Mayor Ignores Cyclists

Written by Alan Halberstadt

A disconcerting element of the mayor’s annual speech to the Chamber of Commerce on May 14 was his continued snub of the city’s bicycling community. While boasting about all the construction happening in the city, Mayor Francis talked about road improvements, new sewers and watermains, new sidewalks and improvements to parks and green space.

There was no mention of the minimal amount of bike route improvements, such as the cycling lines painted on Gladstone and Lincoln, and the multi-use asphalt trail under construction as part of improvements to the E.C. Row South service road.

Later in his address, Mayor Francis waxed poetic about building a modern city with renewed and reliable infrastructure, new and exciting places to play, walk, learn and life . .. a clean, green city with more parks and more trees . . . a city that leverages our location as a gateway to international trade and commerce.

Perhaps this was simply an oversight by the speech writer, but it remains inconceivable to me that Mayor Francis’s vision of a modern city with modern transportation would overlook the surge in focus on bicycling in the greatest livable cities in North America.

The proof in the pudding in Windsor is the disgraceful amount of infrastructure money spent on adding to Windsor’s cycling network within the stimulus fund budget. Rather than double its paltry traditional sum of $400,000 over two years, Windsor used the matching senior government money to reduce its contribution to $200,000 in 2010-2011.

Those looking for some improvements to the disjointed cycling route on Riverside Drive are also faced with more disappointment. The city has agreed to another adjournment of the legal challenge by Bruck Easton and friends to the Riverfront Vista Project. Having already been put off last fall to this spring, the court date was recently pushed back another six months to late fall of 2010 by agreement of both parties.