Cyclists, Motorists … Give Peace A Chance

“I think it’s a culture war that they’re trying to create because it’s not going to help drivers, Congestion will remain the same, if not get worse because you’re just adding more and more cars in there instead of having alternatives like transit, like walking, like biking, like scootering.”

Capital Councillor Shawn Menard

Come on. Culture war?

We all know people who drive cars and others who bike. And they seem to be drinking white wine and devouring canapes in the Glebe … sometimes shockingly together … and yet war has not broken out. No gun-play at all. Most people are transportation-blind when it comes to receptions and the like. That’s good. Amazingly some people both drive and cycle and yet appear not to have required counselling.

Please councillor, give peace a chance. No North and South. No royalists and citoyens.

What Ottawa really needs is less factionalism on the transportation topic and fair-minded people designing our road and cycling maps in the safest and most efficient way possible.

Cyclists tell us that they fear being hit by a vehicle. Well they should be scared. Cycling on roadways, bike lanes on the side of the road or not, is dangerous. Most reasonable people would agree with that … motorists and cyclists.

The city is very proud of its bike lanes on Laurier Avenue. Yet I have found no parent who would want their children pedalling on those lanes. They’re too dangerous. Car and bikes don’t mix well and occasionally this results in tragedy … the fault of the driver or cyclist or both.

We need some thoughtful biking infrastructure that will keep cyclists safe. And that might not necessarily be on roads.

The first priority for bike lanes or paths is safety. If they are not safe, they should not be built. And many of our bike lanes and roads are not safe. Neither are they making cyclists nor motorists happy. Worst of all, they are not making Ontario Premier Doug Ford happy. And so the bull is in the transportation china shop. Ford wants to curb bike lanes. The worst possible outcome.

Somehow we must separate cyclists and motorists. The current system is not safe. Perhaps we build designated bike paths or we close Lisgar Avenue to motor traffic and make it bike only. Maybe we take the dangerous bike lanes off Laurier Avenue. Maybe we designate Spencer Street in the old west end as a bike-only route. These are not answers but suggestions. A long-shot maybe, but perhaps a start.

And rationally, we build bike paths rather than bike lanes where possible. Bike lanes are a cheap, dangerous way to keep the bike lobby on a slow boil and drivers steaming.

Ottawa and other municipalities have handled bike paths so badly that Ontario Government must step in. That’s ridiculous. We’ve seen what provincial intervention into the development world has wrought. The destruction of the fragile human infrastructure of neighbourhoods. And in Ottawa Queen’s Park wouldn’t know Blackburn Hamlet if it were flopped on Yonge Street.

Now bikes. Does Ford’s government know how traffic moves in Ottawa other than not at all? Does it know what works and what doesn’t work in Ottawa. The nation’s capital is so foreign to Ford that he had to appoint an Ontario ambassador to the nation’s capital.

The reason municipalities were created was avoid the problems that Ford is building now. The province doesn’t have the time, personnel, patience or ability to run Ottawa’s development and transportation. But then, neither does the City of Ottawa.

But nature abhors a vacuum and the vacuum in Ottawa leadership is profound. So the province moved in to fill the void.

Now we have the worst of both worlds … a province that doesn’t know what is do with Ottawa and a municipality that doesn’t know what to do with Ottawa.

Ottawa has botched transit, transportation, development and cycling. Now we have a province involved that might botch it all that much more.

Do a good job and you get praise. Do a bad job and you get Doug Ford. The mind wobbles.

Maybe if the City of Ottawa was better at what it did (such as handling cycling well), maybe the province wouldn’t be meddling in the mess.

So bring in the cultural war, councillor, to make it worse.

Ken Gray

Where are John and Yoko on the cycling issue?

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