Highlights from the Ontario Bike Summit
Posted April 29, 2018
Jordan and Yvette from Guelph Coalition for Active Transportation recently attended Share the Road‘s 2018 Ontario Bike Summit. Here is a short recap of what we attended with some links worth checking out!
Bicycle Friendly Community Awards
Our neighbours in Waterloo were awarded the “Gold” Bicycle Friendly Communities designation Way to go, Waterloo! (They’ve surpassed us. Guelph is at the “Silver” level.)
Keynote Address: Dale Bracewell, Manager of Transportation Planning – City of Vancouver
Some impressive success stories and challenges from Vancouver who are at the forefront of urban transportation planning
http://vancouver.ca/streets-transportation/walk-bike-and-transit.aspx
Some highlights:
- 32% decrease in distance driven per resident since 2007
- 10% of residents bike to work
- Half of all trips are using sustainable modes (walking, biking, transit)
- 25% of their cycling network is AAA (All Ages and Abilities)
- Vancouver’s 10 Guidelines for AAA Bike Network: http://vancouver.ca/files/cov/design-guidelines-for-all-ages-and-abilities-cycling-routes.pdf
- Bracewell described his job in the following way: Ensuring that 100% of “new trips” in the city are not taken by car. In other words, the number of car trips stays the same or decreases while other trip types increase as the population grows. This is a good way of thinking of Guelph given the projected population growth.
Keynote Conversation: Ontario Minister of Transportation Kathryn McGarry
- Did you know: The provincial cycling “file” is shared between Ministry of Transportation and Ministry of Tourism, Culture, and Sport
- The province has just released their Cycling Strategy Action Plan (CycleON 2.0 Action Plan.) Worth a read to learn about new funding streams, and the province’s strategies for benefiting from cycling:
http://www.mto.gov.on.ca/english/publications/pdfs/cycle-action-plan.pdf
- The province has just released an update of the Cycling Skills Guide: http://www.mto.gov.on.ca/english/safety/pdfs/cycling-skills.pdf
State of Cycling Presentation by Share the Road CEO, Jamie Stuckless
New polling data collected by Nanos on behalf of Share the Road was presented. This is good stuff for presenting to local decision makers as it shows that there is majority support for investments in cycling infrastructure.
http://www.sharetheroad.ca/opinion-poll-data-s17022 (includes additional link to full Nanos results)
Finding the Right Metrics for Your Project Session – Behind the Scenes of North America’s Most Extensively Studied Bike Lane
This was about Toronto’s Bloor St. Protected Bike Lane Pilot Project. There were a HUGE amount of contributors to this from cycling advocacy, BIA’s, resident associations, Toronto city hall, researchers, consultants, doctors/health advocates.
Photo credit to http://news.engineering.utoronto.ca
Final report to Council
https://www.toronto.ca/wp-content/uploads/2017/10/8ef6-cycling-bloor-backgroundfile-107582.pdf
Highlights from the data collection for Bloor St. Protected bike lane project:
- Daily cyclist count went from 3,300 in June 2016 to 4,900 in June 2017 (49% increase)
- The total number of conflicts/near-misses between all road-users decreased by 44%
- Bike/vehicle conflicts reduced by 61%
- 85% of cyclists now feel safe, compared to 3% before
Other advocacy/community organizations that contributed to this (a few out of many):
- Toronto Centre for Active Transportation
- Cycle Toronto
- Doctors for Safe Cycling
- http://bellsonbloor.org/
These lanes have now been made permanent.
Community Inspiration Session
This was a “20×20” session where presenters had 20 slides and 20 seconds for each slide to present their inspirational projects.
BikeOttawa is doing INCREDIBLE bike network mapping
- https://blog.mapillary.com/update/2017/11/17/completing-the-map-for-bicycle-advocacy-in-ottawa.html is a very cool mapping project designed to enhance the advocacy-case for infrastructure improvements… which they’ve now used to create https://maps.bikeottawa.ca/ . These are interactive maps based on a “traffic-stress” that is assigned to every street in the city using the data previously collected. You can use these tools to create a route that meets the level of stress you are comfortable with. Check it out!
- https://ibikeibuy.ca/statistics/ is a tool to show that people on bikes are spending money all over the city.
The Halifax Cycling Coalition developed a crowdsourcing app called Cycle snApp to capture geo-tagged citizen feedback on anything cycling-related
https://cyclehalifax.ca/learn/snapp/
The Toronto Bicycle Music Festival is a bicycle-powered mobile music festival that’s been taking place since 2010. Their message: “Just add bikes” to your event.
http://torontobicyclemusicfestival.com/
Hope this gives you a good summary of the Ontario Bike Summit!
