Arbutus corridor: the destruction of a greenway

This Vancouver rail corridor used to be double tracked, and saw passenger service from 1902 to 1954. The last commercial train has been seen in 2001. The asset has been considered very early for a North South rail transit line: A more direct alignment via Cambie, has been preferred for the Canada line circa 2006. That was closing a chapter…However the track was still there, and the hope of a local tram has always stay alive in some circles: the 2010 Olympic line demonstration was giving reason for hope…and CP rail was wanting to bank on its precious real estate. After a bit of bullying by CP rail, in order to get a fair price, the city agreed to purchase the corridor for $55M in March 2016, openinga ew chapter:

The Arbutus corridor was a defacto Greenway:

The Arbutus corridor circa 2014  (credit photo CityHallWatch)

Like many disused railway corridors, a greenway was a logical option for a corridor presenting some natural qualities. However where usually the authorities capitalize on the specificity of such assets, the city of Vancouver has decided to destroy it: A destruction in 2 steps [3]:

Destroying the memory of the place

The Arbutus corridor circa 2009 (credit photo Stephen Waddell)

It has been vague promises of reusing the corridor for a rail transit by the City, but this quickly vansihed, and instead to see a  preservation of what make this corridor apart and a reminder of its potential alternative uses, it quickly appeared that the city had negociated the removal of  all things related to the railway. That is certainly one of the safest mean to kill any prospect of reactivation of this  corridor as a future rail transit corridor (1), it is also a a first blunt to the soul of the place.

Destroying the feel of the place

Many disused urban railway corridors exhale a specific  atmosphere found nowhere else in a city, which people growth to appreciate and like it. It was also the case  for the Arbutus corridor, something Patrick Condon has worded as “People have gotten quite used to the Arbutus Corridor as kind of a romantic landscape — the kind of unkempt quality of it. it’s level of decay has become something that people kind of like…” [4], what reflects pretty much the position of the current Paris city council, especially as expressed   by Christophe Najdovski, the councilor in charge of transportation and public space of Paris, who want to preserve “the mystery and magic” of  the Petite ceinture, a disused railway in Paris [6].

Beyond Paris, many other cities capitalize on the experiental side of their assets, that is the case for the Shell road trail in Richmond as stated by the city website:

“The Shell Road Trail is long interior trail that runs north/south along the Shell Road corridor from Alderbridge Way to Williams Road. This interior trail has a distinctly rural feel to it with tall trees and shrubs lining both sides of it, making it a unique trail experience in an urban City Centre.”

The Richmond Shell road trail, and the Colombes “voie verte” (greenway) illustrated below:

The Vancouver official development plan for Arbutus was also not far of this vision, since it was designating it as a greenways, including without limitation [2]:

 

• (i) pedestrian paths, including without limitation urban walks, environmental demonstration
  trails, heritage walks and nature trails; and
• (ii) cyclist paths.

 

 

The challenge for the designer of such  places is to preserve their specificities and feels, while making them accessible to people of all ages and abilities… In the name of the later, Vancouver has simply destroyed the former:

A 4 meter wide bike path under construction? – credit photo [5]

Under public outrage, the city has potentially recognized the insentivity of its position and halted work…temporarily…

Does other solutions were possible?

Yes and it is not even too late to apply them, but what is almost sure is that the corridor has already lost its cachet: whatever final design will be – and it could be a nice one – it is poised to be more bland and artificial since it will be build of a blank state. The soul of the place is lost and, and it is not something designers are armed to restore. The end result is that the whole city will be poorer in diveristy of experience

The main issue now is the treatment of the surface path: it is the object of another post

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[1] It is one of the reason why Paris took the complete opposite step for the Petite Ceinture, as we have seen in a previous post

[2] Arbutus Corridor Official Development Plan (Adopted by By-law No. 8249, July 25, 2000), city of Vancouver

[3] The destruction of the greenway is documented on the Stephen Rees blog, here and there

[4] Arbutus’ asphalt greenway not paved with good intentions, critics say, Matt Robinson, VancouverSUn, August 3 2016, Vancouver

[5] City paves way for Arbutus Greenway, Naoibh O’Connor, Vancourier, August 2, 2016, Vancouver

[6] Petite ceinture : faire le tour de Paris à vélo et autres fantasmes, rue89, September 25th, 2013

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On the capacity of bikeways

it has been lot of research carried out on the capacity of roads, transit or pedestrians infrastructures, with results proven empirically. Such don’t really exist for the cycle tracks, but as the success of the London’s “Super cycling highways” shown, it will become a significant matter

NACTO, in a recent publication [8], estimates the capacity of a 2 way bike lane (3 to 3.50m) at 7,500 bike/hour. This number seems to be derived of the Highway Capcity Manual citing very dusty publications [1]. this post argues that the capacity of a bikeway is more in the 1,500 cyclist/hr/lane (where a lane is 1.20m to 1.5m wide)

A short Litterature review

Most of the papers trying to estimate a bike lane’s throughput tend to rely either on mathematical models, experiments or a blend of both:

An example of experiment leaded by [2] to determinate a bike lane throughput. The experiment above has allowed [2] to conclude that the capacity of a bikelane should be in the 2,500 bike/hr range

The problem of such approaches is they are not (yet) validated by practice (…and in some case, the experiments seem to be more representative of a velodrome typology than an urban bike lane). They also tend to provide a great range of result: One literature study [3] found a capacity of 1,500-5,000 cyclists per hour and traveling speed around 12-20 km/h. Another literature study [4] found a capacity of 2,000-10,000 cyclists per hour for a 2.5 m wide cycle track. It is also important to notice that all these numbers concern an uninterrupted bike lane (e.g bike lane with no intersection).

