The fact that the current mayor promised a separate cycling lane around Stanley Park but ended up removing the temporary one so cars can blast through the park drives me nuts.
I really wish they built that separate cycling lane. Simply because giving the only lane to the bikers blocks out people who can't feasibly get there through biking but not giving bikers a separate lane was also stupid.
Unless you wake up one day and see people stopping at stop signs, then ethics, briliance and pride will continue to elude us every Canada Day, Dude. Our capitals are full of Canadian patriots blowing stop signs, jaywalking and speeding with their kids. Many of thse capital city winners work for the Gov. Ditto Vancouver freewheeling city vehicles. The common phenomenon of mass negligence is not a new one. Experts think that politicians hate photo radar because the citizens do. Our Canadian Lemmings shine and keep their kids at risk. Look at the high percentage of families who speed past the Vancouver's Children Hospital daily. The directors don't know? The mayor is only giving us our civic negligence back with icing and a pretty bow. Personally, i recommend that the local kids supersoak their parents and other adult realtives crotches whenever they break traffic laws together and then carry boxes of adult diapers to humiliate their parents and all of adult relatives who would put their lives at risk, eh? Also a great idea for Israel and the entire Middle East! California! Vancouver's rocket scientists can't even protect us from Velocitized drivers who terrorize cyclists daily. Ever had a pickup truck cut you off when it makes a right turn of you, cutting you of when you cycle? Our schools have 3 % stop signs compliance rates, Dude. The fuzz are unable to police us into MVA/submission. A connection between the extermination camps for our Canadian destitute since 1972 and the lack of traffic law compliance rates and high housing prices is obvious, eh? Ethics, conscientiousness and law-abiding adults would save us, but what politician is interested in upsetting the status quo/ apple cart of high ICBC rates? The teens love paying $5000!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Right teens?
Please vote in the next local election. The current mayor and city council are anti bike. Voter turnout was super low so the regressive ABC party won because NIMBYS all vote. Please vote! Your vote can make a difference. Please don’t be apathetic
If you voted for the current mayor because of law and order or safety you wasted your vote he hasn't done a thing. There are still drug dealers openly working on every corner of the DTES. Not saying that another mayor is going solve those problems but at least they wouldn't be actively trying to dismantle safety infrastructure that we've already paid for.
The bigger problem with drugs and those that peddle them is dealt with at the provincial government to some degree and the rest falls onto to the feds...Only thing a mayor can do is order his dept of safety, the VPD here, to arrest and detain them constantly. And if this was done can you imagine all the "de-fund the police" and the blee ding heart "humanity savers" that would be marching in the streets to end the "police state". How's about we keep our expectations of Mayor Sim to if he can do something about our ridiculous road surfaces along with our disgusting litter problems along with all the secondary issues that brings like the current rat population explosion. I've lived in this city since birth some 60 odd years ago and the Vancouver pre Expo was the one the world admired, as well as it's citizens. Sure glad I got to experience that Vancouver as the current incarnation kinda sucks.
Toronto had these exact issues a year ago as vancouver does currently. It is absolutely possible as with the last mayor election in Toronto. Toronto now has a mayor and council who are highly for bike lanes and better streets. It is possible
@@kellylingushas there ever been a mayor in Vancouver who wasn't in the developers' pockets? This mayor at least is in the pocket of local Vancouver billionaire developers vs the international developers who owned the previous few mayors. ...but it doesn't really matter who the mayor and council are, the decisions are all made by the unelected managers.
IMO, the "bike streets" biggest problem is that they're full of parked cars. It really multiplies the danger. Removing the on street parking on those bike routes is much safer, and some routes that do have this feel much better.
I think that the parking is a great temporary measure to slow the cars down. If they don't work, then use angled parking, and keep angling until the cars slow down.
@@eugenetswong sure it slows the cars down by squeezing the cyclists between them. Did you see the video with all the examples? Using cyclists and pedestrians as "traffic calming" is dangerous
@@eugenetswong drivers are desensitized to other cars. I understand the efficiency sentiment, but we need deliberate structures that will make drivers less comfortable speeding and allow peds and cyclists to see and be seen.
8th Ave is a terrifying part of the bike network. It's a key part of the east-west network in theory, but there's no space for a car to go the other way with reasonable clearance and they definitely aren't going to wait for you to clear the block. The entire road is also skinny enough to be in the door zone, and it's poorly lit at night.
You really ought to have a bicycle light. You should be well lit and prepared for low light situations if you're cycling at night. There's nothing dangerous with the door zone if you're traveling at a safe speed and paying attention. The city has already spent millions of our tax dollars on us at a time when we have people living in tents and standing in line at food banks. Take care of your self instead of demanding the state pay to coddle you.
Never be scared of cycling in Canada. YOU OWN THE STREET! Fear of cycling is caused by being invisible, (dark clothes), blindness (sunglases) deafness (illegal music in ear buds etc). Next is Velocitized drivers who have come off the hiway and can't estimate your speed so they tend to cut you off. The only other problem is "breaking traffic laws, "which doesn't protect you in sticky situations, such as blind corners, unexpected situations and a low winter sun. For example, I went to Stanley park late at night and found that Lost Lagoon had no lighting on the Nw side. My little light was crappy, but it was PITCH DARK, DUDE. Without my light I would have walked into the lagoon for lack of a full moon. After cycling for 55 years in town, my ass was saved at least 10 times at blind corners by stopping at rhe stop sign or whan leaving a driveway, lane or parking lot. Ditto walking in a 4 lane crosswalk when going past a stopped bus or truck by peeking at the next lane for speeding autos. YIKES!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Eighth ave is a feast of blind corners. My pedestrian buddy flew thru the air at Waterloo and 8th!. By dressing like Don "the Mouth" Cherry - you can be seen!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
I find 8th Ave is mostly good, and also just own the road and stay in the middle like you would if you were a car - it's the bike's designated lane, after all. Also fyi majority of bike injuries are result of getting hit by a person opening a car door, so stay far enough away from cars to avoid that.
The other thing that is crap about Beg buttons, is people with adaptive cycles that sit lower, can't reach them. I rode my recumbent trike down a brand new cycle route and couldn't reach any of the beg buttons. I got lucky the route was busy and someone else could hit the button
I recently went to Germany. Beg buttons exist there too, but you are hard pressed to wait more than 30 seconds, even if the light just changed as you got to the intersection. Meanwhile, this morning on a Mobi coming from an appointment some old dude in his Toyota decided to honk at me because I had the audacity to be on the road. Vancouver has a VERY long way to go to be more people friendly and it will def. not happen under the current council. They're too busy swaggering around half-drunk at public festivals.
Fantastic video. Amazing video content which is very well edited and excellent concise commentary. Many thanks, Nic. Like other commenters here, I really appreciated your sections on sidestreets that are supposed to be bike routes but have parking on both sides and often heavy fast traffic during the morning and afternoon school runs and rush hours. I've had some scary experiences and close calls, not to mention the emotional upset of these encounters which lingers long past the ride.
Yeah there's so many roads here that are sketchy as hell. Also its not clear as a newbie cyclist when Im allowed to ride on teh sidewalk. I know its probably never, but there are roads where I live that just seem too dangerous to cycle on.
Happy Critical Mass Friday! I loved seeing myself featured in one of your clips 😜 The removal of the SP bike lane is an embarrassment to the city of Vancouver. Also don’t forget that the ABC park board also imploded on themselves afterwards so.. 🤷♂️🤣
I grew up in Vancouver, beginning in the fifties, and saw it get from car-culture bad, to really bad, then terribly bad. Was so glad to get out of that dangerous, polluted, noisy nightmare traffic in the mid eighties. We blocked the Stanley Park roadway as kids, plus we started an anti-car student club at Tupper, consulting at a meeting with the progressive Harry Rankin (Rankin’s Law - Alderman). Back at school with demonstration in mind, our instigators got expelled. Joined the BC Cycling group next, and we did do the demo cycling event on the UBC causeway road, as a social statement with the Press filming us. We can transition away from our dependence/addiction to cars. Greenways instead of pouring more money into widening the TCH would help. Another section of the highway is being torn up. Costing the taxpayers another half billion. It’s dumb, we are heading in the wrong direction! Yes, improve public transportation. Like mag-lev raised light rail, getting away from busses. These units powered by solar on top of the rail coverings. Still an idealistic advocate. Have been a Proponent/Supporter of the first Shuswap Trail (Balmoral - White Lake), and now my Presentation for the Loftus Lake Fen Universal Trail, and Dedicated Wetland Park have received the funding. Yea!
