Category — Cycling

A fascinating new tool — an interactive map of ICBC’s  BC bicycle accident reports — is making the rounds on Velolove, a listserve I find indispensable for following cycling life in the city.

The work of Eric Promislow, who recently produced it at the Open Data Hackathon at Foodtree, the map gives a visual impression of hotspots and and new insight into what’s working on the cycle system. (Of course, the many accidents that go unreported will not be here.)

Promislow writes that he has relied on data from “5,478 incidents over 2006-2010 with a latitude, longitude, month, and year. There are another 1,044 incidents that report only a town, month, and year.  I left these off the map to avoid grouping 100s of hits near the city hall.”

Nonetheless, the map shows some fascinating trends. The 10th Ave. bike route in Vancouver, for example, shows many incidents. Is this the result of high bike volumes? No doubt yes, in part, but I find car traffic intense on this route in the medical district between Oak and Cambie.

There’s another cluster along Burrard, a route I have avoided for many years, Now the Hornby bike lanes provide a safe alternative one block away.

And the crossing at Clark Dr. and 10th: it has problems, as many cyclists have been complaining in recent weeks. Despite special signalization and a refuge area in the median, this crossing remains a risky one for cyclists.

Despite recent claims to the contrary, cycle trips are up 40 percent along the Hornby and Dunsmuir separated bike lanes, according to the latest counts posted today.

As has been the case in every other city, the added safety created by lane separation is building traffic, which helps reduce automobile congestion and has countless other benefits.

A long-simmering conflict between ATV users and cyclists is coming to a boil along the Kettle Valley Railway, where the federal and provincial governments spent millions to replace the Myra Canyon railway trestle after it was destroyed by the Kelowna forest fire in 2003.

In many locations along the route, recently resurfaced parts of the trail are being degraded by ATV users, whose wide, knobbly tires often churn the surface to loose sand. That’s no problem for an ATV, but the end of the road for a cyclist.

Now the BC Cycling Coalition has weighed in with an appeal to Victoria to enforce bans on ATV use along the old railroad right of way, which has emerged as the province’s leading cycle tourism destination. ATV users are pushing to have the entire route opened up for them. [Read more →]