However, [5] ( as cited by [6] ) reported that the theoretical and practical capacities of a Chinese bicycle lane are about 2000 bicycles/h/ln and 1280 bicycles/h/ln, respectively… That is also in line with an empirical result presented by [7] concerning the Denmark:

Bike lane capacity as a function of its width, as according to [7]

How much lanes of cyclists fit in 3.5m width bikeway
[7] tend to answer to it:

If a 1.8 to 2 m wide bikeway fit 2 lanes of cyclists, any additional lane could require a 1.20m additional width (notice that the cyclists could have a tendency to ride in quincunx to increase their available lateral room). That is the reason for the suggested significant increase in capacity as soon as an unidrectional bike lane reach 3m in the graph above. (There is also some reasons to believe that a 4 meters bidirectioanl bike lane is not width enough to enable 2 lanes of cyclists in each direction in a sustainable way: see video below)

Validation of the numbers in practice

Up to recently, it was basically no opportunity to validate a bikelane model capacity in real life. China of course has wide and busy bike lanes, but they has never presented a typology directly applicable to Europe or America, be by their different geometry or by the type of vehicle: many trikes (up to recently), and nowadays those bikelane tend to be overwhelmed by sccoter (electric or not) (- 70% in Hangzhou as measured by [6]. Bikes also tend to move much more slowly). However, with the recent opening of the London cycle highway this things could change:

Good Morning, London. This is what London's Blackfriars Bridge looks like #cyclesuperhighway https://t.co/byAMWq1QLz

—
Sustrans London (@SustransLondon) May 17, 2016

This video represent the cycling traffic on the London’s Blackfriars bridge: The incoming lanes presents the symptom of a bikeway reaching capacity (bike moving slowly, at speed apparently just enough to maintain balance, and the rare occasional take over use the opposite lane)

What is the effective throughput of Black friars Bridge bike lane?

Sure enough, some cycling supporters quickly raised the question while some other provided some numbers. Here are ours

• there are 37 incoming cyclists crossing a a line (represented by the bottom of the video)
• there are 24 outgoing cyclists crossing the same line

that represents an “instant” throughput of 11,000 cyclists/hour on a period of 20s, or ~3,300 cyclists/hour/ln in the busiest direction (or the equivalent of 10,000 cyclists/hour per car width lane).

First issue, Instant throughput ≠ Throughput

Traffic tends to not flow homegeneously (move in wave, aka “stop and go” traffic), and a measure on 20s can’t be directly scaled into a more generalized throughput. [7] faced with similar issues applied a correction factor based on freeway traffic observation (by comparing maximum observed traffic volumes in 15 minute intervals and maximum volumes in 10 and 20 sec intervals on freeways): this correction factor is estimated to be 0.63

The estimated maximum throughput per lane observed on the Blackfriar Bridge video above become closer to 2000bile/hr/lane. Still a sustantial number (but already significantly less than the number touted by NACTO), a number also in agreement with theorical number exposed by

[5]

Second issue, Uninterrupted bike lane throughput ≠ Interrupted bike lane Throughput

The video below better illustrates the later issue:

Wow, exactly as predicted! RT @steinsky: Nobody uses the #cyclesuperhighway because the queues are too long. pic.twitter.com/YEcPVdkzz9

— Chris Boardman (@Chris_Boardman) May 10, 2016

There are right and left turning cyclists, which fatally indhers the capacity of a bike lane…and there are signal controlled intersections (a necessity as illustrated by the difficulty of the cyclist, waiting at an intersection, to integrate itself in the main bike lane). As for motor traffic, all these tend to halve the real capacity of a typical interrupted urban bike lane vs an hypothetcal uninterrupted one. So that the real capacity we could measure here tend to be more in the ~1,000 to ~1,700 bike/hr/ln (according to if we apply a correcting factor or not). Those numbers are also in line with results from the field carried by [5] and [7]

Why all that matters?
Notice the 2 double deckers in one lane, seen in less than 30s: Could we conclude that the transit capacity of this lane is 24,000people/hour?

It matters since wrong numbers could lead to wrong decisions on the allocation of the street space, but also on the “right sizing” of a bike infrastructure.
The matter is of importance, essentially in regard of transit:

There is no question that a bike lane can achieve a very high throughput but does a 3.5 meter bike lane can carry as much as people than a tram or a BRT?

