Bold ideas are welcomed - needed!

Mayor Dave in Mississauga

Madison, Wisconsin
We share the same latitude and the same cold, snowy winter (actually Burlington has warmer winter highs, fewer snowy days & less snow) but we are miles apart in attitudes towards cycling. 

This week, former Madison Wisconsin mayor, Dave Cieslewicz spoke at the Share the Road cycling summit in Kingston.  Mayor Dave reminded the crowd, cycling friendly cities attract a creative class.  He also said the ciclovia event and the resultant culture of cycling was the most popular thing he ever did!

At a similar event in Mississauga, Cieslewicz warned his audience to expect controversy, saying, "People will imagine all kinds of horrible things, like the end of the free world, just because you're installing a bike lane or a bike box and it will be very controversial. But the truth is once you install these things, people love them. You need to get over that initial political hump."   Not content to rest on its laurels as a gold rated bike friendly city, Madison will be implementing a 100 recommendation plan, spending millions over 5 years to improve existing cycling infrastructure!

The cycling mayor, Boris Johnson

London, UK

Meanwhile in London, England, the mayor announced his cycling vision promoting a plan to spend $1.4 billion over 10 years.  “Cycling will be treated not as niche, marginal, or an but as what it is: an integral part of the transport network, with the capital spending, road space and traffic planners’ attention befitting that role.”  Boris Johnson, Mayor of London.

New York City

In New York city, Mayor Bloomberg's vision is similar - "Cyclists and pedestrians and bus riders are as important, if not, I would argue more important, than automobile riders."  During his tenure, under the guidance of transportation commissioner Janette Sadik-Khan. bike lanes and a bike sharing program has bloomed, along with the necessary angst from motorists.

Chicago

18 months into his first term as mayor, Rahm Emanuel introduced a protected, bi-directional bike lane running directly through the heart of its downtown.  Chicago choose a high profile street because of the message it sends to its citizens - cycling is important, cycling matters!  In Chicago, the committee advising city council is  known as the Mayor's Bicycle Advisory Council.  Overnight, Chicago  has become the envy of cycling friendly cities such as Seattle, New York and even Portland.

Toronto

Finally, in Toronto, even on blustery winter days, nearly a third of travel in downtown Toronto is now by bicycle or on foot. Chief planner Jennifer Keesmaat wants to make the streets safer for cyclists.  “It’s a much more cost-effective way to move,” Ms. Keesmaat said. “Does it mean every trip will be on bike? Absolutely not. But some trips will, and that wouldn’t be a bad thing, if more trips were.”

Does the rest of the world know something we don't?  If Burlington aspires to be a true cycling friendly city, Burlington needs more boldness.  We need to get over the political hump Mayor Cieslewicz referred to. We need a council that heeds the well researched, advice of its hard working citizen's cycling committee.  The cycling committee must be more than just window dressing.

Burlington MISSED its game changer opportunity

"Leadership - Is it telling people what they want to hear, or taking them where they want to go!"

How one kilometer of bike lanes sparked a revolution

Heather Deal - Vancouver councillor  - "A couple of years ago we made the decision to close a lane of the Burrard Street bridge to cars and make it a bike lane. That was a game changer. That was the first time we took space away from cars. I was assigned the media, I thought this is the last time I’ll ever get elected because I’m going down over 1 km of 1 lane for traffic."  

Burlington council missed a golden opportunity to choose leadership that would have impacted generations of citizens in a positive, healthy way by voting against putting bike lanes on Lakeshore Road.

Councillor Deal of Vancouver was re-elected and Vancouver embraced and benefited from its bike lanes.

Why Do People Bike Commute?

Copied from the Atlantic.

"By Lizzy Bennett

Yesterday I polled 99 bike commuters -- friends and members of the Timbuk2 community -- to find out why they ride to work. I asked them for three reasons why they ride and pushed their responses to a word cloud. One might expect the cloud to contain words like sweaty, windblown, tired -- but look what pops. This is a happy, healthy group! One even said "euphoric." "

Yes, all of the words are positive ones.   In addition to the commuter cyclists, all the other cyclists would agree!

It's what we need more of in Burlington and why a continuous bike lanes network is necessary. 

Cyclilng Tourism - It's IMPORTANT!

It's common to see large numbers of runners at road races in Burlington.  Hamilton hosts the oldest road race in North America, the Round the Bay Road Race.  It started in 1894 and is sold out well in advance of race day.

