What kind of society approves of tar sands mining more than bike lanes?

It's simple, the tar sands were approved because people were going to make money off them... a lot of money... so political pressure was and is huge. Bike lanes were not supported in such a manner, nobody on council was a strong enough visionary to actually pick-up the task and because there was no pot of gold at the end of the rainbow for Miller and all who deserve the blame(Rob Ford) before him the project was scrapped. Yes it is a social injustice for cyclists and no most people don't get the irony or if they do they'll be happy to sit on their apathetic hands since chances are they're motorists only.

Haha "social injustice" -- how about you shut your whiny hipster ass up, get a real job, and get yourself a little of that POWER that actually makes a difference?

This is how the world works, dipshits. $ talks. Deal with it.

Hipster? Lol. Ok Grandma, we'll get off your lawn too.. lol!!!

Hipster and troll, you're both wrong.

Moral and economic choices can be aligned, they are not necessary mutually exclusive. This kind of one dimensional ideologically bigoted discussion doesn't help us advance anything.

The reason why tar sands win over bike lanes is simply because the economic benefit of the former is easier to measure and realize and therefore politically easier to sell. The solution for the bike lobby is therefore to do a better job of quantifying the economic benefits of encouraging cycling in the city. This may not be easy to do but a) It would seem our "moral imperative" to try b) It might actually turn out to be excellent business. Good business can be your friend, tree hugging hipster. ;-) (Hey, want a "real job?") This would also be less adversarial than trying to guilt people into being more green and telling them how bad they are for driving to the burbs. It would also be more effective at turning them over to your cause if you can sell them on it rather than beat them over the head with it.

Let's see how Bixi plays out for business, that's a good start.

A tale of two environmental assessments... connecting tar sands and bike lanes was quite a stretch, but now we can align the ideals behind them? Really...

I'm sure any hipster kid would take a viable job, given that unemployment among our youth is the worst it's even been for a long time. That is if the employer didn't malign him as an irresponsible scofflaw for riding a bicycle over an actually irresponsible kid who somehow afforded a car.

Thank you silvio again for pointing out that tar sands and bike lanes have nothing to do with each other except in dances_with_traffic's blinded mindset where the two are necessarily mutually exclusive. Dances_with_traffic, you completely missed the point. You will not win by pitting the two against directly each other because they have nothing to do with each other except in the black & white/good & evil imaginary framework you are consumed with. New speak? Really?! "...any employer would malign him as an irresponsible scofflaw for riding a bicycle over an actually irresponsible kid who somehow afforded a car" You've got to be kidding me. You poor poor thing, the voices in your head must be over powering.

I'm happy to report that I work in a very good paying engineering firm not 5 minutes from Queen/Bathurst (hipster alert!) and easily afford a car, as do most of my colleagues. But I bike to work, as do at least 60% of my colleagues. And work rewards it. Clear your head and open your eyes even just a little. And no we don't work for the tar sands or any petrol.

I sincerely hope you're just joking around.

Oh, and in my opinion, bikes are so relatively inexpensive an extra sales tax seems unlikely that would generate anything substantial. And similarly, any user/licensing fees that would raise enough money to fund bike lanes would be so high as to discourage many casual cyclists. Since it seems our MO at this point is to win far greater numbers over to urban cycling, charging them now seems pointless and even counterproductive. User fees and taxes are useful when you are trying to regulate the consumption of a good or service. We're trying to encourage it at this point.

I am glad i'm not the only person who needs to clear the voices in their head. After you get done, then maybe you should write the writer of the piece on rabble and the post here. Tell them how wrong they are. I wasn't somehow pitting tar sands against bicycle lanes.

tar sands: join me bikelane I am your father, your asphalt is made from me, you can't deny it
bikelane: Noooo! does this mean i have to get a "real" job?? Nooooo!
random cyclist: Man, do I hate hipsters.

Hahaha. I digress,

You're the person who was going to reconcile the ideals between a society that rushes through EAs for tar sand and stalls EAs for bicycle lanes. Maybe we'll just let that dissonance sit for a while. Not to turn it into too much of a canary in a coal mine, but it looks pretty bad when we compare the two. I wasn't aware we're going to discredit problems because their solutions occur at different levels of government. That is if the tar sands EA was ever a federal issue?

Lastly, in case it never crossed your pretty brain, yes people don't hire other people because they don't have a car... it makes the candidate strange and vaguely unreliable, maybe when you experience more you'll find that out. One can hope you never do. Congrats on the job, lets hope they don't promote your co-worker over you because he has a nice(r) car! :)

I believe the writer already gets the point from this thread.

I know you or the writer weren't really pitting bikes against tar sands, you were simply pointing out the cognitive dissonance when trying to evaluate and compare the moral considerations embedded in each. And I actually agree at some level but 1) Like this is the first time humans glaring contradictions have popped out of human history?! Not excusing it, just sayin', work with it. 2) Most people probably don't see the connection or the sad, underlying contradictions, or care to look 3) Those same people could be sold on biking in the city purely on fun and practical merits. That I believe. I get the ideals, but if you can sell it purely because it makes good practical sense in ways that the widest audience can appreciate (time, fun & money)--then we win. Random cycling has a point: "$ talks. Deal with it."

