To the editor:
Don't do it. Bike lanes work. They better define road space to ensure that bikes and cars can share the road more rationally and safely. There is simply no evidence to associate bike lanes with reduced safety outcomes for cyclists.
Anyone who says different is telling you fairy tales. Drivers, like anyone else, are not so dense that they cannot learn to adapt to changes in road markings.
They are doing it all over North America and around the world. Victoria has an extensive bike facility network and not coincidentally, the highest mode share for cycling in Canada and better than most in North America - as much as 20 per cent of commuter traffic in some neighbourhoods.
While you may claim we have the advantage of better weather, Saskatoon and Kingston, who have real winters, also have high levels of cycling. The road diet plan that it appears you are contemplating for Victoria Avenue (how appropriate), is far below the maximum daily traffic volumes that usually are deal breakers for that kind of design.
Our four lanes to two projects have been done on roads with traffic in excess of 15,000 vehicles a day. Bikes don't belong on the sidewalk and you can't shoo them away to alternate routes - they are going the same place everyone else is so they need access to the most direct and convenient routes too.
Don't turn back the clock, I'd love to have the lanes there the next time I get a chance to visit to ride with my Port Arthur friends.
John Luton,
Executive director
Capital Bike and Walk Society,
Victoria, B.C.
