Winnipeg Free Press - PRINT EDITION
City will need to pedal harder
Bike-path upgrade worthwhile; bike-sharing program necessary
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Cyclists negotiate traffic at Main and Bannatyne Tuesday. The city and province must be congratulated for deciding to extend the bike-lane system, but that should just be a start.
Once again Winnipeg is at a crossroads, only this time it's mounted on a bicycle as it stares down its destiny.
At first blush, bike lanes may not seem like a make-it-or-break-it issue of urban planning. To be sure, increased use of bicycles is important for the environment and making cities work better. But in this town, the issue is typically portrayed as gravy -- not the meat and potatoes.
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However, this conventional wisdom wilts after visiting a city that embraces the bike, rather than just tolerates it. A city such as Montreal.
It had been some years since I had spent quality time in Quebec's largest city, and while I always remember Montreal as a city that featured more than its fair share of bike commuters, the city has gone above and beyond in making itself bike-friendly.
The first major development that I spotted were the buffered bike lanes. Not just white lines on the side of major routes downtown, but distinct two-way thoroughfares separated from vehicular traffic by a concrete median. Although it presents a challenge for pedestrians -- you have to look both ways, twice -- it is clearly safer and more efficient for cyclists.
But Montreal also features a Bixi bike-sharing system that allows Montrealers to pick up bicycles in one location downtown and drop them off in another. The stations are located no more than 200 metres apart from each other.
Racks of Bixi bikes can be found with alarming regularity; there are more than 3,000 bikes at 300 individual stations. One year of Bixi access is just $78, taxes included.
In total, Bixi has 8,000 members. It registered about 250,000 individual rides last year. The system was named one of Time magazine's Top 50 inventions of 2008 and is being replicated in Toronto and Ottawa.
It's not an entirely new idea, of course. Paris boasts a similar program, Velib, which supplies more than 20,000 bicycles throughout the core of the city. And each and every year, more and more cities are taking steps to promote bikes and public transit, especially in city cores that simply cannot absorb an endless supply of vehicular traffic.
Which brings us back to Winnipeg. Congratulations must go out to the city and province for extending Winnipeg's dedicated bike-lane system and for including bike lanes alongside the new rapid-transit bus corridor. Unfortunately, there was a hitch.
City traffic engineers could not find a cost-effective way of negotiating the Osborne Street underpass, which essentially cuts the downtown-bound bike lane in half. The underpass cannot be expanded to include a bike path, so cyclists would be forced to share the underpass with buses and other vehicular traffic at some risk.
Cycling advocates cried foul, claiming that they weren't getting a safe, uninterrupted route from southern neighbourhoods into the downtown. The city has responded with a promise to rebuild the underpass some time in the future, but not in the near future.
The absence of a solution for the Osborne underpass dilemma does not undo the good done by the city and province on this issue. It does, however, demonstrate Winnipeg's capacity for falling short on good ideas.
It also suggests that civic officials are stuck in that mindset that says bike lanes are gravy, not meat and potatoes when it comes to urban planning.
They would be wrong, of course.
Bigger cities with greater population density have little choice but to consider radical approaches to moving people in and out of core areas. Winnipeg is not under that kind of pressure, but that does not mean we can take a leisurely approach.
There is a downtown renaissance going on in this city, even if it is moving at a glacial pace, and one of the new trends is the growing number of people travelling downtown for work.
The new Manitoba Hydro headquarters will be full by this fall. Red River College is expanding in the Exchange District and the University of Winnipeg is doing likewise. There are continuing rumours that another government entity (Manitoba Lotteries?) could occupy the top floors of the Hudson's Bay store at Memorial Boulevard and Portage Avenue.
The time is right for the city to move aggressively on bike lanes, bike-sharing programs, and improvements to mass transit in and out of downtown. The rapid-transit program is a move in the right direction, but it should be coupled with efforts to make parking more expensive and rapid transit more affordable and convenient.
And let's not forget safety.
On Tuesday, two cyclists were struck by cars. Carnage like that is reason enough to look at alternatives.
Modern, progressive cities move more people on bikes and rapid transit than in minivans and sedans. They do that because they have to.
Winnipeg may not need the same kind of amenities for cyclists now. But we're going to need them soon and there's no good reason to put off the inevitable.
Republished from the Winnipeg Free Press print edition August 5, 2009 B1
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Posted by: mattyg20
August 7, 2009 at 2:15 PM
I don't agree that all bicycles should be on the sidewalk. Unless there's a problem, I'm going 30+ kph (often much closer to 40 or even over that). That would be hazardous to the pedestrians, and by HTA 145(8) is illegal.
I don't have an issue with motorists who think that bicycles belong on the sidewalk - they are entitled to an opinion. However, the gentleman (term used loosely) that tried to run me over on St. Mary's Ave last Sat afternoon, I take issue to that! It wasn't busy nor was I disobeying the law. Flipping me the bird after you try to kill me is another lovely gesture.
Thankfully, most motorists in Winnipeg seem courteous and friendly towards cyclists. I believe that those who do get incensed when a cyclist is breaking the law and doing foolish things should be getting mad. I do, even when I'm on a bike myself. Please don't paint all with the same brush though T-Rev.
Posted by:
August 5, 2009 at 11:12 PM
Nice idea, but it would be even nicer if the city would finish some of the bike paths that they have already started, such as the Pioneer Greenway near Gateway Road. This bike path gets an awful lot of useage, yet is seems so much more needs to be done.
