Municipal elections are often plagued with low voter turnout. This may be due to the fact that residents of the city are not sure what effect that the local City Councillor has on their life and the life of the city. The are not sure of what the issues are that councillors have an impact on. Often when faced with the list of names on the ballot they are not sure who the candidates are and where they stand on issues that are important to them. The goal of the vote2003@BikeToronto.ca survey was to give residents a way of evaluating the candidates on an issue that is important and which councillors have a direct effect on.

To help Toronto voters determine who the bicycle friendly councillors are we sent our survey out to all of the council candidates for whom we could find e-mails. We will be posting the responses of the candidates who have submitted their responses over the next two days starting with the Toronto South Community Council Wards. Those are the following wards: 17, 18, 19, 20, 21, 22, 27, 28, 29, 30, 31, 32. If candidates have not submitted their surveys yet, there is still time. We will post them as they are submitted. To see the ward candidate surveys you can go to www.biketoronto.ca/vote2003 You can also see a list of all wards

The effect that councillors have on improving the cycling facillities in the City of Toronto to encourage residents to use their bikes more and their cars less has been quite obvious in some of the wards in the former municipalities of Toronto and East York. (This district will soon be referred to as the Toronto South Community Council District.) The Dundas East Bike lane is a case in point. The Councillors in Ward 30 (Jack Layton and Laura Jones) and Ward 32 (Sandra Bussin) have worked with the community to steer this project through the approval process. A neighbouring Councillor, Case Ootes (Ward 29) has done everything in his power to try and stop it and has vowed to remove it if he is relected. Whether or not there is a bike lane on Dundas East will depend on who wins the races in these various wards.

Another project that illustrates the power that councillors have is the Cosburn Bike lane proposal. This is a project that was on the list of 2003 priorities presented to the Toronto Cycling Committee. The first step of the approval process is for the ward councillor to call a public consultation meeting to get the views of local residents on the project. That project runs through two wards, Ward 29 and Ward 31. If a councillor opposes a project they can just delay holding the public meeting so that there is no time to complete the approval process and have construction start.

Whether or not there will be signifigant progress on the Toronto Bike Plan over the next 3 years will depend largely on who occupies the council seats. It is their votes that are needed to approve the funding and it is their support that is needed to have projects go through in their wards and to have project get approved at Community Council.

If you want to have a more bicycle friendly city get out and vote for a bicycle friendly councillor. To find out what your ward is or how to register to vote and where to vote go to the City of Toronto's election web site: www.toronto.ca/elections/