According to NACTO, a bus lane (BRT) can carry 4,000 people (8,000 if train): Those number thought slightly optimistic [9] are fairly realistic, and can be verified empirically…Here we infer that a bike lane of similar width (3 to 3.5m) can be competitive with a buslane but not a trams transit system, in term of throughput.

Furthermore we have not touched the whole notion of Level of Service: the mentioned capacity for Transit are design capacity, that is capacity allowing the transit system at its design (optimal) speed. Reaching the capacity of the bike lane as measured on the BlackFriars Bridge tend to infers a degradation of the speed for cyclists (at least by queuing at traffic light). We also didn’t touch the bike parking issue

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[1] the third edition of the Highway capacity Manual suggests a capacity range of 1700-2500 bicycle/hr/ln where each lane is 3 to 4 feet. Those numbers are inferred of previous publication (“bikeway planning design and guideline” institute of traffic and transportation engineering University of California at Los Angeles 1972, “Geometric Design” by W. King, C., and Harkens, in Transportation and Traffic Engineering Handbook, Institute of Transportation Engineers, 1972). the 7,500 number touted by the NACTO correspond to the highest range of it considering that a 3.5m wide can feet 3 lanes of bike

[2] “Experimental feature of bicycle flow and its modeling” Jiang R. Hu M. , Wu Q. and Song W.

[3] “Operational Analysis of Uninterrupted Bicycle Facilities”, Allen, P., Rouphail, N., Hummer, J. E., and Milazzo, J. S. Transportation Research Record, 1636 29-36, 1998

[4] “Bicycle Traffic Flow Characteristics: Experimental Re-sults and Comparisons”, Navin, F. P. D. ITE Journal, 64 31-36, 1994

[5] “Capacity and level of service for urban bicycle path in China”, Feng Li, China MUnicpal Engineering magazine 1995, 71: 11-14

[6] “Estimating Capacity of Bicycle Path on Urban Roads in Hangzhou, China”, Zhou D., Xu, C. and Wang D. , Transportation Research Board 94th Annual Meeting, 1995.

[7] Analysis of Bicycle Traffic on One-way Bicycle Tracks of Different Width, Thomas Skallebæk Buch and Poul Greibe, Trafitec,

[8] Transit Street Design Guide, NACTO 2016

[9] The French CERTU suggest a design capacity of 3,500 for aBRT, 6,000 fro a tram. Translink considered a design capacity of 3,000 for a BRT, and 7,000 for a LRT on Broadway.

Transit on Commercial Drive…or the cost of a bike lane

Some numbers extracted from the Translink GTFS feed [4] (for the day of Sept 5th, 2014), for the 2km segment between Hasting and Broadway. The current average speed is ~11.5km/h, could be increased to ~15km/h with a bus lane…or reduced to ~9km/h according to the tradeoff done to implement bike paths

• number of #20 runs: 304 (but I counted only 276 between Broadway and Hasting) requiring a minimum of 19 vehicles in revenue service [3]
• time and speed between Broadway and Hasting [6]:

Min time	Average time	Max time
10.3mn	5.3mn	12.4mn
Max speed	Average speed	Min speed
22.6km/h	11.65km/h	9.65km/h

• ~15,700 annual operating hours meaning $1.57 millions in annual operating cost (at $100/hr, in line with [5])

bus lane Impact on Commercial Drive
We are considering the previously presented Commercial Drive proposal as illustrated below

4.5meters wide bike+bus lanes, with bus keeping in its lane at bus stop. It features transit signal priority and right turn specific signal to protect both transit and cyclists – Transit average speed is estimated at 15km/h

• This bus lane, featuring clearly marked corridors (protected in one direction) and transit priority signal, suggests that average speed typical of BRT or urban LRT could be achieved: that is ~20km/h.
• That said, noticeabily because the stop are closely spaced, an average speed of 15km/h could be more realisticaly and conservatively achieved:
That is roughly the average speed of the bus 20 outside the Commercial Drive segment.

Annual operating cost

average speed	Average time	Annual operating cost
9km/h	13.3mn	$1.9M
11.5km/h	10.5mn	$1.5M
15km/h	8mn	$1.2M
20km/h	6mn	$0.9M

The potential operating cost saving is in the tune of of $300,000 to $600,000/year.

On the opposite, a configuration of Commercial Drive with a single lane of traffic per direction to preserve parking [2], negatively impacts the speed of the bus, as we have seen before:

Commercial street redesigned as per StreetForeveryone group – Transit average speed is estimated at 9km/h

Similar configurations, be on Davie or Robson, suggest a reduction of the average speed to ~9km/h; That could increase the route 20 operating cost by $400,000/year:

the bus+bike lanes proposal is conductive of $1 Million in operating cost saving versus a proposal favoring street parking over transit.

A bus lane + traffic signal priority, allows an increase in the bus schedule reliability: lay over can be reduced accordingly, increasing the operating saving

Operating cost is only part of the picture:

Capital cost

the slower a bus route is, the more buses are required at same frequency/seat capacity:

The steeper the slope of a line, the faster the travel, and the sooner a vehicle return to its orgin, ready to do another run. the number of starting lines in between represent the required number of vehicle – credit Melbourne on Transit

The bus requirement is compounded by two conflating issues:

Demand is at its greatest at peak hour, but

transit speed is also at its slowest at peak hour

.

