Transportation for Liveable Communities (TLC)
A working group of OPIRG McMaster
Box 1013, 1280 Main Street West
Hamilton ON L8S 1C0
MUSC room 229
905.627-2696
www.hwcn.org/link/tlc
Thursday, March 25, 2004
To the Mayor and City Council
It has come to our attention that the annual $300,000 allocation for the promotion of cycling in Hamilton is once again being reallocated in this year’’s budget.
This does not exactly surprise us, coming after the revelation last year that the allocation for the previous three years had not been spent. It would seem that money for cycling in Hamilton has been eliminated, not by a democratic decision, but by politico-bureaucratic sleight of hand.
It is particularly ironic that this cavalier treatment of cycling comes at a time when the city is embarking on a transportation policy review aimed at guiding the development of our transportation system to the year 2030.
As you are aware, our transportation system today is on the critical list. According to data released for the policy review, Hamilton performs unfavourably on virtually all counts when compared with nine other cities in Canada. For example, Hamilton:
- has the second highest car fuel use per person among these 10 cities, at 1,242 litres, only slightly lower than Oshawa at 1,248 but well ahead of Ottawa (1,088), Toronto (1,117) and Kitchener- Waterloo (1,053).
- ranks 4th lowest in transit use
- has 7.1 meters of expressway lanes or arterial lanes per person (Toronto 3.0, K-W: 3.7) but feels the need to destroy a major city greenspace to build yet another expressway.
Among other items, the transportation policy review will examine ““mode split targets,”” ““walking and Cycling””, ““traffic calming”” and so on all of which directly involve, or at least pertain to, cycling in Hamilton.
It does not bode well for the success of this review that cycling (and walking) continued to be at best ignored as transportation alternatives in this city.
Transportation for Liveable Communities demands that the $300,000 be re-instated under the yearly cycling budget for 2004 and that progress is made in respect to cycling infrastructure. Further, TLC would appreciate receiving regular updates regarding cycling infrastructure.
TLC home page