A motion requesting a staff report on licensing bicycles is on the agenda of the September 27 meeting of the City’s Public Works and Infrastructure Committee (PWIC). The motion was referred to the PWIC after being introduced at a Council meeting by Councillor Stephen Holyday (Ward 3 Etobicoke Centre) in July.
The City has considered and rejected the idea of licensing cyclists several times. There is even a page on the City’s website recounting this history, including the reasons why previous proposals were rejected. However, this initiative, unlike previous ones, is about licensing bicycles, not bicyclists.
In conversation, Councillor Holyday explained that his motion was motivated primarily by a desire to gather better data for planning purposes. The Councillor expressed concern that projections in the City’s cycling plan were based on Census data. He wants to know where people are actually riding and seems skeptical of the short-term counts of cyclists currently used in planning.
The Councillor envisions a licensing program in which Radio-Frequency Identification (RFID) tags would be affixed to licensed bicycles. He believes this would result in the collection of higher-quality data, which would result in better planning.
RFID tags would be seen as an invasion of privacy by some. Currently, when cars, trucks and bicycles are counted, they are counted anonymously. Councillor Holyday sees each RFID tag being associated with a specific bicycle, however, which would mean that bicycles would thereafter be identified as well as counted. Unless motor vehicles, pedestrians and other road users were also required to carry RFID tags, one would be able to make the case that bicycles were being singled-out.
And RFID may not even be an effective way to gather useful data. GPS-based smartphone apps, like the Toronto Cycling App, can track a user’s route turn-for-turn; however an RFID reader can only count and identify tagged items when they are nearby. The Councillor opposes tagging children’s bicycles, so trips on children’s bikes wouldn’t be counted, nor would trips made on untagged bicycles from other cities. On the other hand, the pneumatic tubes currently being used to count vehicles are able to count all of these trips.
Concerns about RFID aside, Councillor Holyday’s proposal may be based on a false premise: that short-term count data is inaccurate. Data from short-term counts are usually extrapolated based on 24/7 counts done in comparable locations elsewhere. In this way, projections are made to reflect the fact that the number of cyclists will be lower in cold months than in warm ones, for example. Experts insist the errors are small if the count is done right.
Regardless, counts of where people currently cycle aren’t enough when planning where to make improvements in the future. Planners also use neighbourhood-level data about population density from the Census, and trip length data from other sources, to estimate potential interest in cycling. Where data indicates an area with a large population taking a lot of short trips, infrastructure improvements may increase the number of those trips made by bicycle.
In addition to improving data collection, Councillor Holyday’s proposed bicycle licensing program is intended to generate revenue for infrastructure maintenance and expansion.
“Even though we all pay taxes, and we all contribute,” the Councillor argued, a bike lane is “exclusively enjoyed by cyclists,” so it is not unreasonable to expect cyclists to pay some of the costs of providing it. When asked if he’d support charging tolls on motorists using the Gardiner and DVP, which are for the exclusive use of motor vehicles, however, the Councillor said he would not. He does not support any new revenue tools, bicycle licensing fees being the one apparent exception.
Finally, while the Councillor said his proposal is not about changing behaviour, he expressed hope that licensing bicycles would result in improved compliance with traffic laws. He suggested that if cyclists purchased their licenses through partner organizations, such as cycling clubs, members would have a chance to talk to them about safe cycling and press literature into their palms. Comprehensive, Ontario-centric resources are already available free-of-charge online.
On Tuesday the PWIC can approve the motion and direct staff to prepare a report on the potential of a bicycle licensing system, it can refer the motion back to the full Council for further debate, or it can defer it altogether.
Written in September 2016.