Leading up to the 2022 municipal election, CycleWR volunteers have been taking municipal electoral candidates for bike rides to show off the best and worst of the cycling infrastructure in their ward/city/region. For a full list of completed rides, click here. CycleWR is a non-partisan organization that does not support any particular party or candidate. Summaries are written by volunteers or candidates and may not reflect the mandate or views of CycleWR. For more information, contact us at hello@cyclewr.ca.
CycleWR volunteer James Ehrman took Tom Hiller, candidate for Regional Council, Kitchener, out for a ride. Here’s what James had to say about the ride:
Tom made it clear that he is firmly in support of active transportation, and the rights of those using active transportation to do what is necessary to have a safe experience. He did however, mention several times his general belief in balance, I think hinting at a pragmatic stance on future expansion of active transportation. It is clearly a concern for him, but perhaps rightfully so, not the item top of mind, given the other issues in the community.
Regarding the rights of those using active transportation, he mentioned his support for wheeled users to utilize sidewalks where the roadway is not safe or adequate. He was also in support of “Idaho Stops”, where AT users on roads treat stop signs as yields. His belief is that these should not be ticketable offenses.
Since we both lived near the midtown area, I tried to highlight some of the good and bad active transportation situations in the city. Margaret ave has a generous bike lane, and we were able to chat while using it. One major pain point I wanted to highlight was the lack of good options to cross Weber st between Victoria and Union (and far beyond that). Guelph is perhaps the most friendly controlled crossing. At that time of day, Weber is busy enough that the smaller uncontrolled crossings are difficult. Even the spur line does not have a dedicated controlled crossing in this area. Further along in the ride, Queen st. provided mostly good and friendly biking, and King st. was pleasant up until the shared bike route ends and active transportation users are dumped onto the busy King and Victoria intersection with no consideration. Tom agreed with my opinions both good and bad. I think we were generally using the time to share these thoughts, rather than come up with definite solutions.
Generally Tom had lots of support for active transportation, and was a regular user. Being a long-time resident he had lots of interesting stories of how poor the alternative transit network was in the city even 30 years ago.