On the route 20, afternoon peak hour traffic cost ~4 buses:

number of vehicle in service on route 20 according to the time of the day (graph for friday Sept 5th, 2014)

A bus lane, making transit more immune to traffic congestion, allows to reduce drastically the peak hour buses requirement (in our example, the average speed maintained at ~15km/h, vs 9.5km/h currently in peak hour)

Adding a peak hour bus is a very expensive proposition: it means (to preserve spare ratio, and other contingency)

• the Purchase of an additional bus
• Adding storage capacity for this bus (even if in use 20mn a day)
• Adding maintenance cost
• adding a driver on payroll and all ancilliairy cost (training, administration)

According to a conversation with a former Toronto Transit Commission employee, the TTC is costing an additional peak hour bus at $100,000 a year (that is for a 40footer, typically sold a ~$300,000)

It is worth to note that Translink is in very short supply of articulated trolleybus, estimated each at $1M

Revenue

It is no secret that the faster a transit service is, the more ridership it will attract. That has been again recently verified in Seattle, with a quasi linear relationship:

• an increase of 20% in speed is conductive of a similar increase in the ridership, which de facto increase the bus operator revenue[1]

This coumpounded to lower operating cost makes Transit much more financially sustainable.

Conclusion

When all the effects are combined, it is relatively conservative to estimate that a bike lane, done at the expense of transit on Commerical, could end up to cost more than $1 million/year to Translink, when compared to a solution improving both

…and here we have analyzed only the direct cost for Translink…

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[1] New markings aim to keep drivers out of Battery Street bus lane, Aubrey Cohen, SeattlePi- Tuesday, October 21, 2014.

[2] We refers here to the “Street for Everyone” proposal we have previouslly discussed, which has also been discussed on the pricetag blog.

[3] That makes the route 20 the 4th most frequent bus route of the network, behind route 99,9 and 41.

[4] See our reference spreadsheet (which has been updated with the 2014 data) for further detail.

[5] We use here the hourly operating cost as stated in the 2013 Bus Service Performance Review (see Annex A): it is worth to note that this hourly operating cost doesn’t include neither bus lay over and dead end trips. It doesn’t differentiate artics buses from standard ones too: the $100 mark is a very significant under estimate of the real operating cost of a route. A $180 per customer hour service could be closer to reality as we have seen before.

[6] It seems that the average speed of the route 20 is decreasing year over year, almost 10% reduction in the last 7 years according to our spreadsheet [4] (which also depends of the Translink data quality): A probable consequence of the city council inaction on Transit front

The bike lane vs the park

…Or should a bike lane be built at any price…

The Vancouver park board, seems to believe that the public consulation on the Cornwall-Point Grey bike lane, makes a similar public engagement redundant when comes the time to design a seaside bikelane at Kitsilano Beach. Instead, an intercept survey was chosen: the following question was asked to 370 “park users” :

Our goal is to make walking and cycling in and through the parks safer, more convenient, and more comfortable – without compromising the many ways, people use the park. Do you support this goal?

95% naturally supported this laudable goal…but does that give license to the park board to aprove anything, as long as it is called a bike lane, as it has done on October 7th by approving a $2.2 million path bisecting the Kitsilano park?

The need for a bike lane

There is no question that Kitsilano park is very well used: bikes and pedestrians cohabitation on the current seaside path is problematic. In an effort to reduce conflicts, cyclists are asked to dismount on the stretch along the beach itself on busy days… Some cyclists comply….

There is no question either that cyclists are here overwhelmingly on a leisure trip, looking at a seaside experience:

• the fact that a route thru Kits point is unconvenient to commuter cyclist is a reason why it has not been pursued by the Cornwall-Point Grey team [2]
• The selected route, York, didn’t remove the need to improve cycling facilities for recreational user looking at a seaside experience.

This was recognized in the Cornwall-Point Grey consultation, deferring improvment to the existing seaside greenway between Balsam and Burrard to further consultation with park users [2]….

Instead of “improvments” to the existing path, the park board is preferring to build a new one, albeit a reasonnable option…but which is proceeding without consultation:

the planned bike route

…That is the most detailled map provided by the Park board staff [1]….it was considered good enough by the Vancouver park board to approve the project on October 7,2013.

The alignment raises several questions:

• it doesn’t connect in any meaningful way with the York Avenue bike lane
That could be done at Balsam street on the West side, but more importantly at either Yew street or Arbutus street on the East side
• it seems to multiply the zone of conflicts rather than to reduce them between the foot of Yew street and the Boathouse restaurant (this part of the park is heavily used by sun bathers)


Among many safety hazards, cyclists will eventually have to deal with backing trucks.

