Winnipeggers are falling behind the rest of the country when it comes to riding a bike to their downtown workplace, according to Statistics Canada.
A new report shows Winnipeg has the highest number of people living within five kilometres of their workplace in the core of the city, but commuters are less likely to ride a bike to work than people in Canada’s eight largest metropolitan areas.
“There’s lots of opportunity but at the same time were not catching up with that opportunity,” Bike Winnipeg executive director Mark Cohoe said. “We’re really lagging behind a lot of the other cities.”
Cohoe believes a big reason for the lack of cyclists has to do with city infrastructure.
“You’re not getting across the tracks, you’re not getting across the rivers and the fact is that we’ve created a circle, a ring around the downtown core and we’re not connecting through it,” he explained.
Coun. Matt Allard (St. Boniface) pointed out that Winnipeg is one of the smaller cities in the Statistics Canada report, which he believes plays a role in where Winnipeg ranked.
For example, commuters in Toronto, where traffic congestion is known to be much worse, might have an easier time choosing to ride a bike.
“I think a big factor in Winnipeg is our actual commute times are actually still fairly good,” Allard said.
Cycling also plays a big role in the city’s aggressive climate change action plan.
“Our climate change action plan has a target of 50 per cent mode shift by 2030 so that means passenger trips, it means transit, it means biking, it means walking,” Allard said. “We need to find ways to encourage people to use all of those modes.”
The Statistics Canada report, which was released on Wednesday, is based on information from the 2016 census and comparing much it to the 1996 census.
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