The Toronto Cycling Advisory Committee(TCAC) will have its first meeting of 2009 on Monday January 19th at 7:00 pm in Committee Room 2 of Toronto City Hall, 100 Queen Street W. This meeting is open to the public and you can see the items up for discussion on their agenda TCAC Agenda, January 19, 2009.

Highlights of the agenda include a Toronto Bike Plan Update and a Park Trails Projects Update. (As of January 15th these two reports are not available yet online but the agenda notes they will be added to the agenda on January 20th, 2009 after the TCAC meeting.) As the City of Toronto heads into the new year with a renewed commitment to building the Bikeway Network as recommended in the Toronto Bike Plan, which is evidenced by an increased capital budget an a reorganization of the responsibility for building bicycle paths in Toronto's parks, this will be an opportunity to look at what happened over the past year and look for solutions to obstacles that were encountered in the past year.

I hope the city will return to the practice of issuing an annual Toronto Bike Plan progress report to Council through the cycling committee. The last official report that can be found on the city's Cycling Reports and Official Documents webpage was the Year 3 strategy report which was issued in 2005. In order to permit and encourage residents to become engaged in the city processes all of the reports to the Toronto Cycling Advisory Committee should be made accessible to the public just as they are for Council's standing committees. These reports should be made available on-line in a searchable text form (ie. PDF), preferably before the meeting where they will be discussed. It has become practice to hand out reports at the meeting and then not always posting them online afterwards. Sometimes when reports are posted they are in a scanned form that is not searchable.

In order for the City of Toronto to reach its Bike Plan goals it is going to need the involvement of an increasing number of Toronto Residents to work with Councillors to promote routes planned in the Bikeway Network, promote programs proposed in other sections of the Bike Plan and promote cycling as a mode of transportation. Ensuring that the documents explaining the City's plans being implemented, issues being discussed and challenges being faced are available and accessible will allow Toronto residents to become informed and engaged in the process.