(Note: Bike Pirates is a collective. Any opinions in this post need not reflect the views of others. It is just intended to spark discussion.)

Last week, the city council voted to undo the recently added bike lanes on Jarvis street, pushing cyclist safety one street further outside of town.

Not every cycler necessarily agrees that this was a terrible thing. One article in the Globe claims that these lanes “had to die so others could be born”. The point is that the lanes were controversial to begin with, and that activism can’t succeed by causing anger.

Still, cycling activists will counter that fewer bike lanes means more cars, and more cars means worse traffic, not better. If we want to plan for the future, we need to find ways to cap car traffic and encourage cycling and transit ridership.

In any case, it remains to see if any new lanes will actually come of this. A big proposal to replace ordinary lanes with separated bike lanes downtown recently advanced to a planning stage. This sounds like a good thing. But if that’s all there is to it, then it doesn’t seem like enough.