The province needs to invest…

The province needs to invest money exclusively into All-Ages-and Abilities bicycle infrastructure if investing money at all. Money spent on other infrastructure is largely wasted. Paint is cheap and municipalities rarely maintain it well. AAA (All Ages and Abilities) infrastructure consists of physically separated cycling facilities like cycle tracks, protected bike lanes, multi use trails and the like.

Our community of Thunder Bay has an extensive but segmented trail network that doesn't actually connect people to businesses or places of work or even schools. What we need are on-street cycle tracks— dedicated an protected bike infrastructure between the sidewalk and the road/parked cars where average people feel save doing average things on a bike without fancy clothes are tons of experience. The metric of success should be children using the infrastructure.

When travelling around the world the fact is that any country that has achieved a sizeable bicycle mode share uses AAA facilities. Denmark and the Netherlands are prime examples.

Funding lesser infrastructure is a waste and not funding AAA facilities is a missed opportunity.

In Thunder Bay our particular need is for a minimum grid of cycle infrastructure beginning with a direct link between our historic North and South cores (5km long along May and Memorial Ave which we call the Memorial Link). We have a petition signed by over 1000 people requesting funding from our council. Money is the primary barrier. It's already a very heavily trafficked route but only by fit young men and women who are daring. Average people wouldn't ride it ever. This is backwards.

Bike infrastructure must be targeted at average people to be valuable. Fund that and don't fund anything else.

[Original Comment ID: 196471]