Thank you for inviting…

Thank you for inviting public consultation for revising Ontario’s Cycling Strategy.  The following recommendations are broken down in accordance with four of the five action categories of this Strategy.  No recommendations are made for the fifth category, cycle tourism.

Action Category #1:  Design Healthy, Active and Prosperous Communities

Statement of the Problem: Healthy Communities

Right now, motor vehicle operators kill and injure an unacceptably large number of people in Ontario.  In at least two Ontario cities, Toronto and Hamilton, the Public Health Department and Medical Officer of Health has looked at the health consequences of tolerating motor vehicle operators in those cities.  The results are horrific.

In April 2014, Toronto Public Health released their report, “Path to Healthier Air.”  This shows that motor vehicle operators poison and kill an average of 280 people in Toronto each year.   And an average of 1,090 people in Toronto every year are hospitalized because they are poisoned by motor vehicle operators.  This report may be found at: https://www.toronto.ca/wp-content/uploads/2017/11/9190-tph-Air-Pollution-Burden-of-Illness-2014.pdf

This report is an update of the Toronto Public Health report of November 2007, which also determined that the financial costs of people being poisoned by motor vehicle operators in Toronto was an annual average of $2.2 billion.  Most disturbingly, this report found that the dead and injured victims of poisoning by motor vehicle operators were disproportionately children and the elderly.  This report may be found at: https://www.toronto.ca/legdocs/mmis/2007/hl/bgrd/backgroundfile-8046.pdf

In 2013, the City of Hamilton’s Public Health Department worked in partnership with Ontario’s Ministry of the Environment to produce their “Air Quality Progress Report 2013.” This found that motor vehicle operators in Hamilton produce more pollution than all other sources, with 50% of the total air pollution in Hamilton caused by motor vehicle operators.  Of particular concern are cancer-causing fine particles in motor vehicle pollution.  The public health consequences of motor vehicle pollution are horrific:

*Every year, an average of 93 people in Hamilton are poisoned and killed by motor vehicle operators.

*Every year, an average of 358 people in Hamilton are hospitalized because they were poisoned by motor vehicle operators.

*The poisoning deaths and injuries are disproportionately of children, due to their less well developed immune systems.  The elderly are also disproportionately affected.  However, healthy adults are also at risk of death and injury.

*The health care costs to treat people who were poisoned by motor vehicle operators in Hamilton are approximately $465 million per year.

As part of their Vision Zero consultation, the City of Hamilton also collected information on motor vehicle crashes.  This information may be found at: https://www.hamilton.ca/streets-transportation/driving-traffic/vision-zero

From this source, we see that deaths and injuries due to motor vehicle operators crushing people are also horrific.

*Motor vehicle operators crush and kill an annual average of 16 people per year in Hamilton. With an annual total of 93 deaths caused by poisoning and an additional 16 deaths caused by crushing, our current state in Hamilton is one of 109 average annual deaths caused by traffic violence.  This makes traffic violence by far the number one source of death caused by other human beings.

*There is also an average of 1,824 people who received non-fatal injuries in traffic crashes.  When added to the 358 people who are hospitalized because they were poisoned by motor vehicle operators, this gives a total of 2,182 people injured every year by traffic violence in Hamilton.

*The annual financial cost of motor vehicle crashes is $608 million in Hamilton.  When added to the costs due to motor vehicle operators poisoning people, this gives total financial costs of $1,073 million due to traffic violence in the City of Hamilton.

Ontario-wide statistics are available for the human and financial costs of traffic violence due to motor vehicle crashes in Ontario.   See: http://www.injuryresearch.bc.ca/docs/3_20080910_092929Cost%20of%20Traffic%20Collisions%20in%20Ontar io%20and%20Canada.pdf

However, there does not appear to be Ontario-wide information on the number of people killed and injured by being poisoned by motor vehicle operators.  Nor do we have information on the financial costs of this poisoning.

Vision Zero:  Statement of the Solution and Recommendations for Implementation

Recommendation #1:  Ontario should set a goal of Vision Zero.  Zero deaths caused by motor vehicle operators.  Zero poisoning deaths and zero crushing deaths.

