What’s most irksome about the Jarvis debacle is the reason behind it. Though we’ve heard a lot of stuff about the new dedicated bike lane (Toronto’s first) now under construction on Sherbourne, the real story is the city’s desire to placate the north-end residents of Moore Park and Rosedale who hated to lose Jarvis’s reversible middle lane. Its removal slows traffic and their daily commute into downtown.
Even in times of rampant self-interest, this sort of behaviour is unseemly, even odious. But more to the point, it’s self-destructive. At the very moment when the city needs to get people out of their cars and onto bicycles; it loses its nerve. It empowers drivers as it disenfranchises cyclists — and, we might add, pedestrians
How stupid is that?
Read the full post: “Hume: Toronto diminishes its future by killing Jarvis bike lanes” at the Toronto Star.
