Yikes! City hall likes bikes

For the first time, city planners have firmly put the private car into second place. The federal government's infrastructure program is providing $20 million for bike and pedestrian paths adding 102 kilometres to the present network of routes.

Winnipeg has been an attractive place to walk and cycle recreationally for some time. What the new money does is provide many routes for commuter-cycling. At long last, Winnipeg is to become a place where cycling to work is not just for a few, dedicated extremists, but a method of transportation that can be enjoyed by many.

Making the streets safe for cyclists means making the same streets far less appealing for cars. The city had already begun marking off cycle lanes in advance of the grant of infrastructure money from the federal government.

Bike lanes have been appearing throughout the downtown. As yet, they don't link into a comprehensive network, but with the new spending, that should come.

The network won't be perfect. Some cycles lanes are placed away from the curb to continue to allow cars to park -- a positioning likely to make many cyclists feel vulnerable, but that is a niggling comment in an overall good plan that could change the face of the city.

My question is how far will the culture shift at city hall go?

Many of the new commuter bike-paths will be along routes that cyclists already use. The change is that these routes will be changed into "bike boulevards" with "traffic calming measures."

Traffic calming already slows cars on some residential streets in Winnipeg and has been widely used in Europe for many years. Traffic calming makes straight roads curve, adds bumps and islands in a way that makes the streets more pedestrian and bike friendly than friendly to cars.

For a city that has largely designed its street system to allow cars to travel as quickly as possible, the switch to making some streets more appropriate to people power than the combustion engine is a major change. But it's a change carefully made with the full understanding that while it provides an alternative to private car use, the private car still needs to be accommodated.

"You're never going to get people out of their cars, but you have to get them on buses and bikes as well," said property committee chairman Coun. Scott Fielding.

Hooray for that! It's all about achieving a balance, not about making cars and car drivers the enemy,

In Winnipeg, walking and biking is going to remain mostly a spring, summer and fall activity. In the winter, most cyclists are going to revert to other forms of transportation. The plan has to be to provide alternatives to cars, not drive them from the streets.

The new bike lanes add to the building of rapid transit bus corridors as firm steps in a new direction.

More can be done. Winnipeg is a spread out city with a very large downtown. Getting from Portage and Main to the legislature, for example, is a fair walk and not very quick on public transport.

Many commuters with downtown offices will blanch at cycling all the way to work -- a trip from south St. Vital to the new Hydro Building may be more sweaty exercise than many will want -- but cycling around the downtown once they are there, may hold a far greater appeal.

Montreal and Washington, DC, both have bike-sharing rentals that allow bikes to be picked up at central spots and returned after a short trip.

Such a scheme in Winnipeg could add greatly to the use of the new bike lanes. City hall could provide space and invite entrepreneurs to bid on such a system. For the winter, the city could also look at adding smaller shuttle-buses to its fleet for short routes. The Taxi Board could examine how to provide taxis that could be hailed on the street and could be found at permanent taxi stands placed throughout the downtown.

It is always going to be difficult to live in Winnipeg and not own a car, but it could be far easier than it is now. By favouring bikes on some city streets, the city has taken a very important step. It needs to take more. The easier it becomes for commuters to find alternatives, the more the city will change.

The more it changes, the more Winnipeg will feel like a city for tomorrow and less like a city hanging on to the past.

Nicholas Hirst is CEO of Winnipeg-based television and film producer Original Pictures Inc.

Republished from the Winnipeg Free Press print edition September 24, 2009 A12