Strategic Goal no.2 – Active Transportation
TREA members are interested in all aspects of wise travel choices that avoid urban sprawl, and help improve air quality. This includes transit, carpooling, telecommuting, walking and car share to improve peak hour travel, increasing road capacity rather than building more roads. This concept is also known as Transportation Demand Management (TDM).
Specific accomplishments in the past for TREA include spearheading its Bike Week in 1991 building on it with a corporate commuter challenge for several years and renaming it TREA’s Bicycle Festival Week. After 30 years, this has run its course and a city initiative for the month of June called London Celebrates Cycling has evolved. TREA also spearheaded London’s first walking/biking map and then donated the map to the city for continued distribution.
TREA played an active role on the City Transportation Committee when it spearheaded TDM policies. TREA has also been on the City Cycling Committee giving input on city policies. TREA participated with the earlier Health Unit’s Healthy Communities Partnership policy team to gain endorsement of the International Toronto Charter for Physical Activity, various position papers, Official Plan input and a significant public health unit forum on London as an active community.
TREA also participated on the citywide InMotion Challenge team which ran for several years, the planning committees for two provincial Share the Road Bike Summits; and helped initiate the startup of Car-Free Days in London, the regional Active & Safe Routes to School program (2001) and CAN-Bike London’s (2015) delivery of cycling safety training courses. TREA is also represented on the County and City’s Road Safety Strategy Committee. More recently, TREA has been supporting The Big Bike Giveaway, with recruitment of bike helmets and helmet fits.
Walking and cycling have emerged as vital forms of mobility during the COVID-19 crisis and are a key part of recovery planning.