By Brock Weir
Citizens for Safe Cycling is one step closer to seeing the path ahead as Ottawa’s transportation committee passed a motion asking city council to grant the group $50,000 to continue city bike programs until the end of 2007.
But even if council approves the grant on March 28, the organization says it might be too late for them to deliver city programs as well as they did in previous years.
“We’ll be able to start some stuff, but we won’t be as successful as last year,” says Charles Akben-Marchand, president of Citizens for Safe Cycling.
A non-profit volunteer group that encourages and teaches defensive cycling for urban bike riders, Citizens for Safe Cycling has been under contract to deliver the city’s cycling safety, promotion, and education programs since 2003.
The contract with the city came with three optional one-year extensions, conditional on available funding, and on performance. But on Nov. 1, the group received word that their contract would not be renewed through 2007.
Seeing a grim future ahead, Akben-Marchand says they had to let go of two employees, including a program co-ordinator. So even if council approves the new grant, they will be short staffed to deliver the city’s programs.
Akben-Marchand says the deadline for hiring a new co-ordinator to fully implement the year’s programs – including defensive riding classes, a program comparable to driving schools is March 1st.
“The first class is on April 24 and you need two months for a co-ordinator to get the word out that there is a course going on and to try to get people to join,” he says. “It takes months of lead-up time for the co-ordinator to learn what their job is, and to match the people that are taking the course to the people that are instructing.”
Akben-Marchand says he wanted to see continuous funding until 2010 because waiting every year for word on renewed contracts has kept them from running programs effectively.
“Every year there is discontinuity because we’re not sure if the programs are going to run or not,” he says.
The $50,000 grant will keep Citizens for Safe Cycling operating while the city prepares new cycling plans for later this year.
In a presentation given to the transportation committee on March 7, Richard Hewitt, deputy city manager for public works and services, and Mike Flainek, director of traffic and parking operations, outlined plans for the 2007 Cycling Safety and Promotion Program.
They plan to develop programs in collaboration with many city departments such as corporate services, public health, recreation, and police services to form partnerships and share resources.
While the city has not set a time frame, Flainek estimated it could take anywhere between three and six months to implement.
At the transportation committee meeting, Flainek said the original contract with Citizens for Safe Cycling was not renewed due to the “limited number of participants, and significant subsidy per person.”
Flainek said figures for 2006 indicated 185 students participated in the cycling education course at a cost of $178 per student.
The group told the committee this is 10 more students than the target set by the city in 2006, and ignores group programs and information sessions at schools and the community
If city council does not approve the grant, Akben-Marchand says his group will still be an active voice for city cyclists.
“One [of the many things we can do] is simply represent cycling at city hall, watching what happens, commenting on it, then informing cyclists, and frankly we’ll be needing a lot more of that now,” he says.
Somerset Ward Coun. Diane Holmes says a strong voice for cyclists is indeed needed.
“There’s not a strong vocal voice out there on behalf of cyclists,” she says. “We had a cycling advisory committee that has been combined with a roads committee and since then we’ve sort of lost the voice of cyclists.”
Mark Rehder, director of the re-Cycles Bicycle Co-op, says these voices are essential for cities.
“Every urban entity needs a cycling advocacy organization so that the needs of cyclists are not forgotten at the city level, and also to ideally mount some public education campaigns directed towards all road users,” he says.
Holmes, who attended the committee meeting, says city staff should be “supporting and not undermining” Citizens for Safe Cycling.
“They’re doing a great job for very little money.”