Quote:
Originally Posted by OliverD
I think it's less about the absolute demand for bike lanes in the present day and rather an effort to gradually make streets safer in general.
There was a 13 year study done that concluded that protected bike lanes make streets safer for everyone – including drivers.
On the demand side, of course people are not going to bike if they feel it is too dangerous to do so. Just as new streets and roads induce demand for car traffic, protected bike lanes induce demand for cycling (saw something yesterday about how cycling growth nearly doubles with the introduction of bike lanes, unfortunately I can't find it right now). What really moves the needle on cycling is a comprehensive network of protected lanes and trails which of course takes time to build out and can't be done all at once.
Now obviously, if the city is placing bike lanes in random places without a comprehensive plan to later connect them, that probably won't do much for demand. However, even that effort should result in safer streets.
With the demographic shifts we are seeing and with the rapid increase in housing costs we've experienced since COVID, I think it's reasonable to invest in alternative modes of transportation. Even the increased availability of e-bikes is a factor here.
I think it was Adam that mentioned that Saint John still has major issues with adequate pedestrian infrastructure. I agree that's an issue that needs to be addressed as well. But often times improving cycling/pedestrian infrastructure comes at a fairly incremental cost if roads are already being rebuilt for whatever reason. We've seen this in Fredericton, where streets like Brookside and Rookwood have gained bike lanes connecting to the existing trail network during infrastructure renewal projects – at that point it's kind of a no brainer.
I can empathize with your point about being stuck being someone going 30, but in the grand scheme of things it's a minor inconvenience at best. There's not much value in having four lane roads if it means people die or get injured much more frequently. |
We have a group called
Saint John Cycling that is supposed to care about protected lanes, trails, and making Saint John a more bike friendly city; however, their group is mainly composed of people from outside the city that only care about mountain biking in Rockwood park. If enough Saint Johners actually ponied up the $40 membership fee to join, they could actually steer the group back towards its mission statement, without having to go through all the pains of starting a new, competing group that's more focussed on cycling as a form of transportation, than cycling as a form of leisure.
Don't get me wrong, Rockwood Park is well known to be one of the best places to mountain bike on the entire eastern seaboard of North America, but mountain trails at Rockwood Park seems to be the
only interest our local cycling advocacy group puts any time, effort, and financial resources into.
I find it extremely incredulous when UptownAdam talks about the City of Saint John being "beholden to whims of 15 cycling advocates". I wish that was actually the case, but in actuality, the city is far more influenced by the whims of hundreds of cycling advocates who live outside the city limits of Saint John, who only care about Rockwood Park's cycling infrastructure. Saint John would be a much more livable city and a better place to call home if we had more separated bike lanes and separate bike trails to get across the city.
I'm with Adam on the lack of pedestrian infrastructure, but I've mostly only seen him
criticize ideas and future plans from the city on improving pedestrian safety, or ideas on how to improve active transportation links between the West Side and Uptown, two of the most disconnected parts of the city for pedestrians, despite their close proximity to each other. It takes over an hour and a half to walk between the St. John street on the West Side, the closest residential area on the West Side, and Uptown, despite being less than 1km away across the harbour.
The city put out a map of their future plans for the harbour passage a while back, and Adam was highly critical about the feasibility and demand for the Harbour Bridge walkway as outlined in the city's map. Yet, he thinks it makes sense for the city to spend millions on improving paths that already exist between Wolastoq Park and Uptown, that won't actually shorten the distance between the West Side and Uptown, and will only save the bottom of your shoes from possibly getting a little dirty or muddy depending on the weather.
I've said this before and I'll say it again, the lack of pedestrian specific overpasses is a prime example of the extremely poor urban planning on the West Side of Saint John, which is bisected by the throughway.
It takes West Siders longer to walk to get their groceries at Sobey's, so commuters can get home quicker to the their suburbs outside the city. One strategically placed pedestrian overpass between Fundy Heights and Fairville Plaza would greatly help promote pedestrianism and cycling between the two areas of the West Side that have been bisected by the throughway for more than half a century now, and which greatly discourages pedestrianism and cycling between the two main parts of the West Side. Yet, all these years later, I believe there's still only been three pedestrian specific overpasses built to cross the throughway, and
only two of them were actually built at a useful locations for many people to use. The single pedestrian overpass on the West Side doesn't even connect the Fundy Heights with Fairville Plaza, the logical place for a pedestrian overpass. Instead it connects Riverview Drive to the Lower West Side,
which it is already connected to the Lower West Side by an underpass.
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