Redesigning streets to make them safe for bikes, e-scooters, and pedestrians

The use of electric scooters (e-scooters) has witnessed a substantial surge globally.

However, the presence of these motorized vehicles on sidewalks poses a significant risk to pedestrians. A recent practice paper published in CMAJ describes the case of a 68-year-old woman who suffered serious injuries while walking on a city sidewalk after being hit by an e-scooter traveling at approximately 30 km/h. 

While the authors of the paper recognize e-scooters as a popular, efficient and green form of transportation, they argue effective policies are needed to mitigate risks associated with their use. 

On this episode, Drs. Blair Bigham and Mojola Omole speak with Zach Williams, the director of policy and government partnerships and Jamie Perkins the director of communications for  Superpedestrian. Superpedestrian is an e-scooter company that spun off from the MIT Sensible City Lab. They discuss the necessary changes to urban infrastructure as well as the responsibilities of e-scooter providers to ensure safety for riders and pedestrians.

The discussion then shifts to Catherine McKenney, a former Ottawa city councilor and mayoral candidate, who proposed substantial investments in biking infrastructure during their campaign. They argue that debates about safe urban transit have become too polarized and that it is not a matter of being for or against cars, but rather about finding effective solutions to make transportation safe and efficient for all users.

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Transcript

Dr. Mojola Omole:

Hi, I'm Mojola Omole.

Dr. Blair Bigham:

I'm Blair Bigham. This is the CMAJ podcast. So today we're talking about city streets, Jola.

Dr. Mojola Omole:

Yeah, so this was a really interesting paper that was presenting the case for limitation of e-scooters due to traumatic injuries that have happened with pedestrians. And for me, it's just a very interesting topic. I live in Toronto, I have a car, I have an SUV. I am one of those people that likes my car and I don't go on bikes. But I'm also a person who's very ... I'm just being honest. I'm also, so I'm like the least green person if you think from that point of view. But when I look at the amount of carnage that poor infrastructure causes on the roads, for not just e-scooters but for bicyclists and pedestrians, to me this is a public health issue.

Dr. Blair Bigham:

Absolutely. I'm very lucky to live right on a subway line, but I certainly have to drive to get to work, especially with the hours that we have and all the different hospitals that I'm assigned to. But, it worries me when my husband rides his bike downtown to his job at U of T. The streets are scary and you're always hearing about cyclists struck, pedestrian killed. It's a scary time to live in the city, but I kind of feel like I'm a little bit two-faced, because I also really like having all those outdoor patios that have eaten up some of the bike lanes in Toronto. And I guess at the end of the day, there's only so much real estate between buildings.

Dr. Mojola Omole:

I do think though that there's a solution. I think we can have our Parisian sidewalk cafes in the summer and still have safety for pedestrians and people who use a healthier, a more greener way of commuting. Or even honestly when we think about it from an equity position, a more equitable way of transportation.

Dr. Blair Bigham:

Absolutely. So we're going to take a little bit of a different approach, because it's easy to say you got to kick the e-scooters off the sidewalks because then they're going to go on the streets and get hit by cars and then they're going to get kicked back over to the sidewalks. And bike lanes are nice, but not always feasible. So today we're going to be talking to some different people who have ideas on this. The first will be a company that was born out of MIT and is now focused on bringing in e-scooters and what they call microtransportation into cities in a way that integrates well with both pedestrians and cars. And then we're going to talk to a politician who's done their very best to make alternate spaces in between those buildings a reality for microtransport.

So this episode was inspired by a paper in CMAJ titled Traumatic brain and spinal injuries and a pedestrian struck by an electric scooter. The paper was a case study, but it also did a bit of a review and found that e-scooters are drastically increasing around the world. And with it are injuries related to them. Sometimes riders who fall off, other times pedestrians who get struck or sometimes even just trip over them.

Dr. Mojola Omole:

One of the paper's coauthors, Yuqui Lin explained the goal of the paper.