The only thing that sucks about cycling in Vancouver is that your bike will be stripped or stolen the minute you lock it up outside somewhere to go do a thing. It makes cycling for practical purposes utterly pointless and cycling for recreation a non-stop trip.
I was biking back home on Adanac street and a car at a 2 way stop sign intersection creeped past the stop sign and hit me. I was lucky to get away with minor bruises but was shocked at how the driver was saying "they always dive through that street and never hit anyone". Like why is their default driving through a bike street when a literal Main street is less than a 1 min drive away?
5:21 Beg buttons are even dumber in southern California. They don't immediately change even if it's been a while. They just light up the walk signal during the next green cycle and usually without any lead.
It's like that not just in California, but in large parts of Canada and the US too. I've spent time going around suburban Edmonton, Alberta, and I've had to wait 3 minutes (I timed it) for a beg button to activate a walk signal.
my (least) favorite beg button is in Los Altos, CA, USA. It's on a "slow" california stroad; 4 lanes. Only 35mph speed limit (which means cars drive 45-50 mph or 70-80kph). And the beg button which is at a crosswalk says verbatim, "warning, cars may not stop when button is pressed." WTF. My second most favorite is at a particular flavor of southern california stroad widely found in orange county, particularly southern orange county. The speed limit is 60mph on this 6 lane stroad (which means cars drive 70-75 mph or 110-120kph). The beg-button is accompanied by a auditory "WAIT" at 110 dB when standing at roughly arms length at adult-height. As if the roar of the traffic isn't enough. The ubiquity and density of 55-60mph stroads seen in southern orange county is something I haven't even seen in most parts of the South of the US (including Houston, Austin, or San Antonio), Michigan, or Illinois. Perhaps these exist in Canada. Or maybe the SE of the US, somewhere in FL?
@@esgee3829 60mph speed limits? That's not even found on New Jersey state highways, and many of those ban direct left turns and have concrete barriers in the median as well as deceleration lanes on either side. Those only have 50mph speed limits, at most. There are also freeways, even in the southern part of the US, with speed limits lower than 60mph (e.g., the 51 in Phoenix, AZ, which has a speed limit of 55 mph between the Mini-Stack (10/51/202 interchange) and Northern Ave, and the 17 used to have that low of speed limits from the Split (where it starts) to Peoria Ave). I also wonder which stroads have 60mph speed limits. The highest speed limit you'd find on Phoenix stroads are 45mph.
Many are like that in Vancouver too. There’s some here and there which will change the light, though it still takes around 10 seconds, since it has to count down the pedestrian lights. Usually if it’s a busy road, though, you’re waiting for the next cycle
2:57 WHOA WHOA WHOA!! Those are some great raised crosswalks / continuous sidewalks! These are a HUGE part of creating safe cycling streets. It’s an incentive for cars to stick to the main roads, rather than cutting through. It also makes it safer for pedestrians, local residents, and cyclists. (And safer for drivers… I’ve yet to meet anyone who WANTS to insure someone while driving…)
Great to see cycling content about my hometown! I never biked growing up but now exploring it gives me a lot of joy and hope that the city will go on to keep making improvements!
Yeh, there's too much interaction with cars in Vancouver. I'll end up riding on the sidewalk in spots (slowly and yieldingly) to avoid having to interact with drivers - a significant number of whom are on their phones. Or I just won't ride at all, if the route is too exposed to traffic.
I'm starting to see the reason behind the "cyclists always run stop signs" stigma. Most bike routes are directed to side roads, which contain so much more stop-signs, and pedaling gets really tiring on the legs after a few stop-sign stop-gos. This is the main reason I dislike side-street cycle routes. Others include parked cars (door-zones) and entitled drivers calling everyone else entitled for not driving on the freeways or main roads instead.
This is such an arcane law. Ideally, the stop signs should not be applicable to cyclists. Our road laws and road codes are designed by people who don't even walk anywhere, let alone cycle. What should we expect? Unfortunately, our legislators and city designers are too car-brained to recognize that in order for the city to be healthy the bylaws and the infrastructure should be bike friendly.
It's a myth that only cyclists run stop signs, "rolling stop" is a term invented by drivers after all, but you're onto something there, cyclists do run stupid stop signs because they love to put hundreds of them on bike routes for some reason, usually at the dumbest places possible. If it's a bike route it shouldn't have ANY stop signs. Raise the sidewalks parallel to the route and put down traffic circles, or if it's a major crossing add a traffic light.
@@vavilon7109100% disagree with you. I live along a bike way where most cyclists blow through stop signs. Those stop signs exist because the visibility is limited. I have been nearly hit by cyclists as a cyclist, as a pedestrian, and as a motor vehicle, because of blowing through stop signs in my neighborhood. Use stop signs.
@@deprofundis442 Around here there's a significant bike trail and roughly every other arterial has a stop sign for the trail rather than the street. There are so many people that just blow through the street regardless of whether there's a stop sign on the street or not. And, idiots in cars will stop even when there is no stop sign. Cyclists refusing to obey the rules of the road just make it harder for traffic planners to figure out how to clear up the mess that comes from trying to mix bikes, cars, buses and pedestrians into the roads and sidewalks available. It certainly makes it motorists less sympathetic when changes do need to be made if cyclists are getting themselves killed breaking the rules of the road.
I'm a visitor in Vancouver, and today I was riding around the Sea Wall near Stanley Park. It seems like they've converted the bike lane there into more pedestrian space, but the signage for bikes is extremely poor. I gave up after they sent me onto one of the forest trails in the park, when what I was really looking for was to bike by the waterfront as advertised by the Sea Wall.
I ride the Adanac bike route daily, and while it's very nice in general, there's a couple spots that suck. Where it crosses the highway, cars will often go over from neighboring streets and funnel through. They'll often rush to squeeze past me on the overpass, only to immediately slow down and ride their brakes down the rough bumpy hill, and then stop to make a left turn at the bottom. The areas where there is good modal filtering, unfortunately, food and amazon delivery drivers take advantage of the fact that there's no car traffic to bother, and frequently stop in the middle of the street to make their delivery, without even trying to pull over. And finally, on Dunsmuir, while the lights are pretty reasonably timed going westbound, and I'll only have to stop once or twice on my way in the morning, the evening ride eastbound is definitely slower. If you're a mid-fast rider, you'll hit every 2nd light. If you're a slower rider, you'll have to stop every block. Another major annoyance, as much as I hate to say it, is ebikes and scooters. I think they're great, but unfortunately a large percentage of riders don't show sufficient caution, or courtesy. They generally just ride as fast as their motor wants to push them, and if they come up on other bikes, they pass without shoulder checking, and without caring that oncoming traffic has to squeeze over into the door zone. I'm _often_ riding faster than ebikes, and will be about to pass a row of them, when one swerves out in front of me, and _very_ slowly passes another ebike or scooter ahead of them. (29km/h passing 28.8km/h). If you're not going to go significantly faster than the person ahead of you, you shouldn't be passing them. Riding 2 wide for 30+ seconds as you creep past while oncoming traffic in the 2 way bike lane squeezes over, is kind of obnoxious to people who get stuck behind them waiting for them to get out of the way to properly pass them.
thanks for making this. The "bike streets" in Vancouver are often more dangerous and stressful than major roads. I commute from mount pleasant to ubc and feel way safer riding along King Edward (a wide main road with fast moving traffic), than the residential bike streets the planners would have me take. At least with a major road you often have clear visibility, fewer intersections, fewer drivers running stop signs, and more space for cars to pass you. Sometimes it feels like planners are so concerned with making bike routes "pretty" -- like having them go through nice neighborhoods with tree lined streets -- that they forget about safety and efficiency. Safety and efficiency is all that really matters to me as a commuter at the end of the day (and I imagine most others feel this way too). Seeing how the ruling classes of Vancouver plant their front gardens is nice and all, but I'd rather get where I'm going safely and quickly and not have to worry about getting flattened by a diamond encrusted Land Rover on its way to the local school. Thanks again for the video -- "bike streets" need a complete overhaul and rethink as you suggest.
