Comment 34790

By kevlahan (registered) | Posted October 14, 2009 at 16:33:10

Encouraging more cycling, transit use and pedestrian activity is not just some ideal dreamt up by cycling proponents, it is the official policy of the City of Hamilton. The problem is that they haven't yet put into place any effective policies to achieve these goals.

I'm not sure how we can learn from the experience of other cities if these examples are dismissed by saying "but they aren't Hamilton"! We are in a Catch-22: Hamiltonians don't want to pioneer anything "new", but they don't want to learn from what has worked elsewhere (Vancouver, Montreal, the Netherlands, Paris).

Davis is one of the few cities in California to license cyclists, but it has also spent a lot on bikeways and other ways of encouraging cycling. This seems to be a fair trade-off (although the net benefits of licensing are not obvious).

Here, the attitude seems to be "let's get back at those reckless cyclists by forcing them to display a license, and maybe we'll think about improving road conditions for cyclists". If licensing were rolled out as part of a massive investment in cycle lanes you'd see a more moderate response.

However, the bottom line is that all the licensing talk has come from people who find cyclists a nuisance and are not proposing any real improvements. It's just an excuse to avoid taking action that actually works!

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