At their first meeting of the fall the City of Toronto's Works Committee will consider a report which lays out a strategy to get the Bike Plan back on track. This report is in response to the Toronto Bike Plan - Year 3 Progress Report (2004)-PDF which showed that there has not been much progress last year. (See previous article. This lack of progress prompted the members of the Toronto Cycling Committee (TCC) and the City's Roundtable on the Environment to ask staff to develop a plan for accelerating the implementation of the Bike Plan. You can see the full report at the following link from the City of Toronto's web site. Toronto Bike Plan - 3 Year Implementation Strategy (PDF). The decision as to whether or not this strategy gets implemented will rest with the members of the Works Committee. Now is the time for those who want to see the Bike Plan truly implemented to start to put pressure on these Councillors.

The report deals mainly with three areas: 1) expanding cycling infrastructure on roads and through hydro and rail corridors which is the responsibility of the Transportation Services Division 2) expanding bicycle paths in Toronto's parks which is the responsibility of the Parks, Forestry & Recreation division and 3) enhancing the bicycle safety, education and promotion programs that is the responsibility of the City Planning division. The report makes recommendations in some of these areas for accelerating the work on implementing the bike plan.

The most extensive recommendations relate to the expansion of the Bikeway Network. It lays out a three year plan to build 100 kms bike lanes and get a start on a city wide east-west bicycle path through the Finch Hydro Corridor and a majority of the Gatineau Hydro Corridor in Scarborough. The report recommends that the budget for this be set to $3.0 million for 2006, $6.0 million in 2007 and $6.2 million in 2008. The report also recommends that additional staff be hired to handle the increased level of activity.

The $3.0 million proposed in the plan for next year is slightly more than the $2.3 million budgeted for 2005 but only half of the $6.0 million that the Bike Plan recommended be spent in that year. The Toronto Cycling Committee has recommended that the amount budgeted in 2006 be raised to $4.5 million in order to truly give this plan some acceleration.

In the area of Bikeway Network paths through parks, the strategy also lists projects for the next three years that would total $4.1 million over the three years. The level of funding recommended for 2006 is $1.6 million which is in keeping with the recommendation of the Bike Plan.

In the third area, enhancing programs for cycling safety, cycling education and cycling promotion the report states that the funding available to implement these programs has been eroded since 2001. It states that to meet the commitments in the Bike Plan the funding would require "something like a doubling" of the current $150,000. In spite of that the strategy makes no specific recommendations for any increases. The Toronto Cycling Committee has however. At their last meeting they passed a motion that the funding for these programs be increased to $200,000, or 7% of the Cycling infrastructure budget. If that budget was increased to the $4.5 million that the TCC is recommending it would be $315,000 which is 'something like a doubling' recommended in the report.

You can see all of the TCC's recommendations relative to the strategy in the following document. Item 14a Proposed 3-Year Toronto Bike Plan Strategy -TCC

The only way this Strategy to accelerate the Bike Plan will happen is if a majority of the Councillors on the Works committee support it. Now is the time to start contacting them and letting them know your feelings on the issue. You can find the names of the members of the Works Committee and links to their contact information at the following web page. Toronto Works Committee