Nice video. I think the main thing missing is that it's often hard to follow bike routes in Vancouver - for example Heather, Ridgeway, Dumfries, Sunrise, Midtown, and many others. And it's often worse in Burnaby. I have a ton of footage of Vancouver bike routes and bad drivers on my channel; feel free to use it in future videos if it helps.
Spot on, I thought about including it. But here we are. I often find myself missing turns on unfamiliar bike routes. Ultimately, we should be striving towards more direct routes for active transport to avoid this problem entirely.
The bike streets are such a joke, literally just regular streets with cars parked on both sides to help impede your vision while cars are zooming past you. I like the point about being able to get to your destination with an unplanned route. Last time I did that in Vancouver I got lost because the bike street I was on just like randomly ended and there were no more signs.
As a daily commuter on these "bike streets" I totally agree with your thoughts. Something that bothers me constantly is when cars try to use these narrow streets as shortcuts, only to come head on with other cars and then they clog up the street waiting for one side to back up. Meanwhile I'm left guessing which way they will reverse, and if it's safe to go around on either side. If your giant SUV can't fit down a street, don't go there!
Great video! Another issue with residential "biking" routes is hills.. we have a decent amount. Specifically Adanac street. Cars want to pass cyclists even more because they want to maintain the momentum of their engines going uphill, and cyclists are much slower, making it incredibly unsafe. I tried Adnac and CVG, and prefer the later even though it adds few kms to my commute!
I live in Victoria and love to cycle here. My wife and I used to live in Vancouver and we still like to visit and cycle in Greater Vancouver. As you exit the ferry terminal you can turn right for a great day cycling in Boundary Bay or turn left (a bit hard to find the cycle path) and cycle, partially thanks to the courtesy of the Musqueam Band, along the coast to the bird sanctuary. If you want to go into Vancouver proper you have to catch the bike trailer, because the Deas tunnel does not allow bikes. I wish the NDP had not cancelled the bridge planned to replace the tunnel. The bridge would have accommodated cyclists and would have been a beautiful landmark and lookout. I remember how wonderful it was to take the cycle path on the old bridge across the Severn River inlet, while cycle touring in Scotland. Once past the south arm of the Fraser River things improve for cyclists as there are some good cycle routes and Skytrain accepts bikes. Stanley Park is a nice place to ride, but very congested and therefore somewhat dangerous. People like to walk, cycle, bus, drive and park to stroll, in Stanley Park and I think everyone should be accommodated. I think we should keep the car roads in the park and build new vastly expanded cycle routes and sidewalks. Cutting down some trees to accomplish that is fine with me... and get rid of the coyotes. Stanley Park is a city park that should welcome people of all ages and levels of physical ability, not a pristine nature reserve suitable only for the fit and woke. In Canada, we have literally millions of acres of remote wilderness for coyotes and trees. People should be welcome and safe throughout the park, like Central Park in New York.
The phenomenon of parents driving their kids to school (usually one or two kids riding in an SUV twice a day) has gotten out of control. Some parents want to drive right up to the school door and this has raised exhaust emissions, causing the school to implement bans on driving to the school within a few hundred meters. Some parents do not respect it and get fined, then challenge the fine in court. Most kids will have no more than 1km to walk to school or take a bus, but parents do not want their kids to walk or ride the bus. In Portland, they have organized the "bike bus" which is a group ride to school everyday, where a few adults ride a circuit with the students on their way to school. Maybe something similar can be done in Vancouver.
@@grahamturner2640 In Ontario, some parents have gone to court (to contest tickets) because they think the by-law was unlawful, but I don't think they have won. They just pay the fine and wait until the next one. It is OK for them to spend $1500 on fines.
@@CrazyHowie What school does that? What school requires that a kid be driven (if walking or using public transportation or the school bus is an option)? Of course, some students have to be driven to school because there is no bus service, but I'm talking about cases where there is a school or municipal bus or the walk is less than 15 minutes.
I'm a driver and dont cycle. You made some really great points about the infrastructure. I want you guys to have your own lanes too! Better for everybody
Coming from Duncan, which has absolutely terrible bike infrastructure, Vancouver is amazing. But as someone who has lived in Vancouver for nearly two years now without a car, god i wish it was just a little better. I used to cycle to school everyday, but there were two places that just plain felt unsafe. One was a place where i had to cut across the sidewalk twice (at sharp 90+ degree angles) to get to a crosswalk to cross a semi-busy road, and the other where the road bent weirdly with low visibility and cars speeding along the crossroad. Every bike trip i take (outside of 10th, i do like that route) i inevitably have some area of conflict that makes me feel unsafe. Though i love my bike, i seldom use it as its often just safer for me to transit, just so that i dont have to worry about the sketchy intersections or having to ride on the sidewalk for blocks at a time.
It always sucks to see politicians delay or prevent bike lanes / traffic calming. Mayor Bowser here in DC has recently dragged her feet on adding a bike lane to a notoriously dangerous street. Keep fighting the good fight!
Likely because many are renting out rooms to pay their $6,000 a month mortgage. Even 15 years ago I saw this at a friend's house on Keith street in N Van. The Pinoy owners with 2 kids were living in the basement. That was only a $420,000 house. Plus many grownup kids can't move out I guess. Back alleys are even more cramped.
Thanks for highlighting this. It's my major complaint as well. The lack of modal filters is absurd. Another route that has a severe problem with this is the 37th ridgeway, which is one of the best 'southern' east/west bike routes for access to UBC. It quickly falls off a cliff, though, especially as you get into point grey. Despite the population being lower over there, the lack of filters means you're constantly bombarded by car traffic on what should be a slow-speed bicycle route. On the beg buttons: I often arrive at one and click it automatically, and then realize the light doesn't want to change, but the way is clear. So I cross, and then the light turns red and stops traffic for me after I've already left the intersection. This kind of thing would be completely solved by an automatic light.
Even the parts at the West End are a bit of a mess, there is a lot of variation and holes in the network that you end up with a hodge podge system. There is a school on this main route, but while the two streets that connect to the streets that the school on have nice separated bike infrastructure, the section that the school actually sits on lacks ANY bike infrastructure or pedestrian safety features at all, apart from a couple of very minor speed bumps. And this is classified as a AAA route, but the section at the school is a "you figure it out" design.
100% of problems is caused by people being selfish. As both a cyclist and driver, I have absolutely no problem with drivers if they are aware of cyclists and do their part in road safety. The other side is the people that dont care about cyclists, block bike lanes, turn without signaling, cutting off others, dont know what a roundabout is, dont know how to stay in their lane, etc. The thing is that most, if not all, of those negatives affect not just cyclists but other drivers too. The problem is not drivers vs cyclists, its just people being selfish jerks, full stop.
title should be "Commuting with a bike in vancouver sucks" because van is an amazing place for cycling. You got UBC to richmond, east van over to north shore, stanley park over to horseshoe bay/whistler, you got the three ski mountains. Cycling in vancouver is amazing. Commuting in the city sucks
As a lifelong cyclist in Nanaimo I was amazed at how awesome it felt to bike in Vancouver when I went over in 2018. I ended up on the newly built Arbutus Greenway to get to one of my destinations and was thrilled at the wide path and (mostly) ease of use. But I know the bar was set extremely low given I was used to riding on the roads in Nanaimo. Given the climate of the area, we should be a cycling hotspot in our country. It's a real missed opportunity that in 2024 this is still not the case.
