Vancouver Adds Cycletrack to Burrard Bridge

Awesome!! We need to follow Vancouver's lead and do similar things in Portland on our Burnside bridge.

Wait, they think they're providing an example for New York? We already have separated bike paths on the vast majority of our bridges in New York. I'm confused.

Looks like a cool solution for the ridiculously overcrowded Pulaski Bridge bike/ped situation.

Hate to push anyone off the usual Streetsblog high horse but NYC did this (repurposed a traffic lane) on the Queensboro Bridge a couple of decades ago.    

Pulaski is a bigger challenge for barriered lane solution than this Vancouver Bridge because it is a frequently-opened draw bridge.   

Also, I've heard bike lanes for the Byrne Bridge are in the works, though it's far from impassable now.  

To RLB: Greenpoint Avenue Bridge is about to get its (bike) due. I heard that DOT was out recently to a Brooklyn Community Board #1 transportation committee meeting, and they gave a presentation. Work starts soon - some time this summer, again that's what I heard.

Will we see a 'Streetsblog Pacific Northwest' or 'Streetsblog Cascadia' covering Portland, Seattle and Vancouver? I guarantee it would be as popular as your SF & LA versions.

I used to live in Vancouver, until last week. This is the second time they have tried to re-assign Burrard Bridge traffic lanes to bikes. The first time, a few years ago, it was a very tentative attempt by a very divided and timid city council. The anti-change public was able to intimidate politicians into re-assigning the lanes back for car use within a few days. Bringing back separate bike lanes to the bridge was always a point of discussion in city council, partly because of cycling activists and partly because the previous arrangements resulted in many serious accidents to cyclists and pedestrians.

This time, city council agreed to only taking one traffic lane from cars, instead of two, and also to taking one sidewalk from pedestrians, to give to cyclists. Despite that silly compromise that created conflict between cyclists and pedestrians, it is much better than the previous arrangement. This time the city meant business. They placed concrete barriers to separate bikes from speeding cars. They placed a bike box for bikes coming off the bridge northbound turning left into Hornby Street, which has a bike lane towards downtown, and forbade right-hand turns for cars on that intersection, keeping the bike box open to cyclists.

The only traffic problems were cars turning onto the bridge from Pacific Ave, as shown in the video. That only lasted about a week before drivers re-routed either to other bridges or to other approaches to the Burrard Bridge. Most of that traffic was drivers coming from the North Shore who would cut through the West End, a high-density residential area between Downtown and Stanley Park. They should have stayed off the West End, and continued on Georgia to Burrard or to Howe to cross South.

On the enforcement side, for the first week, there were city by-law (ordinance)enforcement officers directing bike, car and pedestrian traffic according to the new design. The police, on the other hand, did not do much. They showed up on the bridge to ticket cyclists who were not wearing helmets, which is not a public safety issue, but which was popular with opponents of the bridge redesign. A punishment to cyclists. Yet they never ticketed cyclists who were going the wrong way on the one-way bike paths. They eventually showed up on Hornby and ticketed drivers who took the now-forbidden right hand turn. But they never ticketed any driver for stopping on the left-turn bike box. Several cars have driven on, and even parked on the separate bike path that was taken away from cars. I am not aware of any of them being ticketed or towed. Also the city forgot to erase the bike signs on the surface of the new pedestrian-only path, and the pedestrian signs on the surface of the new bike-only path, creating confusion among new users of the bike and pedestrian paths.

The last two city governments have created a lot of new bike infrastructure. This includes a bike path similar to the Burrard one on the Dunsmuir Viaduct, the Carrall Street separate and raised bike paths, which drivers are allowed to park on (no tickets or towing there either), the bike path along the new Canada Line bridge over the North arm of the Fraser River to Richmond, The Central Valley Greenway from Vancouver to New Westminster, which was not finished a month after it was inaugurated.

There is also a network of partly traffic-calmed, designated bike routes. But those are very slow, as the streets that cross the bikeways often have the right of way. Giving the designated bike routes the right of way on all but the major arterials, and creating car barriers to discourage cars driving more than three blocks on those routes, would be great to providing a competitive alternative to motorized transportation in Vancouver.

As a Vancouverite, what I really found inspiring was not NYC's improvements, but Bogota's, as shown in Streetfilms.

LB, how will the "permanent" Burrard Bridge bikeways look different and prettier from the current "trial" version?

It is because of the commitment and hard work of people such as Richard Campbell that improvements like this
can be made.

@ Nancy LA: Nancy, cyclists are drivers as well! They drive their bikes. In Europe where I live, each country has another approach to cylcing. But especially here in Austria, pedestrians and cyclists have the right of way, this is the law. Well, let´s assume, at least, pedestrians and cyclists were humans, so it´s a basic human right to not be threatened by 2 tons bombs called cars, right? People will have to change their minds. I know, it´s common to commute one hour to work by car in LA. My dad who was a surgeon walked to his work at the hospital for 5 minutes. For the last 20 years I commuted to school and university by bike for 10-20 minutes. That´s what it should be. By the way I feel sorry, glocks are made in Austria. best regards, Supp.