Yuqi Lin:

A lot of studies have focused on the injury patterns and outcomes for riders only. They do not really talk about implications for other users. We all understand that e-scooters are a useful mode of transportation. It's clean, economic for people to use. We don't think it will go away, but we would like to highlight the need for policies to really help prevent and lessen the burden of all these injuries in the future.

Dr. Mojola Omole:

The paper had a number of recommendations. One of them is on the wishlist of many cyclists.

Yuqi Lin:

So one of the recommendations for policies is that we think it's important to create separate lanes. So we think it's important to have a protected physical environment for a vehicle like this, like an e-scooter or the electric bicycle. A lot of studies already showed the importance of separating the road users.

Dr. Blair Bigham:

The study also called for mandatory helmet laws and stricter enforcement to limit sidewalk use and finally pointed to the need for all groups to come together to make e-scooter use safer.

Yuqi Lin:

We need to enter into discussions with user groups  like law enforcement, city officials or health experts or other interested parties to actually make this mode of transportation safer for everybody because if we do that, we can get the benefits of this type of transportation.

Dr. Blair Bigham:

That's exactly the kind of discussion we're going to have in this episode.

Dr. Mojola Omole:

One of the companies that is introducing e-scooters to cities across North America is Superpedestrian. The company has an interesting pedigree. It's a spinoff from the MIT Sensible City Lab. The first initiative was an e-bike conversion kit called the Copenhagen Wheel, which turned any pedal bike into an e-bike. Zach Williams is the director of policy and government partnerships at Superpedestrian, and Jamie Perkins is the director of communications. Thank you so much for joining us, both of you from Denver today.

So the CMAJ article recommends stronger enforcements of traffic regulations, so basically that we should limit speeds and sidewalk uses of e-scooters. What do you think of that approach to problems of e-scooters riding on the sidewalk?

Zach Williams:

Sure. Obviously sidewalk use is fraught. We've got, quite bluntly, often very little real estate, and there are a wide number of vulnerable road users that are jockeying for position inside of that real estate. So you've got cyclists and scooter riders, you've got pedestrians, you've got folks in the disability community, young, old, and from all walks of life. And I think one of the things that we emphasize in the programs that we run is that we, whenever possible, really want to work with cities who are interested in altering the dynamics of that landscape. So if 93% of our streetscape is currently allocated to cars and everybody else is fighting over the last 7%, we want to be in places that are really interested in changing those dynamics and clawing back some of that streetscape.

Dr. Mojola Omole:

So what exactly are we talking about in terms of, you say, all the other non-vehicle uses, what does that entail?

Jamie Perkins:

Yeah, if you're thinking about a regular street in a very typical North American city in Canada or the United States, you are going to have a few lanes dedicated to cars going in either direction. You might have a sidewalk on either side of the street and you might not. And you might have a bicycle lane on either side of the street or you might not. So there's this kind of car-centrism and this car-supremacy that's alive in our cities that is so normal to us we're not even really thinking about it. But we do think about it when we are walking on a sidewalk and somebody who's on a bike whizzes past us on the sidewalk, for example. Then suddenly you're thinking, "Oh my gosh, why are they up on the sidewalk? This is supposed to be for people walking." So what Zach was talking about there is what do we do when more people are trying to get out of their cars because it's a healthier choice, because it's a more sustainable choice, or just because it's more fun to get out of your car? There's often not a place to go.

Dr. Blair Bigham:

So it's an oversimplification to say, well kick the e-scooters off the sidewalks because then where are they going? They're going to end up on the streets with the dump trucks and the garbage trucks and they'll have new hazards.

Zach Williams:

I think that's right. I think quite frankly, riders have obviously a responsibility to follow the law of the land. And in most instances, that requires that riders stay off of sidewalks. But the reality is that our cities are built, as Jamie said, on decades and decades of car-centric infrastructure. Quite frankly, these conversations often dovetail with issues of socioeconomic status, with disparities and incomes. And so you have riders who are then forced to make a choice between, quite frankly, a very dangerous streetscape or riding on the sidewalk either for a portion of a ride or for all of their trip. And I think, again, just going back to where we started, we really value the opportunity to work with cities who are actively working to take that difficult choice away from riders and give more options on the streetscape for folks to be in the road, but be in the road in a protected way, ideally in a protected bike lane.

