Well it is time to say good bye to Toronto’s “Post and Ring” bicycle stands. The City today confirmed that there is a major flaw in them, they break under the pressure exerted by a two by four piece of wood. Taxpayer’s now own 16 000 useless sidewalk ornaments.
Nothing gets done at City Hall without studies on top of studies being done. They continue ad nauseam and always the excuse for stalling cycling facilities. This begs the question as to whether the City knew about the flaw eariler? If they did, why allow them to be installed. If they did not, why not? Would they not check the security of the Post and Rings before spending all that taxpayer’s money on them? Either way, cyclists deserve to be compensated for their stolen bikes by the City.
Clearly an investigation is needed to find out why we are in this situation and who is responsible.
The City’s solution to this is to point out that they have finally started to install long overdue bicycle lockers, about one hundred of them. You do the math. One hundred versus 16000 Post and Rings. I am not knocking the bicycle lockers, they are great. Unfortunately it will take years to implement them before they come close to being a solution.
A better short term solution would be to deal with the market in stolen bikes. Unfortunately that would take leaderhship on behalf of someone at City Hall to take on the established resellers of stolen goods. Leadership ability is in real short supply at City Hall.