The thing I hate most about the cycling slow streets, especially 7th Ave W between Heather and Laurel, is that cross traffic treats the slow street as a green light for ignoring the stop signs. That street does a great job of stopping traffic going _along_ the street, but that just emboldens drivers going _across_ the street, because they know there are no quick cars on 7th.
Suckiness depends on the type of cyclist you are. Tourists moseying around Stanley Park and downtown will likely be quite satisfied. Short-distance commuters are probably OK too. But if you commute 20km each way, you need speed and your risks go up. If you cycle for a living, doing Doordash deliveries, of course the network is inadequate and you gotta do what you gotta do! And then you have the serious and semi-serious road racer in singles or in groups. Roads and cycle paths were definitely not designed with them in mind, and in declining order for the other groups too. Not sure how much the taxpayers are going to support expenditures for each group. The poor sucker who has no choice but to drive 40 km to work gets no sympathy or preference over people who cycle for leisure.
I was living in Strasbourg, my only transport was my bike. Moved to Vancouver 3 months ago and still did not buy I bike. Just too dangerous. All the cars impede me of using my bike. One extra important thing to have more bikers is having a public transportation that accepts bike inside. This is important for a big city as Vancouver so people can do half of their trip in the public transport if it is too far.
Integration in transit is what ultimately killed my attempt to use a bike to cycle to Langara - I arrive from the southbound platform, meaning I have to ride three elevators just to get out, and there's only one elevator for each part, so if someone else is using them, it wastes way more time than if I just walked all the way out the station. And god forbid any one of those elevators goes down.
What sucks even more are traffic lights that work by detecting the presence of a car. You are basically forced to just run the red light. That’s the sort of lights I have to deal with in my small town.
100% agree that Vancouver’s biggest obstacle is its over-reliance on shared bike streets. They manage to both be an intimidating and occasionally dangerous experience, and a big disincentive to investing in real infrastructure, because the city (esp. the current gov) can just point at a map with a lot of green lines on it and say “look at all our existing bike infrastructure”
It's kind of a shame that the standard color for bike lanes in North America is green because it means if we tried implementing an actual fietsstraat you'd be painting the entire road bright bike lane green. Red is so much more pleasant.
Nice video. Dumfries bike route and the Masumi Greenway Trail have pretty dangerous sections where the cyclist has to yield. Change is slow in Vancouver.
I feel like I upgraded my parts for my bike, to bike around Metro Vancouver but traveling around transit made me see that it seems dangerous with the bike lanes in the middle of two car lanes, unprotected, or just painted. Feel like I just got it now to do some recreational stuff than actual commuting. Felt like I got spoiled trying out to bike in Montreal first and a bit of Toronto, and seeing Vancouver not somewhat on the level of the former.
Not a citizen here, but I’d like to see these changes. One of my closest friends was put into the ICU after being hit by a box truck while riding in a bike lane. Thankfully he’s almost completely recovered, damn ankle is still a bit off, but not everyone gets to be so lucky, and I swear I didn’t need those 2 years shaved off my life from stress
Many cities have the same problem. The recipes have been known for a long time, but in many places they are simply ignored due to lack of demand, political will, and because "it's not for our people." I wonder why the Netherlands was able to pull itself together and escape the trap of car-centricity, while many other countries did not? Maybe it's because they don't have their own automakers? PS. Thanks for your video.
What an excellent video, summing up most of the problems of the cycling network in Vancouver. I lived in Paris most of my life before moving to Vancouver and riding in Vancouver these days feels pretty similar to riding in Paris in the mid/late 90s, both in terms of infrastructure and in terms of confrontational driving culture. The major difference is that Paris (and a lot of European cities) kept moving forward, which took a lot of political spine, as the improvement of cycling and transit infrastructure were NOT popular at all at the beginning. it seems that the scarcest resource in Vancouver is political will. And it is quite obvious that nothing good will come out of the 60's planning handbook used by the current council, but the previous council had been very complacent too with hardly any significant transit or bike infrastructure stated or completed during their term.
bike lanes in vancouver seem to just be for short pleasure rides. There are short routes in the more desirable neighbourhoods and in parks, but very little or no consistent routes that would get you from one side of town to another uninterrupted. I am a car user because the cycle routes are so un-usable. The bike routes don't go where most travelers actually need to go, and bike lanes will disappear at random points. Having a separated bike lane for 2 blocks and then it disappearing doesn't accomplish anything.
I'll add the terrible Uber drivers who always park in the green sections. I ride down Beatty Street and everyday down that 4 block stretch there is one of them parked there. They even pass free parking or even crazier drive through that park in the bike zone.
I doubt anyone is actually aware that designated bike streets in Vancouver have a 30km/h speed limit. I wasn't until I googled it to find where you got that number from. While it is documented if you look, it is not widely published or enforced.
Wow. "This is not AAA cycling infrastructure" Not wrong, but here in the USA, my last mayor got derided as "Bike lane Bill" for daring to build some C minus infrastructure.
Also troublesome are signs that say "Cyclists take the lane" - where you get an unbearably slow cyclist riding at 10 km/h across a lengthy bridge with a line of cars pooling behind them for a block or more.
Vancouver and the region have stalled with safe cycling infra improvements, pretty much, right after the pandemic. Beach ave, being a major improvement, still has abrupt ends both on Hornby and Pacific. There are too many examples of this patchy design. It sucks that the infra is really 3rd class, compared to roads for cars.
Whats scary is our family come to vancouver specifically because it’s leaps and bounds better than here in Alberta. Im euopean so it will never be good enough because i view it as good as it could be.
It’s as if it’s a short term project only as long as they have money to spend on capital improvements. What almost every municipality in English speaking North America is that maintenance & iterative improvement with experimentation is key to making that ribbon-cutting money effective beyond the initial season!
Agree with most the video except... Stanley Park Bike Route: Made me quite cycling around there because of being trapped in the bike lane with shitty cyclists. There were also a couple super-dangerous areas where the divider took away your only escape route. Bad (and expensive) bike infrastructure isn't going to help (even if the lane itself was a good idea the lane we got was poorly engineered/planned). The real solution to the Stanley Park issues is just punishing the bad drivers. 95% of the drivers there are pretty okay. We could spend millions of dollars on separation (some bikes routes should be separated for sure), but why do we let the worst 5% of the drivers drive like they do? That's not just a cycling issue; write off one SUV and you're basically a tax liability for at least a few years. There's people in this city that have wrote off 3+ SUV's and still drive the same way. Broadway Bike Route: I disagree with this because it will just create too much tension. Not to mention that there are two parallel bike lanes just North and South of Broadway. Proponents of cycling directly on Broadway are falling into the same mentality of the zero-compromise car-only crowd. Remember that not just cars but also buses need to use this route to get to UBC. If those buses had to deal with bikes it would further backup what is already the busiest bus route in NA if I'm not mistaken. Maybe they'll do it and maybe I'll eat crow because it will be awesome... but even as a cyclist unfortunately I don't see it quite like that right now.
The entire debate about the Broadway bike lanes is that the street is being ripped up anyway so might as well add bike lanes in- it’s going down to 4 lanes with or without active transportation infrastructure. The 99 won’t be nearly as busy with a skytrain line essentially replacing most of it.
Hard disagree with both points. 1) Infrastructure is always a better long term solution than enforcement, which cannot really be done consistently at scale and has been shown to rarely create lasting behavior change. And talking to a lot of other users of the lane (most of who were, like me, casual cyclists rather than sport cyclists) it seems like your opinion is in the minority. Also your use of the term ‘shitty cyclists’ to describe cyclists like me labels you an elitist, a crank, and basically disqualifies your opinions on cycling matters. 2) The ‘bike lanes’ north and south of broadway are perfect examples of the useless and dangerous ‘shared bike streets’ described in the video. I have to bike on broadway occasionally because i’m trying to access businesses on it, and it’s terrifying. Buses will be a lot less of an issue given that most of them will be substituted by the new skytrain line, and current construction shows that broadway doesn’t need as many lanes of car traffic than it used to have. We’re also trying to plan for the next 50-100 years, and the best time to put in the lanes is now that the whole street is being rebuilt. In what way is asking for a slice of broadway to be dedicated to bikes considered a ‘zero compromise’ stance - this may have been the case 20 years ago, but baseline expectations have changed.
