Bikes account for two per cent of travel

Re: “Roads with bike lanes retain vehicle capacity,” letter, Aug. 23. The writer suggests looking at the real numbers related to cycle use in the core area and the city of Victoria. The Capital Regional District Household Travel Survey provides lots of information.

The CRD website report shows for the core municipalities that daily bike trips are 27,000 out of a total of 829,000 trips, with a bike mode share of 3.3 per cent, representing about two per cent of total core-area travel because documented bike trips are much shorter than car and transit trips.

For the city of Victoria, daily bike trips are about 17,000 out of a total of 440,000. The daily bike mode share is 3.8 per cent.

In the morning peak period, the bike share is at its highest, 6.6 per cent in Victoria and 5.5 per cent across the core municipalities. The writer’s quote: “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” exaggerates the documented bike statistics by a factor of three for Victoria and a factor of four for the other core municipalities.

The cycling lobby has been successful in obtaining funding for bike improvements in comparison to general traffic-flow and safety schemes far beyond a fair-share basis. Our elected municipal representatives should recognize that bikes represent two per cent of daily core-area travel.

Better documentation and rational justifications are essential for all transportation system improvements. David Langley Saanich