Two Wheels Trump Four

It's been a slow couple of news days, what with North Korea doing another nuclear test, Barack Obama nominating the third woman and first Hispanic to the U.S. Supreme Court, the Globe and Mail replacing its editor, California upholding a ban on same-sex marriage and Canada's Governor-General eating a seal heart. Nope, nothing much happening at all.

I'll probably muster up something on one or all of the above-mentioned stories in the next few days, but today I'm fixed on Toronto City Council's decision to install bike lanes on one of the city's bigger downtown north-south streets, and in so doing eliminate one lane of car traffic.

It's quite entertaining to check out the reaction to this ruling, which seems to have pissed off people on all sides to some degree or another. Some of the more car-happy councillors - and citizen groups - are complaining about how this change will make driving in downtown Toronto an even slower, more soul-destroying slog than it already is. Meanwhile, the head of the Toronto Cyclists Union is more irritated with how long it took council to come to this conclusion than she is excited by the fact her side won the day.

As someone who only took up cycling a couple years ago, I can't claim to be a bike junkie. And I don't ride to work, meaning I'm not usually pedaling around during the rush hours. But I can appreciate the feeling of security a dedicated bike lane affords. And while I can also appreciate how cyclists can confuse, hinder and distract drivers, knowing that bikes have their own space actually makes it easier to negotiate the roads as a motorist. When I think back to occasions when cyclists rattled my nerves while I was behind the wheel, I can see that the problem would have been either reduced or eliminated by bike lanes.

I hope Jarvis St. is just the first of many more Toronto streets to get the bike lane upgrade. It's long overdue. And if drivers think this is a way to force them out of their cars and onto bikes, public transit or their own feet, that's fine with me. In fact, I hope they're right.