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  #21  
Old Posted Sep 4, 2009, 2:33 AM
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One of the things that pisses me off about Halifax bicycle lanes is how on the Bedford Highway the city got so lazy they randomly ended the painted lines near intersections and through car parks that are paved, have no parking spots within metres of the road and are owned by the city!

Add to make it even more dangerous the highway has a speed limit of 70km/h (speeds are much higher though), is jammed packed with trucks and buses, and the city refuses to install sidewalks ...
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  #22  
Old Posted Sep 4, 2009, 3:52 AM
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I stayed in a hotel in a Copenhagen for two weeks back in 95, the amount of bicycles was stunning to say the least. I can only imagine how much there is now.
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  #23  
Old Posted Sep 4, 2009, 12:58 PM
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Originally Posted by Terminal City View Post
Some bikers are a real menace. They think they own the road. Not all, but some...
Some drivers are a real menace. They think they own the road. Not all, but some...
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  #24  
Old Posted Sep 4, 2009, 1:23 PM
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Originally Posted by waterloowarrior View Post
Some drivers are a real menace. They think they own the road. Not all, but some...
But they do, they pay taxes in gas that goes towards roads right?
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  #25  
Old Posted Sep 4, 2009, 2:30 PM
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Some bikers are a real menace. They think they own the road. Not all, but some
There are a lot of really, really, stupid bikers (in the courier service) but, I would call them a menace. My car will alway win in battle.
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  #26  
Old Posted Sep 4, 2009, 2:38 PM
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Recreational trails in Edmonton are outstanding, the river valley paths are awesome, but unfortunately they still have a long way to go to building a proper commuter network.
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  #27  
Old Posted Sep 4, 2009, 3:03 PM
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Originally Posted by habfanman View Post
I have the same problem with clothing. I start off freezing, soon find my 'happy temperature', then arrive a steaming ball of sweat!
Mind you, I never rode on the coldest days, but even when it was -10 (or even a bit colder) outside, I only wore a long sleeve t-shirt and my shell jacket, a thin pair of track pants and my shell pants. (plus my cycling gloves and a Bellaclava).

If I was just standing outside, i would have been really cold, but biking keeps one warm.

The hard packed snow that covered the paths for 3 months straight was much more of a detriment to biking than cold was.

I plan to continue to bike during the winter, not every day, but 2-3 days a week, minimum, as long as it's not snowing or -30.
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  #28  
Old Posted Sep 5, 2009, 9:10 PM
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Our 18 km bike path system in North Bay is mostly recreational, but there are portions of the network that travel alongside city streets, some of which are just on the edge of the downtown core. We don't have any dedicated bike lanes running right through the heart of the downtown on city streets, but the Kate Pace way runs along the length of the downtown waterfront with connections to other portions of the network that wind through the rest of the city. The city's small size make it quite possible to use the paths as a commuter route at least for part of the way to wherever you're going, and most of it is segregated from cars via a system of bridges, tunnels and buffer zones for those portions that do run alongside streets (the path runs alongside the sidewalk above the curb instead of right on the street itself).














Of course there are always jerks who think the bike lane makes for a convenient place to park.
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  #29  
Old Posted Sep 6, 2009, 6:13 PM
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The City of Vancouver's bike infrastructure is decent, although not wonderful. They have a goal of creating an approx. 1km x 1km grid of bike routes, which, at the current rate, they should generally achieve within 5-10 years. The rest of the region has significantly worse bike infrastructure, and mode share is much lower. However, it is improving.

Here's a map of the City of Vancouver's bike network:



I live in the upper right corner of the city (several blocks below the "E" in "E 1st Ave"). I work downtown, near the big cluster of bike routes under the "W" in "W Hastings St", which is partially obscured by the bike lane routes. Works out to about 14 km round trip. When I going to university, I bike to the far left of the city, the purple area to the left of Pacific Spirit Regional Park, which works out to about a 30-32 km round trip.

