1. That bike in front of you is not a car.
More bikes on the road means fewer people contributing to gridlock by driving or to overcrowding on subways by taking public transit. Although most drivers don’t see it that way, their real enemy when it comes to faster commute times is other motorists.
2. Cycling is good for the environment – and saves lives.
Biking is a zero-carbon activity. The average car, by contrast, pumps something like 1 kilogram of CO2 into the atmosphere for every kilometre it travels. Cycling helps save lives, too. Streets with more cyclists are safer to travel.
3. Cycling encourages smarter development and is good for the economy.
Streets with higher traffic volumes have less street-level activity, which is bad for local business. Streets with bike lanes tend to encourage more local economic development. Research shows that investments in bike infrastructure generate more jobs than road infrastructure, 11.4 versus 9.6 jobs for every $1 million spent.
4. Cycling reduces health care costs for everyone.
Air pollution kills 24,000 people across Canada prematurely every year, some 1,400 people of them in Toronto. Conventional wisdom has it that cyclists who ride in traffic are exposed to higher levels of pollution than drivers. But drivers sitting in slow-moving rush-hour traffic are exposed to as much as three times more pollution than cyclists.
5. Bikes boost property values.
Neighbourhoods with bike infrastructure are more desirable to live in. Now we also know, according to a recent study by McGill researchers, that bike infrastructure boosts property values. That study found that the presence of Bixi bike-sharing stations raised the value of a typical home in central Montreal by an average of $8,650.
Compiled with research from the Share The Road Cycling Coalition (sharetheroad.ca).
