You can order your lane redone with a center-strip pavement or "country lane" treatment. But the whole lane along with the neighbors have to agree to have this done since you all pay your portion of it if your a homeowner.

http://vancouver.ca/engsvcs/streets/localimprovements/improvementTypes/lanes/index.htm

Not sure that it belongs in this thread, but Janna is completely right that ground water permeable aggregates are a foundation of a truly green infrastructure, I would like to see Vancouver take leaderhip here in terms of R&D, supporting local companies that can provide these and rethinking the city.

I do see the advantages of covered pedestrian routes, at least along commercial streets. Unless one is a commercial landlord or tenant, many people may not realize that it can be a real hurdle for a tenant to obtain permission to install an awning. More encouragement by way of permits and licensing from the City could go along way in making our sidewalks a dry commute!

Maybe I'm not creative enough to figure out how we cover a vehicle route (bikes require infrastructure more akin to cars than to feet, eg. the cost of engineering even a split road route) without it involving concrete and steel but I do imagine alternatives to building on the ground ... this is a cut & paste from an early post I submitted that never got any traction :
Encourage Abundant Groundwater flow: We must use less concrete and asphalt in our infrastructure in favour of ground water permeable aggregates. The city should prohibit asphalt use for parking lots and drive ways. There are many excellent alternative materials that are water permeable. All traffic calming barriers (i.e. traffic bulges and traffic circles) should have open, soil and indigenous plant filled centers. At the moment, the type and abundance of boulevard plantings is limited because our boulevards are essentially deserts. Surrounded by non-permeable cement sidewalks and curves, the soil isn’t able to retain sufficient water and nutrient to support indigenous plants such as ferns and shallow rooted West Coast tree species! No more metal, underground culverts! Parks should have open air culverts that act as seasonal creeks and ponds. Country Lane ways should be the norm. Currently a neighbourhood must pay an additional, costly levy, to have a country lane way, with asphalt the default norm. http://vancouver.ca/engsvcs/streets/localimprovements/improvementTypes/lanes/country.htm This speaks volumes toward the green movements inherent bias skew in favour of wealthy, literate, college educated demographic neighborhoods with the option of paying for what should be the standard. Country Lane ways should be the standard in every residential neighbourhood and in every commercial district with building height restrictions capped at six or less stories (the lower the commercial density, the lighter the commercial transport load).

I was going to post this idea too. Janna makes a good point. The issue is getting as many people as possible who are on the fence about commuting on their bike to decide to do it. A dry commute for the majority of the distance would make it more enjoyable and more likely that people will do it. For die hard cyclists it won't matter. And I don't think it has to be a completely covered network everywhere, just a couple of the main lines going east west and north south.

Keep the Gortex, what you really need when cycling is not complete shelter but something to break the direct impact of wind and rain. Ever taken shelter under a tree in a storm? I do not think the 3Rs are a path to sustainability, or more importantly to resilience. We need to rethink our built and designed environment using cradle-to-cradle approaches. And we need to find new ways to build/grow structures. Imagine if all of our streets, parking lots and sidewalks were porous and combined different grasses that held then filtered run off.

On the other hand, I kind of agree that cycling in the rain in Vancouver is a non-problem. But I would be willing to see some experiments to see if some form of rain shelter could be grown. And I would like to see more shelter over sidewalks so that there could be more street life, even in the rain.

Hmmm, I hike all year round and haven't found a dry forest canopy yet! Let me know when you find one so I can leave the Gortex at home ;-)

I guess I could expand on my "steel, concrete and diesel" comment too: a lot of the ideas that have been posted involve building more things, an approach that is counter intuitive to the basic, proven premise encapsulated in the mantra "reduce, recycle and reuse". Even building the greenest buildings means initially consuming more materials, whether renewable or not, the very act of material consumption is the opposite of green. Having already spent a century building things, my support for new ideas tends toward ideas that (1) once implemented will substantially offset the consumption-investment cost or (2) use existing infrastructure in a lower impact manner or (3) require minimal consumption-investment. So, I am intuitively critical of ideas that involve building unnecessary infrastructure and consider infrastructure unnecessary when an alternative to the "problem' (ie. being wet while bicycling" ) already exists. Vancouver is not a very large City, geographically speaking. If one doesn't want to cycle in the rain, you can leave earlier and walk with an umbrella or take transit or work from home, in the case of work-related travel. We don't really "need" to be dry in order to choose a bike as a form of transit.

Janna, I didn't realize the design work had already been done. I had thought we could grow a covered cycling path using trees.

Steel, concrete, and diesel ... these are basic consumption components involved in building this type of infrastructure. Balancing the environmental footprint of one set of Gortex cycling clothing per rider against the construction of covered cycling routes, and there is no green idea here. A dry idea, but not a green one!

I assume "Drive More" is being facetious as this person no doubt knows that highways contribute to congestion and gridlock. I doubt that car owners would want to pay the huge cost of such highways and as a cyclist I have no interest in paying even more to subsidize car drivers. I already give them enough money.

I cycle rain or cold in Vancouver and Boston and have never found it to be an issue. Rather enjoy it actually. Having a shower and place to change at the end of the ride is a lot more important. But in the interests of experimentation I wouldn't mind a trial of this somewhere, and i think it would make for a great design competition.

The City could build a highway network through the city like in the USA and below would be covered bike routes. A covered bike route could be put under the Georgia Viaduct.