Cycling makes a city more livable, advocates say
The 15th Ontario Bike Summit takes place in Waterloo from April 3 to 5. It includes a discussion on how cycling can help make cities more joyful places that are built for people
Living in a city should be a joyful experience, believes Scott Higgins of HIP Developments.
And a city that’s fun to live in is one that has great cycling infrastructure, so anyone can get around safely and easily on two wheels, he says.
“What’s more fun, riding your bike or sitting in the car? And so when we build cities that focus on humanity and our basic principles of happiness and joy, cycling is critical,” Higgins says.
The developer, who has built innovative developments like the allelectric Bright Building in Kitchener and the Gaslight District in Cambridge, is a guest speaker at the Ontario Bike Summit, which takes place in Waterloo from April 3 to 5.
The summit returns to Waterloo 15 years after it started in that city and is expected to draw 250 policymakers and cycling advocates to share best practices and ideas in an effort to make Ontario more bicycle-friendly.
The annual event was spearheaded by Eleanor McMahon, who started the Share the Road Cycling Coalition in 2007 after her husband, Greg Stobbart, an OPP officer, was killed by a careless driver while on his bike training for a triathlon.
“I think cycling fits really strongly in the conversation of thinking differently about building cities,” says Waterloo city Coun. Diane Freeman, who will be hosting a fireside chat with Higgins at the summit.
Riding a bike is a completely different experience than sitting in a car, Higgins says. “What I believe cycling does is focus on the experience of moving yourself through a city. It’s less about how quickly I can get there.
“I think vehicles focus simply on the efficiency of movement and then create a very depersonalized, not-very-enjoyable experience, where cycling focuses on how you feel, where you stop, what you see, who you experience it with.”
He sees cycling as a way to spark a new way of thinking about how we live in cities on a more human scale, and more sustainably.
The complaints that arise whenever new cycling infrastructure is built — that it slows traffic and that few cyclists ever use it — are no different than the complaints people had when other groundbreaking infrastructure was proposed, Higgins says.
“When we built the expressway, everyone complained that we built it 20 years before we needed it. And everyone complained that we built the LRT, what the heck for? It’s the same thing. You can’t measure it in a matter of months. You have to measure it in years or decades.”
The key, McMahon says, is to build safe, connected cycling infrastructure.
The No. 1 reason people don’t cycle is because they don’t feel safe, she notes.
“If you build it, they will come. And if you build connected infrastructure, they will come. But bike lanes that go nowhere are useless, and therefore you’re not going to see anyone in them.”
Cycling — a cheap and fast way to get around — especially makes sense in the current affordability crisis, McMahon said.
In the 15 years since the first bike summit, McMahon says political attitudes have changed.
Freeman agrees. “I think in Waterloo Region, we have a lot of politicians that are willing to be courageous to make the right decision, not the short-term decision.”
More and more people in Ontario are riding bikes. The Share the Road cycling coalition’s 2023 poll showed that 68 per cent of Ontarians — almost 10 million people — ride their bike at least monthly, while about 22 per cent of Ontarians say they ride a bike daily or almost daily.
“These are living human beings who decide to get a bike out of the garage and ride to work, rather than taking transit or their car, to the benefit of everyone in society, because the bike that’s beside you or in front of you is the car that isn’t.”