Cycling around the city of Vancouver can be a joy — except for those spots where it’s a big problem.
On Friday, city policymakers, planners, public works officials and interested citizens took an 11-mile, round-trip bike ride across the west side of Vancouver to experience for themselves some places where critical bike infrastructure is safe and convenient — and some other spots where it’s problematic or simply missing.
“There are issues of safety,” said Madeleine von Laue, a leader of the Vancouver Bicycle and Pedestrian Stakeholder Group, which organized the ride. The group’s ultimate goal is to establish safe east-west and north-south bike corridors in Vancouver, she said; in some cases, that means completing missing connections between existing bike lanes, but in others, it may mean rejiggering intersections and removing some on-street parking.
“That’s always the big issue,” von Laue said. “That’s what brings out the torch-wielding masses.”
The group of about 25 cyclists departed from City Hall at 2:30 p.m. and rode north on Columbia Street, which has bike lanes — until they disappear at 13th Street.
“Columbia is the most critical north-south bike route on the west side,” stakeholder Amy Horstman said. “It’s a commuter route.”
But, despite too much traffic that’s moving too fast, bikes must share Columbia north of 13th with cars. It doesn’t work well, Horstman said.
“People are getting hit, even on bright, clear days,” she said.
The group stopped to admire the new Bike Clark County co-op shop on Main Street, “The Hub,” then proceeded east on West McLoughlin Boulevard. The next problem spot was in front of the Washington School for the Blind, which has on-street parking that doesn’t get used much but no south-side bike lane.
Instead, there are “sharrows,” those arrow markings that mean: Cars and bikes share the road here. But von Laue said it makes zero sense to have sharrows heading up a steep hill, which bikes and cars naturally take at different speeds.
Two more schools are nearby on McLoughlin, von Laue pointed out — Hudson’s Bay High School and Clark College — yet, it’s definitely not a safe biking route. The Central Park Neighborhood Association has voted in favor of removing the spotty parking on the south side of the street and in favor of adding a bike lane, she added.
“We’re going to be pounding the city” about this particular spot, von Laue said.
‘Oh wow’ and ‘oh no’
On the other hand, Jan Verrinder said recent revisions have provided MacArthur Boulevard with plenty of “the wow factor.”
A few years ago, the city wanted to remove existing bike lanes and instead add sharrows to two of MacArthur’s then-four lanes. But MacArthur already felt like a four-lane freeway, and cyclists rebelled at being forced into that speedy traffic. The city reversed itself, and MacArthur was slimmed into a two-lane road with separated, protected bike lanes that feel plenty wide and continue through intersections.
Verrinder said it’s the best example of a “complete street” in Vancouver. “It has the wow factor,” she said.
If there’s an “oh no factor,” that’s where MacArthur intersects with Lieser Road and St. Helens Avenue. It’s one of the worst intersections in town, Horstman said, because bike lanes disappear, angles of approach aren’t square, there’s an “extra right lane” that appears out of nowhere from the north, and it’s just south of the hospital.
Also, it’s a four-way stop. It’s a fact of life, commented Vancouver Senior Civil Engineer Ryan Lopossa, that nobody really knows how to behave in a four-way stop.
“Every day I have an interesting and sometimes terrifying experience (there),” Horstman said. “There’s something weird about that intersection.”
Lopossa agreed and said the city means to address the problem.
Finally, the group returned to downtown and stopped on West Eighth Street. Vancouver Principal Transportation Planner Patrick Sweeney said Eighth will get a new surface and bike lanes on both sides, in between the parking lane and the travel lane, extending all the way from C Street to Franklin Street.
City Councilman Ty Stober — the only elected official on the ride — wondered aloud whether bike lanes in between parked cars and moving cars really work. Sweeney said they do once people get used to those dynamics and feel confident about the connections.
“We want to close the gaps in these critical east-west and north-south routes,” Sweeney said.
