The next meeting of the Toronto Cycling Committee (TCC) will be on Monday August 22, 2005 at 6:00 p.m. in Committee Room 1 at Toronto City Hall. At this meeting there will be just one item on the agenda but it is a very broad topic. Item 1 on the agenda is "Proposed Strategy for Accelerating the Toronto Bike Plan". Note that the start time is 6:00 pm not the regular 7:00 pm time. You can download the agenda at the following link. TCC Agenda, August 22, 2005(PDF)

This special meeting was called as a response to the Toronto Bike Plan progress report for 2004 that was tabled at the June 29th, 2005 meeting of the Works Committee. You can read the progress report at the following link: Toronto Bike Plan - Year-3 Progress Report (2004) (PDF). The report sounds a warning to Council and to residents who want to see Toronto encourage cycling as a transportation alternative by building bicycle infrastructure and expanding programs to promote cycling.

Since the adoption of the Bike Plan, annual funding for cycling education and promotion programs has remained unchanged, and funding for cycling infrastructure has increased. However, while overall cycling funding has increased, it has not kept pace with the 10-year projection presented in the Plan.

At the current pace of implementation, completing the proposed 1,074 km Bikeway Network within 10 years appears unachievable.

Toronto Bike Plan - Year-3 Progress Report (2004) (PDF)

The most notable area where progress has been slow is in the development of the Bikeway Network. The 10 year goal was that a network of 1074 kms of bike lanes, bike paths and bike routes be created. That would mean adding 783 kilometres to the 222 kilometres that existed in 2001. In the first three years of the plan only 37 kilometres of new bikeways have been added, that is less than 5% of the promised expansion in the first 30% of the time to do it. The report goes on to give reasons why the pace has been so slow: lack of capital funding, a lack of staff resources, and the lack of a streamlined approval process for bike lanes.

This report makes official what cycling activitists have been saying. The Bike Plan is foundering. If that is all it did it would not be much help. The part of the report that gives some hope it the proposal to develop a strategy to accelerate the bike plan that is to be presented to the Works Committee at its September 14, 2005 meeting. The report describes some potential components that could go into that strategy:

• increasing capital and operating funding;
• increasing City staffing;
• using external engineering consultants for design and
• streamlining the bicycle lane approval process; and
• investigating potential external funding sources.

Staff representing the Transportation Services Division, the Parks, Forestry and Recreation Division and the City Planning Division will be presenting a proposed strategy for accelerating the implementation of the Toronto Bike Plan. The implementation strategy will focus on the next three years (2006 - 2008) and will provide a detailed list of projects and recommended annual budgets for the Bikeway Network and cycling promotion and education/safety programs.

The end result of this will be a strategy to accelerate a plan that is not being implemented. The problem is that the same City Council that has not been implementing the plan will have to be counted on to implement the strategy to accelerate the plan.

This is the turning point for the Toronto Bike Plan. If the Mayor David Miller and the Councillors support the acceleration strategy, there is hope that we can see the measures in the bike plan being implemented to support the goal of Toronto's Official Plan to reduce car dependancy. If the Mayor and Councillors do not support the acceleration strategy, any pretense that The City of Toronto is actually implementing the Bike Plan should be discarded.

At this turning point it is crucial for Toronto residents to get involved. Individuals and organizatations who support enhancing cycling as a transportation alternative need to contact the Mayor and their Councillors. They will only make a move if they feel there is community support.