Little official interest in Saskatoon about re-introducing bike licensing: reports

Recently, the idea of reviving once-mandated licenses for cyclists was floated in the city of Saskatoon, but in the local halls of power, there’s little interest in resurrecting the former policy.

According to the Saskatoon Star-Phoenix, the issue reared its head for the first time in 22 years after a local driving instructor, Ken Claffey, says an errant rider collided with the car one of his students was driving. “He came through and he hit the car with his bike and just kept going,” the instructor and driver’s education manager for Saskatoon’s public school district alleged. “Maybe [cyclists] should have license plates on them the same as cars do so we can better figure out who it is that’s doing this.”

At a meeting of the city’s traffic safety committe, Claffey pressed the issue. Reviving bike licensing in Saskatoon — something that was in place from 1916 until 1993, when it was rolled back — would hold cyclists accountable for damages, he argued. Councillors, however, were unconvinced. Instead, the focus of the city of Saskatoon when it comes to cycling is on road safety, like making sure that bikes are properly equipped with bells and lights.

In other words, improving safety for local cyclists, not re-introducing regulatory bureaucracy, is the city’s priority.

Local figures in the Saskatoon cycling scene are glad that the idea of bike licensing remains off the city’s radar, echoing the city’s view that resources are better spent on other ways of improving traffic safety. According to Shaun Shaw, a spokesperson for local advocacy group Saskatoon Cycles, “A licensing program just isn’t something that would be effective or that would work. The system costs more to administer than it would ever bring back in revenyue through license fees.” When bike licensing was scrapped in 1993, it was decomissioned for that reason: running the program was expensive, and in addition to that, the information used was outdated.

Since 1993, other cities including Regina, Winnipeg, Calgary and Edmonton have also scrapped their now-defunct bike licensing programs for similar reasons.