As a person who walks this path, it would be really nice if cyclists coming from behind would indicate by calling out, or ringing a bell. Also, are motorized cyclists allowed on these pathways? I had one pass me yesterday, and he was going at a good speed.
Posted by: BobB
August 5, 2009 at 7:22 PM
"Modern, progressive cities move more people on bikes and rapid transit than in minivans and sedans. They do that because they have to."
Are new New Delhi, Mumbai, and Bejing the sorts of modern progressive cities Winnipeg should be trying to emulate?
London, Paris, New York, Toronto, LA, Calgary, Regina, Windsor, and even Montreal, all move far more people by minivans and sedans than they do by bicycle.
With our climate in Winnipeg, if we want to reduce air pollution and traffic congestion, we need more bus routes, more frequent buses, and once we have more bus riders, more dedicated bus roadways.
Posted by: BobB
August 5, 2009 at 7:11 PM
Most Winnipeg motorists have experienced the achingly slow traffic jams we get during "green week", when people are encourage to bus, bike or walk to work.
Twice as long to get home, twice the air pollution, and twice the wasted fossil fuel, not because of the people walking and busing, but because of a few dozen extra cyclists slowing down traffic.
It is critically important to create adequate bike paths before encouraging greater use of bicycles in Winnipeg.
Under our current laws bicycles with wheels over a certain diameter are not allowed on sidewalks.
It is the same deal with roller blades.
It is not like this world wide. We could have a different law if we wanted it. Whether bikes and roller blades should travel on roads or sidewalks is a provincial government decision, or in some countries a national decision, and different jurisdictions have made different decisions.
Even without changing our current provincial Highway Traffic Act, the city could designate a portion of very wide sidewalks to be a bike path.
Just do what they do in many European countries, paint a line down the sidewalk and paint bike symbols on one side of the line (with an arrow to show if bike traffic is one way or two way).
Or create bike paths on streets adjacent to busy streets, such as Hay St parallel to Osborne.
It is important to create bike paths and to ban bikes from metro routes.
Create adequate bike paths before encouraging greater use of bicycles.
Posted by: BobB
August 5, 2009 at 6:57 PM
T-Rex, when you are directly rear ended by a motor vehicle, it is virtually always the fault of the following vehicle for not maintaining a proper following distance. That even applies if you are suddenly cut off.
With bikes, who knows.
You don't say you were driving an unusually wide vehicle, so these comments assume you weren't.
Our normal traffic lanes are designed so that if bikes stick within 18 inches of the curb a car or small truck can safely pass them in the same lane if it squeezes over to the left.
If you can safely pass them, they can safely pass you.
It is rude and a violation of the law for cyclists to travel further than 18 inches from the curb, unless that area of the road is blocked by a pothole or sewer.
So it is rude for us motorists to block cyclists travelling within 18 inches of the curb.
The only exception is when you are turning right.
If you hit a cyclist who is passing you while you are making a right hand turn, it will almost definitely be considered your fault. Even if the cyclist is speeding along, at night, no headlight, ignores your turn signal, passes you, etc. So you should signal, get right over, and carefully make your turn ensuring you do not hit any pedestrians or cyclists. (The courts will punish you with a fine, god will punish the cyclist (careless or careful) with the a permanent limp or worse.)
"Do unto others as you would have others do unto you."
Posted by: BobB
August 5, 2009 at 6:37 PM
Good points Dan!
But until we build bike paths and bike lanes, even a small increase in bike usage will snarl traffic, grossly increase pollution, increase commute times, and hurt Winnipeg's competitive status compared with other Canadian cities.
City engineers could build an overpass for bikes on Osborne, to carry them over the railway tracks.
Or they could turn one of the sidewalks into a bike path.
Instead city engineers tell taxpayers, "We can't do it", "It is too hard", "Please stop making my head hurt", and "Look you, I'm on a coffee break".
Why squander money building two heavy duty lanes (one north and one south) to carry car and truck traffic, only to have one or the other slowed to a crawl by bicycle traffic during spring, summer and fall rush hours?
It is the same thing with our road surfaces. They don't last 2 years, let alone 30 years. I'm sorry, but it seems to me, according to my observations living in Winnipeg, that if the City of Winnipeg employs any real "P.Eng." engineers, they stopped doing real engineering and became stagnant bureaucrats long ago.
Complaints of "It can't be done" just do not cut it when our city needs to compete with Western Canadian cities where "innovation" is not a dirty word.
(And overpasses have the beauty that, unlike underpasses, they can not flood and do not need special pumps.)
Posted by: slackkey
August 5, 2009 at 5:26 PM
The police will ticket you for riding on the sidewalk (check the local bylaws on that). I bike to work in the spring through fall and don't have much problems as I obey traffic signals and the general rules of the road. I find most drivers courteous to me. I have to agree with some of the posters on not automatically blaming the motorists as I too have seen some cyclists pull some pretty stupid stunts (running reds, running stop signs, riding on the wrong side of the street). Bixi sounds like a great idea.
Posted by:
August 5, 2009 at 4:28 PM
If cyclists want respect on the road, they should respect the rules of the road!
Posted by: Robert
August 5, 2009 at 4:23 PM
T-Rev wrote: "One time I was driving downtown through rush hour, I was in a curb lane blah blah"
Now that is one good "Story". Just a "Story".
Posted by: Robert
August 5, 2009 at 4:19 PM
T-Rev, Let me guess, you are single ?
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