• In other part of the park, it “sterilizes” large swath of the park, that is bisecting the park in such way that some part become practically unsuable as illustrated below -where a ~10 meter wide strip is made unavailable for usual park use:

the 3.5meter wide bike lane cut accross the park…Notice the swath of grass on the right becomes practically not useable by park users

The bike lane could have been put on Arbutus street, a neighborood street in Kits point, but apparently the park board has considered the 66feet wide street too narrow for adding a bike lane:

Arbutus street at Kits point: the 66 feet wide neighborood street s apparently too narrow to accomodate a bike lane

A similar observation could be done at Hadden park, where cyclist are already separated of the sea by the Maritime musseum, and where a bike path on Ogden avenue could not compromise the seaside experience either:

Ogden avenue along hadden park, offer already a great cycling experienc which just need to be connected with the rest of the network

In both case, it requests to suppress some parking spots. Something the park board seems wary to do, in fact the report mentions [1]:

The parking lot at the foot of McNicholl Street will be reduced but leave twenty spots, including ten with waterfront views. Impact on parking revenues is considered to be negligible.

Should we be relieved that no parking spot with water front view has been endangered by the bike lane?

Beyond the park board, here lies the problem of the party ruling Vancouver: As we have noticed before, their bike lanes agenda, is a single and narrow minded one…it is one consisting of laying down bike lanes at the exclusion of any other considerations and for that, it follows the path of least resistance, instead to make clear choice:

• Reallocating space for cyclits at the expense of the car, and not other vulnerable users

Everything needs to give way to the bike lane.

The connection between Hadden park (Ogdon Avenue) and Kitsilano beach (Arbutus) should have been open to discussion: Does a bend to follow as close as possible the shoreline (like done in the proposal) is really necessary?

• One should weight the benefits of a brief moment of extra scenery for cyclists against the costs of eliminating prime space for picnickers, and constructing a longer and convoluted route (eventually preventing cyclists to spread out further west

Thought that the usual suspects will be against the kitsilano bike lane for the sake to be against a bike lane, they will feel conforted in their battle by being joined by people coming of a quarter which should haven’t been bothered: the defensors of our parks….

One doesn’t need to be against bike lanes, to recognize, once again, tha lack of judgement from the Vancouver park board: Eventually due to lack of proper consultation, this bike lane suffering of lack of though is ill conceived (*).

We already hear the unconditional supporters of bike lanes pointing at the successfully used bike lane to prove us wrong…Exactly same logic could apply whether the park board had elected to build a parking lot instead of a bike lane.

(*) To be sure it is a done deal suffering no discussion [3]

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[1] Seaside Greenway Improvements,Vancouver Park Board, Oct 1st, 2013

[2] Seaside Greenway Completion and York Bikeway (Phase 1 of Point Grey-Cornwall Active Transportation Corridor),General Manager of Engineering Services, City of Vancouver, July 16, 2013

[3] Kits Beach bike path a done deal, Sandra Thomas, Vancouver Courier – October 15, 2013

Mighty Segregated bike lanes

…or perceived safety and objective safety of the cycle tracks

A study on Toronto and Vancouver (Canada) from [4]: the risk of bike infrastructure separated of traffic is under-estimated. Note the result carried for the cycle track is an aberrant and irrelevant one for reason explained in [8]

Usually, Urban segregated bike lanes (cycle tracsk) are perceived as safer than non segregated one, by many cycle advocates and public alike. Alas most accident statistics say otherwise, and most scientific studies conclude, consistently overtime, that segregated bike lanes impair safety by ~20% ([1] summarizes and complete previous studies, see also a list of studies at [9]), some older studies putting this number up to 4 time higher [2].

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Of course, it is possible to find some studies saying otherwise, but usually those studies show significant methodology shortcomings. To focus only on recent Canada centric examples: [5] draws conclusion on cycle track from a field study conducted in cities not having such infrastructure per sei, as seen in [8] and obvious selction biais discredit results from [3] (more critics here and there):

Montreal, QC: In (3), a separate bike path in a one lane residential street (rue Brebeuf) is compared to an up to 6 lanes thoroughfare (rue st Denis) on a 1km section (Rachel to Laurier), where St Denis has more intersection, and higher speed limit than Brebeuf...to conclude that separates bike lane improve cyclist safety! (no indication of motor traffic volume is provided) -

The most recent study extended to the USA by the same authors, [10], seems to suffer similar flaws [11].

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In urban area, most of the cyclist accidents are due to conflict with motor vehicles (85% in French cities according to the OSNIR), and most of them occur at intersection: In Canadian cities, 50% of fatal accidents and 72% of accidents resulting in serious injury occurred at intersections [12].

