Stop carnage on our roads, Editorial, May 22

There you go, spinning your wheels again. Last September, you wrote an editorial in a different context but basically covering the same points regarding bad drivers. And I wrote a letter, which you published, that suggested the only way to stop the carnage, or at least reduce it, is to retest drivers every three years.

If you are serious about this issue, then you should be championing this approach and calling on the Ontario government to implement this radical change to our driving culture. Until that happens, nothing much is going to change — people are going to keep being killed and you’ll just be writing another editorial on the same subject, sooner rather than later.

Leon Marr, Toronto

More people than ever live in Toronto. More people than ever commute into the city for work or pleasure. But no major roads or other thoroughfares have been created in Toronto during the past half century.

During that same half century, there has been minimal capacity or service gains in public transit, although there are some small investments now being made in that area.

What does all this mean? More and more people, whether driving, cycling or walking, are sharing our transportation resources.

Words like “carnage” and “war on the car” stir up emotions while contributing little to the solution. Our governments, and their agencies such as the police and schools, used to do a better job on transportation safety. Let’s stop the vitriolic language and blaming and return to doing what we used to do well.

David Kister, Toronto

Toronto is still waiting for its Year of the Bicycle, Opinion, May 21

While good, Albert Koehl’s column only begins to scratch the surface of how inept and uncaring the city actually is with bicycle safety. If we get some safer biking, it is usually done on a ward-by-ward basis, and core cyclists are worth less now than suburban cyclists as part of the recent Bike Plan replacing the undone 2001 Bike Plan.

Although Scarborough had the most outrageous non-performance, a key linkage of the Viaduct bike/Bloor lanes from Sherbourne over to Church St. has also failed to get done. Although it might cost $25,000 to repaint the lane lines, that would be better than doing nothing, including pavement repairs.

This bit of Bloor St. E. was the remnant piece of the 1992 study urging bike lanes along all of Bloor/Danforth. Now, being well into the greenhouse century, we must see better biking as cheap transit relief.

Hamish Wilson, Toronto