In your first point you make a blanket statement that is inherently wrong. Even with separated bikes lanes for example we still have to deal with reckless e-bike riders. Enforcement of traffic laws is pretty damn important. Even just enforcing existing laws (they don't in Vancouver fyi) will go a long way. But laws also have to evolve (to deal with the e-bike problem for example). I dunno... I hate when people make statements like you did without any case studies or evidence and using terms like "always". The issue I take with your premises is that we should just pour more and more money into our road infrastructure to deal with worse and worse drivers. F'k that. Regarding Broadway: If you plan your trip you can easily go up most side streets to your destination. Or god forbid, walk your bike an entire block. Things like this are why there is such a divide: People on both sides are just unwilling to compromise. Unfortunately we have people on the pro-cycling side who thing tax payers should spend millions on extra bike lanes so they don't have to walk their bike a half block. @@leopoldleoleo
The argument of "just ride on the street 2 blocks over" is fine I guess but there are cars all over those routes too? Maybe close off 1 of them? There are a DOZEN parallel 100% car streets - why can't they just drive on them instead of 7th or 10th??? Why is it 100 to 0? All I'm asking is that if they spend $10 of my tax money on places for cars to move freely spend $1 on protecting people walking or biking from them? That's all, just spend a tiny percentage. It's nicer to drive in a safe city as well because you are physically separated. If a right of way is 100' wide, give pedestrians and bikes half of that. It should be 2/3 but who are we kidding here. I totally agree with you though about traffic enforcement and how ICBC operates. If you total a car they just give you money for a new one. If you injure someone on the road the police let you keep driving, they let you drive home if your car still works. We can renew our licenses online so we can be 90 years old or legally blind and still keep driving.
@@randomCADstuff Wanting better infrastructure that benefits all isn’t an unwillingness to ‘compromise’. Why are we ripping up the entire street for subway construction anyway? Spending billions of dollars just so the 99 bus riders can have a speedy train to get to where they need to go? Can’t they just compromise and stick with taking the bus?
Unfortunately bikes being more affordable than cars means no big bike to push law makers. Idk if Canada is as dependent on bribery as the U.S. but that is the case here.
it'll be sound pessimistic but you know it disappointing to see we still at almost square one for bike infrastructure, all canadian cities (montreal and vancouver included) SUCK at it and we just hope upon hope to some day we get what we are fighting for. until that day just try not to die on streets as a bike commuter and keep hoping
The biggest problem for me is all the drug addicts stealing bikes. Not worth riding anything nice or anywhere you cant have eyes on your bike. Loose a bike every year or two living downtown.
Hey Nic, I'm curious what you think of the idea of covered bike corridors? It wouldn't have to be enclosed or anything and could even be transparent. You wouldn't have to put them all over but a few core routes. The cover has 2 effects, 1: it rains a lot here and rain cover is nice, 2: in the winter even when it's 1-3 degrees we get freezing on the roads by falling dew, covering prevents this considerable risk. As someone who made the switch from car commute to ebike a few years ago I think it's super feasable with ebikes to get ridership way up in this city but what's the point if it's only 6 months of the year?
That is something I have yet to see in person. Is that used anywhere? The closest thing that comes to mind are pedestrian malls I've visited in Japan, but those are strictly no-no zones for bicycles. It's an interesting idea, but it's hard enough to get typical infrastructure built as it is 😅 I am of the mind that we need a cultural shift, one that understands we aren't made of sugar. Dress for the weather. That won't work for everyone but it seems to work for a large portion of the population in the cycling meccas of the world.
Great video! I really, really appreciate that your first point is about our local street bikeways. It's such an underlooked part of the network that could be improved relatively easily!
As a Dutch person I always notice abroad that in most places traffic lights take ages. I don't get why. It's really not that hard to put a sensor down and optimize the timing algorithm for flow. You just need a few smart, dedicated people to figure it out and then share the knowledge. I wonder who the people in the municipality are who make the decisions to keep everything dumb. Maybe it's just a lack of education of urban city planners and it's not even considered an option
I also think education for drivers and cyclists needs to improve. The City installed new roadway infrastructure without explaining to people (both on two wheels and four) how to use it. For instance: little traffic circles on residential streets that no-one (including the City) seem to know whether to treat like traffic circles (yield to traffic to the left) or four-way yields (yield to traffic on the right). Or how to turn right when intersecting a non-separated bike lane; does the bike approaching from the rear have to yield to the turning vehicle because it’s already signalling its intention to turn, or does they cyclist pass on the right because they have a lane and the vehicle has to yield to them. Or, how about the fact that for most of my life, we were taught as cyclists that we are vehicles too, and to behave as such. But to do that, we had to know the rules of the road (and most of us were drivers as well, so we did). But now, my kids are growing up uninterested in driving and thus cycling everywhere in a world where drivers around them assume they have knowledge of- or are following- a set of rules they’ve never been taught. I’ve seen some downright dangerous and indignant behaviour from cyclists who don’t seem to know the rules (or are ignorant of a them), that when matched to a driver who expects them to know, is a recipe for collision. This proves the case for separated infrastructure, but separated infrastructure doesn’t negate the need for better education.
Around here traffic circles have always been treated the same as regular uncontrolled intersections unless otherwise posted. There are a few that are signed as roundabouts, but most of the time the traffic circles are just there to force people to slow down while going through the intersection. When it comes to cyclists, this is one of the reasons why we probably ought to start requiring some sort of license. I hear so much BS about things like being allowed to run red lights and stop signs and not knowing that you're legally required in this part of the world to adhere to the normal rules governing operation in the street or sidewalk depending upon which you're in. It didn't used to be as much of an issue, but between traffic calming by taking lanes of traffic away and the increase in the numbers of cars, it's become a much increased problem.
The big thing that I feared would happen with those separated Bike Lanes is happening, but I realize that that's a flaw of North America and not the lanes
I'm not cyclist, but I approve that there would be better bike lanes. And maybe better traffic lights for bikes? It's not easy to time to right turn with a bike in your blind spot.
Hey Nic - You mention Strong Towns - is there a Vancouver group? Looking for like minded folks to deal with local issues and it would be great to find those people. (Google didn’t lead me to a local group.)
At around 6:25, when the car is turning right on a lane given priority to bikes, as a car driver I find this setup completely bonkers. There's no way I'll be able to see a bike moving at 20-30km/hr approaching from behind at an at-grade separated lane. I'll always give way to a bike if I see them, but it's often hard since I may already be turning and I can't see them between my passenger seat, mirrors angled away etc. The setup needs to change. Thankfully, I've had no close calls, but I have had beeps from people behind wanting to go too.
The phenomenon of parents driving their kids to school (usually one or two kids riding in an SUV twice a day) has gotten out of control. Some parents want to drive right up to the school door and this has raised exhaust emissions, causing the school to implement bans on driving to the school within a few hundred meters. Some parents do not respect it and get fined, then challenge the fine in court. Most kids will have no more than 1km to walk to school or take a bus, but parents do not want their kids to walk or ride the bus. In Portland, they have organized the "bike bus" which is a group ride to school everyday, where a few adults ride a circuit with the students on their way to school. Maybe something similar can be done in Vancouver.
Every complaint in this video is of something that still got way more thought than anything in Philadelphia, yet another city where the bike lanes were designed by the paint truck drivers.
