INNOVATION Sept-Oct 2019

T he subject has been divisive in some circles, and occasionally still raises hackles in conversation. But there is no longer any doubt: the number of urban residents who cycle instead of drive has skyrocketed and is expected to increase even more. And that’s why BC engineers are working hard to make cycling in the city easy and safe. Less than a year after Gregor Robertson assumed the role of mayor of Vancouver in 2008, the Burrard Street bike lane was built; a month later, it hosted 130,000 trips in only 30 days. Ten years later, the monthly number had exceeded 216,000—arguably the busiest bike lane in North America. Today, the city boasts a web of interconnected bike lanes of various design types: more than 450 lane-kilometres of bike routes, according to Tourism Vancouver. Protected bike lanes, for instance, are lanes with physical barriers that separate bikes from motor vehicles; local street bikeways are quiet streets with exclusive but unprotected bike lanes; painted bike lanes are like local street bikeways but with painted green lanes; and shared-use lanes are regular streets with areas that are marked—but not exclusive and not protected—for bikes. The city’s two-sheet cycling map, complete with a painted lane and bike signal legend, shows that local street bikeways are by far the most common type of cycling routes. The ubiquitous nature of these routes means that a cyclist can comfortably get from almost any point to any other point in Vancouver. The routes tend to avoid roads with a lot of motor vehicles. For example, cyclists are directed to use 37 th Avenue instead of 41 st Avenue, and Vanness instead of Kingsway. Engineers aren’t trying to blanket the entire city with cycling routes; instead, they’re trying to build good, easy- to-reach cycling routes and direct cyclists to them. Thinking back on the history of cycling lanes in Vancouver, Lon LaClaire, P.Eng., Director of Transportation with the City of Vancouver, said that different types of routes in different areas of the city became part of the plan. “[Cyclists] had already found the secret routes throughout the city,” he said. He suggested that the city begin modifying those neighbourhood routes with barriers and diversionary measures to encourage cycling and discourage motor vehicle traffic. But these routes didn’t need complete separation from motor vehicles. “We just had to wayfind cyclists to them.

These types of protected bike lanes are more common in downtown Vancouver than other parts of the city, primarily because of the lack of quiet neighbourhood streets with lowmotor vehicle traffic. P hoto : c ity of V AncoUVer

Year by year, we chipped away at it. Bit by bit, it got to be this many [cycling routes].” LaClaire said that local street bikeways are common because Vancouver has plenty of neighbourhood side streets that host only light and slow-moving motor traffic. “When you hit the downtown, it all starts to fall apart,” he said. “There aren’t a lot of local streets, so you can’t just discourage cars because these streets are fulfilling all sorts of functions. In these situations, the best solution is to bring in a separation.” For example, despite the success of the Burrard Street bike lane, for years the intersection at Burrard and Pacific streets remained harrowing and high-risk for all types of transportation. The intersection once had southbound entry

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