78 responses so far ↓

• 1 Jeff Leigh // Sep 10, 2014 at 6:17 pm

  PGR had minimal bike traffic as well. That changed once there was improved infrastructure in place. There was growth in both commuter and recreational cyclists.

  I see that where the new infrastructure was put in immediately west of Cambie it has dedicated space for each of bikes and pedestrians, as it should. Haven’t walked it yet so I don’t know how good it is.

• 2 Richard // Sep 10, 2014 at 9:15 pm

  @Brilly

  Ugh, sidewalks were added to Kent connecting to the Canada Line Bridge when the bike path was added.

  I was there a few days ago and there were certainly bikes around. At least one a minute.

  East of Cambie is horrible for bikes and peds. Still, quite a few battling with the traffic.

  Should be rather embarrassing for the City. Much of it is there property.

  A couple of years ago I noticed that the barriers at the driveway to the transfer station forced peds out into the traffic lane. I pointed this out to the City and they moved them. Still, a sidewalk and bike lanes are badly needed.

• 3 Brilliant // Sep 10, 2014 at 10:10 pm

  @Richard 52- take a look at the next blocks west. No sidewalk serving the offices on Kent.

• 4 Jeff Leigh // Sep 10, 2014 at 10:55 pm

  @Brilliant

  OK, now I understand that you meant further west than Ash. Agreed, no sidewalks. But no bike lane either. We need both of them along there.

  When you said the city spent money on a bike lane and not on sidewalks on Kent, that wasn’t correct. The main cost of the improvements in the block from Cambie to Ash was for the new sidewalk and curb. The bike lane is just some paint and a few jersey barriers that were put down in a few hours.

  I also believe that the new divided lane on Kent South leading from Ash to the CLB is a mixed use path, benefiting pedestrians as well.

• 5 Jeff Leigh // Sep 10, 2014 at 11:00 pm

  Brilliant:

  I can actually prove that there are cyclists on Kent at Ash. If you go to Google Street View, on that corner looking south, one of the two cyclists stopped at the railway tracks (midweek) is me. The better looking one is my spouse.

• 6 Warren // Sep 11, 2014 at 11:33 am

  I use Kent every day. The new protected lanes there are nice, although integrating the whole thing the the Canada Line would have been much nicer, getting around the railroad issue.

  Kent Ave is like the wild west for drivers. No painted lanes, no posted limits.

• 7 westygrrl // Sep 11, 2014 at 4:11 pm

  Kent should improve over time as elements of the Marpole Plan (transportation-related) get implemented. At least, let’s hope so. Kent has been an important through-way, truck route, and back door to avoid SWMarine for all of my 20+ years in Marpole and Vancouver.

  It’s now becoming an important bike route via the CanadaLine bridge too, and I think this is a good thing, as the other North Arm crossings are hazardous, imho. The access to this bridge from the YVR side leaves much to be desired, and one has to criss-cross from various bike/road routes to get there, with some challenges. (Unless the adjacent Arbutus Corridor tracks become a new route in future. Hope springs eternal.)

  I’ve become more familiar than I thought I’d ever be with this route, as my teenage son was using it on a daily basis to bike from YVR to the Richmond Oval every day in summer. He preferred his bike to the CanadaLine, and yes, I was worried about his commute back and forth.

  Every day he would return home with stories of near misses and tales about other cyclists duking it out with cars, pedestrianss, etc. My son is not an ‘a-hole’ cyclist, but he does recognize them, along with the many ‘a-hole’ drivers out there as well.

  Vancouver has a toxic, selfish transportation culture. We should all be working towards a more positive attitude towards safety, rule abidance, enforcement and respect.

  Our kids – don’t we want them healthy and active?! – deserve more than the current toxic discourse and constant negativity. Time to grow up.