I'm looking at Google view. Doesn't look worse than any other street like Kingsway or Oak, construction in a few places like anywhere. I was there on Hastings in the early 90s for a week, an old motel that I think became an old folks building the year after, either on Springer or closer to Boundary. Was a nice ride to Stanley Park past PNE, morning and at dusk. I was there 8 or 9 days in 2018 on my tour bike, first 5 days at the 2400 motel. I didn't go to East Hastings then tho. Went down Nanaimo in evenings. If I didn't like the road, I got on the sidewalk. Same as when I was in Toronto to Markham where my hotel was 4 nights. I spent 6 days to Powell River and back thru Nanaimo. Had bums screaming there too. In 2014 I was on my way to Vietnam and ended up with a whole day layover. I got the free hotel rental bike and rode to Stanley Park and back, that was Nov. 11. Gorgeous day.
We see an increasing number of police on bicycles in Vancouver. This is a great thing and VPD should be encouraged in this. It reminds car drivers, cyclists not only count, but are often faster on a cycle and more versatile than cars. And if it gets them out of their muscle cars and vintage Harleys they may even start to move into the 21st Century.
The pedestrian/cyclist stop lights and ask to cross buttons, yeah there is one street I take around here where we wind up always having to stop when it would be so easy to have some detection of cyclists going on to have it green most of the time. What's really ridicules is that half the time the main light is green for the same direction and it should of already changed for the cyclist before he gets there instead of his having to stop 100% just to punch that stupid button. Very high volume large intersections with huge traffic I understand that better in terms of perhaps the cyclist having far less pecking order, but the one I'm talking about is fairly low volume and is at a much more common bike routing point. The fact is I like your thinking on almost all of this including the physical barriers and streets being for bikes primarily, but as for the photo enforcement which I call "gun cameras" (used as a weapon) I think of that as straight out of "1984" and I'm totally against them anywhere and everywhere. They're all about nefarious state evolution against the individual for the purpose of state organized theft. They make drivers extremely nervous about outrageous fines and that makes for worse, less safe driving. We had some here a few years ago but they were all pulled out. Other, especially larger cities in Arizona have them, but not here. These government entities already have enough other areas to swindle us in. That of course is speaking from a car owner's perspective and not so much a bike owner's perspective.
City and regional transportation departments still only care about maximizing vehicle speeds. Pedestrians first is barely on their radar. They'll shoehorn in bike lanes when they're told they have to, but they don't see it as their responsibility. No one wants to lose on-street parking, never mind a driving lane, and there's no room to widen the roads, so bikes just get what's left where it can be crammed in, or most often nothing at all. TransLink should have provided bike paths and bridge crossings along all SkyTrain routes, but they don't see it as their responsibility. Bike routes dead end at stations and there's no consideration for bikes as an alternative when trains and stations are shut down or overloaded. There are some bike paths, but they're an afterthought that seem to have been provided by individual cities to address the blighted areas under trains more than to provide an alternate mode to get around the city. I say that because little of the surrounding areas connect to them. Bikes just have to work their way to the few trails in the car traffic. Somewhat unrelated, but every time I pass Metrotown, I'm in awe of how they refused to reconnect the pedestrian sky bridge. It's just hanging there while thousands of people every hour walk down to street level every hour to cross in traffic. Parks departments and neighborhoods sometimes incorporate bike lanes as part of improvements, but they don't want to lose on-street parking and make no effort to connect the dots between the parks and major bike routes. They seem satisfied with 1/2 mile length of bike lanes on major streets around schools at best, but they they dead end outside of that. Infrastructure in Uptown New West is so bad that e-bike delivery drivers ride on the sidewalk, dodging pedestrians. I don't blame them because the streets are unsafe for bikes. There's a serious case of apathy about fixing much of anything. No one is responsible, and no one cares enough reorganize departments to assign the responsibility to deal with the systemic bureaucratic problems. Saying biking in Vancouver is better than most North American cities is an extremely low bar. The 3% ride share here, compared with 50% often found in Europe is a telling comparison. I had better biking experiences in Phoenix and and they're more sprawling, car centric and drivers are even more openly hostile to bikes. It's also not a climate issue. Seattle's bike network was immensely better when I was there several years ago, and it has since been improved. It's not perfect, but they at least have a very good rails to trails and lake frontage network. The Burke-Gilman, Lake Washington, Sammamish River trails, and bike lanes throughout the city put Vancouver's bike infrastructure to shame. I could ride there all day with very little interaction with cars. In Vancouver I can rarely ride more than a few hundred feet without wondering what the bike route is intended to be. I rode last Summer from New West to Stanley park. It was a beautiful day, but one of the worst biking experiences of my life. Who can we even complain to? No one seems to be in charge.
The fact that the current mayor promised a separate cycling lane around Stanley Park but ended up removing the temporary one so cars can blast through the park drives me nuts.
I really wish they built that separate cycling lane. Simply because giving the only lane to the bikers blocks out people who can't feasibly get there through biking but not giving bikers a separate lane was also stupid.
Unless you wake up one day and see people stopping at stop signs, then ethics, briliance and pride will continue to elude us every Canada Day, Dude. Our capitals are full of Canadian patriots blowing stop signs, jaywalking and speeding with their kids. Many of thse capital city winners work for the Gov. Ditto Vancouver freewheeling city vehicles. The common phenomenon of mass negligence is not a new one. Experts think that politicians hate photo radar because the citizens do. Our Canadian Lemmings shine and keep their kids at risk. Look at the high percentage of families who speed past the Vancouver's Children Hospital daily. The directors don't know? The mayor is only giving us our civic negligence back with icing and a pretty bow. Personally, i recommend that the local kids supersoak their parents and other adult realtives crotches whenever they break traffic laws together and then carry boxes of adult diapers to humiliate their parents and all of adult relatives who would put their lives at risk, eh? Also a great idea for Israel and the entire Middle East! California! Vancouver's rocket scientists can't even protect us from Velocitized drivers who terrorize cyclists daily. Ever had a pickup truck cut you off when it makes a right turn of you, cutting you of when you cycle? Our schools have 3 % stop signs compliance rates, Dude. The fuzz are unable to police us into MVA/submission. A connection between the extermination camps for our Canadian destitute since 1972 and the lack of traffic law compliance rates and high housing prices is obvious, eh? Ethics, conscientiousness and law-abiding adults would save us, but what politician is interested in upsetting the status quo/ apple cart of high ICBC rates? The teens love paying $5000!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Right teens?
Get an EV car.
Please vote in the next local election. The current mayor and city council are anti bike. Voter turnout was super low so the regressive ABC party won because NIMBYS all vote. Please vote! Your vote can make a difference. Please don’t be apathetic
If you voted for the current mayor because of law and order or safety you wasted your vote he hasn't done a thing. There are still drug dealers openly working on every corner of the DTES. Not saying that another mayor is going solve those problems but at least they wouldn't be actively trying to dismantle safety infrastructure that we've already paid for.
The bigger problem with drugs and those that peddle them is dealt with at the provincial government to some degree and the rest falls onto to the feds...Only thing a mayor can do is order his dept of safety, the VPD here, to arrest and detain them constantly. And if this was done can you imagine all the "de-fund the police" and the blee ding heart "humanity savers" that would be marching in the streets to end the "police state". How's about we keep our expectations of Mayor Sim to if he can do something about our ridiculous road surfaces along with our disgusting litter problems along with all the secondary issues that brings like the current rat population explosion. I've lived in this city since birth some 60 odd years ago and the Vancouver pre Expo was the one the world admired, as well as it's citizens. Sure glad I got to experience that Vancouver as the current incarnation kinda sucks.
Toronto had these exact issues a year ago as vancouver does currently. It is absolutely possible as with the last mayor election in Toronto. Toronto now has a mayor and council who are highly for bike lanes and better streets. It is possible
Agreed! This mayor is in developers pockets
@@kellylingushas there ever been a mayor in Vancouver who wasn't in the developers' pockets? This mayor at least is in the pocket of local Vancouver billionaire developers vs the international developers who owned the previous few mayors. ...but it doesn't really matter who the mayor and council are, the decisions are all made by the unelected managers.