Dr. Mojola Omole:

What does your data show about riders using sidewalks?

Zach Williams:

So we launched our first sidewalk detection system here in the States in 2022. The system was launched in Chicago, so certainly not a little backwater metropolitan area. And we ran the program for the entire riding season. We worked diligently to try to take as much baseline data as we could before taking some steps on intervention, and we can talk about those in a little bit. But even the baseline data I think was fairly compelling. I mean, first of all, something like 55% of our riders never touched the sidewalks in any of the pilot zones. So more than half of riders are just never going on the sidewalks at all. And then 70% of the broader ridership group is staying off the vast majority of the time. And so immediately you're starting to talk about smaller and smaller sort of segments of the population that, not surprisingly, have some pretty distinct geographic tendencies.

So we intentionally pick some pilot zones that have pretty dramatic differences in the infrastructure available. And while it's a sort of obvious conclusion that we could have guessed at, it's really stark in the data to see how much more frequently folks who lack safe bike infrastructure are choosing to make the choice to ride up on the sidewalk. The last thing I'll say is that something like 70% of these sidewalk rides are happening on the first or second ride for riders. And so immediately you're talking about experience. And this is another place where we can bring the onus back on providers of micromobility services to say, "Okay, it's up to us to make sure that those first and second rides are happening in a safe environment on our dime. Let's find a parking lot and give people an opportunity to whizz around for a little bit so that by the time they're taking their third or fourth ride, they feel that much more comfortable in the streetscape."

Dr. Mojola Omole:

So there have been suggestions that e-scooters companies, that they should use technology to stop scooters when they're on the sidewalk. Is that actually even a possibility?

Zach Williams:

Yeah, so I think this is a really important and thorny issue. I mean, the idea of sidewalk detection technology and then the iterations on that has been something that the industry's been talking about really since scooters launched in American cities in 17 and 18. We've rolled out detection technology and we've chosen some intervention modes right now that are bluntly, a little softer touch. So we are using education systems, notifications both during and after the rides, and then some follow up notification where appropriate. Again, we talked about how really it's something like 15% of our riders in the Chicago pilot were accounting for 65% of all the sidewalk rides. So you've got an opportunity there to do some really targeted engagement and potentially even divert folks to safety quizzes in this kind of thing to continue to unlock the service.

To the question of actually intervening on a rider's speed in real time, I mean, bluntly speaking, and I think this goes back to our roots as an urban planning organization, an engineering organization, it feels like a big rubicon to cross. I mean, you're talking about intervening on a third party on their speed while they're in progress on a ride. And if you get that wrong by even two feet, you're talking about the difference between slowing somebody down in an intersection versus slowing them down when they've fully crossed the street onto the sidewalk on the other side. And so I think that broadly speaking, the goal is to get there, but for us, we know that it's a really, really serious decision.

Dr. Blair Bigham:

Instead of, say, using dynamic speed control or something that might be a little bit more fraught with challenges, is there an opportunity to use a governor so that it can only go so fast? Are there certain limits that are already put on the technology that try to keep people safe?

Jamie Perkins:

Yeah. Let's zoom back a little bit at a higher level at where the industry has been for the past few years, which is that in many cities, the city is going to choose a maximum speed that the scooters can go in the city. Then there will be certain areas in the cities that are geo-fenced, and there'll be a slower zone. So as your scooter approaches that zone, it slows down, you're not able to accelerate through. And then still other areas like public plazas where we expect a lot of pedestrians to be gathering, and the urban experience is really in having people on foot there, those might be designated as no ride zones. So the scooter will slow down and come to a complete stop until you leave that zone. So that's all technology that's already on the ground.

Dr. Blair Bigham:

Jamie, what type of technologies can be used for preventing scooters from sort of being littered around on sidewalks? We were seeing in the CMAJ paper that up to a third of non-writer injuries aren't actually caused by people getting hit by a scooter, they just trip over a scooter that's sitting there. What are some of the technologies that can help with that?

