Green Fanatics? That’s a brutal stereotype.

I agree with Chris Keam.

What gives, Frances?

Good article Frances. It was interesting to read what is going on in the ‘burbs. I was cycling in Richmond on the weekend and was surprised by the bike lanes and paths there.

I am that suburban cyclist, these days – I live in the DNV and commute downtown.

As suburban commutes go, I have it pretty easy, I’m only 9km from work and can do the trip in 30 minutes give or take. But the cycling facilities are, well.. interesting.

There are lots of individual pieces of work going on which are improving a cyclists lot on the North Shore, but it’ll be a long while before there’s something you can really call a “network”.

It’s complicated by the fact that between Denman Street and Capilano Road there are 5 jurisdictions involved – CoV, Vancouver Parks Board (causeway), the province (bridge and approaches), West Van (whose border cuts through the parking lot of the Marine Drive Earls) and finally the DNV. When there’s something to complain about (which is often) it’s a challenge to work out who to complain to.

Luckily we have the North Shore VACC who have a very good handle on these issues and appear to be one of the main reasons that there’s any coordination at all between these various entities.

While I believe there are good intentions at a policy level in the DNV, West Van, MoT etc – it does seem that on the ground there is a carelessness in the implementation that is frequently annoying and sometimes actively dangerous. I have the scars already.

I’m pretty sure Frances was being sarcastic.

Because I’ve tried reasoning with some of them. Showing there’s viable alternatives. Things we should try BEFORE we go about destroying public infrastructure. They don’t want to hear about it. All they want is the most destructive option to make a statement.

When city hall loses common sense, everyone in the city loses.

It would be nice to talk about the issues around cycling in the suburbs, and not the existence (or rather the lack thereof) of some troll’s imaginary bogeymen.

Is that too much to ask for?

Oh well. We cycle in Vancouver and the trolls keep us busy.

Paul:

You still haven’t given me any ‘facts’ to like or dislike. Facts are things I can look up and verify for myself.

As for the VACC trying to get rid of painted bike lanes in Vancouver, I’d love to hear how you reached that bizarre conclusion. Most cycling organizations, including the VACC, recognize that different facilities are suitable for different areas, so I have to say once again, you need to back up your assertions with something beyond blanket statements.

The VACC isn’t trying to get rid of painted bike lanes… They have gotten rid of them. Shall we take a stroll down Hornby?

Every last argument for the Hornby lane was that the current bike lane was unsafe and didn’t attract people to use their bikes. Hornby, of course, is a street where cars can travel at best 30-40 km/h in daylight hours. However painted bike lanes on King George highway in surrey (where cars typically whip by well in excess of the posted 60 km/h speed limit) are perfectly fine for ensuring safety and attracting cyclists.

Makes perfect common-sense to me CK.

@Paul T.
Last time I cycled down King George in Surrey, the only other cyclist I saw was riding on the sidewalk. Hardly a ringing endorsement of those bike lanes. Even worse, the bike lanes stop just before Surrey Central so they aren’t much use for people trying to get there.

Contrast that to the Dunsmuir and Hornby lanes that have a steady stream of cyclists on them including children. Today I saw a boy around 5 cycling on Hornby and a woman which two young children on Dunsmuir. I doubt that this would have been the case on the old painted bike lanes that were always blocked by stopped buses, cabs and trucks as well as vehicles turning right.

I wonder what would happen to poor ol’ Paul T. when the Canadian Government is no longer able to subsidize the oil industry to keep the price of gasoline artificially low.
I say end the subsidies. End the tax holidays for refiners.
And stop wasting municipal taxes on infrastructure geared solely to the use of the privately owned automobile.
Make the auto industry culpable for the 250,000 Canadians injured every year and the 4700 Canadians killed every year by the private automobile.
Make the auto industry pay for all pollution related deaths and long term disease care.

