Metro Vancouver Bike & Pedestrian Discussion

[chowhou]

Originally Posted by Klazu

Ah, that's the story of every bike lane in existence!

Hardly.

However, barely a block of dedicated space does not a bike lane make. The configuration as it stands today currently is of no real use to a cyclist and gets exactly no one from anywhere to anywhere, so it only makes sense to make the most of the space until the network is expanded. Not sure if this is the best use of the space though.

I am happy that wasted space was reclaimed for the people.

Giant red planters = reclaimed for the people?

[jollyburger]

The 90-metre section of the bike lane on Royal Avenue between Bruce Street and Bay Street continues to be closed to bicycles and will remain closed on a temporary basis, until such time that it can be integrated into a more extensive, connected cycling network.

As an interim measure, the District has installed temporary planter boxes and seating areas to allow the bike lane to be utilized as a public space.

https://westvancouver.ca/transportation-roads/major-projects/horseshoe-bay-streetscape-spirit-trail

[jollyburger]

More delivery e-scooters clashing with pedestrians on B.C. streets
E-scooters are becoming increasingly popular as a cheap and environmentally friendly way to get around, especially for delivery gigs, but they are banned in most public places

Almost a year after Vancouver and a half-dozen other B.C. cities permitted electric scooters to use bike paths and local roads in a trial project, Vancouver police are reporting a rise in complaints.

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E-scooters are becoming increasingly popular as a convenient, environmentally friendly and cheap way to get around, especially for delivery side gigs, but they remain banned in most public places in B.C. and the provincial Transportation Ministry and municipalities are still trying to sort out where micromobility vehicles belong on the transportation grid.

The province launched a three-year pilot project last July. Vancouver, the three North Shore municipalities, Kelowna and Vernon, got on board to allow the motorized vehicles on local streets and protected cycle lanes. Coquitlam joined later.

In those cities, the e-scooters remain banned on major streets, sidewalks and on Vancouver’s seawall, but not everyone complies.

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The trial has caused some conflicts among seniors in Vancouver’s West End, where e-scooters are a frequent topic of discussion at the West End Seniors’ Network at Barclay Manor.

“For myself, it’s quite a problem,” said Don Ryan, a senior and a volunteer at the centre. “I’ve confronted quite a few of them.

“I don’t mind them being on the sidewalk, but they go so fast,” he said. “It’s dangerous for them and it’s dangerous for us.”

He said women at the centre discussed with officers how e-scooters make them feel unsafe during a personal safety workshop.

Ryan said he and the other residents don’t hold out much hope for an intervention from police because the city’s website advises anyone with concerns about e-scooters to call the police non-emergency number.

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“I don’t think anybody would get here fast enough,” he said.

Vancouver police couldn’t provide the number of complaints it receives about e-scooters riding where they’re not supposed to.

“Over the last year, we have received several complaints concerning e-scooters,” said spokeswoman Const. Tania Visintin in an email.

Visintin couldn’t provide the number of tickets — bylaw fines are $100 for riding on a sidewalk — but said, “We continue to educate those we see on the road where their actions are deemed unsafe.”

The City of Vancouver said that, as the pilot is continuing, it hasn’t finished collecting information. But it said most complaints so far are about illegally riding on sidewalks or operating at unsafe speeds.

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It also said a count last summer found illegal use on sidewalks was low on streets with protected bike lanes. But it was much higher on major arterials, where scooters are not allowed, that do not have protected bike lanes.

Visintin said the VPD is “working with the city concerning the future of all things electric on the roadways and how we can ensure the safety of everyone,” including e-users, pedestrians and motorists.

Su Schnee, a West End resident, said many of the seniors she has been helping with errands during the pandemic find it unnerving when silent e-scooters zip by them on the sidewalk.

“All of sudden the scooter whizzes by them,” said Schnee, who said she has had a few close calls herself. “They could hit a senior. It’s just an accident waiting to happen.”

