The Essential Beauty of Bicycle Lanes

In the heady rush of an election cycle, it’s easy to forget the little things that matter. Today, for instance, I’m going to talk about one of my local goals for the Markham-Thornhill area; namely, the expansion of bicycle lanes within the area. It may not seem like much, but bike lanes are an extremely worthwhile investment for the community, and part of my larger goal to help lower emissions and create more affordable transit in Markham-Thornhill. More to the point, they’re a matter of local policy that I frequently see overlooked by our fellow MPs. So let’s begin.

The Benefits

To start, let’s talk about the benefits of bike lanes in general. There are a lot of benefits that a community can reap from bike lanes, no matter what your preferred method of transportation is. Obviously, they improve the health of the commuter, lower the environmental impact of the commute and cost less to buy into overall, but there are other hidden benefits of biking that anyone can appreciate. 

For instance, studies show that widespread accessibility of bike lanes in a city has several positive knock-on effects. These effects include the increasing of retail sales and the increasing value of urban property, as established bike lanes allow cyclists (and users) more access to local businesses and more spending capital to utilize in said businesses. As this is money saved from the gas bill, it suits the Green Party’s position in more ways than one.

Additionally, bike lanes have been proven to meaningfully reduce traffic and improve the safety of the road’s travellers in a way that pandering to car owners does not. This does not just have to do with the number of cars on the road, but the nature of the infrastructure in question. I suggest a separate infrastructure for bikes, not just having bike lanes which narrow the road. Better yet for drivers, a designated infrastructure makes cyclist traffic is separate from cars. Reducing the number of times a cyclist swerves into traffic in a risky attempt to beat a light is sure to ease stress behind the wheel.

The Necessary Changes

If you’re hearing about all these benefits and wondering where the catch is, here’s the big problem. There are prerequisites to achieving this pedal-powered success, and most of them have to do with the cyclist’s needs for safety and accessibility. There are many factors that discourage people from taking their bikes to work, not the least of which being the chance of accidents on shared streets. Collisions between cyclists and vehicles rarely turn out well for the cyclist, and many roads are not designed to accommodate for both at once.  While I’m not suggesting that every single street in the Markham-Thornhill area needs to have a separated bike lane with a metre-tall concrete barrier between the bikes and the cars, I must point out that there are significant benefits to such an arrangement. Hence, a separate infrastructure makes a lot of sense. If cycling feels like an unsafe activity, no one will become a cyclist. This is the hurdle we need to pass in order to reap the benefits of expanded cycling, and I have no doubt that we can.

So what are my opponents saying?

At risk of sounding petty, not much. Our longstanding MP for the Liberal Party, Hon. Mary Ng, has made passing mention of expanding bike lanes in a May 11th news release regarding the Yonge North Subway Extension, in reference to the amount of money her party has spent on public transit projects since 2015. My fellow MP candidates in the recent election, Melissa Felian of the Conservative Party and Paul Sahbaz of the NDP, made no mention of bicycle lanes on their websites, not even as throwaway references. This is a local prospect that could greatly improve transit within our riding, and yet  MPs haven’t shown any interest in discussing it.

Well, that’s a crying shame. There’s merit to an improvement of bicycle lanes in Markham-Thornhill, merit that I hope to get the chance to enjoy alongside all of you one day. If we can increase the coverage of bicycle lanes and improve the safety of cyclists, we may well have made a subtle but important improvement to our riding that we can enjoy for years to come.