To expand a bit on the legend in the map:

Off Street Pathway generally means the Seawall system, particularly around Coal Harbour/Stanley Park/False Creek, such as in this picture:


Source: http://www.citevancouver.org/quad/pr...%20Network.pdf

Source: http://travel.webshots.com/photo/109...15188700BUkAXb
*edit: pic wont link properly. help??*

An improved section recently opened up as park of the Olympic Village at South-East False Creek, but generally it's being growing pretty slowly, due to most of the easy-to-implement routes having already been implemented. There are a few other short off-street pathway sections throughout the city, but they're mainly just short little routes through a park or something. Obviously, things like the seawall around Stanley Park are very popular for recreational biking, but pretty much useless for commuting.

Local Street Bikeway is basically just a side-street that's been designated as a bike route. Usually, they'll have some measures to encourage cycling and discourage vehicles from taking advantage of them. This includes things like signal buttons for major roads located at curb-side (so you don't have to go push the pedestrian one), stop signs generally directed towards cross traffic (so you don't have to slow down/stop every block), random barriers thrown up to force cars in one direction to turn (but allow bikes to travel two ways).

Arterial Bike Lanes are basically painted-on bike lanes on busy streets, similar to what other people have posted. I use these quite a bit when I'm going downtown. They're better than Sharrows (see below), but still have a lot of problems. Taxis/Delivery trucks park in them all the time, which is a pain in the ass. Drivers turning right won't even bother to check if someone is biking to their right, and I've almost been hit several times like this. Buses will also obstruct them when they're at bus stops. The general idea is that they take up the bike lane, and half a travel lane. Bikes are supposed to use the left side of the travel lane that the bus isn't using, and cars are supposed to change lanes to the next lane to the left. The problem is that most cars will only change half-a-lane, so you basically have to merge with traffic, if you dont want to wait for the bus to pull away. Arterial bike lanes will sometimes feature "bike boxes", which allow cyclists to queue jump to the front of the line at a traffic light, so they can get accross the intersection first.

Marked shared lanes is means "sharrows", similar to what Ruckus posted. Frankly, they seem a bit pointless to me; when I ride on streets with them (the one on Pender st, downtown), they really feel no different than riding on a street with nothing at all. I suppose you could argue they remind drivers to watch for bikes, but 99% of the time, in bumper-to-bumper traffic, drivers cant even see them.

---------------------

Here's a map of Vancouver's bike commuting mode shares:


Source: http://www.citevancouver.org/quad/pr...%20Network.pdf

As you can see, cycling is generally must common in the inner areas around downtown. Actually cycling in the core area is pretty low, despite the high residental population. However, walking has a 30-40 percent mode share, which tends to make up for it.

--------------------

Also, I thought I'd mention 3 significant cylcing improvements that have happened recently:

1) Carral Street Greenway

This is pretty much the new gold standard for urban bike ways in Vancouver. It's basically a Copenhagen style "cycle-track". It follows Carrall Street, connecting False Creek to Burrard Inlet along the east access to Downtown.

Looks a little desolate in this picture, I know, but it's actually pretty nice:


Source: SFUVancouver

2) Central Valley Greenway

25km Bike route from Science World to New West Quay. It more-or-less follows the route of the Millennium Line SkyTrain, which opened in 2002. It's predominantly off-street, with a couple short local-street bikeway, and arterial road bikeway sections. It also has a very brief section with Sharrows, but it's only temporary until a proper segregated path opens in a couple years.


Source: http://images.google.ca/imgres?imgur...a%3DG%26um%3D1

3) Burrard Bridge Bike Lanes.

Oh, the drama! You wouldn't believe how much outcry this move generated. Basically, the bridge had 3 lanes in each direction plus a sidewalk/bike path on each side. With both bikes and pedestrians using the paths, it was pretty dangerous, and a lot of cyclists have fallen into traffic. They took out one traffic lane, so cyclists use one traffic lane to go one direction, and the opposite sidewalk to go the other direction. Pedestrians (both directions) use the sidewalk beside the (formerly traffic) bike lane.
Here's a picture:


http://images.google.ca/imgres?imgur...a%3DN%26um%3D1
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Last edited by Jared; Sep 6, 2009 at 6:48 PM.
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  #30  
Old Posted Sep 6, 2009, 8:30 PM
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Here in Ottawa we have a pretty decent pathway system for cycling called the Capital Pathway Network. It's 180km of paths consisting of dedicated bike lanes on roads (not enough of these are physically separated from car traffic), recreational paths, and corridors used extensively by commuters. There is a big push by many councillors and community groups to start twinning some of the higher traffic pathways such as those along the Ottawa River and Rideau Canal (I'm not holding my breathe on that one).

