King Street bike lane in London, Ontario. Photo taken by Victoria Newman/ XFM News.
Cyclists will have one last ride along a downtown protected bike lane.
The “Funeral for a King” event is taking place Wednesday March 31. Anyone can join so long as they wear a mask and follow COVID-19 protocols. Cyclists will meet at Ivey Park at 7:15 pm in funeral attire or as their best Elvis impersonation. They will traverse down the protected King Street bike lane to the Convention Center. Once at the Convention Center, there will be a moment of silence to remember the bike lane.
“So, as a cyclist and as a person who shops downtown, it’s pretty much the only west-east passage for us to get to the businesses downtown. And with the loss of that, means that a lot of us are cut off from the downtown area to shop. So, that is why we’re having the event on the last day of March to basically say goodbye to the King Street bike lane,” said Shelley Carr, Bicycle Mayor for London, when discussing the upcoming event.
But it was not only used by cyclists.
“It also was a benefit to other active transportation people… I hate to use the word ‘bike lane’ because really, it’s for everyone. It’s for anyone who has an accessibility device, if you’re on a scooter, and now we that we’re going to have scooters in the city. So, it was a safe space for anyone that was going faster than walking. And now that means that that there’ll be riders on the sidewalk jeopardizing pedestrians,” she said.
She further followed up by stating that she is not against transit.
“I don’t want to say that transit isn’t important. I think transit is very important. But I’m not really sure that we need to have two lanes of traffic running through the downtown plus a bus line. I think one bus line, plus the bike lane, plus traffic would have been sufficient.”
One of the issues is that London seems to be car centric. Which as Carr points out is an issue especially since recently it had been declared that we are in a climate emergency.
“I think it also is of a bigger concern that we’ve declared a climate emergency. So, taking out a bike route, something that promotes active transportation, is counter-productive to working towards adopting a climate change policy that we’re actually going to assess how we’re doing things in our city. And we saw that with the agreement that we were going to widen roads on Wonderland. A city that’s going to solve a climate change doesn’t widen roads- they make more bike lanes,” she said.
For now, the protected bike lane on King Street will be torn down to build a rapid transit system. Carr is unsure what will happen moving forward but is hopeful that change will occur.
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