PT readers respond with shots of the new railing and bike path on the north (east?) side of the Causeway through Stanley Park.
Graeme Jones:
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Antje Wahl:
The photo below is near the north end before Lions Gate Bridge. Note the orange LED flashers that turn on automatically when a cyclist approaches the crossing of the slip lane into the park.
Work is still underway on the west sidewalk. The project should be complete by the end of February.
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I have found when running on the old path, that as expected, cyclists all tend to use the new smooth asphalt rather than the bumpy concrete. I told the planners responsible at the meeting that this would be the result, and that splitting the path up where the bike bit is 2/3 on concrete and 1/3 on asphalt would mean people have both tactile and visual cues to be in the wrong place … but who listens to ‘lil old former race cyclist who also play artitect in their day job.
Some concrete was needed to attach the fence. I think it would be ok if they hadn’t painted the centre line and everybody kept right on the asphalt except to pass pedestrians or other cyclists. It will be interesting to see where people end up riding and passing on this shared and yet divided path.
This is what I’m saying, they end up riding on the pedestrian path, or with their handlebar over the pedestrian path and their wheels on the bike path, because thats the smooth bit. Its understandable because they are following the desire line of least resistance, its what everyone does.
It will also be interesting to see what happens when the ground under settles a bit and a gap opens up between the asphalt and the concrete. And by interesting I mean Ow!
There is not sufficient room for physical separation of the bike path and walking path in the built width due to concerns about encroaching on the park space. MoTI was asked for new pavement, but it was a cost issue. There was a lot of Discussion about the joint, and the potential for opening a gap after a seasonal cycle.
The other issue is overtaking cyclists. If the separation line was offset as originally drawn, there was room for cyclists to overtake. It is several km, uphill. Overtaking is to be expected. It was planned for on the southbound (west) side with several wider overtaking zones. Not clear how overtaking will happen on the east side now. Does a cyclist wait for a slower cyclist to pull right into the ped zone to overtake on the left? Or does the faster cyclist use the ped path to overtake on the right? There are not yet signs indicating the preferred action. There could be signs saying no overtaking, but they would likely be ignored due to the distance involved.
The fence is a great improvement, and the path improvements are welcome. But these details will need to be addressed.
This is such an insult not only to car users but especially to commuters using the bus. Traffic is crawling onto the bridge and not even a dedicated HOV lane through Stanley Park ? It shows how out of touch political leaders are in N-Van and Vancouver. Five bikers cheer as 5000 bus users moan !
For year the environmentalists have demand no widening of the corridor through Stanley Park and now we pave it wider .. For bikes ?
Where is the train ? Where is the HOV lane ? Where is additional bridge capacity for a growing region ?
If only the mayors of Metro Vancouver had come up with a 10-year plan to improve transportation in the region….
Take your whining somewhere else, Thomas. You were warned about the consequences of voting No in the referendum.
Thomas and one or two other regulars here voted No because a new (and really very tiny) tax was proposed, because there are “TransLink Fat Cats,” because Gregor’s masters degree from Hollyhock Farm grates their senses, because the unions are taking over the solar system, etc. etc. etc.
Yet he turns around the next day and proposes massive tax expenditures — orders of magnitude greater than the 0.5% proposed in the plebiscite — and mountains of debt for unneeded Atlanta-scale freeways and subways for cars and rail through the Stanley Park forest.
Thank gawd he is not in office. Management of public finances and community planning are not his forte.
I forgot the plastic subdivisions in the ALR, the coal terminals next door, LNG is the Lord’s elixir, and $1,000 blueberries from solar greenhouses.
Did I mention the unions, you know, the Devil’s Brigade that will break the back of civilization and who thwarted Maggie Thatcher’s ascent to heaven?
Socialism to the rescue. Gee, 65% voted against tax increases for more buses, diesel powered btw. Seems to me that this blog needs a bit more of a balanced audience and not a special pro bike lobby only.
Look no further than Europe, with their failing states due to excessive spending, excessive regulations, huge regulatory overhead,quintuple the electricity rates in countries like Germany or Denmark, massive unsustainable debts, massive bureaucracies with unsustainably high salaries & benefits, crumbling cities, negative interest rates to keep to con-game of ” bigger government is better ” going. That is better ? Offloading your partying today to future generations ?
More bike lanes are nice, but a mere bandaid. Real solutions are required and nowhere in sight here in MetroVan.
Okay, if that’s how it’s going to be. Let’s stop throwing money at the every demanding, never satisfied automotive industrial complex. If people want to move around, they should each pay the costs as they use them.
Thomas, I’m pretty sure that a bit more analysis of those European states, Thomas, is a recent lack of spending being the main problem, and the fact that Europe has been unwilling to do transfer payments to help the bits that are in trouble (which is why we don’t talk about Georgia being a failed state the way we do Greece [picking georgia only for the letter, not specifically because it is hurting more than other nearby states] or why Alberta isn’t now facing bankruptcy the way Spain is.
Why is pawning off pollution on future generations ok (not saying you believe this specifically, but many who would agree with you on matters in general, do), but money anathema? Why is investing in transit verboten, but not spending on roads (again, more a general question than you specific)? Why is ok for the private sector to borrow to build and invest in a better future, but not a country?
Massive bureaucracies with high salaries and benefits could just as easily describe much of wall street, or the entire petrochemical industry (and somehow those are acceptable), and those groups are exactly the ones who wants small government the most … which is why any suggestion that government is inherently bad is suspect and a bit frightening. Both ways can’t be a con-game.
