http://www.canada.com/search/story.html?id=719ec5bb-5535-48e7-877c-a55d20ccd5b0

Council votes to turn two of six lanes on Burrard Bridge into dedicated bike lanes

Doug Ward
Vancouver Sun


Wednesday, July 20, 2005



Vancouver city council voted Tuesday to turn two of six lanes on the Burrard Bridge into dedicated bike lanes -- a one-year experiment set to begin next April.

"This is the happiest day of my time on city council," said COPE councillor Fred Bass, who proposed the motion authorizing the plan, which received overwhelming support, with only NPA councillor Sam Sullivan opposed.

"I became a city councillor because of global warming," Bass said after the vote. "And it seems to me that what we have here is a very feasible way of testing out whether we can mobilize people to walk and cycle and for people to leave their cars behind."

The city tried a similar bike-lane experiment in 1996, closing one lane to cars and opening it to cyclists. The trial was meant to be extended over a period of months but was called off after one week because of motorist outrage and escalating hostility between drivers and cyclists.

The new bike-lane resolution went against a staff report that warned last month that the closure of two curb lanes would increase traffic congestion and slow transit and the movement of goods.

City staff instead recommended spending $13 million to widen the sidewalk on both sides of the Burrard Bridge as the best option for improving downtown access for cyclists and pedestrians.

The curb lane closure experiment was criticized by Charles Gauthier, executive-director of the Downtown Vancouver Business Improvement Association, who predicted increased congestion. "This council decision doesn't make a lot of sense to us, especially since city staff had made dire predictions about what would happen with lane closures."

Gauthier said the one-year trial will only confirm what the city learned during the 1996 experiment -- that the lane closures would generate congestion and increase transit times.

Cycling advocates were delighted by the council decision. "I'm thrilled," said Bonnie Fenton of the Vancouver Cycling Coalition.

"It's a victory for everybody, but it's going to take a little bit of patience and faith to see that this is an experiment that can work."

Fenton said there will be delays and some motorist anger during the trial's initial phase, "but as has been shown elsewhere, those delays get reduced over time as people develop new routes and new habits."

Bass said he's optimistic that the experiment will work this time because the lane closure will be accompanied by an intensive program promoting cycling and walking across Burrard Bridge and alerting motorists to alternative routes, such as the Granville Bridge.

Council also asked staff to proceed with the design review of the sidewalk-widening proposal.

The bike lane experiment will be assessed by staff at six-month and one-year intervals. If there is a consensus on council to abandon the bike lanes, staff will proceed with the widening of the sidewalks.

Council also instructed staff to examine transit changes and HOV lanes to help reduce the number of single-occupant vehicles crossing Burrard Bridge into the downtown.

About whether he is ready to deal with irate drivers, Bass said: "Motorists called for my head long ago and my head is still on my neck."

dward@png.canwest.com

CROWDED CROSSING:

Each hour during peak times, 8,000 to 9,000 people cross the Burrard Bridge.

Lone drivers 49%

Car poolers 21%

Transit riders 21%

Cyclists 5%

Walkers 4%

Source: City of Vancouver, Vancouver Sun

5% of users are cyclists and 91% are vehicles, yet 33% of the bridge surface will now go to cyclists and 66% will remain for vehicles?

I suppose this will go down in history as one of the current council's greatest acheivements, right up there with the "nuclear free zone" signs around downtown :weird:

Stupid, completely idiodic!!!!!! I can't get over how stupid this is. There's no other way to describe this council. I can't wait until the elections because I'm sure they're going to be gone.

Did they put up those "nuclear weapons free zone" signs? I saw one today and though it was kind of stupid.

lol - WOW.

If the jams encourage more to bike, I'm all for it. It's ridiculous how 49% are SOVs.

Posted this in Vancouver Public Transit thread.. .