Cycling rides, known as GranFondos, are increasing in frequency & popularity.  The cycling "tourist" is 30-55 years old, professional, with a white collar job earning over $60,000.  They spend more and stay longer than average tourists.  The 3 year old Vancouver to Whistler GranFondo is a good example of what it brings to a city.
 
According to the CBC, the over 7,000 riders who participated, brought in over $20 million into the local economy.  20% of the riders were from outside of Canada, some from as far away as Brazil.

The Golden Horseshoe will host several rides in 2013 including GranFondos:
GranFondo Niagara - As of Feb., the site boasts over 1,000 spots have been taken.
Steve Bauer CanFondo - In support of the Milton Velodrome.
Epic Tour Halton - starting from Kelso Quarry.
Ride in Memory of Greg - Share the Road Ride in its 8th year.

Chip & Tar projects
planned for Burlington

Burlington with a central location, scenic hills and routes, is ideally situated to take advantage of cycling tourism.  Judging by the number of riders, there will be huge benefits to the local economy. Burlington should be doing more to encourage cycling visitors.

However, in addition to the lost opportunity to put bike lanes on Lakeshore Road, (without removing the centre turn lane), Burlington's rural road projects are deterrents to cyclists.  Burlington has adopted a policy of applying chip and tar (C&T) surface treatments to it's rural roads.  While these applications are cheaper by a factor of 5, they overlook the benefits of cycling tourism.

Cyclists do not like to ride on chip and tar roads and will avoid them at all costs!  C&T roads are not smooth, have loose gravel from the edges of the roadway and cyclists are prone to flats on these roads.

Google "cyclists chip and tar" and you'll find a list similar to that on the left.

Cyclists hate C&T roads!  Cycling clubs are posting chip & tar alerts on websites to enable cyclists to avoid C&T roads.  Contrary to assurances from engineers, these roads are not cycle worthy, even after several years of ageing.

C&T is myopic rationalization that looks good on the surface but once you scratch underneath, the basis for applying C&T is without merit.

As a Burlington taxpayer, I applaud the cost savings, but in this case the economic benefits of cycling tourism far outweigh the additional costs.  When we chip & tar, it's the same as hanging out banners telling cycling tourists to avoid Burlington.

Cycling ... therapy for the mind. LSR an opportunity lost!

We all know cycling is good for your health, our environment and economics.  In a much earlier post, I observed that if the drug companies could put all the benefits of cycling into a pill, they would be fabulously wealthy.

The New England Journal of Medicine posted a video showing the dramatic influence of cycling on those with Parkinsons.  The first portion of the video is incredibly difficult to watch, painful!  The 58 year old man, suffers the classic symptoms known as "freezing gait," a shuffling unbalanced attempt at walking.

However, on his bicycle he shows no evidence of Parkinsons.

Quoting from the article in Atlantic Cities, "These experiments on bicycling and brain function, along with other studies about the connection between exercise, mood, and concentration, are clearly in their early stages. But they raise profound questions about the way our preferred mode of transportation affects our cognition and mood.

What effect has our dependence on the automobile had on our collective mental health? What role does passive transportation play in mood and attention disorders, especially for children? What therapeutic effects could a shift to more active transportation modes have for people who suffer from these disorders? What are the social costs of an environment that enforces auto dependence? Does cycling have special benefits that other exercise modes don’t?"

Not only does cycling help your physical health, it aids your mental health as well.  

Of course, bike lanes on Lakeshore Road are not a panacea for health issues, but they were one vital step in building a connected bike network in Burlington that was lost when council rejected the proposal.  Studies from around the world indicate, if you add bike lanes, more people use them.  Maybe some of the people who live in the condos on LSR would get out on their bikes if they realised how good it is for them.

In Burlington, more people walk & cycle than ride buses!!!

Despite over whelming evidence from multiple sources and speakers, Burlington council sided with anecdotal diatribes from residents fearing traffic delays, and voted against adding bike lanes to Lakeshore Road for a trail test period.

The NO voting councillors (Mead-Ward, Sharman, Taylor, Goldring) proclaimed they supported cycling!  Look at the capital budget projects and and a new ActiveTransportation Master Plan as evidence they cried.

Sorry, but the evidence states otherwise.  Below is Burlington's bike network after 15 years of councils that "supported cycling" in Burlington.  This council squandered a golden opportunity to add to the network.

A bike lane here, a bike lane there.  Nothing that you can conveniently take from point A to point B in a straightforward manner.  You can see why cycling numbers are low in Burlington!

