Young at Heart: I’ll put my paint brush where my mouth is

Yeah, that was me. I suggested London City Hall should give over some sidewalks to cyclists and paint them blue. Robin egg blue.

Paint the sidewalks. Not the cyclists.

My reasons:

Robin egg blue paint is cheaper than building new bike paths

Some sidewalks don’t get much pedestrian use so a trial run would only put 3 noses out of joint in Hyde Park.

Not kidding. I walked from White Hills to Hyde Park at the beginning of summer (wrote a brilliant column about it), had coffee at Ungers, bought cherry tomatoes at Van Horiks, and encountered only one other pedestrian while walking the whole time. Even the one I did see turned around and took his doggy back home when he saw me with my vegetables. He was likely overwhelmed by the fact someone else was using the sidewalk. In broad daylight.


["Such a lovely colour for a bike path"]

Another reason:

There aren’t thousands of cyclists, I know (city planners have accommodated cars, trucks, SUVs etc. for so long many people have actually fallen in love with the interiors of their vehicles and have forgotten what their legs and feet are there for), but more people might be encouraged to dust off their two-wheelers if there were several safe routes (or even one) to get to a mall, downtown, hair dressers, Dollar Store, Timmies (_______ insert another place you could cycle to that’s dear to your heart).

And, this is where my paint brush comes in: If City Hall designates the sidewalk on one side of Cathcart St. as a bike route, I volunteer to paint it between Duchess and Bruce.

(I mean Bruce Street, not Big Bruce Henderson).

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Got a paint brush?

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