Opinion: No reason why Vancouver can’t become a cycling city | Daily Hive

Bike lanes at the intersection of Hornby and Smithe streets in downtown Vancouver. (Bumble Dee/Shutterstock)

Written for Daily Hive Urbanized by North Vancouver resident and public transit and active transportation enthusiast Johnathan French.

It’s official: bicycles now outnumber cars in the City of London, England. According to The Economist, cycling is up 57 per cent over the past two years. Cars previously outnumbered bicycles 2:1; now, cyclists are on track to outnumber all motor vehicles (including buses, vans and motorbikes) in just a few years.

The British capital has clearly become a cycling city.

This follows a broader trend, where previously car-centric cities are rapidly transforming themselves, building out cycling infrastructure at a rapid pace. Paris comes to mind, along with Hamburg, Copenhagen, Barcelona, and countless Dutch cities.

While many of these cities are older and denser than our North American ones (and with far better public transportation), most of them were completely dominated by cars just a few decades ago.

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Take Amsterdam, for example, like our North American cities, it was completely taken over by cars in the 1960s, and remained so until the 1990s, when they started to seriously build out their cycling infrastructure.

Why can’t we do the same in Vancouver?

Many people say that it can’t work in Vancouver because of the weather, but Amsterdam and Vancouver receive similar amounts of precipitation every year (844 and 1,283 mm, respectively). Despite all its rain, bike traffic in Amsterdam has a 38 per cent mode share.

Even in Oulu, a frigid Finnish city just 100 km from the Arctic Circle, 12 per cent of winter trips are made by bicycle. Clearly, weather isn’t a serious deal-breaker when it comes to cycling.

10th Avenue Bike Lane Vancouver General Hospital

10th Avenue bike lane between Cambie Street and Willow Street within the Vancouver General Hospital precinct. (Kenneth Chan/Daily Hive)

But why should we even bother putting in all this effort to make Vancouver a cycling city?

Cycling and public transit infrastructure effectively act as “relief valves” for car traffic. When congestion becomes bad in a given area, as long as good cycling and public transit options exist, people will shift to whichever option is more convenient, and the system balances itself out.

There’s more to it than that, of course (the Dutch also prioritize highly efficient traffic intersections), but the point still stands that good quality cycling infrastructure does not necessarily make driving worse. For those who need to drive, it means fewer cars on the road. For those who just want convenient transportation, it means more options.

Contrary to common sentiment, the data also shows that businesses benefit from cycling infrastructure. If well-designed, a proper cycling network drives far more people to businesses than cars do. Like pedestrians, cyclists travel right next to businesses at eye level. They’re more aware of goods and services available in their area, and it’s trivial to pull over and check a place out.

Drivers, on the other hand, typically are just passing through an area; pulling over and finding parking is more cumbersome, and they make fewer spontaneous visits.

There are also considerable financial benefits to cycling. The average Canadian spends around $1,300 per month on their personal vehicle; cyclists spend considerably less. Imagine what the average Canadian could do with an extra $1,300 per month.

This doesn’t even account for the money we spend on road infrastructure to support cars. It’s well-known that the heavier a personal vehicle is, the more it wears away at roads. Cyclists cost taxpayers less than drivers simply because bikes don’t destroy the infrastructure beneath them.

Then there are the health benefits. Pollution comes to mind, along with the benefits of exercise (cyclists consistently live longer than drivers). Crucially, improvements to roads and streets to slow vehicles and make cycling safer lead to far fewer people in the hospital.

Hospital visits cost taxpayers an absurd amount of money. Every day in B.C., there are 760 traffic crashes, with 150 being serious or fatal. Even ignoring the fatalities, every time someone goes to the emergency room, it costs taxpayers money. Life-altering injuries drive up costs both for healthcare and car insurance.

Dangerous, car-centric streets cost taxpayers money, especially drivers. Making our streets safer isn’t just a moral obligation; it’s a fiscal obligation.

How, then, do we make Vancouver into a cycling city? You might look around downtown Vancouver and see all the new bike paths and think, “We built all this and yet most people still drive.”