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Olivia Yau, co-founder of Urban Machina, said the sale of e-scooters shot up during COVID when people preferred not to get on public transit and when Vancouver allowed them in some public places. Their popularity continues as gas prices rise. The majority of buyers are in the food delivery business, she said.

“We do tell them sidewalks are off limits, but it’s ultimately up to the user where they choose to ride,” she said.

Bradley Spence, who co-founded Eevee’s, said he can’t keep e-scooters in stock long. Most users are responsible and drive slowly, “but you get a few bad apples, just like with car drivers.”

He said he has reminded e-scooter riders on sidewalks the right to ride on streets and bike paths is only temporary and “if you’re riding on the sidewalk and scaring pedestrians,” that could affect the pilot becoming permanent.

Both he and Yau say city planners have to find a way to make space for e-scooters and other micro mobility devices.

“There are going to be a lot more of them in the city over the next couple of years and whether or not we’re allowing it, people will be riding them,” said Yau.

Alberta, Quebec and Ontario have launched pilot projects to determine where e-scooters will fit in the transportation network, but Toronto’s councillors voted 25-0 to continue an outright ban.

That decision was applauded by March of Dimes Canada, which has raised concerns about “serious safety and accessibility risks for people with disabilities and all pedestrians.” Disability advocates are concerned those with mobility problems can’t hear scooters approaching and can’t react quickly enough to get out of their way.

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The e-scooter users are unlicensed and uninsured, so it could be difficult to identify the user or sue for damages, if someone is badly hurt.

A hospital in Barcelona, Spain, that specializes in orthopedic surgery and injuries caused by trauma, called e-scooter accidents “the new epidemic.”

In a study of patients who suffered e-scooter accidents in 2018 through 2020, it found of the 167 patients, 105 suffered 117 different fractures and needed to be admitted to hospital, while 36 had bruises, 16 had head traumas and four wounds needed stitches. Four suffered ruptures of knee ligaments, three had dislocated shoulders and two had ruptures of thumb ligaments. Half of all patients needed surgery.

“The popularization of e-scooters … has caused a high increased number of accidents,” the study concluded. “Most of the injuries observed may be compared with those seen in high-energy traumas.”

https://vancouversun.com/news/local-news/delivery-escooters-clashing-with-pedestrians-on-bc-streets

[giallo]

Originally Posted by Klazu

Ah, that's the story of every bike lane in existence! I am happy that wasted space was reclaimed for the people. I am equally happy to know how much this single photo must rub some people.

My wife and I have taken up cycling for short trips since moving to Vancouver, and the designated bike lanes are busy. I don't have any experience riding them during the doldrums of winter, but since starting to use them this spring, I've been pleasantly surprised by how active they are.

[Klazu]

Sure, the few sections in and around Downtown can be busy at times but most of the network is very,very underutilized. And in few months' time you will have any bike lane all to yourself as most people here are fair weather cyclists.

Enjoy your honeymoon reuniting with Vancouver and hope you bought a big thick U-lock!

[giallo]

Originally Posted by Klazu

Sure, the few sections in and around Downtown can be busy at times but most of the network is very,very underutilized. And in few months' time you will have any bike lane all to yourself as most people here are fair weather cyclists.

Enjoy your honeymoon reuniting with Vancouver and hope you bought a big thick U-lock!

I'm using the Mobi bikes, so no need for a lock. I'd rather use the bike share program rather than having to constantly worry about my bike getting stolen.

I've mostly been riding around where I live (Mount Pleasant and Fairview area), and there are a lot of riders using the paths. I've noticed downtown has a fairly extensive bike network as well, so I may take a ride down there eventually.

[Klazu]

Originally Posted by giallo

I'm using the Mobi bikes, so no need for a lock. I'd rather use the bike share program rather than having to constantly worry about my bike getting stolen.

Good choice. It is interesting how worthless those bikes are to thieves, even when most stolen bicycles are being sold for parts.

[FarmerHaight]

Originally Posted by giallo

I'm using the Mobi bikes, so no need for a lock.

