Battle on to scrape away bad bike lanes

Councillors target little-used routes

A full frontal assault that will likely see numerous bike lanes scraped off the face of our city streets has been launched.

Two city councillors, Michael Walters and Michael Oshry, are leading the charge. Both councillors support proper bike lanes, but only lanes that are fully segregated from traffic and built in densely populated neighbourhoods.

For example, councillors recently and unanimously supported building two fully segregated bike lanes, one in Old Scona, the other downtown.

What Oshry, Walters and some other councillors can no longer tolerate are the little-used suburban bike lanes installed in 2013 at a cost of $11 million. These lanes are slender paths that run alongside traffic, with only a white painted line separating bike riders from cars and trucks.

Few cyclists, except for the most determined bike commuters, feel safe on these “sharrow” lanes, which is why they’re so little used, Walter says.

“They are entirely indefensible,” he says.

“We have to build inclusive infrastructure. We failed and we need to start again.”

The bike lanes annoy drivers, Oshry says. They see the empty bike lanes and wonder why the space is being wasted.

“I can’t think of a strong enough word to say how bad they are,” Oshry says.

“People are not stupid. When they see these bike lanes and they see the ineffectiveness of them, they think, ‘What are we spending money on bike lanes if this is what we get?’

“I have no problem spending a little money to take them out and I have no problem spending a lot of money to put them back in properly in those locations, or in other locations where it’s appropriate.”

The matter hasn’t come to a vote, and won’t until early July as the matter was delayed at Tuesday’s council meeting, but Walters and Oshry appear to have convinced many of their colleagues to start getting rid of the least used lanes.

City administrators have told Walters it will cost $600,000 to $700,000 to get rid of two lengthy bike lanes south of the Whitemud.

Not all councillors are on board, particularly not the ones who supported the bike lanes in the first place, including Mayor Don Iveson.

He wants to see how much it will cost to scrape, but is leaning toward keeping the current lanes.

He points out the lanes have been studied and found to be safe.

“We know it’s safe, we know it’s functional,” Iveson said.

“It’s not perfect. It’s not the best bike lane in the world, but I think it may send a mixed signal to everybody to withdraw what is there.” What is the mixed signal? “There are many people who would interpret the removal of the bike lanes as a signal from the city that we are getting out of the business of trying to provide safe space on the roadway for cyclists.”

Iveson’s bottom line on scraping?

“It would cost a lot of money for very little gain or no gain, really, and by many people, it would be seen as a step backward.”

Iveson says the lanes aren’t doing any harm. Walters disagrees. “They are hurting our credibility. They are hurting the long game of building a great bike network.

“If we don’t take them out, we’re not listening, because it has been an overwhelming and diverse group” (opposing them, he says. “This isn’t just a bunch of cranky car drivers that don’t like them. This is everybody.”

The turning point for me in this debate came last February when Gil Penalosa, an international expert in walkable and bike friendly cities, gave a public talk in Edmonton where he mentioned how our bike lanes were illconceived.

Many sensible people would never use them because cars simply don’t respect the painted lines, Penalosa said.

When you have one of the world’s most visionary urban planners and pro-cycling advocates telling you that you’ve fouled things up, it’s time to listen.