In October of last year I wrote a blog that favourably reported on the number of post-and-rings, used for locking bikes, in Toronto. I think it is time to slightly amend that view. The city still has the same number of posts; it is just that the number of rings is decreasing.
Places where post-and-rings are located now often have one or two posts with the ring removed. And they don’t seem to be getting replaced. For instance, the area at the southwest corner of the Toronto Reference Library has seen the disappearance of rings, but not one has been replaced.
I suppose they are being removed by bike thieves. Makes you realize that there is no completely safe place to lock up a bike out of doors.
We are in a time of municipal government belt tightening. But I can’t imagine that the cost of replacing these rings would be that prohibitive. Still, I certainly understand that other areas of spending are more important than replacing bike rings.
But on the other hand ... Leaving aside the ever-present possibility of getting hit by a car door, we should remember that cycling is a healthy activity. I am sure there are savings in health care costs associated with cycling. (Granted, health care is not a municipal responsibility.) Also, cyclists don’t clog up streets nearly as much as do cars, and they don’t emit exhaust. So the city should be interested in doing what it can to encourage cycling. Replacing missing bike rings would be one way of doing this.
Our current mayor, Rob Ford, is famously unfriendly toward the cycling community, and I imagine that his attitude is not helping matters. But if cyclists were to contact their local councillors in sufficient numbers when the rings go missing, perhaps some of them might start to reappear.
