The City of Guelph is…

The City of Guelph is pleased to provide input to the Cycle equal to or better than those for vehicle travel lanes in order to encourage cycling as a year-round accessible form of transportation.

3)Make Safer Highways and Streets

It is our opinion that most of the points listed under this section refer more to education than actual safety improvements. The CycleON 2.0 should include some street design principles for bicycle-friendly highways and streets. The fast evolution of cycling infrastructure is leaving Ontario municipalities scrambling to meet diverse user group expectations in constrained spaces. For example: guidance is needed regarding the interaction between AODA expectations and multi-use boulevard facilities or boulevard cycle tracks; intersection design, protected intersections; “mixing zones” at intersections where off-road cycling infrastructure and sidewalk infrastructure meet; signalization; and minimizing the dependency on regulatory signage for enforcing safe behaviours.

On the educational front, the City supports the recommendations included. We would specifically like to see educational materials included in the recurring license renewal mail-outs to all licensed Ontario drivers. These mail-outs are also an opportunity to provide important updates to all drivers on new types of infrastructure and how to use them safely and respectfully, such as boulevard paths, roundabouts, cross-rides and bike boxes. The content should not be specific to people driving cars, but should also include information on using these facilities as pedestrians and people riding bicycles.

The City of Guelph would also support inclusion of funding opportunities for school boards and/or local police services to offer cycling skills training in schools such as Bike Rodeos or simplified CAN-Bike courses for children and youth.

4)Promote Cycling Awareness and Behavioural Shifts

The City of Guelph is encouraged to see a recommendation to develop an integrated multi-channel marketing and awareness campaign. It is our hope that a coordinated communication effort by the Province will complement local efforts to educate the general public and promote cycling, particularly for utilitarian purposes, in our communities. Monitoring and tracking progress on attitudes and behaviour change is welcomed and more specific metrics throughout the strategy to collect data and monitor progress on all recommended actions are encouraged. Some statistics that would be useful to collect regularly include: economic development attributed to cycling tourism, number of transportation trips made by bike as a function of investment in infrastructure, greenhouse gas emission reduction estimates, data on collisions involving cyclists, and estimated impacts to provincial health care costs as the cycling for transportation increases in popularity.

5)Increase Cycling Tourism Opportunities

The City of Guelph is hosting recurring and new cycling events each year that grow in popularity. We hope to continue building our image as a staging place for cycling tourism. We are supportive of the recommendations under this category, particularly for the establishment of a Cycling Tourism Trails Infrastructure Fund that may be helpful in filling in missing links between neighbouring jurisdictions to provide a continuous cycling network. We strongly agree that a coordinated approach with RTOs and hospitality industries is beneficial to promoting cycle tourism, and would include Ontario by Bike as a key partner in those discussions.

We look forward to seeing how CycleON 2.0 evolves and welcome future opportunities to participate in fostering a positive culture of cycling in Ontario.

[Original Comment ID: 213413]