This is a flawed premise. If you look on Google Maps, you can see the main issue: our network is fragmented, with numerous gaps. There are no real backbones for getting around.

If you’ve ever tried cycling in the city, you’ll know that many of these “solid green lines” are, in fact, just painted lines on the road. Burrard Street, for example, has a painted one-way bike lane on one side, and absolutely nothing on the other; despite this, it still shows up as a full “bike path” on Google Maps.

Cycling routes in Vancouver’s central areas. (Google Maps)

Burrard Street’s protected bike lane transitions north of Drake Street. (Google Maps)

Metro Vancouver supposedly has some arterial bike connections; the BC Parkway and Central Valley Greenway come to mind. These are good efforts, but again, anyone who’s used these routes can attest that they are less than perfect. There are numerous sections where cyclists are forced onto sidewalks or onto massive detours.

New Westminster is a good example: as you come along Stewardson Way to 3rd Avenue, you’re forced to take a massive detour onto Quayside Drive, meandering along the boardwalk, only to eventually end up on Columbia Street, where you’re forced to use painted, unprotected bike lanes. Once you get up to Cumberland Street, you’re then forced to either take another detour or bike on the narrow sidewalk with pedestrians.

If this is meant to be the backbone of Metro Vancouver’s cycling network, it’s no wonder we don’t see many cyclists. Imagine if our best roads were like this!

BC Parkway and Central Valley Greenway map. (TransLink)

cumberland street east columbia street new westminster

Intersection of East Columbia Street and Cumberland Street in New Westminster. (Google Maps)

If we’re serious about becoming a proper cycling city, the first thing we need to do is build up a spine for the network. We need a cycling highway system to connect our major population centres, with high-quality cycling paths fully separated from cars. Wayfinding should be intuitive, and everyone from children to seniors should be able to get around the Lower Mainland by bike.

As it stands, most people don’t feel comfortable letting their kids bike to school anymore, and for good reason. But this shouldn’t be a reason to give up; rather, this should galvanize us. Why not build a society where anyone can go anywhere by bike? Why should we lock basic transportation behind an unaffordable driver-only system, one that locks out seniors and children, and needlessly costs taxpayers money?

I want to see kids outside on their bikes, getting around independently.

We also need better standards for how cycling infrastructure is built. For example, in the Netherlands, all cycling infrastructure has that signature red colour, so everyone across the country can identify it. This not only reduces the chances of non-cyclists accidentally using cycling infrastructure, but it also dramatically improves wayfinding. The Dutch also employ dyed asphalt as opposed to relying on paint. This saves a ton of money in the long run, as they don’t have to continuously reapply the paint as it wears down.

From a legal perspective, there’s also a lot to learn. In the Netherlands, there is a clear legal responsibility placed on those who design streets. If there is an accident, and they chose an unsafe street design when other safer options were available, they could be liable; as such, city planners will always try to plan for the safety of all road users. If a particular intersection has higher-than-average crashes, then it must be redesigned to better accommodate all road users. This might seem costly, but again, it saves taxpayers money in the long run when it comes to healthcare costs.

And we haven’t even discussed the use of bricks for local streets, modal filters, raised crosswalks, or the positive effects of reduced noise in our cities.

Red bike lane in Amsterdam. (Eddy Galeotti/Shutterstock)

There is no good reason why Vancouver cannot become a proper cycling city. Popular excuses like our rainy weather fall apart when we observe successful European cities with similar or worse weather. London has shown us that a lot can be achieved in a very short amount of time, and that a city with very little cycling culture can quickly achieve significant ridership over the course of a decade of serious infrastructure improvements.

We need to stop our half-hearted approach to cycling infrastructure if we want to see real change. We need a concerted effort from regional planners to create seamless, connected cycling paths, and we need to drastically rethink our current policies when it comes to street design if we want to eliminate fatalities.

None of this is financially expensive; in fact, it will save taxpayers tons of money in the long run and prevent thousands of needless deaths. All we need is political will.

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