James Twowheeler
My feedback
3 results found
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599 votes
This is an evolutionary process. The City of Vancouver is already considered a North American leader in this regard. Current and future plans and projects (e.g. Cambie Corridor Planning Program) will continue to embrace this ideal.
An error occurred while saving the comment As we know, the majority of carbon emissions in BC come from cars, yet the streets in Vancouver are still designed to prioritize cars. This has to be one of the most important, cheapest and easiest improvements the city can make to its infrastructure.
Firstly, two rebrandings need to happen.
1) Cars lanes are for the disabled, for small businesses, or for the emergency services. If you don't need to carry more than a suitcase, and yet you drive to work, you are stealing the road from these constituents. The old should be on buses, because driving is unsafe.
2) Cycling is faster walking, it is not a sport. You don't have to wear special clothes or special hats, and you don't have to keep up with cars. You're going at bus-pace, but direct to your destination.
Get the marketing people on to these. Stop showing footage of Gregor hunched over mountain-bike handlebars with a helmet on: that's not appealling to SUV-driving moms, and it's not how 10% are *ever* going to commute.
The second point should be backed up with infrastructure changes, namely putting bike lanes beside the sidewalk, not on the moving-traffic side of parked cars. There is already roadspace allocated for bike lanes, it's just in the wrong place. And just as pedestrians have painted markings at intersections, so cyclists need them too.
Here's a plan: book a day; sit down with the downtown business community representatives and tell them that bikes are coming, so we'd better plan for how to get a bike lane on every single street. We can do it all at once, and lose only through-traffic, no parking.
The bus improvements (bulges and traffic-light control) on Main street should be rolled out everywhere. It is insane that the 99 b-line has to stop at traffic lights: the traffic lights should only go red after the bus is through. Buses weaving across bike lanes and fighting back out into traffic is an appalling urban planning decision that needs correcting: bulges and correct placement of bike lanes on the other side of the parked cars will fix this.
Finally, the City must pressurise translink to double the number of buses per route. If you can't just turn up, wait 5 minutes, and get a bus, your system is unusable. 15 minute headways are not frequent service.
In short:
* bike lanes with no loss of parking (yay small businesses! boo thru-traffic)
* a usable bus networkPlease see the following diagrams for a visualisation of all these corrections:
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408 votes
Provincial jurisdiction.
An error occurred while saving the comment @Vicki Morell - interesting stance: laws that apply to children should also apply to adults. Good luck with that.
In my world, we pass laws to protect children from themselves because they're still learning about responsibility and balances of risks. Adults sometimes walk into lamp-posts, and we just let them do that. Sometimes they also get drunk. Oh well, as long as they don't hurt anyone.
Incidentally, helmets are only designed to protect you when falling off your bike yourself. If your friends would otherwise be dead, I'd warrant they weren't just wobbling along the seawall at 10mph? Perhaps they should reconsider their commuting style if they're concerned about their personal safety.
An error occurred while saving the comment Brothers and sisters! Have you not heard the good news?! Helmet wearing is in fact dependent on your proclaimed religion in British Columbia. And for members of the Church of Sit-Up Cycling it is an essential religious practice to wear normal clothes.
(Believers wholly endorse the use of such accident-preventing safety measures as lights, bells, height, strict compliance with traffic signals, a leisurely pace and the use of dedicated cycling streets and lanes.)
More details here:
http://www.copenhagenize.com/2010/09/church-of-sit-up-cycling.htmlMichael (of Copenhagenize) also makes an interesting bet in another post:
"There will never be a city that promotes (or legislates) bicycle helmets that will ever reach double digit modal share for bicycles."
http://www.copenhagenize.com/2010/09/vanity-myth-go-figure.html
Any takers, Vancouver?
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1,002 votes
An ongoing process. Many of the City’s recent initiatives (e.g. downtown separated bike lane trial, additional traffic calming on existing routes) work towards this vision. The draft Greenest City action plan will support this idea, and include directions to help inform the upcoming transportation plan update and new active transportation plan.
An error occurred while saving the comment @GCPT. Travis Martin's idea goes too far. Removing parking is unpalatable to local businesses. Instead we should remove a lane of through-traffic, which offers no local economic benefit, nudging parked cars a meter or two from the curb.
Here are some diagrams: https://spreadsheets.google.com/pub?key=0AufCS6E3wDmsdGtxaVoyd1JCOWNpWFBZdGJMXzJJOVE&output=html&gridlines=false
