Winnipeg architect Brent Bellamy has long called for more bike paths and pedestrian-friendly streets to make Winnipeg safer by reducing the number of fatal collisions.

On social media Friday, he pointed out that two cyclists and 13 pedestrians were killed on city streets in 2019; in the similarly sized city of Oslo, zero such fatalities were recorded.

There was one angle Bellamy didn't tweet about: he could easily have been the third cyclist killed, when an inattentive SUV driver collided with him at Wellington Crescent and Academy Road in early December.

It's an incident that likely wouldn't have happened had he been cycling in the Norwegian capital of Oslo instead of Winnipeg, he said. One of the biggest reasons: Oslo has banned cars in certain areas of the city.

"The biggest difference between the two cities is just political will — they just decided to do it and they did it," Bellamy said.

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