This is What A Bike Lane Looks Like?

Posted on 4 June 2010

It’s the last day of Bike to Work Week. Even though I bike to work more often than not, this week I forced myself to do it on days when I normally wouldn’t have (rain, up the University Way hill on a deadline). And you know what? It wasn’t bad.  Especially since in most of these instances, I could have taken the bus, which very wisely has bike racks on it now. Hopefully other people had the same experience and we see an increase in biking in the city. Before I ride home, here’s a couple of biking links to consider:
“The New Grand Tour“ is a great article from the Walrus about how Europe has embraced sustainability in a way that North America really hasn’t. Here’s an excerpt that made me re-think what biking culture could be:

“…we rode almost exclusively in dedicated bike lanes, which as Canadians we’d come to believe consisted of a stripe of paint on the edge of a busy roadway, or even just a pictograph of a bicycle floating helplessly among parked and idling cars (serving mainly as practice targets for passing motorists). Copenhagen’s bike lanes, by a comparison so stark it makes little sense to use the same term, are flawlessly designed and maintained, with physical barriers such as curbs, medians, and parked cars between them and the motorized traffic, and their own traffic lights at major intersections…
““Here, the bicycle is a vehicle,” he explained. “It’s a tool. We have 500,000 people who ride every day, and I always say we don’t have any cyclists in Copenhagen. None of them identify themselves as cyclists. They’re just people who are getting around the city in the quickest way.””

Look at the picture above. That’s not uncommon for a bike lane along the main commuting lanes in Prince George. It’s better in places, but if a sign asking motorists to “share the road” is all we can ask for coming off one of the main highways in the city, it’s not exactly encouraging newcomers to commuter-biking culture.
With that in mind, This Magazine argues that bike share programs in Canada may be on their way back »

Filed under: bikes, cities, Prince George