David Staples: Top 10 reasons to build downtown bike lanes
DAVID STAPLES, EDMONTON JOURNAL
City council is gearing up to spent $7.5 million on 7.1 km of bike lanes in downtown Edmonton.
This new splurge is planned after already spending $11 million in 2013 on suburban bike lanes that are so detested by the vast majority of Edmontonians that they became a major issue in the last civic election, with some of the lanes subsequently getting scraped off city streets. The little used, unloved remnants deserve the same fate. Only a group of stubborn city councillors who refuse to admit they screwed up keep them from a good scraping.
So it’s a terrible idea to invest $7.5 million more, right? Wrong. In fact, $7.5 million for a new bike lane grid in our downtown is worthy of our support.
Here are the Top Ten reasons why these new bike lanes are a great idea:
The new bike lanes will be much safer because they will be physically segregated from traffic. The 2013 bike lanes didn’t work because they weren’t segregated, but were “sharrows,” sketchily demarked by an insubstantial painted line on busy roads. Cyclists quickly realized that drivers may or may not notice, understand or respect the painted lines, or even see them in winter. In the end, only a small percentage of hardcore cyclists, those few who were already comfortable riding in traffic, were keen to use the sharrows. The lack of use upset fiscal conservatives who hate government waste, not to mention cyclists who dearly wanted bike lanes that work.
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http://edmontonjournal.com/news/loca...own-bike-lanes