Bike Sharing: A Tale of Two Cities
by Lloyd Alter, Toronto on 03. 9.07
In Toronto, they have closed down the Community Bicycle Network of yellow bikes distributed around the City. The City government pleads poverty, and even environmentalist Gord Perks says to Eye Weekly: "I would certainly support this if it's not interfering with competing priorities."- weasel words if I ever heard them. City Council buffoon Rob Ford actually says: "I can't support bike lanes. Roads are built for buses, cars, and trucks. My heart bleeds when someone gets killed, but it's their own fault at the end of the day." And Mayor Miller says Toronto will be North America's Greenest City.
Meanwhile,according to the New York Times, in Paris by the end of the year there will be 20,600 bicycles available for residents and tourists with 1,000 pickup points in an effort to ease traffic congestion and pollution. The bikes can be rented on any day or night and returned to any station.
How much money did bikeshare need? Toronto is becoming a green embarrassment.
All the Canadians I've met have been pretty cool. And Toronto is a happnin place.
But who is this imbecile???? Rob Ford? What- did his parents not give him what he wanted for Christmas once and he is damaged forever??
NY Mayor Bloomberg said something about a bicyclist not being careful enough ON A CLOSED PATH on the West Side when the cyclist was run down by a DRUNK waste of life. I think Toronto's pollution problem is due to Ford's spewing forth nonsense.
Hey numnuts... think of it in the reverse, ... if everyone who used a bike every day started driving a big 8 cylinder then what!?!?
WE RIDE and WE VOTE !!
I love this quote- - -
Modern industrialized states [are] resentful of a few cleverly arranged pounds of tubes and spokes. The cyclist creates everything from almost nothing, becoming the most energy-efficient of all moving animals and machines and, as such, has a disingenuous ability to challenge the entire value system of a society. Cyclists don't consume enough. They can propel themselves 1500 pollution-free miles on the energy equivalent of a gallon of petrol. The bicycle may be too cheap, too available, too healthy, too independent and too equitable for its own good. In an age of excess it is minimal and has the subversive potential to make people happy in an economy fuelled by consumer discontent. Jim McGurn, 1994
I express lament of the passing of a noble program.
I gotta get up for Critical Mass Toronto.
Maybe that guy Ford will be taken out of office ... it will be "his own fault at the end of the day".
Good Luck Canadians,
vsk
BikeShare's operating budget was about $100,000 per year.
Or, to put it another way... the $40 million that they are putting into the re-design of Nathan Phillips Square (Toronto City Hall) could run BikeShare for 400 years.
Every city and state has its crackpot politicians. Local politics can't draw as diverse and even voting.
A NYC senator tried to ban iPods on city streets by making everyone who crossed the street with one on face a $100 fine.