Walkable, Bikeable and Busable Cities of Canada

[JHikka]

The problem with the Halifax example is that there's no real definition between bike lane and sidewalk. There's no barrier, no change in height, and cyclists are still between pedestrians and parked cars. I don't really see this as much of an improvement over simply putting the bike lane on the road - this just feels like a sidewalk with some painted lines on it. It seems like they would rather make things more difficult for pedestrians than for motorists, at least in this one example.

[WarrenC12]

Originally Posted by shreddog

^^ and now all Hali has to do is teach people to read! Or send them to Holland where walking in a bike lane is a "capital" offence.

Vancouver has experimented with all forms of bike lanes it seems, but I've never seen something quite so close to the sidewalk. Usually there is at least a small physical clue that separates the two. Some lanes have a small strip of grass or something else in between.

[Nouvellecosse]

Originally Posted by Hali87

When the picture was taken part of the sidewalk was closed due to the ongoing construction. It does seem to still be an issue there though, it does just look like an exceptionally nice place to walk

Last time I used that lane last Saturday I had multiple issues. One person was standing in it completely oblivious talking to someone on the sidewalk while a group of about 5 people who were crossing the street crossed it without even looking requiring me to brake hard enough to skid despite them being very careful when crossing the main part of the road. A taxi also made a right turn in front of me cutting me off. This is all along of stretch of about 1km.

Although the taxi part I don't think is a bike lane issue so much as a taxi issue.

[jamincan]

Copenhagen has a curb to the bike lane, and another curb to the sidewalk, as I recall.

[JHikka]

Originally Posted by Nouvellecosse

Although the taxi part I don't think is a bike lane issue so much as a taxi issue.

There's not much that can be done about this other than just sheer driver awareness. It happens a ton here, but you can tell pretty quickly that most of the culprits are people that don't typically drive around downtown and aren't used to the volume of cyclists that they might encounter on Bloor/University/Danforth. It's a good day if I can bike 3-4km on Bloor and not have to weave through cars parked in the bike lane, cars turning ahead of cyclists on greens, or any other slew of issues.

[Peggerino]

Winnipeg has a new bike lane like that and I also frequently encounter pedestrians standing in the lane or unaware that it's meant for biking leading to some potentially unsafe situations. I find they're also just not as attractive as conventional protected bike lanes as is common in Montreal and seemed to be a more popular design just a couple years ago. I wish we had more stuff like in Vancouver where they use plants and greenery as the "buffer" between cyclists and motorists but both groups are at the same elevation and sidewalks are raised.

[shreddog]

Originally Posted by JHikka

The problem with the Halifax example is that there's no real definition between bike lane and sidewalk. There's no barrier, no change in height, and cyclists are still between pedestrians and parked cars....

I still stand by my statement about Holland. While there are sometimes very noticeable differences, often times is just the brick colour. Once people do become more aware, I find that they see the bike lanes and respect them better. That said, I still have interactions with pedestrians walking in these bike lanes, so maybe not.

[MolsonExport]

Most of London is either bike-unfriendly stroadsville or residential cul-de-sacland. There are dedicated bike lanes, but most of the time they are just paint markings on the road, where you have aggressive assholes in their pickup trucks zooming past you at 80km/hour within inches of your handlebars.

At Western U, bike lanes are always expropriated for campus construction projects (often for parking for the people working on site). There is no thru bike lane anywhere on campus. Some of the affiliate colleges discourage bikers, by posting signs that demand that cyclists "dismount and walk their bikes through campus" (cars are most welcome to drive right up to the edges of buildings, however).

[manny_santos]

Originally Posted by Truenorth00

Attractiveness of the walk, or destination proximity aside, I am going to argue that something that can and should be fixed is how badly we design and build sidewalks in our cities.

• Video Link

Time and time again people on streets in suburban areas with no sidewalks keep lobbying against sidewalk installations (which are not on their land). This has happened in London, this has happened in Etobicoke, this has happened in Burnaby. There have also been people in Burnaby who have tried to have a bus service removed from their street because they don't want it. Fortunately that didn't get anywhere, as bus service is provided by TransLink and they are accountable to the province.

Municipalities and even higher levels of government need to be empowered to impose sustainable infrastructure such as sidewalks, bike lanes, and public transit on neighbourhoods, even if the locals do not want them - the ability of local homeowners to reject sidewalks needs to be taken away, as long as they're being built on municipal property. New Westminster is doing this very thing right now - a bike lane has been imposed on my neighbourhood even though most people did not want it and still do not want it now (claiming there's been a loss of parking, which I'm not seeing), and to give the city credit they've basically ignored all the opposition and are pushing forward with future plans. Unlike pushover cities like London where locals sabotaged the proposed LRT and where a single resident was able to block construction of a new CN bridge for years, New Westminster has a backbone and doesn't cater to NIMBY people. From a big picture level the bike lane will be very important once Douglas College re-starts in-person classes, and it will be important to the regional cycling network once the new Pauttillo Bridge is built. (For my part I have expressed my support for the bike lane to the City multiple times, even though I don't know the first thing about bicycles.)

With the climate emergency, governments are going to need to take this level of leadership to lower the carbon footprint of their local transportation infrastructure.

[rousseau]

Is someone on here responsible for this Youtube channel?

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCN5...-AbgGHA/videos