I also use the Mobi bikes for any short trip in Vancouver. It's actually amazing how convenient they are. I live four blocks from the Safeway on Robson and Denman, and I'll still grab a Mobi and ride three of those blocks because the retrieval/return process is so quick. Now that I ride them I also notice how much use those bikes get and how often Shaw services them and moves bikes between stations depending on demand. It really is a great program.

I still ride my road bike for any long trips, because its so much faster.

Originally Posted by Klazu

Sure, the few sections in and around Downtown can be busy at times but most of the network is very, very underutilized.

You have zero idea how many people bike outside of the downtown core. Do you regularly drive down the Arbutus Greenway or Union Street or the Central Valley Greenway or the BC Parkway? No, because those are all traffic-calmed streets or bike/pedestrian only.

You really should find another cause to champion. Are some cyclists a-holes? Yes. Are some cycle lanes poorly placed and/or under utilized? Yes. But separating bikes from cars is safer for everyone, every additional bike on the road takes away carbon emissions, and bikes are affordable to an entire class of people who could never dream of owning a car.

Besides, there are plenty of examples out there in London and New York where re-allocating road space to bikes did not increase congestion because traffic redistributes, so I really don't understand your gripe. Maybe congestion in Vancouver was less 20 years ago when there were no bike lanes, but maybe population growth, less carpooling, larger vehicles, more commercial traffic, people avoiding transit because of COVID, etc. have more to do with that than the bike lanes.

[WarrenC12]

Originally Posted by Klazu

Sure, the few sections in and around Downtown can be busy at times but most of the network is very,very underutilized. And in few months' time you will have any bike lane all to yourself as most people here are fair weather cyclists.

You can say the same about cars? I don't get it.

If you want to make these arguments, you need to back it up with statistics. Your anti-bike bias is very well known.

[aberdeen5698]

Originally Posted by FarmerHaight

You have zero idea how many people bike outside of the downtown core. Do you regularly drive down the Arbutus Greenway or Union Street or the Central Valley Greenway or the BC Parkway? No, because those are all traffic-calmed streets or bike/pedestrian only.

Yeah, the busy bike routes are generally out of sight and out of mind for most drivers. Deliberately. The city has done a good job of separating cyclists from motorists, which is a good thing.

I used to cycle regularly down Union street to get downtown from my home in southeast Vancouver when I was teaching a night class at BCIT. That course ran at the Seymour Street campus each Winter term (Jan-Mar), and every night I went against a constant flow of cyclists commuting home from the downtown core.

Yes, there are more summer cyclists than perennial ones, but there is still a healthy use of bike routes all year round. It's just as dumb IMHO to suggest that they are somehow compromised by seasonal variation as it would be to level the such criticism at Stanley Park.

[giallo]

Originally Posted by FarmerHaight

I also use the Mobi bikes for any short trip in Vancouver. It's actually amazing how convenient they are. I live four blocks from the Safeway on Robson and Denman, and I'll still grab a Mobi and ride three of those blocks because the retrieval/return process is so quick. Now that I ride them I also notice how much use those bikes get and how often Shaw services them and moves bikes between stations depending on demand. It really is a great program.

It's a fantastic program.

I used the MoBike program all of the time in Shanghai to get around, but Shanghai doesn't have many (if any) bike lanes, so you're sharing the road with cars, and it could be pretty dangerous at times. I saw plenty of bicycle/scooter riders lying on the ground after a car hit them. Luckily, I never got injured.

As for Vancouver, I usually take 10th as my main east/west arterial, and it's awesome. It's a beautiful street with lots of traffic-calming intersections and a ton of bike riders.

[Klazu]

Originally Posted by aberdeen5698

Yeah, the busy bike routes are generally out of sight and out of mind for most drivers. Deliberately. The city has done a good job of separating cyclists from motorists, which is a good thing.

