Cycling in Waterloo Region

[danbrotherston]

I personally didn't find it very negative. She quoted four people in favour, five against (given the 96% feedback against the lanes, that's a reasonable split) and closed with this quote:

Even people who hated the temporary lanes said they support more properly designed cycling infrastructure like multi-use trails set away from the road. That’s something we all agree on.

Lol, that's the equivalent of "I always support cycling infra, but let me explain why I oppose it now..." Everyone says that because it's like "not being racist".....to say otherwise would be wrong, but I guarantee you those supporters would immediately oppose any reasonable cycling proposal on Westmount or Bridgeport.

As for the article, the two issues I have with it are it is biased:

• She quoted 3 regional councillors, all 3 voted against it, the motion passed and she didn't quote a single supporter on council.
  
• The "96% feedback against it" could should have been balanced by the "2000 people (~70%) supported it during consultation.
  
• The continued reptition of the "we didn't consult" lie that certain (quoted) regional councillors like to bullshit about.
  

and it was divisive:

• Referring to people who bike as "cyclists" and pidgeonholing them to the nth degree (she complains about them being "adept online"...she literally asked online, and using twitter is hardly "adept"), this is despite later explaining in the article that there are many groups other than cyclists which supported the lanes (residents on the street, parents with children, pedestrians).
  
• She stated people who supported this were a tiny minority, again, despite considerable evidence to the contrary.
  
• She used quotes which normalize "motorists" as the norm, and people who bike as an "outside group".
  

These are all common tactics for D'Amato, and very harmful to our community. They entirely ignore the equity features of cycling, and pretends that driving actually supports equity (it doesn't, it REALLY doesn't).

It wasn't entirely negative, but the biases and unnecessary division are clear when you read carefully.

EDIT:

In fairness of both sides, she does make some positive points. She talks with many people who are happy about the lanes, calls out the good parts, and does suggest that there is support for permanent infra (which I find dubious, it's the same old "of course I support cycling", but it nonetheless has been the response we've seen). But I find the whole "two sides"rhetoric really harmful. We won't see cycling be successful, or indeed, our communities, if we constantly put people into exlusionary groups.

When I wrote a letter to the editor, long before I even had a bicycle in the region, I talked about transit, and I talked about all the different people I saw on transit. I did so because I always felt the rhetoric around "oh, only x groups" (usually students or "poors") used transit to be very harmful, given that when I rode transit, I saw a multitude of people riding the bus. We need more of that for cycling and less of this.