Comment 32664

By rideyerbike (registered) | Posted August 07, 2009 at 14:48:34

A strategic move might be to add bike lanes to the King and Main corridors at the same time as their 2-way reconstruction and LRT construction so as not to focus attention on this singular change which would no doubt cause much uproar by the car-focused majority.

I would take the construction of bike lanes on these arterials a step further then simply painting lines on the pavement as Jason suggests. Physically separated bike lanes such as you see in places like Copenhagen, Montreal, Bogota, London (to name a few) are far safer and more effective at encouraging cycling ridership than our typical method of a painted line. see http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ONS2ptAR4... These separated bike lanes can be separated from traffic by a curb, cones, a concrete island, stantions, etc.. Doing this contruction at the same time as the LRT related road re-construction would be both cost-effective and strategic. The rhetoric used to labeling such challenges "unrealistic" is completely counter-productive to producing positive change or any type of solution to this real problem.

Regarding animosity between cyclist and motorists, having lived in both Vancouver and Hamilton as a cyclist, I've noted that drivers tend to be less accommodating/respectful to cyclists on the road in Hamilton in comparison to Van. I think that this is mostly a factor of a more car dominated city and the fact that there is generally poorer cycling infrastructure in Hamilton in comparison to Vancouver. Improving infrastructure will in turn improve cycling ridership, which will in turn help to normalize cycling as a valid mode of transportation and improve drivers response toward them in sharing the road.

Jeremy

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