Bike Lanes

Due to the number of emails, and the amount of media attention the issue of bike lanes has received, I do feel it's important to highlight the reasons for my 'no' vote on Mayor Fillmore's motion on June 10 (the motion failed 12/5). The full motion is here.

The motion:
Direct the Chief Administrative Officer (CAO) to:  Pause awarding contracts for any new bike lane design or construction capital projects, effective immediately, until Council receives a supplementary staff report that: 

1. Provides a list of bike lane projects proposed in the current 4-year capital plan that could result in reduced vehicular traffic capacity and/or increased traffic congestion; and   

2. Assesses the feasibility of alternative network solutions that could achieve active transportation goals while sustaining or improving current traffic flow. 

Firstly, I was disheartened by the way the motion was presented. Bike lanes are a highly contentious issue, and overarching this motion was the supposition that bike lanes cause traffic congestion. As a blanket statement that isn't true, and to offer no general or specific evidence of that in either our current bike network or future bike network planning immediately put this motion in a very polarizing and divisive position.  Given that the AAA bike network is already more than 50% done, and nobody at council is pursuing a complete halt or abandonment of the project, I did not see why we needed to start the dialogue from that place.

Secondly, and further to the first point, the motion lacked procedure and adequate information to reasonably act upon it. I will quote Councillor St. Amand in his Facebook post (here) as he described the situation so well:

"Normally staff reports come first - in fact, they are required to. It’s for that reason the Mayor’s motion had to ask for a waiver of an Administrative Order AND a 2/3 majority was needed to do so. We had not received a report to tell us how many bike lane projects were in flight now, whether there would be cancellation costs associated with the pause, how imminent some projects were based on tender versus award timing, whether some in-flight projects are attached to other recapitalizations of infrastructure that would be undertaken anyway (and therefore an opportunity may be lost), timeline expectations for the pause and associated staff report, etc. Ordinarily, vital questions like this (and often questions we might not think of ourselves) are answered in a staff report to help inform the direction Council gives to staff - the very purpose of the staff report is to provide a common base of understanding of important details, including risks and costs - as well as positives and negatives - and generally provide one or more expert recommendations from staff that council may consider, and even question during debate.

"In this case, the Mayor’s motion sought to immediate halt awards on imminent work which we learned would have very real consequences – while awaiting a staff report that could either confirm or deny that a pause would achieve changes to cost or traffic impact. We act on information presented to us as a council, and it’s further informed by our own research and discussion with residents. The motion asked us to do take action without the usual benefit of that information up front. It is for this reason that I could not support the Mayor’s original motion."

Thirdly, while the motion did call for a pause, there was nothing in the motion that would allow or allocate funds for something else. To all the residents who emailed me concerned about the AAA bike network, and asking for me to support the Mayor because we should be doing something else with precious tax dollars instead, that was not part of the motion. The time to prioritize and allocate funds is during budget season (which happened more than two months ago). The motion, as presented, would not redistribute funds elsewhere. 

Lastly, and most importantly, putting a 'pause' on building bike lanes would significantly increase the cost. At council, we learned that doing another traffic analysis could amount to a loss of construction season.  Also at council, we learned that on average, inflation costs associated with capital projects such as this could be as high as 20% (and were 30% during COVID), so we could be paying 20% more next year on every bike lane project we delay. With a project expected to be completed in 2028, we'd be paying for that 'pause' compounded year after year. In the absence of data to suggest why we should be paying that, I couldn't justify the cost.

If you have any interest in reading further, Councillor Austin wrote a great blog post on the subject here with more facts on the matter.

As always, I'd be delighted to hear your feedback.