Those out-of-sight ones are the first-gen bike routes that most people, myself included, do support. They are safe and don't bother anyone. It is the recent trend (last 5 years) of forcing bike lanes on arterial roads and taking car lanes out. The Broadway plan is the most absurd example of how crazy the crazies can really get.

Once that started happening, it became cyclists vs. drivers overnight, as any benefit to cycling became at the expense of car traffic. Many here pretend that there hasn't been a clear change that is largely ideology driven, as so many things in CoV.

It has also been said many times in here that Vancouver will never ever become like Copenhagen, no matter what cycling advocates say. Never. Not gonna happen even in a fraction of that scale. Nope. Even in China people dumped hundreds of millions of bicycles in exchange for private cars and basically any other transportation method than cycling as they became wealthy as a nation, although maybe pushing cycling is appropriate in a former first world country like Canada where people are getting poorer.

[WarrenC12]

Originally Posted by Klazu

Those out-of-sight ones are the first-gen bike routes that most people, myself included, do support. They are safe and don't bother anyone. It is the recent trend (last 5 years) of forcing bike lanes on arterial roads and taking car lanes out. The Broadway plan is the most absurd example of how crazy the crazies can really get.

Last 5 years? Is that how long you've been here? This stuff has been ongoing (and planned) for much longer.

[NetMapel]

I can see why car drivers find bike lanes on arterial roads a nuisance. A lot of them may look empty at first glance if you weren’t paying attention and therefore a big waste of space. But I attribute that mostly to an incomplete bicycling infrastructure which will take time to build. For example, Lougheed Highway is a pretty important arterial road in the north Burnaby area. Between the Lougheed and Brentwood section, some portion of it is nice and separated which is excellent. Then you have portion that’s just right on the road which is not very comfortable for both drivers and cyclists. Such inconsistency makes that bike route not the most desirable so I don’t personally observe too many cyclists on there. What really should happen is either Burnaby does a better job of making that route more comfortable or move such a east-west bike lane to more calmer streets. Otherwise it’s kind of stuck in no-man’s land currently and that’s not good for anybody. There is no question that well designed bike infrastructure does get used well as we have observed both in Vancouver and other cities around the world. So I wouldn’t take some current observation of “low usage” and think it’ll always be that case. Improve the infrastructure and it will get used. Burnaby kind of does biking improvement little piece at a time so I guess it will take a while to get there…

[chowhou]

Originally Posted by Klazu

Even in China people dumped hundreds of millions of bicycles in exchange for private cars and basically any other transportation method than cycling as they became wealthy as a nation, although maybe pushing cycling is appropriate in a former first world country like Canada where people are getting poorer.

Then they realized their mistake.

I'm sure you'd love government policies such as rationing weekday road space by banning specific license plate numbers in the Beijing city centre (FYI 5th ring road is approximately the distance from downtown of the entire North Shore, all of Vancouver, and half of Burnaby.), designating roads as bicycle only and building 3200km of bike lanes in Beijing, and dedicating highway lanes for separated bicycle lanes in Zhejiang.

I'm also intrigued by the implication that China is a first world country and Denmark somehow isn't.

It has also been said many times in here that Vancouver will never ever become like Copenhagen, no matter what cycling advocates say. Never. Not gonna happen even in a fraction of that scale. Nope.

The first stage is denial.

[Changing City]

Originally Posted by Klazu

Those out-of-sight ones are the first-gen bike routes that most people, myself included, do support. They are safe and don't bother anyone. It is the recent trend (last 5 years) of forcing bike lanes on arterial roads and taking car lanes out. The Broadway plan is the most absurd example of how crazy the crazies can really get.

So far there are very few arterials with bike lanes. There are lanes on Burrard Bridge, and Cambie Bridge, but it's the intersections at either end that could slow traffic, and the new design of those junctions ensures that there isn't a significant impact on vehicular traffic. There are lanes on Dunsmuir Viaduct, but they haven't caused terrible traffic congestion - whenever there is any it's usually as a result of a vehicle incident at a junction further into Downtown, and those happened before there were any bike lanes.

