Boldly going where no Vancouver City Council has gone before, Mayor Gregor Robertson and his Vision Vancouver party took their green vision of a bicycle-friendly downtown Vancouver a step further yesterday (5th October).
After a full day of debate, and only a short while before midnight (11.38 p.m.), they unanimously approved a new $3.2 million separated bike lane on Hornby Street – despite vociferous opposition from some sectors of the business community, most notably Laura Jones of the Canadian Federation of Independent Business.
Interestingly, even though Global TV News was on at the time of the vote, they apparently did not deem it important enough to report on (despite promising at the top of the hour to keep us updated).
I got the news from Twitter! And I am reporting it in this post 22 minutes after it happened, and hours before Global will get to it (on tomorrow morning’s news). I guess this is the dawn of a whole new age of information sharing.
The new, physically separated two-way bike lane on Hornby Street will connect the separated bike lane on the Burrard Street Bridge (opened July 2009) with the separated bike lane on Dunsmuir Street (opened March 2010).
Downtown Vancouver will now have a (very basic) network of separated bike lanes that will facilitate safe bicycle commuting.
Since the beginning of this pro-cycling initiative, Vancouver has witnessed an exponential growth in downtown cyclist traffic: for example, cyclist traffic on the Dunsmuir cycle lane increased from 100 per day to 2,000 per day in the first five months after it opened.
At the center of this issue is a fierce debate about the future of transportation in Vancouver. While the population and number of jobs are growing rapidly, car trips into the city declined by 10% in the last 13 years, thanks to a long-term strategy to discourage car traffic. At the same time, total trips increased by 23% – with the difference accounted for by an increase in cycling, walking and transit. This despite the fact that only 1% of Vancouver’s street space is set aside for cyclists!
With the city expected to grow by another 23% by 2041, Vancouver needs to find alternative means for people to get around. Surveys show that 60% of residents would cycle downtown if it was safer. So it seems that safe, separated cycling lanes are the way to go!
The budget for this new lane is $3.2 million – an amount which has been the subject of outraged protests by the anti-cyclist brigade. But this is equivalent to the price of three buses – without the accompanying upkeep costs! And the average cost to build infrastructure for cars is $1 million per block. As the Hornby bike lane will span eight blocks, this means that a similar length of road for cars would cost $8 million – more than twice as much as the budget for this bike route.
So while we rejoice in this decision, let’s keep it in perspective: One Giant Step for Cyclists, One Small Step for Vancouver’s Budget.
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Thanks for the update Joe. The statistics you offer really help put it all into perspective. This is so cool- one more step to a to a safer street and cleaner air!
Glad you liked it! I found those stats in Business in Vancouver magazine – reputable source. I was pretty surprised by them – they put it in perspective for me too. Someone else was saying that it’s not about the money, or losing a bit of parking – it’s about an anti-cycling culture in Vancouver. And that same person was saying that Toronto does not have this problem, and it’s time for Vancouver to grow up!
Like other cyclists, I’m glad to see this go through as well. One more step on a long road towards bringing us closer to the gold standard of cycling infrastructure, the Netherlands.
In trying to inform myself a little more about the various advantages of cycling, I’ve been digging around Copenhagenize.com
Some of the excellent links I found:
Bike lanes have been found to be good for business:
http://www.copenhagenize.com/2007/11/cyclists-are-better-shoppers-than.html
And cities should actually be paying us to ride bikes, considering all the benefits we bring:
http://www.copenhagenize.com/2010/03/folly-of-bicycle-licences.html
“In Denmark we’ve determined that cycling is much more cost-efficient than cars. Indeed, for every kilometre cycled the nation enjoys a net profit of 25 cents. For every kilometre driven by car, the nation suffers a net loss of 16 cents. Due to a host of health factors, wear and tear/road maintenance factors, etc.
In Copenhagen a study has determined that for every kilometre cycled, the city earns $1.10. Pure profit. Based on the value of our cycling citizens living longer – 7 years – and being less ill whilst alive (subsidizing those poor motorists and their illnesses as we slog away at work with fewer sick days) as well as the value of health care costs saved.”
