thommyjo
Senior Member
I think bikeways are only acceptable if there's a least 1 fully AAA (all ages and abilities) bike route along a parallel corridor. (within a few blocks and traveling the same way)
For example, where I live on the West End, 95ave is becoming the District Connector. They're making it a MUP (not ideal, but ok), but it's fully separated/protected and goes from 189st to 142st. Amazing. 92ave and 97ave are also E/W bike routes currently. No infrastructure, just sharrows. Ideally those roads would have neighbourhood level MUPs in the future, but then being "local street bikeways" for now while demand is lower is fine. People can take slight detours to access the main protected route for longer trips. But if people need to start doing 40,60,80% of a trip on non protected routes (or uncleared winter routes), then only the most confident riders will be out there.
Local bikeways take little effort and should be a part of vision zero/street lab level projects. The 100 Million for Bike Lanes should be high quality, Key Routes, that maximize improvements to our city-wide bike grid. That's what it was touted as. Not crappy little modal filters that should happen with or with/out this special funding.
That's my beef. We have to maximize ridership.
Also, difference in Vancouver as someone that works/rides there: 1) way narrower streets, 2) no snow, 3) slower streets, 4) denser core with low car use meaning less busy bikeways as more people walk/transit. And even still, you rarely see kids/seniors biking on 10th ave, but you see lots on the Arbutus greenway. So it clearly isn't a solution for All riders.
Good video here. 6min mark has some interesting thoughts on MUPs/sidewalks and also mentions the critical need for protected intersections of which we have 0 still I believe.
For example, where I live on the West End, 95ave is becoming the District Connector. They're making it a MUP (not ideal, but ok), but it's fully separated/protected and goes from 189st to 142st. Amazing. 92ave and 97ave are also E/W bike routes currently. No infrastructure, just sharrows. Ideally those roads would have neighbourhood level MUPs in the future, but then being "local street bikeways" for now while demand is lower is fine. People can take slight detours to access the main protected route for longer trips. But if people need to start doing 40,60,80% of a trip on non protected routes (or uncleared winter routes), then only the most confident riders will be out there.
Local bikeways take little effort and should be a part of vision zero/street lab level projects. The 100 Million for Bike Lanes should be high quality, Key Routes, that maximize improvements to our city-wide bike grid. That's what it was touted as. Not crappy little modal filters that should happen with or with/out this special funding.
That's my beef. We have to maximize ridership.
Also, difference in Vancouver as someone that works/rides there: 1) way narrower streets, 2) no snow, 3) slower streets, 4) denser core with low car use meaning less busy bikeways as more people walk/transit. And even still, you rarely see kids/seniors biking on 10th ave, but you see lots on the Arbutus greenway. So it clearly isn't a solution for All riders.
Good video here. 6min mark has some interesting thoughts on MUPs/sidewalks and also mentions the critical need for protected intersections of which we have 0 still I believe.
