Cars, Bikes and the Burrard Street Bridge

If you've never ridden a bike (or roller-bladed, or even walked, for that matter) over the Burrard Street Bridge here in Vancouver, let me try to paint a picture for you. There are 6 lanes of traffic squeezed onto the bridge with a sidewalk that is maybe 6' wide on each side. The curb feels like it's 12" above the road. Bikes and pedestrians share the bridge, (never a good combination). I compare it to riding your bike along a balance beam - that curb is a huge drop, and between trying to stay on the sidewalk and not hit pedestrians, well you can see why I avoid using that bridge at all costs - it's just no fun! The same could be said for the Granville Bridge, but for now I'll stick to the matter at hand.

I can't believe that the first (and to date, only) test for converting lanes on the Burrard Bridge to bicycle lanes was 13 years ago. That's right, 1996 - and the issue is up for debate again. That test only lasted one week (due to complaints from drivers), so the results have to be taken with a grain of salt. But even in that one week, car traffic dropped and bike traffic significantly increased. And no where in Canada is the climate better suited for cycling than southwestern BC. At long last the new city council is voting on a plan for a six month trial starting in June, and I predict a huge success.

First, I did some searching on the website of the Alliance for Biking and Walking. They have dozens of reports on all types of travel, and here are a few points that I liked most from one report, Making Cycling Irresistable, by Puncher and Buehler.

• Germany, Denmark, and the Netherlands have greatly improved cycling safety since 1970. Although levels of cycling have increased in all three countries over the past 35 years, the total number of cycling fatalities has declined by over 70%. Fatalities fell by 60% in the UK over the same period, but the amount of cycling also decreased. The least improvement in cycling safety has been in the USA, where fatalities fell by only 30%.
• As the cyclist fatality rate per billion km cycled rose by 174% from 1950 to 1978, the average km cycled per inhabitant fell by 65%. Since the mid-1970s, Dutch cities have undertaken massive improvements to cycling infrastructure and restricted car use. The result has been an 81% fall in the cyclist fatality rate...thus encouraging a 36% increase in km cycled per inhabitant.
• The perceived traffic danger of cycling is an important deterrent to more widespread cycling. Women and the elderly appear to be especially sensitive to such traffic danger. Many American parents do not allow their children to cycle for the same reason.
• In the USA, much of the effort to improve cyclist safety has focused on increasing
  helmet use, if necessary by law, especially for children. Thus, it is important to
  emphasize that the much safer cycling in northern Europe is definitely not due to
  widespread use of safety helmets. On the contrary, in the Netherlands, with the safest cycling of any country, less than one percent of adult cyclists wear helmets.
• Rates of cycling are similar among different income classes. For example, the
  2002 national travel survey in Germany revealed that the lowest-income quartile was
  only slightly more likely to travel by bike (10% of trips) than the highest-income quartile
  (8.3%) (German Federal Ministry of Transport, 2003). Similarly, cyclists are distributed
  evenly among income classes in the Netherlands and Denmark (Dutch Ministry of
  Transport, 2006; Dutch Cycling Federation, 2006).
  

It really boils down to common sense, as many studies have shown - make cycling safer, and more people will get out of their cars. Bikes and cars don't mix - drivers are scared of hitting bikes, and cyclists are scared of being hit by a car. Make it safer for one, and you're making the road safer for everyone, improving traffic flow overall. (Not to mention the cars that are no longer on the road because the driver now cycles). Sort of a "build-it-and-they-will-come" situation.

(On a side note, the "build-it-and-they-will-come" phenomenon works for cars as well. It's been shown that when, for example, a highway is widened, the overall increase in traffic ends up being much more than the capacity that was added, and in not too long traffic is actually moving slower than it was before! Clearly, building more roads is not generally the answer to traffic problems.)

Now of course drivers aren't going down without a fight here - they are worried about traffic. Traffic in Vancouver can be hell, but it's no worse than any other city in North America. In fact overall, I find it to generally be no big deal - and I've traveled to numerous major cities across the continent. Drivers here are worried that reducing lanes on the bridge will create traffic havoc. Fact is, although the first week or two may be a pain, in the long term drivers learn and overall traffic actually decreases by more than than the capacity that was taken away. In addition, I have never once been stuck in a traffic jam on Burrard Bridge itself - the problem has been the intersections and traffic lights at either end. Taking away space on the bridge shouldn't even be the issue for drivers.

The funniest thing I heard on the news today was someone from (I believe) the Downtown Business Association. Their concern is that fewer people will come downtown and business will suffer, because fewer people will want to cross a more congested bridge. Well, let's be honest here - there isn't a truly non-congested route to get to downtown as it is - so how will this make it any worse? If anything, business will increase as more cyclists from the rest of the city feel comfortable coming downtown instead of staying on the other side of False Creek. In a study done by the City of Toronto (Feb. 2009) with regards to adding bike lanes on Bloor Street, it was found that "Patrons arriving by foot and bicycle visit the most often and spend the most money per month..."

I could go on forever with facts and figures and reports and studies that show how beneficial the conversion of these lanes will be, but the best data is going to come from the actual test. Let's at least try this for 6 months and get the hard data. I think that even the drivers will be surprised at how much better this solution is. As I've said before, we can't keep growing based on the needs of cars, because that only keeps getting us into more trouble - no one can argue the fact our roads are only at capacity for a few hours out of every day. We have to look at new options - not just for the environment, but for our quality of life as well.