Last week Toronto Mayoral candidate, Giorgio Mammoliti, announced that, if elected, he would introduce bicycle licensing as a way to help pay the cost of proposed new cycling lanes. This is an idea that has been raised before, and as the City of Toronto’s own website clearly states, ‘studies have concluded that licensing is not worth it.’
Besides this recent bicycle licensing idea, Mammoliti also proposed in 2007 that the army should be called in to the Jane and Finch community to curb gang violence. He also suggested a red light district on Toronto Island and a casino on the waterfront.
So the concept of licensing could simply be passed off as another outdated, off-the-wall idea, but Giorgio Mammoliti has been involved in provincial and municipal politics for two decades, and we should look at just how calculated this is.
Marcus Gee of the Globe and Mail summed it up quite nicely last week. He asked, why were the candidates, like Mammoliti, spending so much time on the issues surrounding cycling?
Sad to say, the reasons are purely political. Our ranting candidates are trying to ride what they see as a wave of suburban anger over Mayor David Miller’s administration. For those who love to loathe Mr. Miller, bike lanes represent all the sins of an administration that favours pedal-happy downtowners over the ordinary guy fighting his way to work through traffic. They are nothing short of a conspiracy – the infamous “war on the car” – to rob motorists of their fundamental rights.
So if bicycle lanes are the sin, certainly bicycle licensing is redemption for the car driving citizens and a ticket into the Mayor’s office for Mammoliti?
I think Mr. Mammoliti knows that in practice bicycle licensing might be overly bureaucratic and may fail, but politically it reaches out to all those drivers that believe cyclists don’t contribute to the maintenance of the roadways, and that cycling infrastructure is detrimental to the majority automobile traffic. Dave Meslin puts some of these concerns to rest in his article last week at spacingtoronto.
If the average driver believes that cyclists have less right to be on the roads, then proposing bicycle licensing is appealing to every commuter who drives into the core of the city each day – and there are still many more of them than cyclists.
Certainly the idea of bicycle licensing may not by enough to get Giorgio Mammoliti elected, and licensing is likely not going to be put into effect even if he were elected. This idea, though, is enough to further the division between drivers and cyclists in the news instead of creating divisions – physical divisions in the form of cycling lanes – on the streets.
bicycle license photo by woody1778a