The above post also slaps down the silly notion of registration and licensing.
This is great info and great links – I love it! Would you mind if I post this sometime as a guest post, so more people will see it? And if I did, should I just call you “pacpost”?
Hi Joe,
Please feel free to post the information in any way you like. I’m just passing along the excellent work of others. 😉 No need to mention me, but if you must, go with ‘pacpost’. Thanks.
The only thing I’d add concerns the comparison of cars versus bikes, and their relative impact on roads. From a simply physics perspective, it’s not just the weight difference which is important.
The average commuting cyclist can probably generate about 150 watts of power when accelerating (Lance Armstrong and company can max out at around 450 watts on mountain climbs, but there’s maybe 10 guys in the world who can do that, and who knows what’s fuelling them).
The average car (nowadays around 200 HP) can generate 150,000 watts. So, while the average car weighs 20 times more than the average cyclist on a bike, that car is capable of putting down 1,000 times more kinetic force through its tires. It’s not just acceleration, there’s also the act of braking which imparts tremendous forces on our roads. That, much more than weight, accounts for the tremendous wear and tear that cars dish out to roads.
Just something else to keep in mind when we’re talking about the different costs of building and maintaining roads and bike paths. Feel free to use the above in any future post you’d like to put up. 😉
Thank you! I am definitely going to put this together as a guest post (I don’t want to take credit for it myself, but I really want to get these ideas out there. The timing is appropriate – today the net is full of motorists metaphorically foaming at the mouth over the vote. Time for another reminder about how much they owe us … not that it will ever sink in, but it’s therapeutic to say it anyway. Also, I have noticed that there is another, quieter group – people who are undecided, and will actually listen to both sides of the story. These people rapidly become pro-cyclist when they realize we are pro-planet and have reason and research on our side; while the motorist lobby shoots itself in the foot with its ugly hatred and its obvious ignorance.
Hi Joe,
You’re welcome. I look forward to the post(s).
I think you’re right about the quiet majority, which dovetails with Geoff Meggs pointing out that this new protected bike infrastructure is about trying to accommodate the 60% of the population too afraid to try cycling.
As for that proportion of motorists who are irrationally angry, I think the following is the best parody I’ve come across yet of this small but very vocal bunch of loonybins:
http://bamboobadger.blogspot.com/2009/10/why-i-hate-pedestrians.html
That’s the funniest thing I’ve read in ages – thanks! I will definitely find a way of sharing that …
Hi Pacpost. I just used that hilarious link in my latest blog – https://averagejoecyclist.com/?p=1128 – I have been so stressed out by all the rage from the anti-cycling lobby lately, that I decided I needed to lighten up a little – chill out. I will be doing a guest post using your information within the next week.
I had the audio feed going from a browser window while working from home last nite so I got to listen to all the speakers. Gordon Price’s delivery was simply amazing.
Looking forward to trying it. Every bike trip to downtown for me right now uses Hornby for the trip in and Burrard for the trip out. The southern part of hornby has always been fine (except at nelson), but gets dangerous feeling around georgia and even worse between dunsmuir and pender. Coming back south on Burrard, that last block between Drake and Pacific is the worst. Looks like it’ll be much better now.
Yes, I cannot wait to use it! I am fortunate that I seldom have to bike downtown. But when I do, I scoot around the edges. I am pretty brave most of the time on my bike, but Hornby near Georgia right now just feels like mayhem. Even lower down you don’t know what to expect from minute to minute, because at any second a car could hit you from either side. So I hate it, and I avoid it.
I HAVE to get more techno-savvy! I would have loved to have been listening to that! At least with this blog, I am learning more every day …
Council minutes now available: http://vancouver.ca/ctyclerk/cclerk/20101005/regu20101005ag.htm
If you load this in Windows Media Player (http://www4.insinc.com/ibc/mp/md/play/c/317/1199/201010051910wv150en,003.asx) and jump to 2:33:50 you can hear Gordon Price’s speech.
thanks – I am going to post those links so as many people as possible see them … and also check them out myself, of course