Downtown cycle track metrics disputed in Manning Centre report

A new report by the Manning Centre on the downtown cycle track network says city administrators manipulated data to highlight its benefits, while downplaying safety issues.

Researcher Peter McCaffrey authored the Manning Centre report, alleging city administration skewed the data collected for the cycle track in its own favour.

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" I think city administration clearly wanted a permanent cycle track in the first place and so that's influenced how they've presented this data," he said.

McCaffrey says officials went back and lowered the original targets after realizing they couldn't meet them. He says they made technical errors as well, giving some results a better grade than they deserved and downplaying the increased number of collisions on each leg of the track.

But one citycouncillorargues the conservative think tank's analysis misses the mark.Coun. Evan Woolley countered council was made aware the targets were lowered.

"It was changed retroactively but it was approved by council," he said.

"When we originally set up the matrix through which we would measure success, we asked administration to come back and report to us on how that information was being collected, and we made changes to improve that collection."

Woolley said the number of bike collisions may be up along cycle tracks, but he says the overall number of collisions are down in the core.

Wolley called the cycle track a successful pilot project

"We have seen a massive amount of business support for them, we've had hundreds of emails from people and very little opposition," he said.

City council will decide Monday whether to make the cycle track network permanent.

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