One of the most prominent pro-cycling organizations in Halifax, the
approximately 200 members of the HCC take their two-wheeled transit
seriously. Steve Bedard, director of education and advocacy for the
group, says the membership even includes people who don’t own bicycles
but are “interested in taking steps to ensure Halifax is
planned in a more sustainable way on
a transportation level.”
Their mandate includes supporting and promoting cycling
infrastructure in the city, as well as ensuring public funds are spent
appropriately. The HCC believes cycling has the potential to reduce
congestion problems in the HRM, to reduce infrastructure spending and
improve the health of Haligonians.
If decisions made by our municipal council in the past
year—the widening of Chebucto Road and the plans to widen Bayers
Road—are any indication, organizations such as the HCC have an
uphill battle against city hall on what they think is important.
“We have people commuting to work in cars when they live within
seven kilometres or less from their workplace when they could easily
hop on a bike and get to work faster than if they took a car,”
writes Bedard in an email.
“Our municipal government has to do more to try to encourage these
people to take their bikes, use our Transit system, or even walk more
to get to where they’re going, especially when they live so close to
their workplaces. Road expansions don’t cater to this need, especially
when we see expansion projects here in the HRM that don’t put any
thought towards the needs of cyclists. So even though HRM seems
superficially involved in greenhouse gas reduction, they have yet to
make the connections between CO2 emission and
transportation/congestion.”
This article appears in Apr 9-15, 2009.
Well, pssh, good to see something’s being done…finally. Really, people don’t understand how addicting cycling is; how much fun it can be. It solves a million different problems and yet it’s so elusive to the common person’s life.