Separated bike lanes are extremely effective at attracting people to the two-wheeled transportation alternative. But there is less attention paid to the larger component of Vancouver’s continent-dominating cycling infrastructure. Namely, neighbourhood streets changed into cycling routes. Traffic calming, lower speed limits, bike buttons at arterials — all contribute to making it easy to get around the city by bike.
Mike Hagar looks at this cheap and effective infrastructure in the Globe and Mail. Replete with extensive quotes from Gordon Price.
Mike Hagar looks at this cheap and effective infrastructure in the Globe and Mail. Replete with extensive quotes from Gordon Price.
Urban-planning and transportation experts have long feted Vancouver’s extensive system of bike-friendly side streets as a cheap and uncontroversial way for bike-resistant North American cities to create the infrastructure that gets people out of their cars and onto two wheels.
It’s very simple,” says Gordon Price, a six-term former city councillor and former director of Simon Fraser University’s City Program. “All you have to do is put in traffic signals where these side streets cross another arterial.” . . .
. . . Price was a councillor from 1986 to 2002, after which he says his Non-Partisan Association party committed to fomenting a “bikelash” among Vancouver’s more conservative residents to oppose any expansion to the city’s cycling infrastructure. This movement began to reach a fever pitch in the run-up to council reallocating a car lane of the Burrard Street Bridge in 2009 to create a separated path for cyclists riding in and out of downtown.
It’s territorial, it is tribal – it doesn’t matter what the data says,” Mr. Price says of the resistance toward such separated bike lanes. “People just feel like ‘you’re taking space; the congestion’s bad already; you’re deliberately making my life worse. For who? A bunch of jerks who aren’t obeying the law. Why don’t you licence them and make them pay their way? Anyway, we don’t have room and blah blah blah.’ And guess what happens [after a new bike lane is built]? Nothing.”
Nothing, that is, except a steady rise in mode-share for the two-wheeled alternative. Today, roughly 10% of trips to and from work are made by bicycle, and that number seems likely to continue its rise.
It’s true that these bicycle friendly side streets were a great way to get started on a safe cycling network. But they are inadequate as a way to fully integrate cycling into the transportation network.
By definition they do not give access to commercial frontages and therefore treat cycling as a recreational activity or something done by those who are not integral to our economy.
There is no harm in creating more such bicycle-friendly streets but there is if it comes at the expense of taking it to the next level and adding separated cycle tracks to our commercial streets.
I like the residential bike routes because they have few traffic lights. They do need more traffic calming since many drivers use these to avoid the busy arterials. We really need both and the proposed complete street for Commercial will be a good start. Then Main followed by Broadway.
I think neighbourhood greenways and complete shopping streets are different things with different purposes. You would take a greenway to go access to and from home and to visit people and to go to a distant destination. You would use a complete shopping street to go shopping.
They’re both needed.
Right, because its not like Point Grey Road is so successful because it is a leisure route.
One of the options for the PGR route was to reallocate a lane along Cornwall from the Burrard Bridge to Point Grey Road. This would have been a more direct route with a lower hill to climb and given cyclists access to two blocks of shops/restaurants and services. Given that merchants usually do better when separated bike lanes are introduced this was a missed opportunity for them.
Instead, to maintain motordom, cyclists lost and are detoured to York with fewer shops and services, a significantly higher hill and an awkward connection back to PGR.
The PGR route could have been more successful if it was designed to accommodate commuter and recreational cyclists, shopping and hungry cyclists. It would have also made Cornwall a more pleasant place to walk.
The traffic mayhem that was predicted for MacDonald/4th/Broadway etc. never materialized. The traffic mayhem that was predicted for Cornwall probably wouldn’t have either.
I agree. Cornwall would have been better. A flatter route, more direct for people cycling to the beach, etc. Still York is fine and works okay and it’s what was possible at the time so I’m pretty happy with it.
The only complaint I have is that the part west of Yew isn’t really AAA. It doesn’t affect me much but for example children cycling along there don’t do so well.
You’d think it’s simple to build a good neighbourhood street bike route, but try riding the 4th Street bike route in the City of North Vancouver. Or for that matter, even getting to 4th from the path along 3rd when travelling eastbound.