It was the official opening of the new bike lane in downtown Vancouver yesterday, which gave all us media types a chance to gather on the street at Granville and Dunsmuir and observe an array of unusual driving techniques while we waited for the news conference to begin.
My story here. As I and others are reporting, businesses along the street are waiting and seeing what the impact is going to be. They are worried about stories they’ve heard that have filtered over from the Burrard Bridge trial, particularly the case of the Appleton Gallery that says it is going to have to close because of the negative impact that bike lane had on its business.
(The mayor, by the way, asked about that yesterday said engineers looked at the case of Hornby Street closely but determined the only way to ensure cyclist safety was to prohibit right turns onto Hornby from Pacific. And he has his doubts about how much impact the bike lane had, saying it’s hard to sort that out from any possible recession impacts. “I disagree that it was all the bike lane, because the street’s open. You can get to it from a couple of directions.”)