Cycling is getting better in Richmond! Not long ago Maggie and I had a pretty terrifying experience when we attempted to cycle around Richmond Island. After I did a post on how awful life is for Richmond cyclists, the City of Richmond got back to me saying that they had plans to improve cycling infrastructure, when funds permitted.
So I was happy to hear that Richmond has just unveiled a brand new, $265,000 bike route, running from the bike lane on the new Canada Line Bridge, along Van Horne Way to the Bridgeport Trail.
Here is a video that gives you an idea of what it is like cycle across this bridge:
It seems that the BC government paid for about half of this bridge, and Richmond and TransLink came up with the rest. Gotta say that TransLink is doing some pretty good work. Their Central Valley Greenway is outstanding, even though it still needs some finishing touches. And I noticed them out at the VACC Bike to Work Week last week.
Go TransLink, and Go Richmond!
Thanks: To my Mom for sleuthing out this bit of cycling news!
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Nice, will be looking forward to seeing the new route. Also although I haven’t yet tried the bridgeport or shell trails, I searched the Richmond website just now and was glad to see a small page about the bridgeport trail that included:
“Located between Shell Road and Van Horne Way this 1.5 km trial travels through residential and industrial areas. Over time it will provide an important link between the proposed Shell Road Greenway and the Bridgeport waterfront.”
yes, I had not heard of it either. I look forward to trying it out.
The thing I find remarkable about bike network improvements, and which makes me cautiously optimistic for the future of the bike network in Vancouver, is how cheap they are.
$265,000? That’s pocket change in the regional/provincial scheme of things.
Great point, which I had not thought of, Declan. I should research a post about this. I read somewhere that 10% of the money for transport is spent on transit – the rest is for roads. It would be interesting to get the numbers on what is spent on roads for cars, and what is spent on cycle routes.
The downtown separated bike lanes are probably the most expensive per-km in the lower mainland with the exception of the railway overpass on the CVG at Sperling. Even so, both the Hornby and Dunsmuir lanes together cost less than the cost of putting in left turn bays at one intersection Knight Street (about 4.5 million).
Yet somehow, people still manage to complain about the cost…
I think for some people, $10 spent on cycling infrastructure would be $10 too much. On the other hand, most people don’t know or care what roads costs – as long as they have a smoothish structure on which to be gridlocked …
I was just looking at TransLink’s proposals for 2011 and was struck by two points in their plan:
– Retain funding for Major Road Network Improvement projects (Minor Capital Program) at $20M/year
– Preserve funding for Bike Capital Program at $6M/year
I’m not really good with financial numbers, but given the relative costs of major roadwork vs. bikes, this seems like a huge amount to be spending on the cycling side of things. (I’m not complaining at all!)
Thanks for this, Graeme. It’s encouraging news. Plus, something I have in mind is to research the financial side of things – during the hysteria about Hornby, I read somewhere that the cost of the Hornby bike lane would be the same as the cost of 1 bus. Given that they are now estimating the number of cyclists coming into Vancouver daily is equivalent to something like 75 bus loads, it makes me realize that one has to look at the complete financial picture, rather than focusing on numbers in isolation. So I really want to research and see how much money is put into car infrastructure vs. bike infrastructure vs. transit, for example. I read somewhere the other day that around 10% of the USA’s transport spending goes on transit – the other 90% goes on providing roads for cars. I would guess Canada’s is similar. If you start to think what our transit system would look like if we spent 50% of the transport budget on transit, the mind boggles – perhaps 400% better than it looks now? We constantly hear that cars are essential because of urban sprawl – but with really wonderful transit and safe bike lanes, I wonder if that would still be true?
There’s a vid up now about the bridge I just noticed:
http://www.bclocalnews.com/richmond_southdelta/richmondreview/news/106995723.html
Hey Alex, thanks for the link – will add it to the post.