politics

Whatever the political spin about "mandates" and "working together", Toronto cyclists this morning have been feeling mighty bruised (at least one literally who was doored) by a divisive and ant-bike Ford win. That hasn't stopped them from the pithy tweets. See for yourself:

bad door prize this morn. bike is destroyed. spent 4 hours at hosp/55 division. no broken bones. feel like ive been thru a war. #biketo

There is some danger of assigning "mandates" to elections. Toronto just elected as mayor the worst choice possible for supporting walking or cycling. As Eric at Curbside puts it: "Today the city of Toronto voted in its 64th mayor, a porkchop of a man who, by all looks, rarely refuses gravy." So does this mean the war on the car has been won by the drivers?

Lloyd of Treehugger thinks so, that there's a big backlash coming:

TCAT has surprised me with two reports announced at the same time, the Benchmarking Active Transportation in Canadian Cities report and the Building Better Cycling in Cities: Lessons for Toronto report.

TorontoCranks informed me of some anti-bike lane campaigning taking place in Scarborough, Ward 35 - Adrian Heaps' ward. There's no love lost on Heaps by hardcore cycling advocates (including TorontoCranks who considers Heaps an "arrogant jackass") but TC points out that Heaps has done a lot to improve his ward. And at least Heaps has voted for all the bikeway network projects before council in the last 4 years while he was also the chair of the Cycling Committee.

Here is the first serious platform presentation on cycling by Mayoral Candidate HiMY SYeD. It's a shame that all the mainstream candidates have only excreted patronizing and dangerous platforms.