Link the the Capital Pathway Network website: http://www.canadascapital.gc.ca/bins...&lang=1&bhcp=1

and

System Map: http://www.canadascapital.gc.ca/data..._velo_2007.pdf
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  #31  
Old Posted Sep 7, 2009, 5:11 AM
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A map of some of Winnipeg's trails

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  #32  
Old Posted Sep 7, 2009, 4:21 PM
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I'm not sure I understand this picture. Where exactly are the bike lanes, and where does automobile traffic go?

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  #33  
Old Posted Sep 7, 2009, 4:43 PM
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^ I was wondering the same thing. All I see is a conventional street, a sidewalk on the right and another sidewalk with a car parked on it on the right! (but I do see a parking meter too, so I suppose he is allowed to park here)
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  #34  
Old Posted Sep 7, 2009, 6:10 PM
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Quote:
Originally Posted by le calmar View Post
^ I was wondering the same thing. All I see is a conventional street, a sidewalk on the right and another sidewalk with a car parked on it on the right! (but I do see a parking meter too, so I suppose he is allowed to park here)
The bike path is the dark grey concrete. The idea is that the cobblestone bits separate provide a border between the sidewalk and the cycle track. The road in the middle is for vehicles.


Photo by deasine

This photo shows some of the signage a bit better. The cycle track is uni-directional BTW, there's another one on the other side of the road.
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  #35  
Old Posted Sep 8, 2009, 4:51 AM
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this video has part of the Carrall Street Greenway in the first part (0:23 to 0:51)

Video Link
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  #36  
Old Posted May 7, 2010, 3:56 AM
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Montreal to add 51km of bike paths by 2010


http://www.montrealgazette.com/trave...815/story.html
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  #37  
Old Posted May 7, 2010, 4:02 AM
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full trail maps here http://onegreencity.com/ << for winnipeg and proposed
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  #38  
Old Posted May 7, 2010, 5:46 AM
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Quote:
Originally Posted by WhipperSnapper View Post
Toronto is a work in progress but the progress is pretty impressive although I doubt they will meet the 1000 km mark but 2012. There has been a huge uproar with the loss of a single lane of traffic on Jarvis but it seems a pretty isolated case. I haven't heard any complaints in my neighbourhood which has lost 4 of 8 downtown commuter lanes of traffic along Eastern and Dundas.
Yeah I hear that Toronto is only about 50 years behind in cycling infrastructure. Can anyone say "3 years later import BIXI from Montréal without the supporting infrastructure"=Sure to FAIL

Jarvis=painted lines=FAIL. University=designed to fail=FAIL.

It all fits in with still asking for "Subway tokens please"=FAIL.

Toronto=FAIL
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  #39  
Old Posted May 12, 2010, 1:44 PM
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Ottawa has the potential to be the best cycling city in Canada, or even in North America if city council gets its act together on resolving proper bike routes through the urban downtown core. The geography is great, no big hills, and most of the waterways have recreational paths along them.



Here's a video I made going along the Ottawa River pathway below Parliament Hill and then up along the Rideau Canal and across the new Corktown Bridge:

Video Link
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  #40  
Old Posted May 12, 2010, 5:06 PM
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The Route verte puts all of Quebec within reach of your handlebars!
http://www.routeverte.com/rv/index_e.php

Made up of over 4,000 km of bikeways criss-crossing the most beautiful regions of Quebec, the Route verte puts you on the right track for the vacation of your dreams. No matter which bikeway you cycle on—the Parcours des Anses in Lévis, the Véloroute des Bleuets encircling Lac Saint-Jean, the Berri Street bike path in Montreal or the Estriade in the Eastern Townships—you’re riding on the Route verte.

This vast bicycle route—the most extensive in North America—includes all types of bikeways: bike paths, designated shared roadways and paved shoulders. Marked throughout its length, the route will encompass a total of 4,300 km when completed.

The best bicycle route in the world
The Route verte has won two prestigious awards: the Prix Ulysse, one of the Grands Prix du tourisme québécois for the Montreal region, and first place, among the ten best bicycle routes in the world, selected by the National Geographic Society.


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