That last point is news to me. The only scenario I can imagine this is if I were applying for a pizza delivery job. If it happens more widely I've yet to witness it. I forgot to mention 99% at work don't drive because frankly there's no place to park and it's ridiculous to drive. So they bike or transit or walk. The promotion idea is ludicrous. I know Bay Streeters (read: tend to be avid consumers and peddlers of all manner of materialistic social signaling) that don't even own cars because it doesn't make economic sense, and yet still hate hippies. ;-) Shades of gray...

I don't really want to see a bike license fee. But I also recognize that cars already pay a much greater share of taxes for road upkeep. Drivers pay property taxes, plus gas taxes, provincial licence fees, Miller's municipal license fee , taxes on parking, enviromental tax on tires, batteries and oil filters etc. I would say the system you proposed is already in place.

Right now there is $200 million of federal dollars being spent to upgrade Toronto roads and infrastructure. So your claim that ALL municipal roads are paid by property taxes is not true . The TCU shou make stickers that read - Thank you Stephen Harper for fixing our potholed roads.

We could look at this issue another way too. There are fewer large vehicles on our roads but they cause significantly more damage to the road than cars. If commercial vehicles and the TTC had to pay the city for the damage they caused transit riders wouldn't be getting refunds anytime soon. The cost of good and services would be significantly higher and so would TTC fares but where road mainatenance is concerned it would be a much more progressive method of addressing the problem.

Or we can stick to the status quo which is working (sort of) and stop the whining and whinging that the system in unfair.

From what i understand the fee would have to be quite large, given the small number of people who would purchase one and the typical costs associated with the program... i don't really see such a program having an effect on how many people strictly follow the traffic laws. So what is the point? To simply appease a "tyrant" if you will... perhaps no cyclist advocate in favour of a license is familiar with the bait and switch?

Further to Anthill's comments:
- about 7% of Property Taxes go directly to our road expenses, a total of about 35% goes to Transportation costs
- Toronto's budget accounts for $180,000,000 to be spent each year on Road Repair, which is an expense exclusively tied to motor vehicles, not bikes - but everybody pays for it.
- Bicycle licensing has been reviewed twice by the MTO and each time the conclusion was that it would be too expensive, ineffective and impossible to manage.

In my opinion there is only incidental enforcement of bike laws - more education and enforcement would be welcomed by all I'm sure, which should also include comprehensive driver education regarding cycling.

Lastly, I'd like to know how we are to encourage people to commute by Bike, if they already pay Property Taxes and Vehicle fees?

In other words - Why should I pay more to ride my bike to work?

Many of the commenters, like our governments, are kinda EAvading the topic - which is about the rather disparate and uneven use of EAs, and what the criteria are for their application. It is a very marked contrast in process that massive projects and impacts are EAsed through, and this also must include the BLoor/Yorkville project, where many politicians and officials couldn't figger out that a dividing line of $2.2M meant that a $25M (now $29+M) project shouldn't be in the rubber stamp no process/inputs category, but in a more fullsome Class B, like the cheaper Roncesvalles and St. Clair project.
I am disliking the anonymouse slagging of Albert Koehl, who at least has the guts and interest in putting together a piece and is willing to put his name on it. I do agree that discussing how many avoided costs of automobility there are is useful though - and there are some older studies that indicate a range of between $1,000 and $4,600 of avoided costs and externalities per car per year - and if logic had any sway, having the civic car registration tax continue would be wise.
And returning to the Bloor topic, I'm glad that I reacted to finding that scrawled note on an old scrap of paper to check the existence of that on-the-shelf report from 1992 a few years back. If anyone wishes to look at it directly, it's call # is 711.72097135 M13 at Urban Affairs.
There is a climate carisis - most of the rest of the world gets this.

A cyclist is far more likely to have actually paid for the road they are on... the cyclist's tax economy is all local - unlike car commuter who cross into other cities roads.

"- Bicycle licensing has been reviewed twice by the MTO and each time the conclusion was that it would be too expensive, ineffective and impossible to manage."

That would be vehicular licensing of individual bikes. Actually, there is conflicting information about the MTO's conclusion, as reviews of recreational all-terrain vehicle and snowmobile licensing programs indicate that the existing policies and procedures for registration, tracking, and revenues work well. Funny how the same can't be done for bikes.

And the MTO's reviews don't consider cyclist training, education, and certification. Having proof of competency in the form of a cyclists license is another part of the equation (and revenue stream). If cycling was taught in elementary schools, driver candidates would learn correct behavior and skills so that by the time they got to secondary school, they could take a driver exam with a solid foundation of learning behind them. The step after that would be automobile driver training, which is where our licensing system "jumps to" at the moment.

