The other [less than] 1%

At the Lakeshore Road (LSR) improvement committee meeting one council member asked why staff bothered producing a report outlining the feasibility of bike lanes because only .7 of 1% of the daily traffic were cyclists?  Similar sentiments were echoed in letters to the editor and to other council members.
There is a simple reason why few cyclists use LSR.  
The majority of cyclists will not cycle on dangerous roads with a high volume of traffic and no bike lane.  Make it safer and studies indicate, they will use it.

1.

Researchers found the presence of off-road bike paths and on-street bike lanes were, by far, the biggest determinant of cycling rates in cities. And that’s true even after you control for a variety of other factors like how hot or cold a city is, how much rain falls, how dense the city is, how high gas prices are, the type of people that live there, or how safe it is to cycle. None of those things seem to matter quite as much. The results, the authors write, “are consistent with the hypothesis that bike lanes and bike paths encourage cycling.”  Transportation July 2011 Buehler & Pucher.


A Portland, Oregon study gave cyclists GPS devices and recorded riding patterns.   She found that cyclists will go out of their way to use streets with bike lanes.

Focusing on a meaningless number is a red herring.  Independent studies from around the world show that if you bike lanes, people will use them.  If you build bike lanes that are safer to use, more people will use them.  

The Trouble with Bike Lanes on Lakeshore Road

In Dec. 2010, council passed a motion instructing staff to examine the feasibility of putting bike lanes on Lakeshore Road east of the downtown.

Two years later, on Monday Dec. 3rd, staff's report arrived at the Community Development Committee.  The report finally reached the committee 3 and a half hours into the meeting leaving less than 25 minutes to hear 7 citizen delegations and Bruce Zvaniga, Director of Transportation Services.

Three councillors had very pointed questions and very clearly revealed that they did not see value in bike lanes on Lakeshore Road.  Some of the paraphrased questions were:
Why are we here to discuss this?
How does a bike lane on Lakeshore Road improve safety - for drivers?  --   and then cyclists?
How does eliminating the centre turn lane help the drivers turning left or exiting the condos?
What are we trying to accomplish here?
Are we trying to satisfy a [Cycling] Master Plan that may not be correct?
Shouldn't we be measuring something to determine if it worked?
Cycling trips are only .7 of 1% of daily traffic. - what is it [the report] for?
You can watch the discussions at city hall here.  They begin around the 3:32 mark.

However, time ran out and the issue and 6 unheard delegations were asked to come back in January!

Yes, I believe, and research shows that bike lanes on Lakeshore Road are invaluable to Burlington in promoting safety, slowing down drivers, increasing the number of cyclists and even help to reduce traffic congestion.

In the next few blog posts I hope you'll come back to read how bike lanes makes economic sense and strengthens the quality of life we all enjoy in Burlington.

To be continued ..............................