TCAT Director Nancy Smith Lea was interviewed by TVO’s Diane Peters on a story about how the pandemic has driven a rise in cycling which may give Ontario a needed financial boost and help its economic recovery post-pandemic.
Urban cycling is one way to lighten the load on city streets, says Nancy Smith Lea, executive director of the Centre for Active Transportation: “[It’s] a much more efficient way of moving people; moving people by car is the least efficient.” And, she adds, cycling doesn’t have to be the only solution: a targeted approach to reducing car-dependence can also be effective. “We need to get rid of this binary thinking,” she says. “We don’t need to replace every trip. But we can look at some of the short trips made by car and how they can be served by bikes.”
Another benefit: travelling and commuting and running errands by bike keeps more cash in cyclists’ pockets — money that they can then put back into local economies. “For people living in areas where it’s possible to walk or bike for a lot of your trips, that means you’re not spending time in a car or you don’t have a car,” says Smith Lea. “You have more disposable income to spend at restaurants or buying better bikes.” …
Smith Lea says few realize that bike lanes and racks cost very little. “It’s just so freaking cheap to build bike infrastructure,” she says. “It’s a drop in the bucket compared to other transportation projects. It’s not complicated, and you can put in a bike lane overnight.” …
And there are other barriers. … Cycling also has a lingering diversity problem, Smith Lea says. In Toronto, at least, that has to do with who has access to safe ways to cycle: “Over the past few years, we’ve seen an increasing divide in the amount of new cycling infrastructure being built in the mostly white downtown, as compared to the more racialized inner suburbs.”
Read the full article: Why cycling more could be good for the economy