By Rachel Braeuer
Photos by Vaikunthe Banerjee
Once a week (although I should go more often) I have a near-death experience as I walk down St. George from Broadway in Vancouver to my boxing class. No, it’s not from being pitifully out of shape. It’s because I forget that 10th avenue is a major bike thoroughfare, and I just about die when I step off the curb despite looking both ways.
It’s a “traffic calmed area” in the sense that the intersection involves a roundabout. However, this doesn’t slow down cyclists, who zoom past quicker than any car can. Despite being labeled on maps of various bike routes in Vancouver, there is no indication of this to pedestrians. It’s just one blip on the grid of traffic in the Lower Mainland, but it’s indicative of a larger problem: cyclists, pedestrians and motor vehicles are at odds when it comes to getting around.
Many have lamented the inclusion of separated bike lanes in Vancouver. I love them. Generally speaking, I’m either a pedestrian or transit rider, and on occasion a car driver. In either case, being on the road near cyclists terrifies me, not because I don’t know what to do, but because the whole “share the road” thing isn’t really functional, especially when there’s barely any room on most roads for cars, let alone bikes.
When I’m walking, I never know the protocol for crossing these unmarked bike routes. Who yields? Arguably it’s easier for pedestrians near me to wait than it is for the cyclist to come to a halt for me, but during the post-work commute (the timeframe I make the trek to boxing) I usually end up waiting a while for safe passage, despite the fact that I probably have the right of way, technically.
The latest scuffle over bike lanes is happening in Kits. The city has proposed closing down West Point Grey Road and part of Cornwall to motor vehicles, which the Kitsilano Chamber of Commerce rejected. Not travelling in that area often, I can’t speak to the need in the area, but the chamber’s cries seem to echo the opposition Vancouverites had to separated bike lanes downtown and the loss of a lane on the Burrard Street bridge.
Businesses claimed it would be their undoing, but I don’t think I heard a single “local treasure going under because of bike lane” story after their inclusion and frankly, who the hell drives in downtown Vancouver anyway, save for kids from Maple Ridge and Abbotsford that don’t know better?
Maybe the proposed bike lane(s) in Kits are unnecessary, but bike lanes generally make more sense than leaving two tonnes of steel and 10 pounds of aluminum and the odd flesh-bag on foot to duke it out on the road. We barely have the infrastructure to support the amount of cars currently on the road, and if the trend of single occupancy vehicles does not change, this isn’t going to improve.
It seems common sense, but studies are showing things like the existence of bike lanes altering the perceived accessibility of cycling as a means of transportation, which in turn affects the likelihood of someone to attempting it.
Something’s gotta give here to make effective changes, and if it’s a lane of traffic, who cares as long as everyone gets to live at the end of their commute?
