Advisor criticizes political inaction on creating liveable cities at Thorncliffe/Flemingdon Park town hall

A former bureaucrat famed for transforming the city of Bogota, Colombia through the construction of hundreds of kilometres of bikeways and parks as well as removing cars from almost 100 kilometres of city streets on Sundays has sharply criticized both Toronto’s inaction on developing a liveable city and the pro-car tenor of the current mayoral debate.

According to police, a pedestrian is hit every six hours in the Toronto area, Gil Penalosa, the executive director of the Toronto-based advocacy group 8-80 Cities, said during a recent presentation at Valley Park Middle School, located at the border of the Flemingdon Park and Thorncliffe Park communities.

“And nobody cares,” said Penalosa. “Has anybody heard anything from any of the candidates running for mayor about making the city safer for pedestrians?”

Penalosa added Torontonians seem not only inured to pedestrian fatalities, but many seem to justify them as the fault of pedestrians for using an iPod or a phone.

“What? Somebody can be killed because they were listening to music on the iPod?” he asked incredulously. “That doesn’t make any sense.”

During a question and answer period following his presentation, Penalosa also criticized those candidates running for office in this fall’s Toronto election who pander to the populace by suggesting the solution to traffic woes is more and bigger roads, something he said 50 years of North American experience has shown always results in more, not less, congestion.

“Look, the honest answer is the car is not an option,” said Penalosa, who as the former commissioner of parks, sport and recreation in Bogota opened 91 kilometres of car-free city roads on Sundays, an event now known as the Ciclovia and used by 1.5 million people weekly to walk, run, skate and bike.

“The only solution is public transit and walking and cycling,” he said. “The car has a role to play…but we can’t expect everybody to get everywhere by car.”

The slow implementation of active transportation options in the Greater Toronto Area (GTA) is neither due to technical reasons nor a lack of money, argued Penalosa. He pointed out other crowded cities manage to construct on-road separated bike paths in weeks, not years. And Toronto is not short of cash – he noted Bogota created 280 kilometres of bikeways in three years though its residents have a tenth of the per capita income as Torontonians. He also pointed out the subway extension to Vaughan, into what is now a low density area between Steeles Avenue and Highway 7, will cost $2.6 billion.

“What’s it going to solve?,” Penalosa asked rhetorically. “Nothing, nothing.”

He said governments could have created a bus rapid transit system along the same route and have money left over for protected bikeways all across Ontario.

What it needs to catch up to cities like Copenhagen, Amsterdam and New York is leadership, political will, and doers in the public sector, he said.

“(Bureaucrats) need to be reminded they’re paid to get things done, not to list reasons why (something) is not possible,” he said.

He suggested both groups have a responsibility to represent all citizens, including the one-third of people – youth and seniors – who don’t drive.

“It’s almost like a human right, it’s like the right to mobility,” he said.

The name 8-80 Cities (www.8-80cities.org), formerly called Walk and Bike for Life, is a reminder to city builders to design a world that’s accessible and safe to the children and the aged, he said.

At least one indicator shows Toronto isn’t there, he said. Women, due to concerns about safety, make up only 20 per cent of the cyclists in Toronto, a city which uses paint rather than infrastructure to separate its bike lanes, said Penalosa. In comparison, cyclists in Copenhagen are 55 per cent female, a figure closer to the population norm.

The Danish city provides an apt comparison for Toronto, said Pealosa, because of its similar climate and the fear its denizens had of carving out road space for pedestrians and cyclists 40 years ago. At that time, residents argued creating pedestrian-only streets or constructing separated bike paths would be impossible and futile because the car was the dominant mode of transportation, such routes would only be used in the spring and summer, and the culture of walking and congregating in public places was part of the Italian rather than the Danish culture.

“Let me tell you, now the Danish are more Italian than the Italians,” said Penalosa. “They love their public spaces.”

Bicycling has doubled in Copenhagen, a richer and more educated city than Toronto, since 1990 and now 38 per cent of trips are made by bike with a goal of reaching 50 per cent by 2015, he said. Seventy per cent of those cyclists continue to bike in the snow, and more than 60 per cent of cyclists do it because it’s easy, fast and convenient, he said. Only one per cent cite environmental reasons.

“A politician in Toronto said, ‘Traffic is terrible because of the cyclists,’” recalled Penalosa, after which he showed a video of a bikeway in Copenhagen being used by thousands of cyclists moving without interruption.

“Can you imagine if each one of these cyclists was using one car? No, traffic is terrible because there’s not enough cyclists.”

Penalosa said such change is never easy and every community finds reasons why it’s not possible in their area.

“Every community is different, every community is unique,” he said. “Nevertheless, it’s about adapting and improving.

“Unfortunately, we don’t have 40 years, we need to develop a sense of urgency… We’re moving at the speed of a turtle.”

Thorncliffe and Flemingdon, areas of large residential towers populated by tens of thousands of new Canadians, might also face cultural challenges.

“There is no predominance of bike culture from where they’re coming from,” explained Jehad Aliweiwi, executive director of the multi-services non-profit Thorncliffe Neighbourhood Office, referring to the South Asian, Afghani, and Arabic-speaking newcomers.

However, whether by default or design, he said the horseshoe-shaped community of Thorncliffe allows parents to see their children walk to the junior school – North America’s largest elementary with 1,800 kids and 700 more spaces coming – and almost all people walk to the adjacent mall, the East York Town Centre.

“So people are walking and we’re encouraging them,” he said. However, his office, which invited Penalosa to speak, is also encouraging residents to take up cycling, especially in the abundant green environs of the Don River valley beside the community. So far, they’re having more luck getting the kids, first generation Canadians, to pedal.

That’s the experience of Thorncliffe resident, Elizabeth Muchogo, a Kenyan immigrant who took in Penalosa’s presentation with her six-year-old son, Eric. He cycled, she walked.

“I’ve never cycled in my life,” she said, explaining it’s dangerous to do so in Kenyan cities.

However, she is hopeful it becomes more a part of the culture in Toronto as it is in Copenhagen. Her younger sister lives in that city, and is only now herself learning to cycle.

Muchogo said her sister’s husband, a lawyer, rides his bike every day and has never learned to drive.

“You won’t find a professor or a lawyer from my country cycling,” she said.

That’s an attitude that must change, Penalosa said during his presentation.

Providing infrastructure for active transportation, including physically separated bike lanes, is a message to the world that Canada is a truly egalitarian society.

“When a person on a $40 bike is as important as someone in a $40,000 car, then things start to change.”

- Tim Foran

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