The Thought of The Day

‘Budapest,Prague,Lisbon, Copenhagen…cities. Bran, Windsor, Neuschwanstein…castles. Louvre, Moravian Gallery, Rembrandt House…museums. Westminster Abbey, Coliseum, La Tour Eiffel, Sagrada Familia…landmarks. Golonka, Karelian pasty, Taramosalata, Jägerschnitzel…only the most finger licking good European foods.’

Jesse #1,
Apropos the Velib http://www.velib.paris.fr aka Velo in Paris… my family have just returned from Paris less than three weeks ago after a month of travelling throughout France.
Re. Paris and bikes:
Think of the most attraction points in the city (Champs Elysees, Notre Dame, Basilique du Sacre-Couer, Tour Eiffel, … and also the off the grid touristic joints in the city, they did a lot of walking around…and observed NO Bike traffic or insignificant at the most.!
Re. Velo, according to the locals it is extremely underused and costly in maintenance and replacement of the vandalized bikes (yeah it happens a lot) Sometimes a bike ends up costing the municipality five to ten times its initial price.
No separated bike lanes, not even designated bike lanes, the road is shared. Period.
Pleasing their Green kooks. Same racket, it is the new trend, there’s money in it too. It takes a bit of effort pretending you are trying to reduce “your carbon foot print” LOL!
Of course if this idiocy of sharing comes to Vancouver, the Green Bullies are going to make the same BS claims that they made with the “Trial” separated bike lanes and their tremendous “sucKcess”.

Another way of confirming how far away from reality Vancouver City Hall really is. Please, do yourselves a favour, stop comparing with the Europeans, copying their way of life, bike lanes, green design and festivals. At least stop pretending that Vancouver is a cosmopolitan city. It’s not.
Unless… Hockey comes to town, and then what do Vancouverites do at the first Mayoral call? They Riot! Oh yeah, now I am embarrassed.

But wait, look, Meggs is riding his Danish Jorg & Olef bike down on…Hornby.
On. A. Separated. From. Reality. Bike. Lane.

We live in Vancouver and this keeps us busy…

Thanks Bobbie Bees @ 22 for proving my point. The separated bike lane is not about safety or encouraging more cycling, it’s about a vocal group of fanatics who feel the car is the root of all evil and people need to be punished for using it. I’m not anti-car or anti-bike. And I agree we need to incent people to use bikes more, but common sense has to reign.

The most fanatic of bike users are in charge at city hall right now. Fanatics should never be in charge. They need to be involved, but not have the final say.

@Paul

Just think about it for a second. Just how else do you suggest that cycling be made safe and comfortable for people of all ages. Who is going to take their small children cycling on busy roads with nothing separating them from traffic. Pretty much no one and for good reason.

You seem to think that only a few brave people, mostly guys, should be the only ones who get to enjoy cycling in the city. I believe that everyone should be able to enjoy cycling in the city if they chose to.

“So don’t trust everything you read, as long as you don’t know who’s paying for it.”

Such as when someone claims there’s no bike lanes in Paris?

@Glissando Remmy

So there are separated bike lanes in Paris that only can be used by tourists? Funny, I don’t remember having to show a passport or by a ticket to use them. Some are through the heart of the city in some areas where there aren’t that many tourists.

They live in Paris and that keeps them off the bike lanes?

Please start making sense.

Well, in addition to the separated bike lanes, Paris also lots of car-free streets and 30k zones that are fine to cycle in.

In the suburbs everything is far apart.

From this basic fact an incalculable number of policy and engineering decisions flow and the result is that cycling infrastructure needs in the suburbs are not necessarily the same as those in more urban built up areas, let alone the downtown core.

To enable people in their vehicles to cover these long distances with greater ease many of the main streets and highways that make up the suburban road network allow, or at least condone, higher rates of speed than the 50 kph limit typical of the road network in the more built up and central areas of the region. 60, 70, and routinely 80+ kph is the norm on the main roads and highways that constitute the road network in the suburbs. These speeds create a much more dangerous environment for cyclists and all but guarantees that a collision with a vehicle would be fatal to the cyclist. This is simply not the case when collisions take place at the 30, 40, and 50 kph road speeds that are the norm in more built up urban areas.

