Active Transportation
by Ingrid Buday
November and December have been busy months for Active Transportation!
In November, Etobicoke Climate Action participated in the United Nations World Day of Remembrance for Road Traffic Victims. Roads have prioritized vehicles since the 1912s when Kansas City passed the first ordinance requiring people to cross streets at crosswalks, the birth of “jay walking”. Here is an interesting article from the BBC regarding the evolution of how we view our roads today.
Since then millions of people have been seriously injured or killed on our roads; and on November 21st we walked down Avenue Road from Dupont to Bloor, honouring those who suffered at the hands of drivers and lack of political will to make our streets safer. You can see more here: Biking in a Big City
In addition, a study was conducted on the Killed or Seriously Injured Data from the Toronto Police Services Open Data Portal (see documentation here) where if an injured person had to be admitted to hospital, even if only for observation at the time of the collision, should be included in the data set. As it turns out, the dataset is incomplete. This dataset is now being completed through crowdsourced methodology where people can check the data on a map, determine if their crash is included, and if not add it to an auxiliary dataset. You can check that out here: Road Traffic Victims Count
To make our streets safer and hold drivers accountable, Jessica Bell, Bhutila Karpoche and Doly Begum brought forward the Vulnerable Road Users Law (Bill 54) and it passed its second reading. A video highlighting the proposed Act can be found here on Twitter. There is lots of work to be done; next it goes to committee, then a third reading, then royal assent. Etobicoke Climate Action supports this measure to make drivers accountable for the actions they take when it involves harm to people and their loved ones.
December’s highlight was the Council Meeting on December 15th where 2020 ActiveTO bike lanes were made permanent and a plan for 100 km of new bikeways in three years was approved. This includes extending the Bloor bike lanes to Six Points by 2024. Even with this new plan approved, each bike lane proposed in the plan will be subject to public consultation and will return to City Council for final approval. We will need to stay active and participate in consultations as they come up. For bike info and petitions you can read more at Two Wheeled Politics.
The downside is that both Etobicoke North’s Councillor Michael Ford and Etobicoke Centre’s Councillor Stephen Holyday voted against it. We have some serious work to do in the upcoming elections to make Etobicoke a safe place for everyone on our roads!
Etobicoke Climate Action will now have two Neighbourhood Climate Action Champions! Brian MacLean will be joined by Ingrid Buday in the upcoming cohort of the City of Toronto’s initiative for local leaders to engage community residents on environmental issues and inspire climate action. More to come on this as well.
Lastly, if you think that you need a car for hauling stuff around, check out this page that showcases different cargo bikes and what you can do with them! Bromptoning
Just remember:
