Keep it rolling: Toronto’s Bike Month
It seems that Toronto’s Bike Month is on a roll. Launching this week and running throughout June, Bike Month will likely attract more people as a result of more bike lanes that have popped up in the city in recent years.
It may surprise you to learn that Bike Month is an initiative of the City of Toronto, beginning in 1989 with Bike to Work Day. Since then this awareness initiative expanded to include an entire month + week under the partnership of the City and Cycle Toronto.
We at Greening Homes are all for this of course. One of our Five Core Values is Smart Transportation, encouraging our team to ride bikes, take TTC or carpool to the job site. In June, we offer our team a stipend to cover a basic bike tune up. In 2015 we won an award for Pollution Probes’ healthy commute challenge. A side benefit to this policy is neighbour appreciation as our on-site teams try not to take up a lot of street parking space.
It’s not a surprise then that we favour renovation projects close to TTC routes and cycling infrastructure.
While the City has taken positive strides in carving out bike lanes to make cycling safer and hence more popular, much more needs to be done of course. According to Cycle Toronto, dooring is on the rise – that terrible surprise when a cyclist collides with an opening car door. Cycle Toronto notes that dooring was not included in the Road Safety Plan approved by Toronto City Council last year, and recommends adding a dooring collision analysis. A map on dooring collisions between 2014 and 2016 clearly demonstrates that bike lanes play a critical role in dramatically reducing these accidents.
With this in mind, Greening Homes would love to see the Western Toronto Railpath expand soon. Most of our team lives in the area, and we’ve come to rely on the first phase of the path, which launched in 2009 and runs from Cariboo Avenue to Dundas Street West. It’s paved and safe. Phase Two will take us further south and east.
According to Friends of West Toronto Railpath: “Once completed, the Railpath will give more than 250,000 Toronto residents a sustainable transportation link with the downtown core.”
Bring it on!
We certainly applaud the progress made to date, and are grateful for the advocacy and resources provided by Cycle Toronto, Pollution Probe, and other organizations.
After all, we want the city to be safe for cycling, encouraging other companies to adopt Smart Transportation policies too!
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