There is also a significant difference in the experience of having a vehicle pass a cyclist at the speeds that are typical of the more urban built up areas of the region versus the speeds that are typical on roads in the suburbs. When large vehicles such as giant SUVs, dump trucks, or delivery vans pass a cyclist doing 60, 70, or 80+ kph they buffet the air to such an extent that the cyclist’s balance is affected and they can be pushed towards the curb. This is no different than when a large truck passes a small car on the freeway and the occupants of the latter can feel the car veer slightly in the wake of the large vehicle.

The road geometry in the suburbs is configured to allow vehicles to travel, corner, and navigate intersections at greater rates of speed than would be possible on city streets in the more built up and central areas of the region and the design of the average street is first and foremost for automobile users. Pedestrians, transit users, people with wheeled mobility aids, and cyclists are given secondary consideration, if any at all. The overarching assumption that governs the design of streets and their funding in the suburban parts of our region is that the super-majority of people will travel by automobiles the majority of the time. In this context adding cycling infrastructure that will be used is extremely challenging for several reasons.

1. Cycling is inherently human powered, and even with the emergence of the niche group of electric bicycle users the basic reality is that there is a finite distance most people will be able to cover by bicycle in what they consider a reasonable amount of time. The geographically dispersed nature of the suburbs significantly limits their accessibility to cyclists due to the travel distances that are required.

2. The road network in the suburbs lacks the fine grain of the grid system present in the more built up and central areas of the region. This precludes the use of immediately parallel side streets as designated bicycle routes, such as 10th Avenue’s relationship to Broadway in the City of Vancouver. While the geographic spacing of major streets may not be very different from what one finds in the City of Vancouver, the lack side streets or through access on the side streets largely eliminates their usefulness. This road geometry also forces nearly all automobile traffic onto the main streets, dramatically increasing the volume of vehicles they are expected to carry and in doing so creating pressure on the road network to move automobiles at a greater rate of speed and with fewer interruptions like signalled intersections.

3. The length of blocks and the infrequency of signalled intersections mean that the accessibility of everything in the suburbs is diminished. If one is on one side of the street and their destination is on the other, one must find a way to get to the other side. In the suburban street grid the next intersection may be hundreds of metres away, if not even further, and there is no guarantee that there will be any signalization to allow cyclists, let alone pedestrians, to cross safely. All to often access to shopping centres and strip mall parking lots is facilitated by mid-block left turn bays or a bi-directional turning lane in the centre of the road. Cyclists are very hard pressed to use these tools because they require one to be in the left-most travel lane and by law cyclists must be in the right-most travel lane. For the purposes of turning left a cyclists may make their way into the left-most lane but actually doing so on busy streets where vehicles travel 60, 70, 80+ kph is too much to ask of the cycling public.

4. Many roads in the suburbs, especially in more rural areas, lack paved and maintained shoulders while the travel lanes are not wide enough to safely accommodate a cyclist, a metre’s safe passing space, and a vehicle. When shoulders do exist they are routinely strewn with debris and present very real puncture risk to cyclists’ tires. In most cases these roads also lack any sort of pedestrian infrastructure so these shoulders are the defacto sidewalks. The undulating nature of much of our region’s topography coupled with inadequate shoulders, high rates of travel speed, and inconsistent street lighting all make cycling at night a genuinely dangerous proposition for cyclists.

5. Large geographic obstacles like shopping mall super blocks, highways, railways, rivers or ravines, and major streets with long blocks and no crossings all significantly lower the accessibility of vast areas of the suburbs and deter both cycling and walking. Improvements like the new Tynehead pedestrian and bicycle bridge in Surrey, the Canada Line pedestrian and bicycle bridge between Vancouver and Richmond, and the Sperling-Burnaby Lake pedestrian and bicycle bridge in Burnaby are all essential tools to bridge geographic obstacles. The reality is that they are also simultaneously very capital intensive and ‘low hanging fruit’ and without connective bicycle and pedestrian infrastructure they will do next to nothing to improve rates of walking and cycling.