Thought, that a separated bike lane can remove potential conflicts along a road, and is recognized to reduce risk in such cases, it makes matter worse at intersections: This is mainly due to the fact cyclists, not on the road, tend to be overlooked by other road users, generating conflict at road intersections. The increased risk for cyclist is illustrated below:

According to (2), the cyclist could be up to 12 time safer on the right side of the street - credit photo (6)

Aware of this fact, Some transportation professional organizations don’t recommend separated bike lane: it is the case for the AASHTO in the USA, or the CERTU for urban area in France. A position supported by numeorus cyclist organizations, be in France (FFCT, Fubicy) or Germany (ADFC), which have been at best rather neutral on the development of segregated cycle track, in some case opposed, and consistently advocating against the mandatory use of it. That eventually became the case for most of the french cycle track, circa 2000. For this later purpose a new road sign has been introduced, and Germany is following track:

The cycle in a blue square sign has been introduced circa 2000: it indicates a recommended cycle track. The cycle in a blue disc indicate a mandatory cycle track ... except of course in UK Which has not ratified the Vienna convention on road sign, from which those signs are derived

An issue is that motorists tend to ignore the difference, and harass cyclists not using the cycle tracks

Traffic engineers, on their side, sometimes eager to remove cyclist of the road for their “good”, have worked to increase the safety of separate bike lane:

Reintroduction into general traffic at intersection

Rennes, France (Armorique Bld): Cycle track merging in general traffic at intersection, and resuming after it

Treating cyclist as pedestrian at intersection

Hong Kong (Along Ting Kok Rd, Kong Kong NT): Cyclists are expected to walk their bikes to the cycle track... and dismount at every intersections...what by the way is seldom respected in despite of the British style staggered pedestrian crossing! -credit photo left (16), right, Google

Cycling Commuters are generally not impressed by those treatments, which are just slowing down their commute, even when the obligation to walk the bike at intersections (Hong Kong case), is obviously widely disregarded by cyclists using such facilities.

The Copenhagen’s Treatment: Blue cycle crossings

Copenhagen, DK: An intersection where potential conflict zones are highlighted in blue – credit photo (13)

It has been “invented” in Copenhagen in 1981: The basic idea is to mark the area of conflict between motor vehicles and cyclists so road users pay more attention to this conflict and cyclists have a lane marking through the junction area. Alas, while it is found effectively reducing the number of accidents (and injuries) with one line, it increases it with 2 lines or more, according to [13].

A reason for that is that, it becomes too much solicitation for the motorist than he can process – resulting in an increase of rear ending collisions and red light runnings; and provides a false “sense of safety” to the cyclists, becoming more complacent- not doing head check or using hand signals according to [14]– what is consistent with the “naked street and risk compensation theories.

…and more often that not:

Separated bike lanes come with a panoply of restrictive sign

All, in the name of cycling safety of course…

Left, Bideford UK; center, Harlow UK (now dismantled); right Vancouver, CA - credit photo resp (5),(unknown),(16)

But at the end, it is sometimes better to give-up

…than to cut the trees:

Rennes, France (Clos Courtel Street): A once mandatory segregated bike lane, has been replaced by a painted bike lane, allowing much better visibility of cyclists by other road users - credit photo Google

Should we be Against the separated bike lane?

or…Should we support the helmet law under evidence of greater safety provided by the helmet

Both generate passionate debates, and unfortunately, both generate biased scientific literature too.

Supporters of the helmet laws are because they are concerned by the safety of existing cyclists, they will be obviously against separated bike lanes for the same reason. Not surprisingly, most of the anti cyclist lobbyist will fell in this category

Supporter of the helmet laws supporting separated bike lane are not logical with themselves and probably grossly misinformed

Opponent to the helmet laws, will explain that, while the safety of existing cyclists is important, it is not paramount- One have to take a more holistic view to assess the benefit/drawback of such safety tool than the existing cycling population- and opponent to the helmet laws, without necessarily denying the positive safety effect of the helmet on an individual, will oppose to a law on the ground that it discourages sufficiently cycling to have a general negative effect for the society.
Same logic apply to the cycle tracks: there is no need to deny their negative effect on road safety, or to produce biased studies to try to counter evidence, to support them: that is only conductive of complacency with poorly designed cycle tracks which do no good for cycling. Former Vancouver Planning Director, Brent Toderian was able to implicitly recognize the safety issue and supporting it [17]: What is important is to produce evidence that the positive effect they induce outweigh their negative ones

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[1] Traffic safety on bicycle paths – results from a new large scale Danish study, ICTCT workshop Melbourne, 2008

[2] Signalreglerade korsningars funktion och olycksrisk för oskyddade trafikanter – Delrapport 1: Cyklister. Linderholm, Leif, Institutionen för trafikteknik, LTH: Bulletin 55, Lund 1984

[3] Risk of injury for bicycling on cycle tracks versus in the street, Anne C Lusk, Peter G Furth, Patrick Morency, Luis F Miranda-Moreno, Walter C Willett and Jack T Dennerlein, Injury Prevention, February 2011. doi:10.1136/ip.2010.028696.

[4] Route Infrastructure and the Risk of Injuries to Bicyclists: A Case-Crossover Study, Teschke K, Harris MA, Reynolds CC, Winters M, Babul S, Chipman M, Cusimano MD, Brubacher JR, Hunte G, Friedman SM, Monro M, Shen H, Vernich L, Cripton PA., American Journal of Public Health: December 2012, Vol. 102, No. 12, pp. 2336-2343.