Burrard Bridge with Cars, Bikes and Pedestrians (current configuration) :eek::eek::eek:
No wonder so little people bike, it's an accident waiting to happen.

http://image24.webshots.com/25/6/84/84/30968484sGaLVqHmCT_ph.jpg

Burrard Bridge with Cars

http://img329.imageshack.us/img329/4986/272990282ef2993c45b0gb.jpg

Burrard Bridge with Bikes:)

http://img329.imageshack.us/img329/4476/217506280792d225ebb1dd.jpg

http://img329.imageshack.us/img329/171/217506295ca5855079b9qp.jpg

http://img329.imageshack.us/img329/9122/22310512de2e8923c9b7of.jpg

Burrard Bridge with Cars, Bikes and Pedestrians (current configuration) :eek::eek::eek:
No wonder so little people bike, it's an accident waiting to happen.



How is an accident not waiting to happen by having bicyles in lanes beside traffic? If a cyclist wipes out he/she will be in the way of traffic one way or another. It's also nice to see the second cyclist is taking care to avert any needless injuries...by not wearing that tacky accident-prone helmet.

Meh, this is a one-year trial. If there's congestion as a result, the bike lanes will be axed. If things somehow work out and the traffic balances out between Granville and Burrard bridges then all will be fine. As for promoting the use of bicycles, this won't convert more than a handful of people to cycling. And for most of those once the rains come the bike will be nothing more than an ornament on condo balconies :)

What...speed limits on a bike lane? I can't imagine how they try to enforce that.

Another stupid idea, majority of the people are not going to bike, thats just how it is, certainly not enough to justify closing two lanes at the expense of cars. There is alot of cars using that each hour as the article said.

Great news. Of course it will lead to congestion, but then again, it is congested anyway. I hope it will encourage people to use public transport or the bycicle more. We all know people need more excercise as it is:)

Does anyone know if the closure of the lanes is offset by extra public transport?

^Nope.

It's a safety issue. Pedestrians do not stay within their part of the sidewalk and have often forced cyclists off the sidewalk into traffic. There have been a number of injuries over the years (not sure of deaths).

The 8 lane Granville Bridge is practically adjacent to the Burrard Bridge - it is under capacity because it was planned to link up to a freeway system that was never built.

************
Crash course on safe biking

CBC Marketplace Broadcast: March 30, 2004

Jane Lister was badly injured in an accident on a shared path in Vancouver
We've all heard the stories about cyclists and motorists fighting to rule the road. But what about battling for space with pedestrians, joggers, and dog-walkers?

Every day, hundreds of people cycle over the shared path on the Burrard Bridge, one of Vancouver's busiest. Jane Lister was one of them, until her commute home from work one day.

Halfway across the bridge, she swerved to avoid some pedestrians.

"My first memory is the sensation of a tube being pulled from my throat. I broke all the ribs on my left side, and had punctured and collapsed lungs. I fell into a mini van, and my head kind of got trapped between the car and the curb."

It may sound like just another accident between a cyclist and a car, but - in this case - neither was to blame. Instead, the problem was cyclists, pedestrians, dog-walkers and runners forced to share the same narrow path.

There aren't any rules about how wide shared pathways have to be. Just suggested guidelines. Paths Marketplace measured in cities across Canada often fell short of those guidelines.

Richard Drdul rides the trails as a transportation engineer and says many bikeways are risky business.

"When it gets hectic and busy, there's a lot more potential for an injury or collision," Drdul told Marketplace. "We have to make [pathways] more attractive, and we have to make them safer."

But how dangerous can these paths be? We mounted a "cyclecam" to check it out. We found plenty of traffic - and plenty of pedestrians.

There is startling research on shared bike paths. Cyclists who use these routes are almost three times more likely to get injured than if they' re riding on the road.

"There were two pedestrians walking to my right and the pedestrian next to me stepped into me, and I ended up on the roadway," Jane Lister remembers. "It would not have happened if there had been adequate room."

After her accident, Lister sued the city of Vancouver. As part of her lawsuit, she hired someone to design a safer pathway because the city was saying nothing could be done.

Her report concluded it would be reasonable to put up a guardrail. But the city's report found the pathway was wide enough. Lister says this isn't an ideal world: people gesture when they walk and talk and don't necessarily walk in a straight line.

David Rawsthorne is Vancouver's bike path engineer.

