Local cyclists are sending a message to the city to complete a cycling bridge from Vickers to Carrick Streets.
The group Just Bike Thunder Bay is organizing a bike ride from the area of the proposed bridge to City Hall.
It’s taking place tonight at 6 PM, in support of a deputation calling for the city to build the bridge.
Organizers add they are urging City Council to use provincial money set aside for the project.
Cycling advocate Ken Shields tells us he’ll be speaking to Councillors, and opposes City Administration’s recommendation to keep working with CN Rail to upgrade the bridge.
“Anybody who’s been involved with [the CN Rail Bridge at] James Street knows that their interests are their own. They’re a corporation, they’re not in the interest of other users. So, I don’t feel that working with them would be productive.”
“The CN bridge is there, and it is being used illegally and probably unsafely,” Shields notes. “It’s time [for a cycling bridge] because, for ten years, there’s been a plan to create a bridge at that location.”
He is also arguing against the motion to use money set aside for cycling infrastructure to expand bike trails in the Oliver Road area.
Shields claims there is plenty of data showing Memorial Avenue is unsafe for cyclists, while there is little or no information about cyclist collisions in the Oliver Road and Ford Street areas
“There will be no net benefit to the cycling community” by focusing on those areas instead of the Vickers-Carrick bridge, he argues.