IMO, the "bike streets" biggest problem is that they're full of parked cars. It really multiplies the danger. Removing the on street parking on those bike routes is much safer, and some routes that do have this feel much better.
I think that the parking is a great temporary measure to slow the cars down. If they don't work, then use angled parking, and keep angling until the cars slow down.
@@eugenetswong sure it slows the cars down by squeezing the cyclists between them. Did you see the video with all the examples? Using cyclists and pedestrians as "traffic calming" is dangerous
@@eugenetswong drivers are desensitized to other cars. I understand the efficiency sentiment, but we need deliberate structures that will make drivers less comfortable speeding and allow peds and cyclists to see and be seen.
@@galenkehler I'm taking about streets where the lanes are too narrow for cars to pass.
@@GaigeGrosskreutzGunClubAngled parking is a deliberate structure.
8th Ave is a terrifying part of the bike network. It's a key part of the east-west network in theory, but there's no space for a car to go the other way with reasonable clearance and they definitely aren't going to wait for you to clear the block. The entire road is also skinny enough to be in the door zone, and it's poorly lit at night.
Ive ridden 8th probably 200 times and I’ve never felt uncomfortable there.
You really ought to have a bicycle light. You should be well lit and prepared for low light situations if you're cycling at night. There's nothing dangerous with the door zone if you're traveling at a safe speed and paying attention. The city has already spent millions of our tax dollars on us at a time when we have people living in tents and standing in line at food banks. Take care of your self instead of demanding the state pay to coddle you.
Never be scared of cycling in Canada. YOU OWN THE STREET! Fear of cycling is caused by being invisible, (dark clothes), blindness (sunglases) deafness (illegal music in ear buds etc). Next is Velocitized drivers who have come off the hiway and can't estimate your speed so they tend to cut you off. The only other problem is "breaking traffic laws, "which doesn't protect you in sticky situations, such as blind corners, unexpected situations and a low winter sun. For example, I went to Stanley park late at night and found that Lost Lagoon had no lighting on the Nw side. My little light was crappy, but it was PITCH DARK, DUDE. Without my light I would have walked into the lagoon for lack of a full moon. After cycling for 55 years in town, my ass was saved at least 10 times at blind corners by stopping at rhe stop sign or whan leaving a driveway, lane or parking lot. Ditto walking in a 4 lane crosswalk when going past a stopped bus or truck by peeking at the next lane for speeding autos. YIKES!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Eighth ave is a feast of blind corners. My pedestrian buddy flew thru the air at Waterloo and 8th!. By dressing like Don "the Mouth" Cherry - you can be seen!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
I find 8th Ave is mostly good, and also just own the road and stay in the middle like you would if you were a car - it's the bike's designated lane, after all. Also fyi majority of bike injuries are result of getting hit by a person opening a car door, so stay far enough away from cars to avoid that.
The other thing that is crap about Beg buttons, is people with adaptive cycles that sit lower, can't reach them. I rode my recumbent trike down a brand new cycle route and couldn't reach any of the beg buttons. I got lucky the route was busy and someone else could hit the button
I recently went to Germany. Beg buttons exist there too, but you are hard pressed to wait more than 30 seconds, even if the light just changed as you got to the intersection.
Meanwhile, this morning on a Mobi coming from an appointment some old dude in his Toyota decided to honk at me because I had the audacity to be on the road.
Vancouver has a VERY long way to go to be more people friendly and it will def. not happen under the current council. They're too busy swaggering around half-drunk at public festivals.
Fantastic video. Amazing video content which is very well edited and excellent concise commentary. Many thanks, Nic. Like other commenters here, I really appreciated your sections on sidestreets that are supposed to be bike routes but have parking on both sides and often heavy fast traffic during the morning and afternoon school runs and rush hours. I've had some scary experiences and close calls, not to mention the emotional upset of these encounters which lingers long past the ride.
Yeah there's so many roads here that are sketchy as hell. Also its not clear as a newbie cyclist when Im allowed to ride on teh sidewalk. I know its probably never, but there are roads where I live that just seem too dangerous to cycle on.
wow, i ride these routes pretty much nearly everyday. awesome to see a video covering how i feel exactly to the T
Happy Critical Mass Friday! I loved seeing myself featured in one of your clips 😜
The removal of the SP bike lane is an embarrassment to the city of Vancouver. Also don’t forget that the ABC park board also imploded on themselves afterwards so.. 🤷♂️🤣
agreed!
I grew up in Vancouver, beginning in the fifties, and saw it get from car-culture bad, to really bad, then terribly bad. Was so glad to get out of that dangerous, polluted, noisy nightmare traffic in the mid eighties. We blocked the Stanley Park roadway as kids, plus we started an anti-car student club at Tupper, consulting at a meeting with the progressive Harry Rankin (Rankin’s Law - Alderman). Back at school with demonstration in mind, our instigators got expelled. Joined the BC Cycling group next, and we did do the demo cycling event on the UBC causeway road, as a social statement with the Press filming us. We can transition away from our dependence/addiction to cars. Greenways instead of pouring more money into widening the TCH would help. Another section of the highway is being torn up. Costing the taxpayers another half billion. It’s dumb, we are heading in the wrong direction! Yes, improve public transportation. Like mag-lev raised light rail, getting away from busses. These units powered by solar on top of the rail coverings. Still an idealistic advocate. Have been a Proponent/Supporter of the first Shuswap Trail (Balmoral - White Lake), and now my Presentation for the Loftus Lake Fen Universal Trail, and Dedicated Wetland Park have received the funding. Yea!
The only thing that sucks about cycling in Vancouver is that your bike will be stripped or stolen the minute you lock it up outside somewhere to go do a thing. It makes cycling for practical purposes utterly pointless and cycling for recreation a non-stop trip.
I was biking back home on Adanac street and a car at a 2 way stop sign intersection creeped past the stop sign and hit me. I was lucky to get away with minor bruises but was shocked at how the driver was saying "they always dive through that street and never hit anyone". Like why is their default driving through a bike street when a literal Main street is less than a 1 min drive away?
5:21 Beg buttons are even dumber in southern California. They don't immediately change even if it's been a while. They just light up the walk signal during the next green cycle and usually without any lead.
It's like that not just in California, but in large parts of Canada and the US too. I've spent time going around suburban Edmonton, Alberta, and I've had to wait 3 minutes (I timed it) for a beg button to activate a walk signal.
my (least) favorite beg button is in Los Altos, CA, USA. It's on a "slow" california stroad; 4 lanes. Only 35mph speed limit (which means cars drive 45-50 mph or 70-80kph). And the beg button which is at a crosswalk says verbatim, "warning, cars may not stop when button is pressed." WTF. My second most favorite is at a particular flavor of southern california stroad widely found in orange county, particularly southern orange county. The speed limit is 60mph on this 6 lane stroad (which means cars drive 70-75 mph or 110-120kph). The beg-button is accompanied by a auditory "WAIT" at 110 dB when standing at roughly arms length at adult-height. As if the roar of the traffic isn't enough. The ubiquity and density of 55-60mph stroads seen in southern orange county is something I haven't even seen in most parts of the South of the US (including Houston, Austin, or San Antonio), Michigan, or Illinois. Perhaps these exist in Canada. Or maybe the SE of the US, somewhere in FL?
@@esgee3829 60mph speed limits? That's not even found on New Jersey state highways, and many of those ban direct left turns and have concrete barriers in the median as well as deceleration lanes on either side. Those only have 50mph speed limits, at most. There are also freeways, even in the southern part of the US, with speed limits lower than 60mph (e.g., the 51 in Phoenix, AZ, which has a speed limit of 55 mph between the Mini-Stack (10/51/202 interchange) and Northern Ave, and the 17 used to have that low of speed limits from the Split (where it starts) to Peoria Ave). I also wonder which stroads have 60mph speed limits. The highest speed limit you'd find on Phoenix stroads are 45mph.
Many are like that in Vancouver too. There’s some here and there which will change the light, though it still takes around 10 seconds, since it has to count down the pedestrian lights.