It is difficult to achieve a goal without measuring progress towards its accomplishment.  Using the same methodology as the Toronto and Hamilton Public Health Departments, the Province of Ontario can measure poisoning and crushing deaths caused by motor vehicle operators in order to track progress towards achieving Vision Zero.

Recommendation #2:  Ontario should measure deaths caused by motor vehicle operators, including all citizens of Ontario poisoned and killed by motor vehicle operators.

There are several ways of effectively implementing Recommendation #1 by a progressive mode shift to replace the use of private motor vehicles for transportation in Ontario with walking, cycling and public transit.   It has been repeatedly demonstrated that people in Ontario are willing to embrace this mode shift whenever walking, cycling or public transit are the fastest, easiest and most convenient way of safely travelling from A to B.

Recommendation #3:  Ontario’s transportation infrastructure and land use policies should have as their goal to make walking, cycling or public transit the fastest, easiest and most convenient way of safely travelling from A to B.

There currently do not exist goals or targets in Ontario for cycling mode share, or for mode share for walking or public transit.

Recommendation #4:  Transportation mode share targets should be set for Ontario and for each region in Ontario.

Action Plan Category #2:  Improve Cycling Infrastructure

Right now, a serious obstacle to improving cycling infrastructure in Ontario is our poor quality of design engineering standards.  Many people have criticized the current Book 18 of the Ontario Traffic Manual.  One such criticism can be found here: http://www.aviewfromthecyclepath.com/2013/06/ontario-traffic-manual-bicycle.html

My home city of Hamilton, Ontario has many examples of the profoundly dangerous infrastructure of Book 18.  One current example in Hamilton is on Golf Links Road approaching the Lincoln Alexander Parkway.  Note the photograph of an unprotected bike lane with two motor vehicle lanes to the right of the bike lane and two motor vehicle lanes to the left of the bike lane.  Needless to say, this grossly unsafe design gets approximately zero bicycle traffic.  Would you send your 12-year-old daughter riding to school on this bike lane?  I definitely would not.

Photo:  Golf Links Road approaching the Lincoln Alexander Parkway in Hamilton

Another notoriously bad design in the current Book 18 is the notorious “door zone bike lane.”  By putting a bike lane into the door zone of adjacent parked cars, one creates the crazy situation where the most dangerous place on the entire road to ride a bike is in the bike lane.  An example is in my home city of Hamilton, on Dundurn Street.

Photo:  Dundurn Street in Hamilton

For more information, see: http://www.raisethehammer.org/article/2232/lets_go_dutch_part_iii:_dutch_bike_lane_design

The recognized world-class benchmark design engineering standard for bicycle traffic infrastructure is the Dutch CROW Design Manual for Bicycle Traffic. Which does not allow the dangerous infrastructure that we see in Hamilton and other Ontario cities.

Recommendation #5:  Reform Book 18 of the Ontario Traffic Manual by bringing it into conformance with the CROW Design Manual for Bicycle Traffic.

Action Category #3:  Make Highways and Streets Safer

The overwhelming source of danger on our highways and streets is posed by motor vehicle operators. Many ways of achieving Recommendations #1 and #3 effectively employ key constraints upon motor vehicle operation to eliminate this danger by achieving a mode shift to walking, cycling and public transit.  One such constraint is short-term storage or parking of motor vehicles.

As stated in Section 6, Item 1.4 of Ontario's 2016 Climate Change Action Plan, it is current Ontario government policy to eliminate minimum car parking requirements from municipal zoning bylaws in Ontario.  See:

https://www.ontario.ca/page/climate-change-action-plan#section-6

A quote from this source:

“1.4 Eliminate minimum parking requirements

Minimum parking requirements would be eliminated over the next five years for municipal zoning bylaws.”

Recommendation #6:  Ontario should immediately implement its existing policy to eliminate all minimum car parking requirements from municipal zoning bylaws.

Another key constraint upon private motor vehicle operators is the fact that they get in each other’s way and cause traffic congestion.  It has been amply demonstrated that, thanks to the phenomenon known as Induced Demand, it is futile to attempt to eliminate this congestion by building more roads for cars.  And yet such attempts, at extraordinary cost, have been repeatedly made in Ontario and repeatedly failed.

