Three photos of people riding bikes on Vancouver’s very popular and busy Seaside Greenway. Shamefully, the section at Kits Beach Park is nasty and dangerous, but nothing gets done.
Click here for a PDF of the full-size poster by HUB Cycling.
Despite seeing over half a million bike trips annually, and being subject to many years of calls for change from users and residents alike, the Vancouver Park Board continues to operate under the assumption that routing people on bikes through a busy parking lot — including tourists, children and older folks — is A-OK.
Happy Bike to Work Week…
OMG
200 m of bike lanes are missing in an area where we already have 3 or 4 decent alternatives.
Meanwhile homelessness and lack of affordable rentals are real crises that also remain unsolved.
Perhaps we need a new mayor?
Don’t worry, you’re getting one.
Don’t worry. You’re also getting several clusters of modular homes for the homeless and housing-challenged placed all over the city very quickly.
So why does it have to be either/or? Improved cycling has made our city more livable and the envy of people across Canada. At the recent National Bike Summit in Ottawa, a German expert said that he uses Vancouver as an example of a city that rapidly increased its bike usage. Kits Beach Park is a huge gap in the Seaside Greenway which should have been fixed long ago. Maybe we need a new Park Board.
I just recently learned about why this condition continues to fester, and was shocked to learn that the Parks Board ducks the issue. They’re elected to make decisions.
“Shamefully, the section at Kits Beach Park is nasty and dangerous” says Ken … and interestingly enough, it is the only section pictured with helmetless cyclist…
notice, that the issue is not a park board issue alone…
Arbutus, Ogden, Maple are under city jurisdiction (not park board),: the city is not more proactive than the park in that instance.
It starts with the Park Board. There are local street alternatives for a bypass route, just like we have a Seaside Bypass along South False Creek and on 1st Ave. But it starts in the park. Once we sort out a safe route in the park, then City staff can work on connecting to it safely from neighbourhood streets.
Unfortunately, the Park Board leadership decided that they didn’t want their staff to work collaboratively with City transportation engineering staff to come up with a joint solution. They voted to not ask staff to do exactly that. Duck, run, hide.
Voters should ask Park Board candidates in October what they plan to do about it. Unless the current commissioner who moved the motion to defer discussion ends up being a mayoral candidate, then ask him.
Not sure why you are focusing on helmet use, Voony. Helmets are required on public streets. The photo you refer to is in the park. There is a City bylaw requiring helmets on designated bike paths in the park. The Park Board staff report supporting the helmet bylaw, and the documented official bike route, both show a route that is not through the parking lot. It is only the actions of the Park Board to direct people through the parking lot that results in this situation.
It is comments like these that show why the helmet law is so bad for our society.
“Congestion is your friend” Larry Beasley used to say.
Who says that bikes have a right to travel fast through a people-attracting destinations. Get off and walk your bike, enjoy the place, or go around. Blasting bike lanes through popular people attracting destinations like beaches and shopping streets is like blasting freeways through a downtown.
Too many traffic engineers are taking the same old auto-flow solutions they learned in the freeway days and applying them to bikes.
If we are worried about people blasting through people-attracting destinations, and want to change the park, let’s start with the two parking lots. And the service lane. And the staff parking behind the restaurant. Lots of opportunity to remove vehicles that blast through.
Or, we could find a way to balance it and accommodate all users.
Be careful what you wish for.
People are safely cycling and walking on all sections of our magnificent Seaside Greenway from the Convention Centre, around Stanley Park, past Science World and all the way out to Spanish Banks. Why block it through Kits Beach Park. This is an international embarrassment.