There will be lanes on Granville Bridge, but that has lots of capacity to spare, so it shouldn't be an issue. If Council's request to investigate the possibility of adding bike lanes on Broadway actually get built, it will probably mean less parking or widened sidewalks - it's not likely TransLink will agree to less than four lanes for traffic, as there will still be bus routes using the street.

Originally Posted by Klazu

It has also been said many times in here that Vancouver will never ever become like Copenhagen, no matter what cycling advocates say. Never. Not gonna happen even in a fraction of that scale. Nope. Even in China people dumped hundreds of millions of bicycles in exchange for private cars and basically any other transportation method than cycling as they became wealthy as a nation, although maybe pushing cycling is appropriate in a former first world country like Canada where people are getting poorer.

Find us a quote where anybody ever said Vancouver will become like Copenhagen. You can find people suggesting Vancouver could become more like Copenhagen, but that's not the same statement. In building more AAA safe routes, Vancouver is becoming more like Copenhagen.

Under Vision it aspired to be the greenest city (which Copenhagen actually is), but vehicles and cycling are only a tiny part of the process of achieving that, albeit an important one. For vehicles, the City has similar targets to the Province. The provincial target is that distances travelled in light-duty vehicles will be 25% less by 2030, compared to 2020. The City plans expect vehicle trips to stay at the same level, and all extra trips (from a growing population) to be by transit, bike and walking. By 2035 the Province now says you also won't be able to buy a new gas powered vehicle - they'll all be zero emission vehicles.

[whatnext]

For those defending the bike lanes, here's a shot from a sunny weekday at rush hour on Smithe (a bike lane that connects to Richards and Hornby bike lanes). Notice anything? Maybe the car stranded in the intersection as the lights no longer time properly? Maybe the lack of bikes?

[IMG]bike by bcborn, on Flickr[/IMG]

And this is on a sunny weekday. After 6pm on a normal day the only thing you often see on the downtown lanes is a handful of food delivery bikes or scooters while sidewalks and roads are well used.

[NetMapel]

Originally Posted by whatnext

For those defending the bike lanes, here's a shot from a sunny weekday at rush hour on Smithe (that bike lane connect to Richard and Hornby bike lanes). Notice anything? Maybe the car stranded in the intersection as the lights no longer time properly? Maybe the lack of bikes?

bike by bcborn, on Flickr

And this is on a sunny weekday. After 6pm on a normal day the only thing you often see on the downtown lanes is a handful of food delivery bikes or scooters while sidewalks and roads are well used.

I don’t think a picture like that is a very accurate assessment of things. It is also entirely possible that the left lane is backed up because that’s where people want to make a left turn to Hornby, the most direct path to Granville bridge to get out of downtown. Having an extra car lane by replacing the bike lane wouldn’t do anything to solve that.

[FarmerHaight]

Originally Posted by whatnext

FNotice anything? Maybe the car stranded in the intersection as the lights no longer time properly? Maybe the lack of bikes?

The bikes are two blocks ahead and aren't sitting in their vehicles like noobs. Or maybe they're sitting to the right of the photo waiting for the signal to change. What does this prove? I could post a photo of Pacific Street or Burrard Bridge or Seaside Bypass on a busy day as "proof" that we need 10x the current space dedicated to bikes.

[aberdeen5698]

Originally Posted by NetMapel

I don’t think a picture like that is a very accurate assessment of things. It is also entirely possible that the left lane is backed up because that’s where people want to make a left turn to Hornby, the most direct path to Granville bridge to get out of downtown. Having an extra car lane by replacing the bike lane wouldn’t do anything to solve that.

That's exactly why the left lane backs up like that. It's got nothing to do with the bike lane.

Originally Posted by FarmerHaight

The bikes are two blocks ahead and aren't sitting in their vehicles like noobs.

Yeah, after 6 PM you don't see as many bikes - so what? You don't see as many cars, either.

And why don't delivery bikes count? You know that if they were delivery cars instead then they'd just add to the congestion, right?