THIS is a bike lane

According to the Toronto Star's online Map of the week (March 19, 2009), there were 1,068 bicycle accidents reported to Toronto police in 2008. Some of these accidents occurred while cyclists were using dedicated bike lanes, such as the College St. or Dundas St. E. bike lanes. This should come as no surprise: a painted line on the side of the road, as any cyclist can tell you, offers little protection from passing cars or the suddenly-opened doors of cars parked between traffic, cyclists and the sidewalk. Clearly, there should be NO accidents involving cars on Toronto bicycle lanes. By definition, a bicycle lane must be SAFE for cyclists, but our bike lanes don´t even look safe. Would you feel safe with cars whizzing past you on the Bloor Viaduct?

Out-of-touch conservatives like Justin Van Dette consistently miss the point when they suggest that bike lanes should be relegated to Toronto's ravines. For too many car crazy Canadians a bicycle is a toy to be taken out the occasional weekend with the kids: it´s not a serious mode of transportation. But bicycles are a valid, efficient and clean way to get around the city. We need to make opting to bike a more viable alternative for the average Torontonian, who is not willing to risk life and limb to get from point A to point B, like the courageous cyclists of this city do every day.

Maybe it´s because Van Dette, and others like him, intuit the inherent challenge cyclists and bike lanes represent: more bike lanes mean fewer cars; they´re not really complementary. Once you start creating a dedicated space for cyclists, sooner or later people will have no choice but to get on a bicycle (“if you build it, they will come”). As things stand, my mother wouldn´t even think of hopping on her bike to get around the city: she´s too scared —and for good reason. If, on the other hand, there were a genuinely safe and intelligent bike lane system in Toronto, she just might not be able to resist a nice bike ride down to the lake; because if we build them right, bike lanes allow cyclists to move around the city faster—and far cheaper (if not basically for free, once you factor in the initial purchase of the bicycle and the odd flat tire, etc.)— than they could with public transit or driving. Design, backed by a dedicated citizenry —and working in their interest—, has the potential to change a city and to change the way people live in it. This probably is not a pleasant recipe for somebody fundamentally opposed to change and to maintaining the status quo.

It is not true that the decision to build more bike lanes “comes down to spending”. Money is not the only criteria on which a society can base its decisions —even if it were, encouraging cycling through ambitious infrastructure investment is arguably a lot cheaper than subsidizing new car purchases, highways, road repairs, and the health care costs associated with pollution and an increasingly overweight population. This is precisely the kind of discourse that neo-liberals have been shoving down our throats in Ontario for the last 20 years: if it doesn´t add up to more money and less taxes for the rich it doesn´t “function”.

The question is not whether having a bike lane on the Danforth “functions” —according to the Slovenian critic Slavoj Žižek, the real political act is not simply whatever functions in the context of existing relations (drivers on the road/pedestrians on the sidewalk/cyclists in the bike lane; the rich in Rosedale/the poor in Parkdale, etc.), rather precisely that which modifies the context that determines how things function. In other words, bike lanes are not just an unhappy appendage to highways, designed to curtail further protest and change. Our goal is not simply to be assigned our appropriate —and very vulnerable— space in the transport hierarchy: at the side of the road, between the cars and the people, marginalized yet somehow assuaged by a bit of paint. Nor is it to build a fluid and harmonious network of interacting cars and bicycles. Rather, our task is to progressively relegate the car to a space as limited and uncomfortable as bicycles have heretofore occupied. This is not about revenge: it´s a revolution. We need to radically reconsider how and for whom our cities work: for them (drivers), or for us (cyclists).[1] And we have to be prepared to start fighting for our Right to the City. A cyclist has at least as great a claim to the road as a driver. Bike lanes are just one example of a space that citizens need to win back if freedom and democracy are to regain a foothold in this city. A wonderful example of how people can come together to regain and rebuild these spaces is the West Toronto Rail Path, a community-based initiative that has transformed long-abandoned rail lines into a “green transportation artery”.

If we are going to invest in traditional bike lanes —instead of simply taking over the road—, we should at the very least construct functional and, above all, SAFE bicycle lanes. This would be a start. It would allow more people to get onto their bikes and leave their cars at home and would be one more step towards the ultimate goal of re-shaping the urban landscape.

So what should a real bike lane look like?

This is a bike lane: it is clearly marked, visually separated from traffic, since it forms part of the sidewalk, and physically marked by a barrier that separates it from the road. There is even room for bikes to pass in opposite directions. The picture is from Cordoba, Spain. Not exactly bicycle Mecca, but it is nevertheless far better prepared than Toronto to keep its citizens and visitors peddling safely.

After a few, brief moments of euphoria, I realized that the New York Times article I was about to post as a shining example for us all, was in fact a digital remnant of the fake, utopian version of the New York Times published last year by the Yes Men, in which George Bush was impeached for war crimes, and U.S. troops were immediately pulled out of Iraq. One article reported that the New York Department of Transportation had just announced that: “over the next two years, every other avenue will receive a full bike lane, blocked off from traffic, while every fifth crosstown street will be opened exclusively to bicyclists and pedestrians beginning next month.” Even the traffic lights would be adjusted to change in sync with riders (New York Bike Path system expanded dramatically). It may be a utopian fiction, but it would be a good start. Really, there is no such thing as too many bike lanes, only too many cars. The more bike lanes the better, I say, but let them be real bike lanes!

[1] This “us and them” stuff sounds a bit crude, but let´s not kid ourselves: real change will always encounter resistance. It therefore requires a fight. The good thing is we don´t need to eliminate “them”: we just have to convert them into cyclists, pedestrians or happy transit users.