Jamie Perkins:

For sure. One of our technologies, it's really our key software, is called vehicle intelligence. And kind of the brilliance of vehicle intelligence is that it's like the scooter's brain inside of the scooter. And so it tells us we know exactly where the scooter is, we know the health of all of the scooter systems, we also know if a scooter has tipped over and fallen, which happens to be a lot of that scooter kind of clutter that contribute to-

Dr. Blair Bigham:

What do you do with that information, like you're not going to send a car out to move the scooter?

Jamie Perkins:

Yes, we are.

Dr. Blair Bigham:

Oh, you do? Okay.

Jamie Perkins:

You better believe it. So what that vehicle intelligence does is it writes its own service ticket. It essentially says, "Help me," at a very urgent level, sends that to our operations team, and then our operations team is right there. And we do mark those as very highest priority because any effect that we have on the pedestrian environment we're considering of the highest priority. And one of the real improvements we've seen is that we run a free floating system. It's not reliant on docks like a lot of bike shares from the past. But one of the things that we can implement with that system are parking corrals, which show up in the app, and they show people where preferred parking places are. And we really like using kind of a carrot lever with this where we're able to do incentivized parking. If you're able to park in the parking corral, we'll give you $1 more and then that's going to help ensure that that pedestrian space stays really clear.

Dr. Blair Bigham:

Oh, interesting. Okay. So sort of design like behavioral engineering, design the system so that people do the right thing.

Jamie Perkins:

Exactly.

Dr. Blair Bigham:

That way you don't have to chase their scooters around with a Subaru and pick them up.

Zach Williams:

That's right. And I think what's important to note there is it's also an opportunity to utilize streetscape that is typically underutilized. I mean, scooters parking in a certain spot don't necessarily pose the same restrictions as a car parking in that lot. So for instance, in Hartford where we've installed our own parking corrals in collaboration with the city, we took some space near fire hydrants because we know that the fire department can kick the scooters over if they desperately need to get to that fire hydrant. And so in that way, we can make use of streetscape that traditionally has just been bright yellow lines that is totally underutilized otherwise.

Jamie Perkins:

And our scooters have a 1/25th footprint of a car. And so if you're thinking about repurposing one parking space on a street, one parallel parking space, that can mean a huge impact on the streetscape for scooters.

Dr. Mojola Omole:

So how can cities be designed to make e-scooters and all other forms of microtransit safer for everyone?

Zach Williams:

I mean, I think obviously the easy answer here is build us bike lanes. Sometimes we get this question and folks I think are looking for really fascinating and compelling answers, but it's really, it goes back to this idea of in North America broadly, like clawing back some of that streetscape and dedicating it for folks that are ready to travel between 10 and 20 miles an hour. So bikes, e-scooters, cyclists, and the like. We have a role to play there. Micromobility companies get a ton of data and information about what street segments are not only most ridden, but now in the second iteration of our technologies where we are doing some sidewalk detection, we're looking at data on what street segments have the most incidents of sidewalk riding. And so that's a bullseye in terms of not only do we know there's ridership, but we know that there's problematic ridership. And so this is a place where we need some targeted infrastructure investment.

Dr. Mojola Omole:

So what cities would you say are leading the way in having these solutions for microtransportation safety?

Zach Williams:

Yeah, absolutely. We were in Boston, actually, earlier this year for the NACTO conference, and our headquarters is across the river in Cambridge. And Mayor Wu came into office in Boston and inherited a really difficult situation with the city's orange line, which needed much needed repairs. And when she made the difficult political decision to shut down the orange line, she married that political decision with an enormous amount of investment in alternatives so that folks who lost access to that line for the short period of time, didn't necessarily just have to go into a personal vehicle. Across the river. In our hometown of Cambridge, a number of years ago, the city passed a resolution that any roadway project had to come with bike lane infrastructure investment. And so making it a political priority to wrest back again, some of that built in streetscape. And I will say if cities like Boston and Cambridge that have 500 year old histories at this point can do it with cobble stones and granite curbs, it really shows that it's a question of political will. And I think where the will is there, it can be done.

