CAUSE)  www.citizensalliance.ca/

The Council of Canadians http://www.canadians.org/

Avaaz has also launched a petition which can be signed here,

http://www.avaaz.org/en/stop_the_quarry/?vl