How exactly would paving the road wider for cars have helped … I’m pretty sure geometry suggests the bridge isn’t getting any wider for another lane, so why should the causeway.
But for the record, I am in favour of them choosing a different path, paving a pleasant slightly meandering path through the woods (they exist already almost perfectly in gravel form) … because honestly, cars are unpleasant, smelly, loud, and I’d prefer to stay away from them especially when I’m sucking in air breathing hard going uphill (running or by bike). I’m sure many pedestrians would choose to go through the park also, but signage is atrocious in there, and even with running through regularly, I still get turned around. Better wayfinding suggesting that a pleasant ‘Plan B’ route exists would go far in there. But this required holistic solutions that no-one was willing to consider. Too much brain damage from people who are fearful of saying yes, because every little decision is micromanaged in part by people who say the decision is wrong. (so, it would seem I’m just as guilty as you 😉 )
It would have been great if the referendum had been about green busses and not diesel … kind of like a cherry on top … but it wasn’t and it wouldn’t have been more likely to pass if it was.
Finally, I’m not sure if you’ve noticed that the crumbling cities in europe seem a lot better off than those elsewhere (Detroit for instance) … and how exactly are these crumbling cities to be fixed if the beast that would fix them is made smaller … starve my beast but make it fix my roads too? I don’t think it works like that. I would contend that policies that made smaller government are the exact ones which created the crumbling, the boom and bust economies, and the decision to have diesel busses instead of electric. Small government ain’t gonna have money to help anyone, and avoiding bureaucracy didn’t help the folks in Flint.
Car drivers are sensitive souls indeed if widening the cycle lanes by a few feet and providing a railing to keep cyclists from falling into the bumper-to-bumper traffic is seen as an insult. And of course the driving lanes, on both the bridge and causeway, were widened significantly when the bridge deck was rebuilt.
As for bus users, there is dedicated bus access to both sides of the bridge/causeway structure, and once on it traffic moves relatively quickly. Not being a regular bridge commuter, I was astounded that it took me only 15 minutes to get from Park Royal to West Georgia by bus at 4:30 in the afternoon last week, with only a single southbound lane available. Once on the bridge we were travelling too quickly to even see the sweating cyclists, let alone feel insulted by them.
Transportation systems are complex beasts. Sadly there appears to be limited appetite at present to make the big investments that are needed in ours. That doesn’t mean we can’t make the incremental small ones.
Try this along Marine drive in N-Van and W-Van and hang it over LionsGate and Second Narrows, and over Hastings for a full northshore loop: http://www.skytran.com
Far cheaper than a subway, lightweight, fast, high capacity & green !
Anyone with Vision in MetroVan to push this along (as opposed to more diesel buses or other traditional transit systems) ? Until then: diesel buses to the rescue, and more bike lanes, of course, for the 1-2% of society that rides a bike regularly.
I think once its working prototype is functional in Israel, then this PRT will be considered globally and hopefully BC.
Classic example of over-reactive public policy (and near-emergency expenditure of publicly-collected funds) for a rare, one-off act of carelessness by one cyclist, which happened to be coincidental with a passing bus, at the precisely wrong moment. Had the cosmos fated the bus to be 5 seconds early (or 10 seconds late), the cyclist would have suffered scrapes and embarrasment. Over many, many decades, that sidewalk served hundreds of thousands of riders and (more rarely) walkers, using courtesy & sensible caution. One death; throw money at it. All better!
Now (after what some would class as destructive works), we have padded the crib and now walkers and cyclists have there areas of ‘right’ which they will defend and enforce. Cyclists are also now ‘protected’ from the evility of vehicles and will raise their velocities accordingly, until new risks emerge.
There’s a thing called negligence. Once you know somethings a problem, and you choose not to solve it, then you have culpability when it happens again.
Thats why most road changes seem to happen.
You say padding the crib, I say recognizing something dangerous, doing the math, and realizing that $7 million is cheaper than a lawsuit.
http://www.dooleylucenti.ca/municipal-liability-for-motor-vehicle-accidents/ (there are lots and lots of other examples, both in Canada, and around the world)
One death can be the proof that something is dangerous, or you could have asked anyone who has to ride across the bridge (because its not like there are many alternatives), and they could have told you that this would happen, sometime, and they hoped it wouldn’t be to them.
Yes, she got unlucky, but so do most people who get sick, and so we have health insurance, with preventative care, because we consider as a civilized society that sometimes it’s better to treat a problem before it becomes deadly.
Cyclists do have rights. Vehicles don’t have rights. The vehicle’s drivers have rights, but those don’t have any more weight than those of the cyclist.
As for the increased velocity, there are things called speed limits, which if enforced, would do wonders for your risk. I’m all for those – it would make the park much more pleasant to bike and run through.
And finally, drivers have plenty of padded cribs – have you seen how long of a gap they put in between switching the center lane from one way to another? Jeesh, those mollycoddled drivers, you’d get at least another 100 cars an hour through there if you made it a 3 second switch and then any stragglers get to play Mad Max. Where’s your sense of adventure! … or do you only want to protect areas of ‘right’ when its your rights?
Nice that the Province has included the symbols on the pavement (unlike the City in many places) – I especially like the triangular arrows indicating that the pedestrian path is 2-way and the bike path is 1-way. The pedestrian logo is also readable from both directions, unlike some City examples.