Ontario still has some official plans to repeat this record of failure.  One example is the proposed expansion of Highway #6 through Hamilton.  Cost estimates currently range upwards of a mind-boggling $750 million for this absurd boondoggle.

Recommendation #7:  Immediately cancel all plans in Ontario for inappropriate expansion of automobile highway infrastructure.

Another step towards achieving Recommendation #3 is through changes to Ontario’s Highway Traffic Act to implement what has become known as an “Idaho stop law.”  Starting in 1982, the US state of Idaho changed their laws to allow cyclists to treat stop signs as yield signs and to treat red traffic lights as stop signs.  Since 1982, this measure has been found to increase traffic safety in Idaho.

Idaho stop rules have also become the de facto law in major Ontario cities such as Hamilton and Toronto.  It is inappropriate to maintain laws that people do not follow and that police do not enforce.  Such a rule also helps make cycling the fastest, easiest and most convenient way of safely travelling from A to B by improving safety and helping people to maintain momentum while travelling.

See:

https://nacto.org/wp-content/uploads/2012/06/Fajans-J.-and-M.-Curry.-2001..pdf

and, https://las.depaul.edu/centers-and-institutes/chaddick-institute-for-metropolitan-development/resea rch-and-publications/Documents/PoliciesForPedaling-120816-FNL.pdf

Recommendation #8:  Change the Ontario Highway Traffic Act to implement an Idaho stop law.

The most important way of achieving cycling safety is through appropriate infrastructure.  The second most important way of achieving cycling safety is through the “safety in numbers” effect. The more people cycling, the safer it is to cycle.  Unfortunately, there is one provision of Ontario’s Highway Traffic Act that actively discourages cycling, thereby making it more dangerous for the remaining cyclists in Ontario.  This is Ontario’s notorious child helmet law, which mandates the wearing of bicycle helmets for children under the age of 18.

In Australia, their introduction of an all-ages bicycle helmet law had the effect of reducing the number of cyclists by approximately one-third.  By losing the “safety in numbers” effect, this made cycling much more dangerous in Australia.  Some demographics, such as female secondary school students, had a much sharper drop in numbers.

Fortunately, the effect of Ontario’s law has been largely mitigated by police not enforcing it and by large numbers of secondary school students refusing to obey it.  It is inappropriate to maintain laws that people do not follow and that police do not enforce.   However, this law does provide some social pressure, particularly upon younger children.  This makes cycling more dangerous for children in Ontario by reducing the number of children cycling.

Recommendation #9:  Improve the safety of children cycling by repealing the child bicycle helmet law.

Closely related to this is the negative branding of cycling by promoting the use of helmets for transportation cycling by adults.  This makes cycling more dangerous in Ontario by discouraging people from cycling.

Recommendation #10:  Encourage safety through the “safety in numbers” effect by immediately ceasing all forms of helmet promotion for transportation cycling.

Action Category #4:  Promote Cycling Awareness and Behavioural Shifts

An excellent example of effective awareness promotion resulting in behavioural shift is Ontario and Canada’s current promotion of the dangers of tobacco consumption.  This has discouraged tobacco use by educating the public about the dangers of tobacco consumption.   Cancer and tobacco use have been effectively associated in the public mind.

Similar anti-cancer promotion should be directed at car drivers.  One very effective means of anti-cancer promotion for tobacco is labelling laws on tobacco products to educate users on the cancers caused by tobacco consumption.  Similar labelling laws should be used to educate car drivers on the cancers caused by the fine particles and other lethal cancer-causing poisons created by car use.

There is one key difference between cancer caused by tobacco use and cancer caused by automobile use.  With the elimination of second-hand smoke, tobacco users are only hurting themselves.  Car drivers are poisoning and killing everyone else.

However, the effectiveness of tobacco education does provide an example for how to properly associate cancer with car use in the public mind.  Mandatory labelling of the purchases of everything from automobiles to gasoline has the potential to educate the public about the cancers caused by automobile use.

Recommendation #11:  Educate the public about the cancer deaths and other health consequences caused by automobile use through compulsory labelling laws with the purchase of automobiles, automotive products and gasoline.

[Original Comment ID: 213501]