Dr. Blair Bigham:

Zach, what do you do if you have a city that's not interested or politically ready or financially ready to make those investments in safer streets? Can you bring in scooters without running the risk of case studies like the CMAJ case, where someone ends up with a subarachnoid bleed because the scooters are crammed onto sidewalks? I guess what I'm getting at is how do you sort of balance this sort of innovative need to create safer, healthier, more environmentally friendly and people friendly cities with the practicalities of making the technology fit into the space that we're given?

Zach Williams:

Yeah, it's a totally fair question. It's obviously chicken and egg. I've had cities that have explicitly asked me this question, can we do it if we're not there yet? Oftentimes that question comes from bike-ped advocacy folks who are tired of 10 years of fighting without much fruit to show for it. And on the one hand, I think there's an argument to be made that in Hartford for instance, 70,000 unique folks over two years have taken trips in that city. You have to figure that at least 50% of them, that's probably their first time riding in the streetscape. And so all of a sudden you've got a whole bunch of extra political will and capital to do that kind of work when you're giving folks the opportunity to experience what it feels like to have to make that decision between, do I stay in the street, do I go up on the sidewalk, and then make the decision again 10 seconds later?

At the same time, again, by no means am I trying to duck our responsibility here. I think that in Hartford and now all over the country, we have piloted a slow first ride program. So all of our vehicles are capped at a lower speed for a rider's first trip. And this speaks to the bit about experience and wanting to make sure that a rider feels comfortable on your way. We do a ton of work in terms of giving away helmets, and we're not alone in that work. All of our peers, in fact, most of the cities we work with have this as a regulatory requirement to do that kind of community engagement work to do those kinds of helmet giveaways. It is on us to do everything we can do. But again, I would say that we value the opportunity to work with cities who are ready to leverage the data that we can provide to make those investments and make it less frequent of a difficult decision for the riders to have to choose between two ills.

Dr. Blair Bigham:

What can we learn from the cities where they've kicked out scooters, like what went wrong?

Jamie Perkins:

I think that what we see is a really new industry where cities are really looking for other cities to lead the way. And we've seen cities that have kicked scooters out and been able to go back to the drawing board to make really thoughtful programs. So for example, we are about to roll out in Dallas. Dallas had a scooter program, and Dallas decided that scooters were not working where they were. And so they actually haven't had scooters for a couple years, and this is reintroduction after they've gone back. They've looked at the best practices of other cities and they're really adopting a lot of those. And I think that cities are really looking at other cities that are leading, and there's a lot of lessons learned right now because the industry is still so new.

Dr. Blair Bigham:

Awesome. I think Jola and I could talk to you all day about this stuff, but we'll go ahead and wrap it up.

Dr. Mojola Omole:

Yeah.

Jamie Perkins:

[inaudible 00:21:54].

Dr. Mojola Omole:

Thank you so much for being with us today. Zach Williams is the director of policy and government and Partnerships at Super Pedestrian, and Jamie Perkins is the director of communications at Super Pedestrian.

Zach Williams:

Thanks, Jola. Thanks, Blair.

Jamie Perkins:

It was a pleasure.

Dr. Blair Bigham:

Thanks guys.

Dr. Mojola Omole:

Coming up after the break, we hear from someone who tried to bring big changes to city infrastructure and unfortunately failed. What can we learn about these challenges of making cities safer for all forms of transportation? So Blair, this idea to redesign our streets to make them safer for bikes or e-scooters or pedestrians is not new.

Dr. Blair Bigham:

It's not new, but it's certainly political. 

Dr. Mojola Omole:

So our next guest knows exactly how hard it is to make our streets safer. Catherine McKenney is the founder of CitySHAPES, a nonprofit focused on building healthier and greener cities. They're also a former candidate for mayor of Ottawa, and they spent eight years as council for downtown Ward in that little city that wants to be Toronto.

Dr. Blair Bigham:

So Catherine, you ran a campaign on a commitment to make very large investments in cycling infrastructure. What was it that you were seeing in Ottawa that made you think that was important? 

