Roads with bike lanes retain vehicle capacity

Re: “Bike lanes make emissions worse,” letter, Aug. 19.

Contrary to the letter-writer’s numbers, the share of traffic represented by cyclists is not four per cent in Victoria. That number is closer to Capital Regional District and Statistics Canada numbers for all trips across the region that stretches from Port Renfrew to Salt Spring Island.

More useful numbers will be those related to commuting in the city and other core municipalities.

In my neighbourhood, more than 20 per cent of commute trips are by bike; numbers are similar in other areas of the city and adjacent municipalities. This is more important for transportation planning and performance of roadways, since capacity is most often a function of peak-hour demand.

Roads where new bike lanes have appeared offer the same capacity for vehicles they did before, and often more efficiently, more likely reducing, rather than increasing, emissions.

Increase in vehicle capacity will increase emissions. Traffic engineers often find a correlation between more roads and more vehicle trips. If the perception is that it is easier to drive, more people will do so, adding emissions and discouraging other more sustainable travel choices.

Bike lanes and other facilities encourage shifts in travel choices. The expansion of bike facilities has been found to increase the share of traffic accounted for by bike trips, and the only plausible increase in emissions associated with that change would be the extra food trucks delivering fuel to the grocery stores where cyclists fill up their tanks. John Luton Victoria