• 8 Richard Wittstock // Sep 11, 2014 at 11:29 pm

  Bar #37

  Good points re: E Kent; I want to add my vote to those suggesting Kent needs to be re-thought. It doesn’t get used by cyclists nearly as much as it could because it is brutal. I rode it yesterday, commuting home from a meeting near New West Quay, around UBC to my home in Kits. New West is improving their infrastructure along Stewardson, and Burnaby’s aforenoted North Fraser foreshore park is a delight. Then you hit Vancouver, and it is a gong show. North side of the tracks, then south side, then north side, crumbling pavement, crossing old unused rail spurs, dodging garbage trucks…it’s horrible. It is a logical and potentially important cycling commuter artery but at present is not workable for anyone but the most confident of riders. And wayfinding signage is horrible along that route. All users, cyclists, motorists and trucks alike would benefit from some thoughtful street design here.

• 9 Richard Wittstock // Sep 11, 2014 at 11:37 pm

  Westygrrl #57 Very well said. I almost got squashed by a garbage truck once on that route as I was looking to cross over to the Skytrain bridge from the north side…despite a long hand signal, that dude following behind me was just not going to slow down and let me get over to turn left from the right side of the lane. Had I not shoulder-checked, I would not be here to type this right now. I still get shivers when I think about it.

  So it gets pretty tiresome for me when I hear drivers whining about aggressive cyclists in this city. The consequence of an assh*le cyclist to a motorist is almost nil. The consequence of an assh*le motorist to a cyclist is often fatal.

• 10 Bill // Sep 12, 2014 at 9:12 am

  @Richard Wittstock #59

  “The consequence of an assh*le cyclist to a motorist is almost nil.”

  Not really. I only get angry at cyclists when they have done something really stupid that could have resulted in an accident because I don’t want to live the rest of my life knowing I have seriously injured or worse, killed someone even though I had the “right of way”. That is why on many occasions I have given way to cyclists even though I have had the right of way.

• 11 bar // Sep 12, 2014 at 12:11 pm

  Well, I suppose it’s progress that people are noticing how cycling infrastructure in Vancouver generally sucks outside of downtown and the west side. And how other cities talk less but do more.

  That being said, we need to recognize that not every road should be turned into a cycle route. Kent is a really important industrial access route. It’s a street that should belong to trucks and commercial vehicles, and yes, gasp, cars, to service one of the few remaining industrial areas in the city.

  Driving industry out of Vancouver and into Richmond or Burnaby is not being green. It’s being selfish and hypocritical, by foisting negative externalities on others. Kind of like what the bicycle lobby complains about car users…

  It might cost a bit more, but the city could put a decent bicycle path all along the river. Or maybe along Marine itself (after all, that’s where the stores are). Or be a bit more creative like Burnaby has been. All of that just requires a bit more attention and money focused on the rest of Vancouver where us real people live 🙂

• 12 gman // Sep 12, 2014 at 1:02 pm

  This is another solution if the road is just to narrow.
  http://www.theage.com.au/victoria/glenroy-bike-lane-abandoned-after-motorists-rip-out-bollards-20140909-10ehgj.html

• 13 Jeff Leigh // Sep 12, 2014 at 1:04 pm

  Not sure you could buy up land all along the river, and remember that would displace industrial land uses as well. There is a reason many of those businesses are situated on the river, like bringing in log booms.

  Marine Drive is certainly a potential option, but it has hills that Kent doesn’t (so some might avoid it anyway) and losing a traffic lane in one or both directions there would have more impact on cars and commercial traffic than doing something on Kent.

  One option is to put it along Kent South, where portions of a bike route have already been built. Between Boundary and Cambie there are four or five properties that would be impacted, as they own and use what is the road allowance alignment elsewhere. That land could be bought or expropriated, but I can’t imagine it would be cheap to do so.

  All ideas worth discussing.

• 14 Bill McCreery // Sep 12, 2014 at 8:40 pm

  Why put bike lanes on arterials??? Dunsmuir, Hornby, Burrard, Kent & Marine are arterials. Madness. So is Pt. Grey Road according to City documents. Even when barriered off there’s still the intersections, which by definition intersect. Bikers breath more pollution, much higher stress levels.

  One of the 1st principles of transportation planning is to separate incompatible types of movement.

• 15 Jeff Leigh // Sep 12, 2014 at 10:42 pm

  @Bill M

  You should check the definition of arterial. High capacity roads, often with limited access, between urban centres. Marine fits that definition, not so the others you list. Certainly not Kent, with a 33 or 40 foot road allowance. Certainly not PGR, which had a decision taken years ago to not turn into an arterial, and which your former party designated as such. Check the city record.

