“Sometimes it’s hard to keep all the cats in the room,” councillor Kyle Rae begins when asked what Monday’s vote on his ward’s Jarvis redesign – in particular the inclusion on bike lanes – will look like.
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“If I keep all the people in the room for the vote that it will pass – but it’s keeping the all there through the accusations of warfare against the car,” he says.
At some point since the plans to convert an already sketchy north-south switching lane into a pedestrian-cyclist-motorist friendly boulevard, right-wing councilors declared it a war.
The fear-mongering tactic – you’re with cars or against – is a deliberately oversimplified one designed to enrage motorists.
“The biggest concern is the framing of the issue as a war on the automobile,” acknowledges Toronto Cyclists’ Union executive director Yvonne Bambrick. She’s suggesting people take a second to consider the facts around the Jarvis redesign.
She also points out that cyclists are not battling motorists, but powerful metaphors car sway undecided councillors. “They might rethink their vote.”
“There’s an imaginary loss,” says Rae about all the huffing and puffing from councillors like Denzil Minnan-Wong and Michael Walker – who were already furious that info about the plan was printed in NOW and not some paper they have delivered to their doorstep.
“At peak hours, staff estimate there will be a five minute increase between Bloor and Queen,” adds Rae of the negligible trade-off for cyclist safety, neighbourhood revitalization and public space greening.
“I’m feeling that we will win this, displaying some confidence going into the Monday vote, but repeats the need to keep councillors around through the barrage of manufactured attacks from the right.
Bambrick adds that everyone who understands the need for safe lanes for cyclists should be contacting their councillors before Monday.
Better yet, those who can should go the Meeting No. 24 of the Public Works and Infrastructure Committee (scroll to the bottom) to support the effort.
In case you need a reminder, Monday is also the start of Bike Month and the councillors inciting a “war” between cars and bikes would love nothing more than to ruin it. Don’t let them.
