On October 3, 2007 the Public Works and Infrastructure Committee will consider a report on Sustainable Transportation Initiatives: Short-term Proposals. It contains initiatives in a number of areas including cycling. This report includes recommendations to study a number of proposals most of which are recommendations contained in the Toronto Bike Plan. The outcome of these studies would be reports that would come back to this Committee or the Planning and Growth Management Committee and then eventually on to Council which would be the basis of a decision to actually implement these projects. These are all necessary projects and should be supported. If you want to lend your support to these you can sign up for a deputation or send in a written deputation by contacting pwic@toronto.ca. The deadline to register is 12:00 noon on Tuesday October 2nd.

This report comes as a result of the City's Climate Change Plan that was adopted by Council in July of 2007. The report states that this report contains only some of the City's transportation proposals that will be included in the Climate Change plan and that other transportation proposals will be dealt with separately. These will all be included the Sustainable Transportation Implementation Strategy (STIS) which is called for in Toronto's Climate Change plan.

The 'short term' proposals in the area of cycling infrastructure are those that would lay the foundation for future bike lane or bike path projects. This is good in that it gets these ideas on the agenda and prepares the way to get money in the 2008 budget for these studies. It is concerning however these are called short term proposals. The studies will be done in 2008 with the earliest the resulting bike lane or bike path projects could start being implemented is in 2009. These are, I would hope, mid-term proposals. There is more that must be done to get the Cycling Infrastructure built in the shorter term. These are the bike lanes on streets that simply need to be approved by Council or the path projects that are on City owned land in parks and along boulevards. Hopefully we will see these in the long awaited Toronto Bike Plan progress report which is due this fall. Hopefully these 'shorter term' implementation projects are among the other transportation initiatives that are referred to in the report that will be dealt with separately.

The cycling related initiatives are quoted below. You can read the background on each of these in the full report: Sustainable Transportation Initiatives: Short-term Proposals. The initiatives are summarized as a chart indicating the timelines in the following document Apendix 1 Sustainable Transportation Initiatives. There are also further details on the proposals in the following document Appendix 2 Sustainable Transportation Initiatives

CYCLING
(a) direct the Executive Director, Facilities and Real Estate to assess the feasibility of a bikestation in the redevelopment of Union Station.

(b) direct the Chief Planner and Executive Director, City Planning to assess the feasibility of a Bike Share program for City staff at all Civic Centres and to develop a business case for commuter and community public bike share programs and report back to the Planning and Growth Management Committee on these initiatives.

(c) authorize the General Manager, Transportation Services to retain a Transportation Consultant to undertake, in 2008, an Environmental Assessment of an east-west bicycle route through the downtown area with the objective of implementing the recommended route in 2009.

(d) direct the General Manager, Transportation Services to report on the feasibility of establishing a bikeway on Bloor Street and Danforth Avenue, from Royal York Road to Victoria Park Avenue, including the development of design options and an assessment of the parking and traffic impacts, and report to the Public Works and Infrastructure Committee on the results of this review.

(e) direct the General Manager, Transportation Services, in consultation with the General Manager, Parks, Forestry and Recreation, to investigate the feasibility, assess the maintenance requirements and responsibilities, undertake the detailed design and enter into negotiations with the owners and operators of the rail and hydro corridors for the implementation of the bicycle trails identified in the approved Bike Plan within these corridors, and to report back on the results of this review.

OTHER INITIATIVES

direct the General Manager, Transportation Services and the Chief Planner and Executive Director, City Planning, to report on:

(i) the establishment of a permanent City staff committee to liaise with representatives of the cartage and courier industries, building owners, managers and tenants on commercial vehicle servicing issues, including the access and parking needs of pick-up, delivery and servicing vehicles; and
(ii) possible strategies to encourage a greater proportion of courier deliveries and pick-ups to be made by bicycle.

Adopting these proposals is a positive step in getting these projects actually implemented. They will remove some of the obstacles that have prevented the planning and construction of paths in hydro and rail corridors and on some important on-street east west routes. I hope, however that Council does not think by passing this set of proposals that it has dealt with the cycling file and can move on to other things. This is just a part of the overall plan that needs to be in place to complete the Bikeway Network by 2012 as Mayor David Miller has promised.