Category — Cycling

Bike to Work Week seems to be setting off a competition among Canadian cities to improve cycling infrastructure.

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.)

In this morning’s mail, this intriguing find from Lynn Kisilenko: a plastic bridge, capable of supporting a battle tank, made almost entirely of recycled plastic bags.

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?

Despite the relative calm as council approved segregated bike lanes for Dunsmuir St., today’s decision may prove more significant than last year’s Burrard Bridge trial.

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. [Read more →]

My mail box is filling up with suggestions from city cyclists for even more improvements to Vancouver’s bike network in response to this week’s proposed $25 million cycling investment program. (I count about $12 million to create new routes, $13 million to upgrade, overhaul, plan and monitor to get to the $25 million in news reports.)

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.