Council votes to make cycle track permanent
Calgary’s controversial 6.5-kilometre network of separated bike lanes in the city’s downtown core is here to stay.
Following an 18-month pilot project in which reams of data was collected, city council voted 10-4 in favour of making the $5.5-million bike network permanent late Monday following hours of questions and debate.
“Council is seeing this is not just something for the fringe of society. The number of cyclists in Calgary is growing and it’s growing very fast,” the city’s bike boss Tom Thivener told reporters after the vote.
Mayor Naheed Nenshi, who noted he isn’t a cyclist, said he was pleased with council’s overwhelming support to keep the network of barrier separate bike lanes that opened in 2015 after being narrowly approved as a pilot project in 2014.
“As we look at the data, more people are cycling, we’ve lowered the percentage of injury collisions throughout the core, and we’ve had pretty minimal impact on automobile traffic, so I’m quite pleased with where council ended up today,” he said after the vote.
Councillors Ward Sutherland, Peter Demong, Sean Chu and Joe Magliocca voted against making the cycle tracks piloted on 12th Avenue S, 5th Street S.W. and 8th/9th Avenue S permanent. Coun. Jim Stevenson was absent from Monday’s vote.
Ward 13 Coun. Diane Colley-Urquhart, who along with Coun. Ray Jones voted in favour of keeping the bike lanes on Monday and against the pilot in 2014, said she’s been impressed with how the project has worked.
“I was a person that didn’t support this in the beginning. I thought this was madness,” she said after the vote Monday.
“But, to see how it’s evolved, and how it’s working and to see how people are starting to get the fact that this is shared public space.”
In addition to making the network permanent, the 10-4 vote saw council agree to spend $1.65 million, from the existing budget and money left over when the lanes came in under budget, for improvements to the infrastructure including parking, transit and traffic issues. Though, as per council direction, no money will be spent to make the existing physical infrastructure permanent, unless improvements are required.
An amendment brought forward by Coun. Andre Chabot for administration to report back on how the 12th Avenue route will operate when Green Line construction starts was also passed, but a pitch from Chabot to make the network permanent except for 12th Avenue S.W. lost in a 7-7 tie.
An amendment put forward by Coun. Sean Chu to remove the 8th Avenue cycle track west of 3rd Street S.W. and to relocate the 12th Avenue cycle track to 10th Avenue failed in an 11-3 vote with only Chu, Magliocca and Pootmans in favour.
“We’re talking about a network and if you start nibbling away at the network, it becomes less successful,” Coun. Druh Farrell said of Chu’s pitch, which administration estimated would cost $1.2 million.
After lengthy debate, area councillor Evan Woolley said he was excited the bike lanes aren’t going anywhere.
“This has been an immense amount of work from people in the community, residents, administration and everybody,” he said.