[5] Safe Cycling: How Do Risk Perceptions Compare With Observed Risk?, Meghan Winters, Shelina Babul, H.J.E.H. (Jack) Becker, Jeffery R. Brubacher, Mary Chipman, Peter Cripton, Michael D. Cusimano, Steven M. Friedman, M. Anne Harris, Garth Hunte, Melody Monro, Conor C.O. Reynolds, Hui Shen, Kay Teschke, Injury Prevention, Canadian Journal of Public Health , Vol 103, No 9, 2012

[6] Bicycle Quaterly

[7] Gary James

[8] Conclusion of both [4] and [5] are drawn from a study carried from May 2008 to Nov 2009 in Toronto and Vancouver. To the bets of our knowledge, it was no “cycle track” in Toronto, and the only ones able to qualify in Vancouver, were an experiment started on July 2009 on Burrard Bridge, with no intersection along the ~1km cycle track segment, and a ~300m segment in one direction on a quiet street (Carral street) with ~300 cars at peak hour with only one very quiet intersection (Keefer street) featuring ~120 car at peak hour (From City of Vancouver’s 2006 traffic count) what is barely representative of a typical cycle track: The result provided for the cycle tracks is hence certainly irrelevant, and that is the reason it stands as an outlier.

[9] Bicycle Infrastructure Studies review by Ian Brett Cooper

[10] Bicycle Guidelines and Crash Rates on Cycle Tracks in the United States, Anne C. Lusk, Patrick Morency, Luis F. Miranda-Moreno, Walter C. Willett, Jack T. Dennerlein, American Journal of Public Health, July 2013

[11] [10] draws conclusion by comparing current crash rate on some cycle tracks with some numbers collected, sometimes in specific situation- like a study on Boston’s bike messengers- more than 10 years ago, without correcting them of external factors, like significant general crashes reduction rate in the last decade, and well documented safety in number effect affecting more particularly the cyclists. Furthermore, one could argue that the “crash rate” is a very poor, if not uncorrelated, proxy, to qualify the safety of a road infrastructure: Roundabout are well-known to increase the rate of crashes, vs a signaled intersection, but they are also well recognized to reduce the risk of serious injuries, most of the crashes being limited to fender-bender type. In other word, a crash rate ratio is not representative of the safety social cost of an infrastructure…what ultimately matter. More awkward [10] suggests that “The AASHTO recommendations may have been influenced by the predominantly male composition (more than 90%) of the report’s authors” without being able to substantiate this assertion, showing that we have here more a opinion paper: attacking the gender of authors to disqualify their works, seems pretty petty at best!

[12] Vulnerable Road User Safety: A Global Concern, Transport Canada, 2004.

[13] Safety effects of blue cycle crossings: A before-after study, Søren Underlien Jensen, Accident Analysis & Prevention, Volume 40, Issue 2, March 2008

[14] Evaluation of Blue Bike-Lane Treatment in Portland, Oregon. Hunter,W.W., Harkey, D.L., Stewart, J.R., Birk, M.L., Transportation Research Record 1705, 2000

[15] The finding of [13] seems in fact to suggest that the increase in accident and injuries are mainly among motorists, and eventually moped: so that in fact the blue line could effectively be not than “unsafe” for cyclists. Unfortunately, the paper doesn’t provide detailed break down of the injuries according to the transport mode. In any case, the measured global effect is a negative one

[16] www.vivendesign.com

[17] Vancouver Embraces Bikes, Adds Lanes, Tim Newcomb, Planning;, Vol. 77 Issue 2, Feb2011

bike errand in Lulu Island…

…or a bike commuting adventure in Richmond

Richmond with its flat land should be a paradise for cyclists, and indeed it offers interesting trails on the dykes and elsewhere. Stephen Rees has extensively covered them and others Richmond related cycling issues in a serie of posts [sr1][sr2][sr4], so here is another view focusing more on utility cycling, that is basically cycling to go to work/study. Below is a snapshot of what makes such cycling an adventurous proposition in Richmond

The bike lanes or lack of…

A B&W sign seems to indicate a bike lane, motorists have a different opinion. A green sign indicates direction against common sense that cyclists also rightfully ignore.

It is not the least advantage of a cycle lane to behave like a legal, safe, and comfortable queue jumper, avoiding inhalation of polluted air by cyclists on congested road, and making this mode more competitive with other commuting choice.

It makes little sense to promote cycling by asking cyclist to breath car exhaust in middle of traffic congestion [5]

… But Richmond replaces the bike lanes when it is most needed, by one of its avatar, the sharrow, as seen below:

horizontal Chevron marking is usually reserved for shared road, carrying calmed or low level of traffic. In Richmond, they are also found on main axis, with predictable effect

As explained by New York City DOT engineers [3], when there is not enough right of way to implement a dedicated lane or traffic is light and calm enough to justify a shared street, a chevron marking (also called sharrow) could be used raise awareness of motorist…Richmond still has to learn how to use appropriate horizontal marking for bike facilities

The network or lack of…

Richmond city provides a cycling map, where the simple fact to draw a bike on a road, seems to justify the classification of it as a bike lane. A ground survey of the bike lane could lead to the more realistic map below:

The richmond bike lanes network has lot of critical missing links

basically, the Richmond city center is serviced by a a backbone of 2 bike lanes, the north-south bike lane,along the path of the former interurban (gardencity, Granville and railway) and on the east of Garden city by an East-West bike lane along Westmintser hwy.
In despite of some commendable effort in the right direction, like the raised bike lane on the road 3, bike lanes are still fairly disconnected and basically don’t provide much needed connections to the Canada line or the Kwantlen college.