However, even with the lack of a safe, continuous network of bike lanes, more people cycle & walk than take the bus!  Impossible you say!  In one of the largest surveys in North America, Transportation Tomorrow contacted residents by letter and phone to understand their urban travel needs.  The results below are for 3 years and show that more people cycle in Halton that ride buses.

In every year, in every measurement, more people made trips by cycling than by local transit.  

Imagine the numbers if a fraction of the enormous annual funding given to transit was channelled to cycling infrastructure - and it would only be for 1 year, unlike the annual subsidy given to transit.   

Drawing a line in the road

In a sad reversal of a previous vote, on Jan. 28th. Burlington Council voted against putting bike lanes on Lakeshore Road.

Don't worry, say the councillors and mayor who voted no against the proposal.  Burlington is a cycling friendly city and we'll champion this by spending millions on precarious, dated cycling infrastructure projects!  Specifically, Burlington will be pouring millions into multipurpose paths.  They will be put on the following streets:

Lakeshore Road (Torrance to Burloak)

Fairview St. (Walkers to Appleby)

Mainway (Northside to Walkers)

It doesn't matter that multipurpose paths, bisected by numerous driveways, next to roadways are hazardous.

It doesn't matter that MTO, AASHTO and transportation experts no longer promote multipurpose paths, bisected by driveways next to roadways.

Don't worry, cried those who voted no.  We know better!  We know more than experts and researchers.  We have our fingers on the pulse of the people .... and an election is coming in 2014!  And we'll spend taxpayer dollars on an Active Transportation Plan & experts because we need to get people out of their cars & its the right thing to do..... but if there's opposition, we may not implement it!

Dangerous                                                                                                               Safer

The Regions of Waterloo and Peel are in the process of completing their AT plans.  We can learn from them.  They've already done much of the leg work.  The chart above from the UBC research study on Bicyclists’ Injuries and the Cycling Environment, compares cycling infrastructure types and the degree of danger associated with cycling them.  

Multipurpose paths can be used to encourage cycling but they must meet specific criteria to be safe.  There must be few driveways and side street intersections, <1 per 300m.  None of the above routes meet this rule.

Sometimes the pulse of the people is wrong.  Years ago, people didn't want to be restricted by seat belts.  They would cause more accidents, they cried.  Before that, restaurants and bars, needed smoking otherwise they would go bankrupt!

It was a difficult decision.  Emotions ran high.  Misinformation was rampant.  A few councillors listened to the constructive positive arguments brought forward.  Thank you and my appreciation to Councillors Craven, Dennison and Lancaster who voted to make a safer, better Burlington.  

Year's earlier, our city's legal department sought opinions regarding the use of edge lines and bike lanes differentiating between them to avoid potential lawsuits.  Let's hope these dangerous multipurpose paths, bisected by driveways, next to roadways don't end up costing the city far more than the millions to install them.

NCDOT – Bicycle Facilities Guide: Types of Bicycle Accommodations
Bicyclists’ Injuries and the Cycling Environment  - highly recommended reading
MTO (1996) Ontario bikeways planning and design guidelines.pdf 2.6  - currently under revision as MTO Bk 18

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 ..............................

Your chance to be heard .... and make a difference!

Below is an email I received.  Hope you will take advantage of it.

Halton Region is undertaking an Active Transportation Master Plan Study.  As part of the consultation for this study, Halton Region is hosting a World Café Workshop to encourage discussion around important topics and issues for the study.  Please let others know of the event.

You are invited to attend one of two sessions for the workshop as follows:
Date:   Monday, November 5, 2012
Session No. 1: 3:00 p.m. to 5:00 p.m.                                Session No. 2: 6:30 p.m. to 8:30 p.m.
Location:         Banquet Room, Milton Sports Centre, 605 Santa Maria Boulevard, Milton

Space is limited. Please confirm your attendance and Session No. with Marianne Radue at marianne.radue@ibigroup.com.  The workshop host will strive to include a wide range of people and agencies from across the Region. In your email, please note the municipality where you work or reside, or the organization that you will represent.

If you have any questions about the study, please do not hesitate to contact me or Jeffrey Reid at Jeffrey.Reid@halton.ca.

Regards,

Norma Moores P.Eng.
Associate, IBI Group
Suite 200, East Wing, 360 James Street North, Hamilton ON  L8L 1H5  Canada
email Norma.Moores@IBIGroup.com                           web   www.ibigroup.com