Whether you ride once or twice a week, only in fair-weather, or ride every day to work or school, cycling infrastructure matters to you.
Healthy Communities
Strong communities need to be people-oriented. When youth can walk or bike to school, and when adults can walk to the grocery store or bike to work or school, neighbourhoods come alive. Safe, pleasant, active and fun: good cycling infrastructure connects neighbours with each other and connects neighbourhoods across the city.
The Plan
This infrastructure doesn’t happen by itself. It needs strong support from councillors and trustees to ensure it remains a priority. Councillors direct the priorities of the administration, and provide the budget to implement changes. The City of Edmonton has developed a well-designed Bicycle Transportation Plan (BTP). It calls for $10-million to be spent for 10 years. The result: a complete, city-wide bicycle transportation network, including connector routes and pathways to get around within your neighbourhood and a city-wide skeleton network, fed by the connector routes. The connector system will be on low-traffic roads, suitable for both transportation and family recreation, while the city-wide network will provide direct corridors for bicycle access that moderately-skilled cyclists will feel comfortable on. Sharrows, bike lanes, multi-use trails, and other types of infrastructure will be built; the BTP considers the most appropriate style of route for the location.
The Economy of Cycling
That’s almost 500km of bikeway, plus facilities such as secure bike-parking, showers, transit integration, signage, education and maintenance, for well under the cost of a major road or bridge rehabilitation. Increasing cycling reduces road maintenance costs, reduces congestion, frees up parking, and improves ground-level air quality. Now there’s an investment. For individuals, cycling provides an accessible, healthy, and fun mode of transportation: not just for students riding to school, but for labourers, professionals, office-workers, parents and entire families. Edmonton’s sunny, dry weather is great for riding at least 265-days a year. It’s flat, it’s not especially windy, and we have a great river valley too, if your destination happens to take you along that route.
A Message to Candidates
We want candidates for mayor, council and the school boards to hear this message: cycling matters to us.
- We want candidates to see letters and e-mails in their mailboxes asking about their positions on funding cycling infrastructure.
- We want candidates to hear and answer questions about cycling issues at every forum they attend.
- We want to see candidates posting photos of themselves with their bikes, or better yet, riding their bikes.
- We want council candidates to be familiar with cycling issues, with the Bicycle Transportation Plan, and to promise to make active transportation a priority by adequately funding it.
- We want to hear school board candidates talking about adequate bicycle parking at schools. We want them to discuss youth riding to grade school, junior high, and high school in a safe environment. We want to hear candidates addressing cycling as a way to reduce dangerous vehicle congestion in front of schools.
How You Can Participate
Familiarize yourself with our draft lobby document. If you have recommendations, feel free to contact us with them.
Write to the candidates in your ward and to the mayoral candidates. You can base your letter off of this example letter for council and mayoral candidates, or use this example letter for school board trustee candidates. Ask them to commit to fully fund and support the Bicycle Transportation Plan. EBC has sent all candidates a letter and questionnaire but we want many cyclists to write letters too! The more people who ask about cycling, the more it will be on their policy agenda. Make sure your letter is framed by the big picture issues, but offer some personal stuff too. What parts of your own bicycle routes needs to be improved? Include info@edmontonbikes.ca as a carbon-copy in your letter, so we know what candidates have been asked, and forward any responses that you receive to us. We’ll be posting the responses we receive from candidates to their individual pages so that we can all learn about their positions.
Attend forums in your area. You can view a list of city-sponsored forums. Know of other forums? Let us know. Here’s a list of sample forum questions that you could ask or base your own questions on.
Results
We’re not expecting to change the results of the election. We’re non-partisan. We’ll post information that we receive here without additional commentary and let you decide. But we do want all the candidates to be aware of the concerns that cyclists have, and be constantly reminded that supporting cycling infrastructure rejuvenates neighbourhoods, and benefits both cyclists and drivers. Remind them that many of us are both drivers and cyclists. Cycling reduces congestion and road maintenance/expansion requirements, and dedicated infrastructure makes us both more comfortable.
Accountability: After the Vote
The campaign isn’t over on October 18. By then, the elected officials will know the importance of cycling issues, and we’ll have their word that it matters to them as we move into planning, budgeting and other decisions at City Hall and on the school boards.
We’re just getting started! If you want to be more involved, please contact us at info@edmontonbikes.ca, or send a message using the form below.
