Cycling strategies need to focus on women, report says

Much of the GTHA’s untapped cycling potential rests with women, who currently make up less than 30 per cent of bicycle riders in the region.

TheStar.com
Oct. 12, 2016
By Ben Spurr

Cities that want to unlock their full cycling potential need to focus their efforts on getting more women on the road.

That’s one conclusion contained in a new Ryerson University report, which documented cycling patterns in the Greater Toronto and Hamilton Area and made recommendations for how to expand bicycle use.

The report, released on Tuesday, determined that of the 14 million trips made in the region each day, 4.4 million could potentially be made by bike.

The researchers defined a potential cycling trip as one in which the primary mode of travel wasn’t by bicycle or by foot, was between 1 km and 5 km long and didn’t involve carrying a passenger.

The region isn’t even close to maximizing its cycling trips however. As of 2011, only about 1 per cent of all journeys were made by bicycle.

The report “points out the huge potential” of increasing cycling in the region, said Raktim Mitra, a professorat Ryerson’s School of Urban and Regional Planning and the lead investigator on the study.

The report was meant to inform the regional transportation plan being drafted by Metrolinx, the provincial transit agency for the GTHA, and recommends governments build walking and cycling connections to transit projects, create dense mixed-use communities around transit hubs and create youth cycling programs.

But importantly, the authors determined that much of the region’s untapped cycling potential rests with women, who currently make up less than 30 per cent of bicycle riders in the GTHA.

That’s despite the fact that the study found more than half the trips taken by women, or 54 per cent, could be biked, compared to 46 per cent for men.

The report recommends conducting more research on women’s cycling patterns and potential barriers to bicycle use in order to inform policies that would bridge cycling’s gender gap.

“Women are the way forward for cities and regions aiming to increase cycling trips. In the absence of policy and programming that are strategically directed to women, much of the existing cycling potential among female travellers may never be (realized),” the report said.

According to Nancy Smith Lea, director of the Toronto Centre for Active Transportation and a co-author of the study, it’s difficult to say why women are less likely to cycle than men, because hard evidence is scant.

While some research suggests women are more safety-conscious and risk-averse than their male counterparts, Smith Lea argued that doesn’t tell the whole story. There are also important cultural factors that can deter women from getting in the saddle.

“If you go into a bike shop or look around you on the streets and all you see is men, it’s going to make you feel like this is not an activity that’s for you,” she said.

Creating a more welcoming environment for female riders was exactly what Lavinia Tanzim and Claire McFarlane had in mind when they co-founded the Bad Girls Bike Club this summer.

Tanzim, a 23-year-old creative industries student, said that the casual misogyny women can encounter in male-dominated bike shops can deter them from riding. To counter that, she and McFarlane lead group rides and give safety and maintenance tips to youth who identify as female who want to ride a bike.

“It’s not only about giving people education and workshops and teaching them about biking, but also to create a critical mass of (women) who are interested in biking,” said Tanzim. “There’s power in numbers.”

Although McFarlane, 21, said that the bike club fills a need that wasn’t being served by Toronto’s bike scene, she cautioned against assuming that men and women have inherently different attitudes towards biking.

“I think we should encourage everyone to ride,” she said.

To some extent, the Ryerson study supports that approach. It found that measures that benefit all riders are also effective in increasing gender parity on the roads.

Building safe cycling infrastructure such as separated bike lanes will increase overall ridership, but can also be “a critical factor in increasing cycling by women,” the authors said.

A recent Forum Research poll found that while a majority of respondents supported the Bloor bike lanes project, it was particularly popular with women (62 per cent) compared to men (49 per cent).

“The main issue really is to make it safer for everybody,” said Smith Lea.

“The more infrastructure you put in, the more likely that women are to cycle.”