• 16 Bill McCreery // Sep 12, 2014 at 11:15 pm

  @ Jeff
  Your definition is a suburbia definition. Arterials in urban areas with a grid system such as Vancouver’s cannot have “limited access”. However, Vancouver needs, and has many arterials.

  Pt Grey Road was shown as an arterial on the infamous Vision Van mass citywide spot zoning plan of anything goes within, what was it, 1 1/2 blocks of an arterial.

  Please read the foregoing conversations. You will find that Kent, in those conversations, and in fact, is a truck route first and foremost. It has been, is now, and must remain so in order that the industries are properly serviced. A truck route is a specialized form of an arterial – for trucks. It goes against all proper transportation planning principles to try to marry an 18 wheeler truck route with a 2 wheeler bike route.

  Separate them, and with more than a concrete divider with growies on top.

• 17 Jeff Leigh // Sep 12, 2014 at 11:36 pm

  The truck route (which is also an arterial) is Marine. Note the limited access in places.

  Kent is a local collector and delivery route. Important for truck use, as was noted above. But it isn’t a through road now, and so certainly doesn’t qualify as an arterial. Especially with the existing road allowance. But if you want to make it a truck only route, then take the cars off it. The speeding cars cutting through to avoid SWM are more dangerous than the trucks, which largely have professional drivers.

• 18 Brilliant // Sep 13, 2014 at 9:04 am

  @Jeff Leigh 59 – I didn’t say no cyclists , just a minimal number given the money and effort expended on the bridge. Maybe on the weekend it’s busier as like PGR it is really geared to the leisure cyclist. The question then becomes why is so much money being dumped on one form of leisure activity rather than something more inclusive like community centres?

• 19 Papillon // Sep 14, 2014 at 10:16 am

  Apparently walking makes you happy, works for me.

• 20 Bill McCreery // Sep 14, 2014 at 10:28 pm

  Sorry Jeff, but my point was that good transportation planning says that bikes and trucks as well as cars should not be mixed. That’s my point not the definition of words.

• 21 Jeff Leigh // Sep 15, 2014 at 8:05 am

  @Bill

  Interested in what your solution to east/west bike routes south of 57th would be. Marine is an arterial. You say no to Kent. OK, so where would you put the missing bike connector route? Would you buy up properties on the Kent South alignment? Or divert them to Richmond? Or something else?

• 22 Bill McCreery // Sep 15, 2014 at 11:37 am

  I don’t have a solution as yet. There are unused/underused rail r.o.w.’s there that, with a more positive relationship with their owners might be part of the solution.

  My Point has been that a separated bike lane means it must be really separated. The conversations above point out the many not so good consequences of brute forcing such solutions.

  And, those r.o.w’s need to be a part of the long range Downtown/Gastown/Chinatown/
  South False Creek/Arbutus/Fraser River Corridor/Burnaby to the Valley surface rail line.

• 23 spartikus // Sep 15, 2014 at 12:49 pm

  This is a pretty good article from The Atlantic’s CityLab on “Bikelash” – not only interesting for the insights into the phenomena, but a nice reminder that the debate we are having in Vancouver is going on throughout North America.

• 24 Kenji // Sep 16, 2014 at 11:43 am

  I was in Kelowna over the weekend. Even in Rutland, the Whalley Flats of the Okanagan (I can say that because I am from there), they have bike lanes.

  Case closed as far as I am concerned. If Hickville BC can have bike lanes, Joe Downtowndriver can deal!

• 25 Jenables // Sep 16, 2014 at 5:48 pm

  Kenji you are from Rutland? I know a few people from there, oddly enough..

• 26 Kenji // Sep 17, 2014 at 3:12 pm

  I am technically from Edmonton, but I spent every summer and winter in Rutland because my mom’s family is from there. I might or might not know the people you know, because I am like 8x your age

• 27 Jenables // Sep 17, 2014 at 9:16 pm

  what is 8x 30something? I’m mystery woman all of a sudden. I’ll grill you when I see you at beer nite!

• 28 Kenji // Sep 18, 2014 at 9:12 am

  That was Craft, Oct 2, and Chris Keam is definitely coming…?