It’s exciting to see our little town grow and grow.
Encouraging people to get out of their cars and use their bikes has many benefits, both short and long term.
Many people are confused and perhaps not well informed about the new additional bike lanes that are planned for Shelbourne Street from Hillside to Haultain.
This stretch is significantly densified with many home and condo developments. Accommodation that we very much need.
Each new development along this corridor has a maximum of one parking space per home.
Many of these residences are for people who work in areas far from home that are simply not favorable to use a bicycle to go to work, or have owners or renters who are elderly and cannot use a bicycle.
So far it sounds like anti-bike-lanes to me. But this is not the case as there is already a wonderful bike path one block away that runs smoothly and goes through a beautiful park.
It runs from Doncaster Drive to Bay Street. It’s safer than using Shelbourne, even with the proposed new cycle lanes.
So the combination of making the densification of Shelbourne less attractive, combined with perfectly wonderful bike lanes that are already in place makes no sense. It doesn’t matter that people’s home values will go down because of the lack of parking along the street, or pushing a bunch of cars onto side streets.
But folks, unless you make your voices heard this unnecessary change will be pushed into silence and in a few weeks you will see completely useless bike lanes littering this area.
Note: there was no public consultation on this.
Gord McDougall
victory
