Cars are by far the greatest source of danger when it comes to transportation in cities, said Brent Toderian, a Vancouver-based city planning consultant.J.P. MOCZULSKI/The Globe and Mail
If bikes are vehicles, why don’t they require licences and registration like cars? – Toni, Toronto
Toronto and Vancouver abolished bike licences decades ago, and they have no plans to backpedal. That’s because bike licensing schemes are expensive to run and they discourage people from cycling, a city planning expert said.
”Every city that has looked at it says it costs too much to run … If your actual goal is to have less people on bikes and more people in cars, then it would succeed,” said Brent Toderian, a Vancouver-based city planning consultant.
From 1935 to 1957, Toronto required bikes to have licence plates – which cost 50 cents a year and came with an annual bike inspection at a police station but no written test.
The city ended licensing with a bylaw amendment that said the rule, which also applied to children, “often results in an unconscious contravention of the law at a very tender age.”
Vancouver licensed bikes from 1959 to 1978, although it wasn’t always mandatory. Vancouver said the goal of the program was to discourage bike theft and find stolen bikes – not to fine cyclists for breaking the law. It ended because it was expensive to run and didn’t prevent thefts.
Today, cyclists no longer require licences or plates, but they have to follow the rules of the road and face the same fines as drivers, though they don’t rack up demerit points for breaking the law.
“People on bikes can already be stopped and ticketed for bylaw infractions and traffic violations like riding on a crowded sidewalk or whipping through red lights,” Michael Longfield, executive director of advocacy group Cycle Toronto, said in an e-mail. “We license drivers because we know there’s an inherent risk associated with being behind the wheel of a car.”
Difficult to enforce
The City of Toronto – which pointed us to its web pages on the issue – and other jurisdictions that have considered bike licences say, in addition to the cost, the schemes are difficult to enforce and generally don’t deter cycling scofflaws.
Cities have other tools to teach cyclists good road manners and enforce the rules, including traffic law enforcement blitzes and public awareness campaigns, the City of Toronto said.
“It’s important to ask what problems are we trying to solve by proposing bicycle licensing, Longfield said. “Too often, licensing is proposed as a way to limit cycling as an option and present a false equivalency that trivializes the real risks that cars can pose.”
Studies in Europe show that cyclists over all are far less likely to break traffic laws than drivers, Longfield said.
“Think of the number of times you’ve probably seen a car not come to a complete stop at a stop sign or just at a stoplight when making a right turn … we just take that for granted,” Longfield said. “There’s sort of a perception, though, that when somebody on a bike does it, it’s a bigger piece of lawlessness.”
So far this year, Toronto police have issued 40 tickets to cyclists for failing to stop at a stop sign. They’ve issued 23,413 tickets to motorists for the same offence.
A car can be a “deadly weapon” that can kill people, but if a car is hit by a cyclist, the car typically “gets a ding,” if that, Toderian said.
“The people who attack bikes like to point out the incredibly small rounding error of incidents involving [bikes hitting cars or pedestrians],” Toderian said. “And even on that issue, every analysis shows that if you provide safe, separated infrastructure for bikes and active mobility, it’s safer for everyone, including pedestrians and people in cars.”
But what about testing to make sure that cyclists know the laws?
While cycling education is important, it shouldn’t be tied to a test and a licence, Longfield said. Similar to licences, a testing scheme would be expensive to set up and maintain, difficult to enforce – and it would keep many people from cycling, he said.
There are already cycling education programs, including Can-Bike – although they’re not mandatory in schools in most places. Cycling Canada, which runs Can-Bike, didn’t respond to questions.
“In countries where there is cycling education in schools, it’s to enable and empower more young people to ride,” Longfield said. “We should be making it even easier and more convenient to choose to ride a bike.”
Also, since cyclists aren’t going at high speeds on highways, they don’t necessarily need to know as many rules as drivers do – and many of the rules for cyclists are on signs.
“Cities put up a lot of signs saying where bikes can and can’t go,” Longfield said, adding that stop signs and pedestrian signals are self-evident.
‘An urban no-brainer’
While some pedestrians and drivers would like to see cyclists require a licence, Toderian says the benefits of cycling outweigh the risks.
“The more people that can move in cities without cars … you get more economic benefits and commerce, less pollution, lower [CO2] emissions, better public health and lower public costs. It’s the closest thing we have to an urban no-brainer.”
Anything that makes cycling more difficult, including licensing requirements or tearing out bike lanes, will increase the number of cars on the road and make it less safe for cyclists, pedestrians and drivers, he said.
Cars are by far the greatest source of danger when it comes to transportation in cities, Toderian said. “Particularly as cars have gotten bigger and bigger. They’re less often cars – they’re more often SUVs and trucks. That and excessive speed are the two most significant safety issues on our roads.”
Longfield said that studies consistently show riders behave better when they have access to safe bike lanes. Plus, studies show when there are more people on bikes, especially when there’s a network of safe bike lanes, it is safer to cycle, Toderian said.
“It’s safety in numbers,” he said. “When everyone starts to expect bikes, biking is more safe.”
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