The City has posted the traffic counts on the Burrard Bridge for the first few weeks here.
The City says:
The first two weeks of pedestrians, cyclists and vehicle traffic data from the Burrard Bridge Bike Lane Trial show that cycling is up, pedestrian traffic has remained steady and vehicle traffic has fluctuated, with a slight decline overall compared to pre-trial levels.
My take:
It looks as though the summer vehicle volumes on the bridge can be accommodated without too much trouble. There was enough spare capacity to allow for a reduction of a lane. Meanwhile, the bike traffic spike that occurred on opening day has more or less continued, suggesting that the demand was there all along.
I’ve also heard anecdotally that there’s less congestion on Cornwall and Burrard south of the bridge. Makes sense: the delays that occur on Pacific create a metering effect, similar to what happens on Lions Gate. Once you’re past the zipper, traffic flows smoothly.
Next up: the Critical Mass debate. My observations here on the Sun’s Community of Interest blogs.
The bike stats are really telling, because everyone on the car lobby kept harping on about how only a “few hundred” bikers use the bridge each day, and that’s a number I keep hearing all the time. This shows that even on the worst days before the trial was implemented they were well into the thousands of trips and it’s increased by thousands more trips every single day. That’s huge.
If those numbers of trips keep up it will be nearly impossible not to admit this is a success.
It looks to me that biking trend seems to be down, but it will take a bit more time before the trend is absolutely clear.
All traffic will likely be down in August. Everybody is on vacation.