"Typically strangers don' t walk side by side and carry on conversations. People who know each other do, and cyclists pass them."

There is no strict standard about how much space cyclists and pedestrians need to co-exist safely on a path - just guidelines that don' t have to be met.

"A standard is a box and not every situation fits into the box," Rawsthorne said.

The suggested Canadian guideline for a one-way shared path is two to three metres wide. The path on the Burrard Bridge seems to measure up at 2.6 metres.

But here' s where the action kicks into high gear. Our cameras found people going two ways, which is exactly what happened in Jane Lister's case. The guideline for a two-way shared path is three to four metres wide.

"Those are the absolute minimum," transportation engineer Richard Drdul said. "Three is the absolute minimum that we would want to build a new pathway to, and that' s only where there are a low number of users. Once we get any kind of level of use, we want to be four metres, even wider."

So Marketplace put shared paths to the test. We checked nine popular paths in major cities to see how they measure up to the four-metre minimum our expert recommends.

In Halifax, the paths are all under par. All three fall short in Toronto. In Vancouver, only one path meets the four-metre minimum.

"It just becomes lack of funds," Drdul said. "It costs more to build a pathway four metres wide, than to build it three metres wide."

But is it just width that matters? We asked Drudl to check one crowded Vancouver path.

"You can' t see far enough around the corner for the speed you' re traveling. You might come around a sharp corner and you may not have time to stop or react."

In Europe, there are small countries, but more space for cycling. Sweden, Denmark and The Netherlands all have dedicated bike lanes, separate from pedestrians and cars. They even have their own traffic signals.

Canada has no national cycling strategy and little funding to make biking safer. Drdul says until our cities build better bikeways, cyclists should actually be sharing the road, with cars.

"The road is safer. Everyone is going in the same direction. They' re all going relatively the same speed."

Cycling activists across the country have been fighting for more space on the street for cyclists - dedicated bike lanes on major arteries.

Jane Lister settled her case against the city out of court. She can' t say how much money she got. But says the city is still accountable.

"They were aware that the situation on the bridge was unacceptable."

City planners admit there' s a problem with the bridge path, saying "safety issues persist that must be addressed." That was three years ago. How long before the city takes action?

"I don' t have a date for you," Rawsthorne said. "We haven' t found a solution that will provide a solution for these users."

So who is responsible if someone is injured on a shared pathway and the city has complaints about the path?

"I think the people using those paths have a certain responsibility to use them prudently," Rawsthorne said.

Until the city makes changes, Jane Lister has safety tips for other cyclists:

Use your voice or your bell.
Don' t hesitate to let people know where you are.
And for both pedestrians and cyclists, just always be aware.

The city tried a similar bike-lane experiment in 1996, closing one lane to cars and opening it to cyclists. The trial was meant to be extended over a period of months but was called off after one week because of motorist outrage and escalating hostility between drivers and cyclists.

The new bike-lane resolution went against a staff report that warned last month that the closure of two curb lanes would increase traffic congestion and slow transit and the movement of goods.


I think I can visualize how things will eventually pan out:

1. New council elected in November;

2. April 1, closure of two lanes for cyclists;

3. Rainy weather resulting in few cyclists;

4. Angry motorists in traffic with widespread media attention;

5. New city councillors hit with numerous angry phone calls and e-mails;

6. Within weeks, two lanes revert back to regular vehicular traffic;

Great news. Of course it will lead to congestion, but then again, it is congested anyway. I hope it will encourage people to use public transport or the bycicle more. We all know people need more excercise as it is:)

Does anyone know if the closure of the lanes is offset by extra public transport?

As a bus rider sitting on a bus in traffic is a waste of my time. With two lanes, this is bound to happen.

^and you'll be staring at an empty lane right next to you, with an occasional cyclist pedelling past.

It's a safety issue. Pedestrians do not stay within their part of the sidewalk and have often forced cyclists off the sidewalk into traffic. There have been a number of injuries over the years (not sure of deaths).

The 8 lane Granville Bridge is practically adjacent to the Burrard Bridge - it is under capacity because it was planned to link up to a freeway system that was never built.