Finally, when bicycle infrastructure like painted bicycle lanes are added, cycling opponents are often at a loss to understand why cyclists and cycling advocacy groups can be critical. Such criticism often stems from observations about how, despite the painted bicycle lane, cyclists’ ability to navigate intersections still has not been considered. Also, lane width matters and Surrey, for example, has chosen to use the 1.5 metre-wide painted bicycle lanes, which includes the concrete gutter and the often uneven asphalt seam where the road surface and gutter meet. The Surrey 1.5 metre painted bicycle lane is fully foot narrower than what the City of Vancouver paints, and nearly half of what the Netherlands considers an adequate one-way bicycle lane width to be. Burnaby has been squeezing in bicycle lanes here and there along its portion of the Central Valley Greenway and in one section the lane they have added between two vehicle lanes is so narrow that the North American-standard bicycle lane paint stencil cannot even fit between the lines: http://pricetags.files.wordpress.com/2011/08/burnaby-narrow-bike-lane-august-14-2011-p1260089.jpg It would be brilliant if separated cycle tracks, or at least raised painted bicycle lanes, could be integrated into the suburban road network, but that is simply unrealistic for the foreseeable future. The simple per-kilometre cost of bridging vast suburban distances with proper cycling infrastructure would be prohibitive, and because of this the painted bicycle lane will be the norm going forward. The real priority as I see it is to transform typical suburban roads into complete streets, with sidewalks, street and pedestrian lighting, 50 kph speed limits, painted bicycle lanes of adequate width, and frequent signalized intersections designed to safely include pedestrian and cyclists in their timed ballet of movement. Focus on that and all sorts of positive outcomes for rates of cycling, walking, transit use, and road safety will bloom.

I am still very pleased to see cycling improvements being made in our suburban municipalities and the governments, engineers, and planners there really do have a harder go of it than their counterparts in the City of Vancouver, notwithstanding the pushback the latter receive when bike lanes and cycle tracks are added.

Well, thanks to Dave Pasin for raising the tone. Have to confess at first glance I thought your (Dave’s) comment was going to turn out to be an apologia for inaction but I do agree with your analysis that the lack of “complete streets” is ultimately the cause of many of the issues cyclists face – and *everyone* would be better off if this were addressed.

@Mark Allerton

If you are referring to comment 34, the author is David Godin not Dave Pasin.

I wonder if any of you commenters have actually seen the bridges built in Surrey. I live right next to one built over Hwy 99. I don’t see how this can be a priority for anyone, including cycling advocates. The bridge goes from one isolated cul-de-sac to another quiet subdivision. I fail to see it as a benefit to anyone but a casual recreational cyclist – nobody is using this bridge to commute anywhere. The large signs erected on our street tell everyone that this is a project paid for by “Canada’s Economic Action Plan” – presumeably this was a shovel-ready project that was ready to go when the cash was being handed out a couple of years ago. It’s a nice bridge – complete with a dazzling light display that really attracts the youth at night who evediently enjoy the light show even more when using artificial stimulants…
One must wonder how, with all the talk about debt and municipal tax increases etc. how building this bridge can be viewed as a priority? From my perspective as a Surrey taxpayer and a home owner next to one of these bridges, i wish they had spent the money on something else.

Just changed a bank of air filters on some supply fans at work today. 24 fliters @ 24″x24″x2″.
These filters are changed every coupls of months. The fans are on 24/7.
Anyways, it’s always amazing just how black these filters are.
It’s also amazing how bad they stink.
The air intake is for this fan is about 100′ from Burrard street.
Yech……..
It’s safe to say the blackness and resulting stench sure isn’t coming from the cyclists on Burrard.
I wonder where else it can be coming from.