By: Lucaiah Smith-Miodownik, News Writer
How far can two wheels take you? For SFU health sciences professor Dr. Meghan Winters, this is a question worth exploring.
Winters works in the cities, health & active transportation research lab, which focuses on “the intersection of population health, urban environments, transportation, and safety to produce evidence to support practice, policy, and programs.” Recently, she headed a study chronicling the changes in bicycle infrastructure, or the various roads and paths intended for cycling, in Canada from 2022 to 2024. The Peak spoke with her for more information.
Without a trail to follow, Winters and her team had to build their criteria before assembling a map of cycling networks across Canada in 2022. Doing so meant finding a way to measure the different types of bikeable areas throughout the country. “Not all bike lanes feel equal [ . . . ] there’s different levels of both comfort and objectively measured safety on different kinds of cycling infrastructure,” she said.
After researching engineering design guidelines and public health evidence, the team created the “Canadian bikeway comfort and safety” classification system. Bike infrastructure was rated as high, medium, or low comfort. High comfort meant “bike-only paths, cycle tracks, and local street bikeways,” while medium comfort was “paved multi-use paths,” and low comfort was “painted bike lanes.” From there, the team took their newly founded rating system and applied it to OpenStreetMap to form their own map.
According to the study, plotting cycling network data is a key step in “supporting healthy transportation options in cities of all sizes,” especially when some cities are removing bike lanes.
The 2024 map indicates that the total distance of bike paths and lanes increased from 23,502 kilometres in 2022 to 27,089 two years later, with most additions being classified as medium comfort. Additionally, more growth was charted in small and medium cities (populations of 50,000 to 499,999) as opposed to large ones. “Areas with greater populations of recent immigrants, racialized people, and people with low incomes,” as well as “areas with lower proportions of populations of children and older adults” also saw more expansion.
Winters clarified that while these areas may see more bike infrastructure, it is not necessarily built with these populations in mind. In reality, busier streets with bike lanes may be home to more newcomers or lower-income populations, while children and families may live in more residential areas.
“When cities are planning their infrastructure, they have different criteria in mind, and the criteria may not be ‘are we building infrastructure near kids and the places kids need to go.’”
— Dr. Meghan Winters, SFU health sciences professor and lead author of the study
In regard to Vancouver, the city “showed little change over the time period” in terms of bike networks. “There is high-density cycling infrastructure in some areas, in the business district, around the Seawall [ . . . ] and yet there are a lot of areas of Vancouver that are very underserved,” Winters explained. Such a layout agrees with the study’s findings that “a common pattern in many cities’ cycling infrastructure is a focus on connecting to business districts, but often fewer connections between neighbourhoods.”
“All through South and East Vancouver, it’s very hard to ride your bicycle. The connections aren’t there, the protection isn’t there, and it makes it hard for the people living in those neighbourhoods to be able to get across town to the places they need to go.”
These findings could inform future work, such as “offering the potential to explore linkages between cycling infrastructure and health and social outcomes.” They also support “evaluat[ing] the existing cycling network and prioritiz[ing] investments for populations who have been underserved or are underrepresented in the cycling community” when looking to expand bike networks in the future.
