Should city erase botched bike lanes?
Many routes poorly placed and barely used
The introduction of bike lanes to Edmonton streets is such a debacle that it now threatens the entire program. That’s too bad. A bike is a great way of getting around. It would be fantastic if Edmonton had a network of dedicated bike lanes that folks used and loved. But city council and administration’s move to bring in many kilometres of bike lanes on city roads in recent years has been misguided, marked by a dash of anti-car sentiment, a shortage of credible community engagement, and too much top-down, overly optimistic and aggressive leadership bent on the social re-engineering of Edmonton streets.
Such is the public backlash against bike lanes that Coun. Michael Oshry is now openly voicing the popular notion that they need to be scrubbed from city streets. Is that the right move? This week council got an update on usage of our existing bike lanes, which mostly run through suburban areas. The city found that while the percentage of cyclists on them is increasing, the numbers are astonishingly small, just dozens on some routes per summer day, a few hundred on others.
It’s time to cut our losses, Oshry says. “My saying is, ‘Fail fast, false cheap.’ The first go-round was not good so let’s forget it. Start from scratch.”
It’s no use trying to fix up the existing suburban lanes, as they will never be efficient, safe or well used since they were placed on busy, arterial roads. “Trying to put a BandAid on them now is not the way to go,” Oshry says. “The city made a mistake when they put them there. That’s fine. ... Move on. Tear them out.”
Oshry would prefer to see any new bike lanes built on quiet residential streets and in the far more dense downtown area. That’s a sound plan. Yet while Oshry is saying what many Edmontonians are thinking, it’s going to be hard to get rid of the old bike routes. For one thing, the old lanes still have many fierce boosters on city council. For another, they’re thermal plastic milled into the road, so it’s no easy thing to scrape them away. The roads would have to be resurfaced and that could cost millions, says Coun. Michael Walters.
In the end, nothing might get done. Edmonton will remain with the worst of all worlds when it comes to bike lanes. The old lanes will remain, but many fedup councillors and outraged citizens will be unwilling to back any new and better bike lanes in the core, lanes dedicated to bikes only, separated from traffic. “We will be left with only lanes that are controversial, much maligned, but already there,” Walters says.
A ny way out of this freeze?
Walters has a plan. Like Oshry, Walters wants to see all new bike lanes built in the city core. He also wants them to be separated from traffic. “That’s the winner. I’m not a fan of them on the street, mixing with school dropoffs, mixing with school buses, mixing with ETS. It’s chaos in some spots.”
The first part of the plan is now in place, a new requirement for far more open engagement, where the community has a real say in the placement of a bike lane, Walters says.
This week, council also asked the administration to come up with some standards to gauge if a bike lane is being used and is thus warranted. This program will be similar to the study of usage numbers that determine if city bus routes are needed and can be chopped.
Finally, if a community determines it doesn’t want an existing bike lane, and if that bike lane is underutilized, Walters says money has to be found to take out the lane. “Unless there’s community buy-in and community use of the lanes, they’re not worth keeping.”
The current bike lane concept was concocted and pushed by a group of civic leaders and planners firmly committed to the proposition that the car must no longer be king of the city, that it must share the streets. While this is a visionary scheme, and while many folks may share the sentiment to some degree, the reality is it led to bike lanes that work for almost no one.
The backlash has been severe. It’s time to respect what communities are saying, get rid of the old lanes where they are completely unwelcome, and see if a new coalition can come together to build safer, more useful bike lanes in the core.