If problems identified by residents and businesses are manageable, the new lane could be in place before the end of the year. Cycling trips, meanwhile, are jumping as a share of overall traffic, rising 24 percent across the Burrard Bridge and up 400 percent to about 2,000 a day on the Dunsmuir route since the downtown Dunsmuir lane opened.

According to staff estimates, the 3,500 cycle commuters are already saving Translink the trouble of finding capacity equivalent to another 65 to 75 full transit buses a day. That saving will only grow.

Traffic to the downtown peninsula has been decreasing for the last decade, despite perceptions of gridlock. Why? Undoubtedly more commuters are using transit, as parking operators note. Soon, we hope, more will be cycling.

It’s hard to credit, however, the claim here that the new bike lanes are emptying the lots. Would that it were so.

Driver traffic violations on the Ontario bike route.

The war of words between drivers and cyclists shows little sign of abating.

In the wake of cyclist outrage about a “crackdown” on riders by ticket-issuing members of the VPD, a group of cyclists has staked out the Ontario bike route at 10th Ave. to monitor drivers for violations.

The results, distributed to media outlets today, were unsurprising. Citizens for Safe Bikeways claimed to have documented 18 dangerous incidents in a few hours.

(No doubt a similar stakeout by driver could produce worrying results for cyclist.)

As I learned late last month, when I brought together several VPD officers responsible for traffic enforcement for a discussion with some leading members of the cycling community, it comes down to resources.

My mailbox receives demands daily, from both motorists and cyclists, for a crackdown on the other side. To crack down on everyone, everywhere, would require a second police department.

This problem will take new partnerships, new resources and time to resolve. Education will be more effective than enforcement alone, although enforcement must be part of the equation. In my opinion, these efforts must be provincial in scope, although we can do more at the city level.

In the meantime, be careful out there.

Here’s the full text of the release:

During a two hour period volunteers recorded 18 incidents of dangerous and illegal driving on a single block of a popular bike route in Vancouver.
At the location along the 10th Avenue bike route Citizens for Safe Bikeways (CSB) recorded the following:
•    11 incidents of driving the wrong way through the traffic circle
•    7 incidents of driving through a “No Entry except bicycles” sign
•    1 incident of passing a cyclist without leaving 1 metre of space
The incidents were all photographed. License plate numbers and vehicle descriptions are being forwarded to the Vancouver Police Department and ICBC.
The multiple examples of motor vehicles driving the wrong way through a traffic circle are especially concerning.
This traffic circle is at the intersection of two heavily used bicycle routes. There are tall buildings and trees on the corner most commonly used by short-cutting vehicles giving them limited visibility.
On average the short-cutting happens once every 11 minutes.
The group spoke with two people who live in buildings on this corner. One mentioned that her partner had almost been struck twice by short-cutting vehicles on the wrong side of the road. Another mentioned that she thought the frequency of traffic circle short-cutting was normally higher than what we had observed.
CSB advocates for a evidence-based approach to improving cycling safety. We believe that we should look at how enforcement is handled in jurisdictions that have better safety records for cyclists than Vancouver does.
Recent crack downs by the Vancouver Police have appeared to focus on punishing relatively safe behaviour while ignoring more dangerous behaviour by both motor vehicles and cyclists on cycling routes.
High resolution photos of the incidents are available.
For more information contact Rob Baxter at 778.869.8333 or robert@recov.org.

Montreal cyclists wait to cross Stanley on the De Maisonneuve bike route earlier this month. The bike lane accomodates two-way cycle traffic in one lane of the busy one-way thoroughfare.

City workers were putting the final touches today on the new Dunsmuir St. bike lanes, set to open June 15 as the next phase of the city’s crosstown cycle lane installations. Cyclists were already using the new route as crews hosed down the final sections near Burrard.

Similar lanes have been in place in Montreal for two years, providing a vital safe route through the busiest part of the downtown core on De Maisonneuve. Good thing, too: tangling with Montreal drivers is not for the faint of heart.

In Toronto, the Star reports that cycling advocates in that city are shifting gears, moving away from a goal of 1,000 kilometres of bike routes to focus on a safe, connected route system that grows ridership. Toronto’s current system of about 400 kilometres is about the size of Vancouver’s. Given the size of the city, the change in emphasis is significant.

That approach dovetails nicely with Vancouver’s recent decision to emphasize ridership and safety, with an emphasis on separate lanes, rather than simple extension of painted lanes, in our next 10-year plan. (Nonetheless, the current council’s investments are bringing significant expansion.)

The latest analysis of the safety risks confronted by cyclists in the two cities was reported today in the Globe. Not surprisingly, Toronto riders face a special hazard from the city’s streetcar tracks, and a political challenge in the coming election, where at least one mayoral candidate is promising a moratorium on new bike infrastructure.

Montreal’s popular Bixi rental bike program, by contrast, is adding in a strong transit discount package that makes the bike share effort as much a transit initiative as a cycling one. (Vancouver is studying the Bixi program but must reconcile the helmet law with bike rental aspect.)

Could it, she wonders, be converted to peaceful uses as a pedestrian bike bridge across False Creek, an idea that just won’t go away?

For this project, the US Army used ”94 percent recycled materials including glass, vehicle bumpers and about 85,000 pounds of high-density polyethylene plastic. That’s equivalent to about 550,000 one-gallon plastic milk jugs which, laid end-to-end, would extend nearly 82 miles.”

Why not a bridge with recycled tanks?

For the first time, council is testing segregated lanes in the heart of the city in an effort to break the logjam that has kept cycling mode share at a fraction of the longstanding goal.

The Burrard trial attracted “end of civilization” media coverage, a barrage of e-mails on both sides of the issue and platoons of intervenors at council.

Dunsmuir saw a small flurry of e-mails and about four intervenors, including three representing busineses in the 600 block. The whole discussion took about three hours, with general agreement the project looks sound between Richards and Beatty.

West of Richards the road narrows, raising serious concerns from the Downtown Vancouver BIA, which opposes the impending ban on right turns at Seymour and Hornby. It also will affect transit, taxi zones and the drop-off zone at the front door of the St. Regis Hotel.

Unlike the Burrard trial, the Dunsmuir project carries more uncertainties, particularly for the dense residential, commercial and retail project built around the Dunsmuir entrance to the Skytrain.

Burrard had been studied to death, but the Dunsmuir project is a true trial, to be followed later this summer by a north-south connection along the Burrard corridor still to be determined. This phase is bound to be even more complex, given its length.

Aware of the potential pitfalls, council directed staff to have a troubleshooter ready to hear concerns and make changes, if warranted, as the Dunsmuir trial unfolds.

If both phases of this year’s work are a success, council will have penetrated to the heart of the matter — the downtown core which is the destination of most urban travellers.

But city engineers are already at work on a number of bike routes to improve traffic calming measures. This should produce safer rides for cyclists and a quieter life for residents as more cars are prevented from cutting through neighbourhoods.

Full details of the current work were distributed to council March 31. I posted it the next day, but I’m doing so again given the renewed interest.