Catherine McKenney:

The entire campaign really was based on making Ottawa the healthiest, greenest and best connected city. I wanted to say in the world, my campaign team insisted that I keep that to Canada. We know that in cities, some 70% of greenhouse gas emissions come from cities themselves, and most of those come from either transportation or energy use in buildings. So when we think about moving people out of cars when we're able to, the best ways to do that are through reliable and affordable transit, good pedestrian infrastructure, and of course getting people onto bikes. So what we decided we would do was to propose building 25 years of infrastructure in four. And doing that through green bonds, so it didn't cost anymore, but you got the outcome immediately.

Dr. Mojola Omole:

So the election became a race between you and one other candidate, Mark Sutcliffe.

Catherine McKenney:

Yeah.

Dr. Mojola Omole:

How did he respond to this part of your platform?

Catherine McKenney:

So the response to the bike lanes really became an anti-car, war-against- car type culture. It was disappointing in that we were never able to clearly demonstrate what the outcomes would be of that investment, and that it was not going to cost us any more money. As a matter of fact, it was going to save us money in the long run because we do, year over year, we spend approximately $15 million a year on cycling infrastructure in Ottawa. That gets you about 10 kilometers. So you can imagine in 20 years from now, 25 years from now, that $15 million might get you two kilometers. So if you can move that up, as long as the interest rate stays below inflation, you're going to save some money and it's healthier, you save lives. We've normalized road deaths and catastrophic injury, but we really can decrease them exponentially.

Dr. Mojola Omole:

I don't know if you can answer this question, but why do you think there is such, this dichotomy, that either you're for cars or you're for other forms of microtransportation?

Catherine McKenney:

Absolutely. And I've struggled with that. We haven't done a good enough job of really explaining the benefits to everyone, including drivers, of taking more cars off the road, reducing of congestion. And we do know that safe cycling infrastructure reduces collisions resulting in death or catastrophic injury for all road users, including drivers.

Dr. Mojola Omole:

What do you think needs to happen just to advance this kind of change in infrastructure?

Catherine McKenney:

Well, cities need funding first off. I think when we proposed our plan, it was a $250 million plan over 20 to 25 years. However, that was easily translated into a quarter of a billion dollar expenditure, and that just sounded frightening. If I could go back-

Dr. Mojola Omole:

Not really, to be honest.

Catherine McKenney:

Not really, but-

Dr. Mojola Omole:

I just feel like for infrastructure, but I mean the amount of money we waste on a lot of stuff in general, to me, like to create a healthier and really a safer place because for me as primarily a driver, I also want to feel that the people sharing the road with me are also safe.

Catherine McKenney:

So yes, the vision zero policy looks at exactly that, is that as a pedestrian or a cyclist should be able to make a mistake, we all make mistakes and not risk catastrophic injury or death because of the way we've designed our roadways. But also as a driver, I drive as well and I don't want to hurt anyone, but there are times you make unintended mistakes. And that should not lead to catastrophic injury or fatality as well. So I believe that cycling infrastructure becomes accepted very quickly. What we've done in Ottawa for the most part is we've created a very extensive commuter cycling network. What we have to do now is fill in those gaps, allow people to move around their neighborhoods to get to the library, to get to a corner store. When we talk about suburban communities, it's hard to go back and turn them into walkable compact communities with amenities close by. But if you have safe cycling infrastructure and if you have good transit, you can achieve that. So it really is incumbent upon us to continue that work to show that safe-cycling infrastructure benefits everyone.

Dr. Mojola Omole:

So when you were council, you were working at the city, how hard and what were the oppositions you were getting for trying to make changes to infrastructure in the roads In Ottawa?

Catherine McKenney:

Mostly it was financing, so there just wasn't enough money dedicated towards cycling infrastructure or pedestrian infrastructure. So I'll just back up a little bit. When we put in the first segregated cycling lane in Ottawa, it was my predecessor who was a councilor at the time, and that committee meeting was pretty hostile, went to 11 o'clock at night. I ran a couple years later, I had a pamphlet with a picture of myself as a winter cyclist. So on that roadway where there are a lot of high rises, if I went into one of those, we were often accosted. People would yell at us in the hallways. They just did not like the cycling lane in front of their residences. Four years later, I went back into those same buildings and it was completely different. People had either gotten used to it and realized, "You know what? It really didn't take away anything from me as a driver."