Connection to the Bridgeport station

Nevertheless, Bridgeport station is reachable by a bike lane connected to the rest of the network… at least up to a certain point:

bicycle access to the Bridgeport station doesn't seem to have been well considered

Connection to the Canada line bridge

A recent addition to the bike lanes netwok has been the connection of the Canada line bridge to the rest of the bike network through Van Horne road in an industrial precinct…but probably that the 12 meters wide road was judged still on the narrow side, so a bike lane takes place in only one direction! (opposite direction is a shared path).

Notice that in general cyclists use an alternative and more pleasant route via Riverport road.

The 12 meters wide road was judged a bit too narrow to put 2 bike lanes in addition of 2 general traffic ones, so one of them end up on the sidewalk! Notice how the shared path sign is hiding the stop...and which path is shared?

Better to ignore the signage

At Great Canadian way and Sea island way intersection, cyclists are the object of less care than the landscaping, and a cyclist following sign could put himself in an uncomfortable if not outright unsafe spot.

First a satellite view of the situation

the great canadian Way and Sea Island way interstection from satellite or how the cyclist can evolve from West to East?

The cyclist travelling from West to East on Sea island Way will encounter a suite of sign designed to his attention. A first sign suggest he will have to do a right tun where the on ramp lane merge. The sign indicates that the cyclist should be still on the road:

Right at the intersection, the sign tell you that you will have to tun right where the lane merge, but to stay on the road for the time being

A second sign seems to disagree with the first one, since it assumes that the cyclist should be on the sidewalk, and then suggest a very strange procedure to the cyclist obeying to the first one:

after proceeding to where the lanes merge, the sign tell you to turn right to take the bike path, but how the bike is expected to do it

Law abiding cyclist need to be lucky…

or prepared to spend very very long time…at ever red light. This is due to the fact that most of the secondary roads have traffic light activated by induction loop…not triggered by bike

this traffic light goes green only if a car approach it, if you are a cyclist, you have to count on luck, and be prepared to waste tremendous amount of time...for sure another option exist!

The right turn lane…
…or how to make a cyclist like a pin in the middle of a bowling lane

Richmond bike lanes disposition put cyclist in treacherous spot in most of the city intersection

As the above picture illustrates, advanced right turn lane gives way to probably the most disconcerting disposition of bike lanes, de facto defeating the purpose of those bike lanes, which is to provide a secure environment to the cyclist.

Motorists seems unsure on the way to negotiate a right turn with a bike lane in the middle of the road: some will pass a cyclist on the right… some others on the left before tail gating the bike….

In Richmond, yield to cyclist is definitely not an option!

Needless to say, intersections in BC (most of them arranged as above), are especially treacherous for cyclist, where more than 60% of the accidents happen, and going straight seems the most dangerous proposition for a cyclist [4]

Obviously, there is some better way to implement bike lane with advanced right turn lane, and generally, they are implemented like below in Europe

the cyclist doesn't need to be in the middle of traffic to cross an intersection. bike lane is protected by horizontal yielding marking giving priority to the cyclist (what is the law in most of European juridiction)...In North America, additional signage as seen in Portland, OR or Vancouver, BC could be necessary (right)

because the “yield to cyclist” could be not obvious to the BC motorist [1] and horizontal “yield” marking less frequent here than in Europe could be not as well understood [2], additional vertical sign, nowadays rarely seen in Europe, could be required here

.

In cyclist friendly jurisdictions, Yield to cyclist is the only option!

…and not surprisingly, those jurisdictions have usually much safer road safety record than BC.

Conclusion

Richmond BC, is like a child learning to bike. It seems to be full of good intention, but lack of understanding and method. European cities was not much different a quarter century ago, it is just that Richmond needs to work much harder in order to not fall behind.

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[1] While, it is generally the law to yield to cyclist, like to pedestrian, on a right turn in Europe, law seems to be far less consistent across North american jurisdictions which usually don’t treat cyclist as a vulnerable user of the road, see bike lane and right turn difference in Oregon and California or, for a more awkward regulation, the Ontario MTO explicitly indicates that right turning vehicles have priority on cyclists.

[2] European countries, and more generally country adopting the Vienna convention road signage, use thick dashed lane as a horizontal “yield line” marking, the equivalent in North america is usually a line of triangle, used in New York City as illustrated in the video of the NYC DOT[3].

[3] NYC DOT explains Bike Lanes in the Big Apple

[4] number from www.bikesense.bc.ca

[5] It is what is required by the BC motor vehicle act section 158