🚀 go-pugleaf

laurence_mclaughlin@mindlink.bc.ca (Laurence McLaughlin) wrote:

>latwood@sfu.ca (Lucinda Atwood) wrote:

>>Did y'all see this month's Bicycling magazine? We're one of North America's 
>>top ten cities for cycling. We're number ten. Guess who was chosen as number 
>>one....I was shocked.

>I was shocked to see Vancouver make the list at all !! Even Ottawa
>(8th place) does far more (officially and unofficially), and
>Toronto...no contest!

As someone who's lived and biked in both those cities in the last few
years, I haven't been too impressed with either's approach to cycling
lately.  The last major move I can remember in Toronto was restoring
parking on College and killing a bike lane (and not for the reasons
that Curt would like to see it done for)... and Ottawa's famous bike
paths are a) shared with lotsa joggers and pedestrians, and b) riddled
with potholes deep enough that they have to send search parties in to
look for you after three days.  (This is mainly a function of those
paths being federally funded, and the feds cutting way back on this
sort of thing in recent years.)

That being said, I don't have a sense of what's happened in the last
two years in Ottawa (although the administration there isn't known for
its friendliness to bikes), or since Barbara Hall was elected in
Toronto.

One thing I'll readily concede about TO, tho -- you can take your
bikes on the subway, buses and streetcars in off-peak hours, and in
the counterflow direction during rush hour.  That IS a big plus, and I
hope BC Transit takes a few notes...