Recently the Vancouver Sun published yet another article in which business people – notably Mike Brascia of Brascia’s Tailors Menswear – tear their hair out over a mere two separated bike lanes in downtown Vancouver. Makes me wonder if these kinds of people have ever visited a truly modern city. These dinosaurs need to make way for people of all ages and abilities to bike in safety. It makes me very happy to see parents and children cycling in (relative) safety on Dunsmuir and Hornby.
Families can now cycle in downtown Vancouver, thanks to the relative safety provided by separated bike lanes. This family was enjoying the separated bike lane on Hornby Street, on bikes rented on the same streetI personally think their safety is much more important than the fact that it is now a little inconvenient for Mr. Brascia to get his car in and out of his private parking spot behind his shop on Hornby. In any case, as I show in this post, there is plenty of parking in downtown Vancouver.
By way of showing how utterly ridiculous these wailings are, I am publishing here a guest post from a cyclist based in Copenhagen (where they have good cycling infrastructure everywhere, and where a mere two separate bike lanes would not even make the news). On the contrary, bike lanes like this are common as dirt in the Netherlands:
Separate bike lanes are not something to wail about – they are in fact commonplace in the Netherlands. Photo from As Easy as Riding a BikeAs a result, there are five times as many bikes as cars in Copenhagen. Sounds like heaven to me.
Guest post from Mads Phikamphon, author of Copenhagen-based bike site, Cykelvalg
Compared with most cities, Copenhagen is nothing less than a paradise for cyclists. Everybody bikes here – even the members of the parliament and more than half the school children.
Most Copenhageners think that it’s faster to get around the city by bike than by car, so people here don’t only bike because it’s cheaper and healthier than taking the car.
Because most people in Copenhagen love their bikes, there are more bikes in the city than there are people living here. And 5 times as many bikes as there are cars.
Living in Copenhagen, I have always loved my bike and when I started my own bicycle site I decided to make a graphic that shows just how bike friendly Copenhagen is:
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