Steffan Ileman wants the City of Vancouver to restore the Burrard Bridge to its pre-bike lane condition and has started a petition to rally supporters.
Ileman’s online petition will be delivered to Mayor Gregor Robertson once it hits 2,500 supporters and he only has 200 to go.
In an interview with the CBC, the 40-year West End resident reiterated “we’d like the construction to be stopped forthwith, and secondly, tear down all those concrete obstructions.”
Ileman’s petition describes the bike lanes as a “travesty” and argues that they don’t attract enough cyclists to justify their impact on motor vehicle traffic.
RELATED: Guide to Bike Lanes in Vancouver
“They should have built just reasonable curb lanes instead with reasonable width and that would have satisfied everybody,” he told the CBC.
According to city’s director of transportation Lon LaClaire, about 10 per cent of Vancouverites commute by bike, and it’s typical to see up to 7,000 bike trips across the Burrard bridge every day during warmer months.
According to data collected by the city, cyclists took 157,000 trips across the bridge in June.
Last modified: August 23, 2017
Fine. We’ll ride in the vehicle lane like we do on Beach and Pacific Avenues. He probably won’t like that though.
It really is asinine to have bike lanes on both sides. Waste of money and resources. Pedestrians down one side and bikes down the other. If cyclists would obey the simple rules of the road neither intersection would be dangerous for them. Common sense ain’t so common anymore.
We need better alternatives to moving larger numbers of people, whether that’s with better transit (more frequent) or more lanes (not fewer). To spend many millions on choking traffic down to accommodate a few cyclist doesn’t make sense to people stuck in grid-lock traffic. I don’t understand why that money couldn’t be spent on suspending a walkway /bike lane under the main bridge deck, thus leaving all lanes open to traffic.
I used to be pro bike lanes but it seems a good many cyclists prefer to zoom down the sidewalks adjacent to the bike lanes. Cyclists in Vancouver need to make up their minds – they can’t brazenly intimidate pedestrians and expect support for dedicated cycle lanes.
Bicycle lanes are a necessity as drivers cannot be relied on to watch for cyclists. However, I would like to suggest returning the pedestrian walk on the east side of the bridge. People enjoy the view of the inner bay as well as the outer. Drivers? Get out of that stink making wasteful contraption and enjoy life in the real world
The guy is deluded. He’s confusing the disruption caused by construction with one small part of the design.
Anyone with a brain can see that the design is heavily weighted in favour of motorists. The city is bending over backwards here to provide more room for driving. There are going to be extra turning lanes for driving on. More predictable traffic movements. Advance turn signals.
This was the second highest location for motor vehicle collisions in the city. Even if you weren’t the one involved in it, the delay caused by these collisions would affect things for many other motorists. Kudos to the city for improving things for motorists here. And also for saving money by tying this in with a planned trunk sewer rebuild.
I just wonder what’s wrong with this guy. Did he even take a glance at the design? Doesn’t look like he did.
As I see it, it isn’t an either/or proposition. We deserve better.
I agree that the design of the bike lanes is excessive, wasteful, and sub-optimal in terms of the use of public space. The current design repeats an incredibly stupid blunder that was introduced to urban planning from the 1920s onward, when auto manufacturers conspired to transfer privilege and entitlement from public transit (especially streetcars) to privately owned automobiles.
Since cars, particularly single-occupant motor vehicles, have ruled unchallenged for years, some are crying the blues that the reality they have bought into is changing. That’s life. Deal with it–but deal with it intelligently!
It doesn’t help to repeat a mistake with no real solution in sight. Arguing abpout what portion of the roadway should be allocated to whom misses the point if it doesn’t solve a problem.
The missing factor in the use of the Burrard bridge is where public transit fits in. Right now, it’s merely an afterthought. If we are ever to arrive at a solution everybody can live with, transit needs to be front-and-centre.
Yes, the single occupant motor vehicle–no matter the size, or what is powering it–MUST give way. It is not, and has not been sustainable for years, if it ever was at all. Change must happen, and attitudes must change accordingly. Sharing public space has to be geared to the needs of the many, and the needs of the many are so undervalued that we actually call the conveyance used by the majority as “the Loser Cruiser.”
Time for a re-think.
Yes, Burrard Bridge needs to be redesigned. But let’s not repeat Vision’s vindictive and divisive ideology of pitting motorists against cyclists. We need a healthy dose of integrative thinking and altrusim where everybody has a voice in the process, and where the needs of the many can finally be heard.
Get rid of them. It’s a waste of time and money
I’m a lifelong Vancouver cyclist since the 1970s (and yes I own a car too). I’ve NEVER had difficulty riding across the Burrard Street Bridge, or any other bridge in Vancouver for that matter. The Vision Vancouver butchering of the Burrard Street Bridge is mis-guided trying-to-be-politically-correct-green to cater to a small percentage of the cycling population versus the majority of car drivers. Probably in a few years another city council will spend more millions to rip out the bike lanes but not before wasting more money and time on more consultations. For that matter I don’t recall they did any community consultations when they decided to put in the current bike lanes and anti-suicide fences. Just NUTS.
I agree whole-heartedly with Anthony and Peter above, as I too am a cyclist and motorist.
The focus needs to be on moving the most people efficiently in the urban setting.
For better or worse, our society made a pact with the personal vehicle, and that pact is not going to be undone by carving away traffic lanes to accomodate bicycles.
It is going to be undone with efficient and convenient public transit.
But big picture aside, a couple of thoughts:
On the Burrard Bridge, one lane each way could instead have been dedicated to busses, emergency vehicles, taxis and ride-shares/car-shares.
Instead of doggedly pushing ahead bicycling infrastructure, the Vision council should have recognized and promoted the nascent car-sharing phenomenon that started in the late 1990s.
,