Ken Ohrn:

Downtown Vancouver Business Improvement Association president Charles Gauthier says separated bike lanes are “here to stay”.

From CBC:.

Vancouver’s bike lanes finally accepted by downtown business group

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After years spent fighting the separated bike lanes on Hornby and Dunsmuir streets, the Downtown Vancouver Business Improvement Association (DVBIA) has softened its stance.

The organization had criticized Vancouver city council for a lack of public consultation, spoke out at public meetings and even commissioned studies to show the lanes’ negative impacts on business.

But now, nearly five years since the bikeways were approved, the DVBIA is now accepting them, as it sponsors Bike to Work Week.

“Times have changed and here we are and we have separated bike lanes downtown and they’re here to stay,” president and CEO Charles Gauthier told The Early Edition’s Margaret Gallagher.

“It is a mode of transportation that people are using to come here and we don’t want to deny anyone access to the downtown, including cyclists.”

Yes, folks, this was written May 25, 2015.  It’s quite a change, and a most welcome one.

Here’s a longer interview with Mr. Gauthier by Alison Bailey at News1130.  It seems that DVBIA members now realize that people want to ride bikes, lots of them, and this isn’t going away. And when infrastructure is in place to make this safe, the number of people on bikes rises dramatically.

Quoting Mr. Gauthier:

But I’m seeing people of all ages and abilities that are riding in the bike lanes that I wouldn’t have seen five, ten years ago. And certainly, the case that the engineers made and the case that cycling advocates made that separated bike lanes are really the necessity to get people of all ages and abilities to travel and commute that way has proven to be correct.

I think this is a great illustration of latent demand.  A decade ago, people who would have liked to ride a bike downtown were concerned about safety, and did not ride. Hit the skip button to 2015 and with vastly improved infrastructure, and a growing network, the number of riders is rising quickly and the demographics are expanding. So building bike lanes was a leap of faith, now widely accepted as a good thing.  As they say:  “You don’t justify a new bridge by counting the number of people swimming the river.”

It’s a change for the better, for many reasons, for all of us, no matter what mode we use to get around.

[I spoke to Mr. Gauthier at the Share the Road Commuter Challenge event last week.  He promised that he’d take up the challenge next year.]