If it is a safety issue, they should spend the money to create additional bike lanes over and above the 6 car lanes. You can't bottle neck the burrard bridge for the sake of 30 radical bike activists and a few annecdotal examples of injuries. It's illogical.

Besides, have you ever tried to get from granville bridge area to kits driving?

The only thing this poor solution will achieve is traffic chaos.

^and you'll be staring at an empty lane right next to you, with an occasional cyclist pedelling past.

Why the city doesn't cater to public transit and carpoolers by installing an HOV lane is beyond me. That would be far more intelligent than catering to a small group of rabid bike protesters.

I think I can visualize how things will eventually pan out:

1. New council elected in November;

2. April 1, closure of two lanes for cyclists;

3. Rainy weather resulting in few cyclists;

4. Angry motorists in traffic with widespread media attention;

5. New city councillors hit with numerous angry phone calls and e-mails;

6. Within weeks, two lanes revert back to regular vehicular traffic;Yea. Probably something close to that. The 4th point I can't see, because the Burrard bridge will still be 4 lanes, wider than the Lions Gate :) and there hasn't been anything close to traffic congestion that I've seen in my lifetime. We'll see I suppose. I hope it works out for cyclists.

cities are built for people not cars

I think I can visualize how things will eventually pan out:

1. New council elected in November;

2. April 1, closure of two lanes for cyclists;

3. Rainy weather resulting in few cyclists;

4. Angry motorists in traffic with widespread media attention;

5. New city councillors hit with numerous angry phone calls and e-mails;

6. Within weeks, two lanes revert back to regular vehicular traffic;

I say #2 never happens, new council realizes the folly prior to April 1.

:okay: In a country with a huge health care problem and a budget to match. I side with the eco- friendly bike option! I myself ride a bike 20 kilometers a day to work and back.
The downtown is small enough that it should encourage less cars more transit and bike options! You are too blame said it best cities are for people not cars.
I could tell you I save about 5 grand a year doing this bike thing but of course I will not bother you with this detail!Cars are for make up and cell phones! :okay:

I side with the eco- friendly bike option! I myself ride a bike 20 kilometers a day to work and back.

Kudos to you. I also cycle occasionally to work when the weather is great but I do not use the main congested thoroughfares - I use the less travelled adjoining side streets.

One has to remember that we get a lot of miserable weather out here - rain, wind, snow etc. which is not conducive to cycling at times.

As for the Burrard Street Bridge, they should have taken the proper approach by expanding the sidewalk - although the existing sidewalk situation is not terribly bad.

It's awesome how city hall is looking out for the citizens of Vancouver, since they are all too selfish to think of the good of the city. Thanks for looking out for us Ellsworth… I mean Fred Bass. I am of the belief that most people in the city are rational; they would take transit if it were faster or more convenient than driving. Instead of punishing people who drive, council should apologise for making them. Council should focus less on an anti-car policy and more on a pro-transit, pro-bike policy.

A city without cars would be hellish. How would anything get anywhere?

People love cars! You can make the place as friendly as you want for pedestrians and bikes, but the vast majority of people prefer cars.... that's just the way it is.

It's a balance between cost and preserving the heritage of the bridge.

At one point, an elevated bike path was proposed above the existing sidwalks weaving around the towers - but the heritage activists panned it. The alternative, as suspended bike path below the bridge deck is unaceptable to the Coast Guard WRT clearance for marine traffic.

The Fir Street off-ramp gives you direct access to Broadway. It's the fastest way to get from downtown to Broadway, 12th Ave or 16th Ave to go to the west side. You bypass the congestion on Burrard between Cornwall and Broadway (avoid 4th & Burrard) - and you fly over the congestion on Granville between 6th and Broadway. Lots of people use it to bypass South Granville by turning left at 16th and then right back onto Granville.

I degress I am from Nanaimo but I ride year round not just in summer weather. I do this 5 days a week no matter the weather. Although Nanaimo gets very little snow each year I prepare myself with snow tires on my bike in the winter months!
I dress warm in the cold and light when it is hot! I adapt to the climate though this is really not a problem for me because I usually wear t-shirts year round!