Or they left and people moved in who accepted the cycling lanes. And I would ask people, "How do you like living here on  Lorier Avenue?" And they'd say, "I love it." And I'd say, "Why would you move in here?" And often they'd say, "Oh, because of the bike lanes." So over the passage of time, the cycling lanes get accepted and you would not be able to take out that cycling lane in this city today. It wouldn't be accepted by people. So we haven't seen cycling infrastructure come out in Ottawa. I think that for us, the barrier really is funding, a good funding model. And also trying to demonstrate to everyone that the benefit for everyone on the street if less people are in their cars.

Dr. Mojola Omole:

The CMAJ article talks a lot about other things that need to happen for policy changes to make vehicles like e-scooters, microtransit safer. What can communities do if we're trying to be successful for pushing for these changes?

Catherine McKenney:

When we think about where we've come, if we think about in Ottawa, we have organizations, advocacy groups that are pushing for better, whether it's on transit, cycling, and where we've come in a decade is quite significant really. And we would not be able to take out a bike lane in this city. Once it's in place, it doesn't come out. It continues to grow. I think the problem today is that most of our cycling infrastructure, as I said, is commuter-based. We really need to start filling in those gaps so that everyone can use, can get around by bikes safely. And also, I believe that there will be cities that will take advantage of funding models and they will accelerate their cycling infrastructure. Montreal has done so, Hamilton is talking about it. And people will go there. Tourism will happen in those cities. People will go and at some point we will start to demand it where we are, whether it's here in Ottawa or another city. But it will happen. I'd like to see it quicker, but I think e-bikes is what I'm holding onto as the driver.

Dr. Mojola Omole:

Great. Thank you so much.

Catherine McKenney:

Thank you.

Dr. Mojola Omole:

Catherine McKenney is the former Ottawa mayoral candidate, city councilor, and founder of City Shapes. So Blair, what's the one thing that stood out for you?

Dr. Blair Bigham:

I think this idea that we have such limited real estate and figuring out how to do the balance to make sure everybody can safely share that space is really, really tricky. And it sounds like even when, whether you're a company that comes from MIT or whether you are a politician who's been at it for years, it's really, really hard to get everybody on board with that balance. I think that's where physicians come in because we're always trying to advocate for the healthiest balance while other peoples might have other values that they place ahead of public health. And that's where our voices might be able to contribute to conversations around how our cities are designed.

Dr. Mojola Omole:

Yeah, for sure. For me, I think I didn't realize, because I know nothing about local government, was that cycling is not viewed as part of road budgeting. And so to me it almost is like the road is for vehicles, and then the rest of us, whether you are a pedestrian or you are using any sort of microtransit, are viewed as an afterthought. And so if you're not integral and part of the planning for something, then it's never going to be designed well. So that's what stood out for me. And honestly from reading the article and what happened to the patient, we do need to do better in terms from a public health point of view to prevent death and catastrophic injuries. In Toronto, oftentimes you read about cyclists, or even here when I'm in Scarborough, pedestrians who are being struck by vehicles. So for me, I think it is a public health concern and that we really do need to advocate for better design of our city streets

Dr. Blair Bigham:

Because at the same time, there's also a public health prerogative to make sure people are getting out of their cars and whether they're walking or cycling or using other types of microtransportation. We've been asking people to get out of their cars for decades now. And so we have to make sure that we're also following up with that ask by delivering spaces that facilitate that.

Dr. Mojola Omole:

For sure. This has been a great conversation, Blair.

Dr. Blair Bigham:

That's it for this week on the CMAJ Podcast. Do us a favor, if you can, light can share our podcast wherever it is you download your audio. We'd love to get the message out there and get more listeners like you. I'm Blair Bigham.

Dr. Mojola Omole:

I'm Mojola Omole. Until next time, be well.