Finally, most of the general public conveniently forget professional drivers and commercial vehicle owner/operators. These are what our highway networks are really built for: the movement of goods. Anyone know what a DZ or AZ license costs? Annual fee for a CVOR? Fines for not keeping accurate driver logs? Take a guess, and then think about how everything we rely on here in Toronto comes to us via truck.

Brian

High school cycling courses in Phys Ed. class would be great.

Great post HPVrider!

I remember in the 1970's the police used to stage "bike rodeos" at elementary schools and in the parking lot of the local East York Curling Club each summer, doing the same thing, skills courses laid out on the tarmac, simulating traffic scenarios.

They too registered bikes onsite, for free, writing down the make, model, and serial number and owner's address.

Though it's not entirely in the mandate of the police to teach cycling skills, officers I know like Hugh Smith and Scott Mills believe strongly in education before enforcement. It's not fair to punish someone who may not know the rules or appropriate behaviors for a given road scenario.

I can't imagine why skills clinics held in conjunction with CAN-BIKE instructors and Police couldn't be done today, or why this great tradition has died off. Certainly it would build better relationships with future cyclists and road users and the police.

As for licensing, again, it's the responsibility of the Ministry of Transport at the Provincial level. Has anyone here contacted Minister Kathleen Wynne's office to request a meeting to discuss?

Brian

Sorry, I can't seem to be able to get it past the spam filter.

Seymore,

Excellent points, but I'm more of a gay Erasure fan, who sang songs like "Chains Of Love"..

"how can I explain, when there are few words i can choose..."

It really boils down to standards, education, behavior, and enforcement. Take those subcategories and make a list of what's working right now, and what needs improvement. Then improvise, concoct, dream up ideas for solutions to what needs improvement, and then discuss your ideas with others. THAT's how we make change. No one person, group, or administration can effect that kind of change. It has to be a collective paradigm shift.

"do you remember there was a time, a ha ah, when there were open doors, an invitation to explore"...

Clearly there is enough bureaucracy, apathy, and misocracy. What is needed is vision, patience, clarity, and communication. All those things happened at the advent of the automobile as a mass produced consumer product, to the point where municipalities, provinces, and federations got on board to help build the business around these consumer products. If governments hadn't built roads, motoring would still be a sport for the wealthy elite, much like polo or horseback riding. Or cycling. our society needs to decide if cycling is to remain a sport pastime, or a definite mode of personal transport. And it can't be both. This generation is waffling, and time is approaching where a decision has to be made.

To your points:

Insurance is a necessary evil in our society, because everything we depend on is bought and sold with money. Cyclists should have to pay insurance, just like any other road user, because it makes sense and is useful in worst-case scenarios. And, bike insurance will be a strong deterrent to unskilled riders attempting to join traffic, inappropriate behavior, and an encouragement to education. Ever wonder how many people take Young Drivers just because it entitles them to discounted insurance premiums? Lots. Insurance can be made for bikes, and it dosn't have to be as expensive as other insurances, because of the point John Spragge made in a previous post: bikes can't cause as much damage or injury as a 2000 lb automobile.

Sweat, safety, foul weather - I'm sorry, but these points really trigger me personally. There are just too many people living so far from the truth... Fact is, Everybody sweats. Naturally. We sweat to cool our bodies. We sweat all the time, whether we percieve it or not. It's completely natural, and normal.

Safety: there's risk in everything, in every moment, everywhere. Ultimately, we are all going to die eventually, it's inevitable, loss and death is natural. We should learn not to fear it, but to accept it, embrace it, understand it, do our best to prevent it, but in the end, go with it.

Foul weather: there is no such thing as foul weather, just inappropriate clothing. The solution is to be prepared for the worst, and be resilient to change with the weather. We do a myriad of other things in the outdoors that are way more "dangerous' than cycling; why is it that people take ski lessons, sailing lessons, surf lessons, all activities which rely on "foul weather" to generate condtions; yet they don't take cycling lessons? Stumps me.

This is fun. Thanks for the discourse.

Brian

or the atv or snowmobile exams... ha ha. "exams"

Really though, the cost of the licensing and revenues is going to be directly proportional to the effectiveness and scope of the program... which is to say for bicycles - not very. An atv, boat or snowmobile costs tens of thousands, most bicycles cost under a thousand. Would the charge a cyclist 10% or $100? I think a snowmobiler pays 10% and thats $100, so for a cyclist that works out to $10 max. Could the province even hire one person to manage the program? It's all icing on the shit cake i'm afraid. Though, with a license plate I could finally take the 407, nice wide shoulders I hear! Better get working on those e-bike modifications!! ;)

@skinny B (Brian):
"our society needs to decide if cycling is to remain a sport pastime, or a definite mode of personal transport. And it can't be both."

Why can't it be both? I ride my bike in the city to get from one place to the other, but whenever I have time off I go on recreational rides. On the two different types of rides, I wear different clothes, use a different bike, eat different food, and have different goals, but I don't feel too conflicted about it.