Cycling PEI says kids should bike on sidewalks
Riding on streets and highways 'doesn't make any sense' for kids
Sidewalk-riding is prohibited in many Canadian municipalities, but to Cycling PEI children shouldn’t be subjected to those rules. As the CBC reported, the province’s Highway Traffic Act “bans all bikes from sidewalks.”
Cycling PEI wants to change that—giving kids the means to ride on the sidewalk, as opposed to streets and highways.
Speaking with the CBC, Cycling PEI executive director Mike Connolly laid out the matter. “It doesn’t make any sense to have a four-, five-, six-year-old child riding on the highway, or on any roads, even if they’re quiet roads,” he said. “It makes more sense to have them on something separated, such as a sidewalk.”
“We’d like to see a wheel variance or a speed variance, or even an age variance,” Connolly added. “Some kind of an exception.”
Cycling PEI first requested these changes six years ago, but no changes were made.
In most municipalities in Canada, you can’t ride on the sidewalk. There are, of course, exceptions. In Toronto, wheel size governs whether or not you can ride a bike on the pedestrian’s space. If a bike has 24″ wheels or smaller, it’s OK for the sidewalk. The problem, for some, is that this rule also allows certain two-wheeled devices with electric motors on the sidewalk.
