Safe, convenient cycling routes help

A recent letter claimed that Victoria will never reach European levels of cycling because European cities have dense medieval cores that were shaped long before the automobile.

In fact, most European cities were rebuilt and expanded during the post-war period, and car use grew rapidly through the 1960s and 1970s.

European cities were on the same track as North American cities, and were becoming choked with traffic; historic squares and piazzas were used for parking lots.

It wasn’t until the last 30-40 years that European cities really began to push back against automobile dominance, building protected bike lanes and creating pedestrianized areas.

When you look at cities around the world, the biggest factor impacting the amount of cycling isn’t climate or “culture”; cycling use is directly related to the amount of safe and convenient cycling infrastructure that cities have built. That’s why nearly every city in North America is developing a network of all ages and abilities cycling routes.

While it’s true that many European cities are denser than Victoria, really high densities aren’t required for cycling to be a convenient option. A city just needs to be compact enough so that most cycling trips can be made in 15-20 minutes – a criterion that the City of Victoria already meets.

The letter also claimed that taking away road space from cars results in more congestion and idling, and thus more greenhouse gases.

This “theory” has been widely disproved by numerous studies looking at real-world examples in cities. In fact, cities that have built lots of automobile infrastructure and have more free flow traffic produce more greenhouse gases per capita than more congested cities with less car infrastructure.

This is because building more lanes for cars leads to induced demand, resulting in even more driving and pollution. Perhaps more surprisingly, the converse is also true: if you take space away from cars and make driving slightly more inconvenient relative to other travel modes, people will drive less.

It is not “pie in the sky” to aim for European levels of cycling in Victoria.

According to census data, Greater Victoria already ranks first among 393 metro areas in the U.S. and Canada in terms of the cycling share of work trips.

We are starting from a strong foundation, and building more safe and convenient cycling routes is the key to making cycling even more popular.