Usually if it’s a busy road, though, you’re waiting for the next cycle
2:57 WHOA WHOA WHOA!! Those are some great raised crosswalks / continuous sidewalks! These are a HUGE part of creating safe cycling streets. It’s an incentive for cars to stick to the main roads, rather than cutting through. It also makes it safer for pedestrians, local residents, and cyclists. (And safer for drivers… I’ve yet to meet anyone who WANTS to insure someone while driving…)
We had those everywhere in Belgium. I live in Columbus OH now and I can think of several places where we could install those but we won't lol.
Great to see cycling content about my hometown! I never biked growing up but now exploring it gives me a lot of joy and hope that the city will go on to keep making improvements!
Absolutely! Hopefully you've had a chance in recent years.
I was meaning to message you. I'd love to collaborate with you next time I'm in Seattle.
Yeh, there's too much interaction with cars in Vancouver. I'll end up riding on the sidewalk in spots (slowly and yieldingly) to avoid having to interact with drivers - a significant number of whom are on their phones. Or I just won't ride at all, if the route is too exposed to traffic.
I'm starting to see the reason behind the "cyclists always run stop signs" stigma. Most bike routes are directed to side roads, which contain so much more stop-signs, and pedaling gets really tiring on the legs after a few stop-sign stop-gos.
This is the main reason I dislike side-street cycle routes. Others include parked cars (door-zones) and entitled drivers calling everyone else entitled for not driving on the freeways or main roads instead.
This is such an arcane law. Ideally, the stop signs should not be applicable to cyclists. Our road laws and road codes are designed by people who don't even walk anywhere, let alone cycle. What should we expect? Unfortunately, our legislators and city designers are too car-brained to recognize that in order for the city to be healthy the bylaws and the infrastructure should be bike friendly.
It's a myth that only cyclists run stop signs, "rolling stop" is a term invented by drivers after all, but you're onto something there, cyclists do run stupid stop signs because they love to put hundreds of them on bike routes for some reason, usually at the dumbest places possible. If it's a bike route it shouldn't have ANY stop signs. Raise the sidewalks parallel to the route and put down traffic circles, or if it's a major crossing add a traffic light.
@@vavilon7109100% disagree with you. I live along a bike way where most cyclists blow through stop signs. Those stop signs exist because the visibility is limited. I have been nearly hit by cyclists as a cyclist, as a pedestrian, and as a motor vehicle, because of blowing through stop signs in my neighborhood. Use stop signs.
@@deprofundis442 Around here there's a significant bike trail and roughly every other arterial has a stop sign for the trail rather than the street. There are so many people that just blow through the street regardless of whether there's a stop sign on the street or not. And, idiots in cars will stop even when there is no stop sign.
Cyclists refusing to obey the rules of the road just make it harder for traffic planners to figure out how to clear up the mess that comes from trying to mix bikes, cars, buses and pedestrians into the roads and sidewalks available. It certainly makes it motorists less sympathetic when changes do need to be made if cyclists are getting themselves killed breaking the rules of the road.
Have cyclist pay insurance and licensing as well.
Good points, would love it if city council saw the opportunity in following Paris's lead
I'm a visitor in Vancouver, and today I was riding around the Sea Wall near Stanley Park. It seems like they've converted the bike lane there into more pedestrian space, but the signage for bikes is extremely poor. I gave up after they sent me onto one of the forest trails in the park, when what I was really looking for was to bike by the waterfront as advertised by the Sea Wall.
I ride the Adanac bike route daily, and while it's very nice in general, there's a couple spots that suck. Where it crosses the highway, cars will often go over from neighboring streets and funnel through. They'll often rush to squeeze past me on the overpass, only to immediately slow down and ride their brakes down the rough bumpy hill, and then stop to make a left turn at the bottom.
The areas where there is good modal filtering, unfortunately, food and amazon delivery drivers take advantage of the fact that there's no car traffic to bother, and frequently stop in the middle of the street to make their delivery, without even trying to pull over. And finally, on Dunsmuir, while the lights are pretty reasonably timed going westbound, and I'll only have to stop once or twice on my way in the morning, the evening ride eastbound is definitely slower. If you're a mid-fast rider, you'll hit every 2nd light. If you're a slower rider, you'll have to stop every block.
Another major annoyance, as much as I hate to say it, is ebikes and scooters. I think they're great, but unfortunately a large percentage of riders don't show sufficient caution, or courtesy.
They generally just ride as fast as their motor wants to push them, and if they come up on other bikes, they pass without shoulder checking, and without caring that oncoming traffic has to squeeze over into the door zone. I'm _often_ riding faster than ebikes, and will be about to pass a row of them, when one swerves out in front of me, and _very_ slowly passes another ebike or scooter ahead of them. (29km/h passing 28.8km/h). If you're not going to go significantly faster than the person ahead of you, you shouldn't be passing them. Riding 2 wide for 30+ seconds as you creep past while oncoming traffic in the 2 way bike lane squeezes over, is kind of obnoxious to people who get stuck behind them waiting for them to get out of the way to properly pass them.
thanks for making this. The "bike streets" in Vancouver are often more dangerous and stressful than major roads. I commute from mount pleasant to ubc and feel way safer riding along King Edward (a wide main road with fast moving traffic), than the residential bike streets the planners would have me take. At least with a major road you often have clear visibility, fewer intersections, fewer drivers running stop signs, and more space for cars to pass you.
Sometimes it feels like planners are so concerned with making bike routes "pretty" -- like having them go through nice neighborhoods with tree lined streets -- that they forget about safety and efficiency. Safety and efficiency is all that really matters to me as a commuter at the end of the day (and I imagine most others feel this way too). Seeing how the ruling classes of Vancouver plant their front gardens is nice and all, but I'd rather get where I'm going safely and quickly and not have to worry about getting flattened by a diamond encrusted Land Rover on its way to the local school.
Thanks again for the video -- "bike streets" need a complete overhaul and rethink as you suggest.
Nice video. I think the main thing missing is that it's often hard to follow bike routes in Vancouver - for example Heather, Ridgeway, Dumfries, Sunrise, Midtown, and many others. And it's often worse in Burnaby.
I have a ton of footage of Vancouver bike routes and bad drivers on my channel; feel free to use it in future videos if it helps.
Spot on, I thought about including it. But here we are. I often find myself missing turns on unfamiliar bike routes.
Ultimately, we should be striving towards more direct routes for active transport to avoid this problem entirely.
You hit nail on the head. Not sure why the officials don’t care about those issues.
The bike streets are such a joke, literally just regular streets with cars parked on both sides to help impede your vision while cars are zooming past you. I like the point about being able to get to your destination with an unplanned route. Last time I did that in Vancouver I got lost because the bike street I was on just like randomly ended and there were no more signs.
As a daily commuter on these "bike streets" I totally agree with your thoughts. Something that bothers me constantly is when cars try to use these narrow streets as shortcuts, only to come head on with other cars and then they clog up the street waiting for one side to back up. Meanwhile I'm left guessing which way they will reverse, and if it's safe to go around on either side. If your giant SUV can't fit down a street, don't go there!
Great video! Another issue with residential "biking" routes is hills.. we have a decent amount. Specifically Adanac street. Cars want to pass cyclists even more because they want to maintain the momentum of their engines going uphill, and cyclists are much slower, making it incredibly unsafe. I tried Adnac and CVG, and prefer the later even though it adds few kms to my commute!
I live in Victoria and love to cycle here. My wife and I used to live in Vancouver and we still like to visit and cycle in Greater Vancouver. As you exit the ferry terminal you can turn right for a great day cycling in Boundary Bay or turn left (a bit hard to find the cycle path) and cycle, partially thanks to the courtesy of the Musqueam Band, along the coast to the bird sanctuary. If you want to go into Vancouver proper you have to catch the bike trailer, because the Deas tunnel does not allow bikes. I wish the NDP had not cancelled the bridge planned to replace the tunnel. The bridge would have accommodated cyclists and would have been a beautiful landmark and lookout. I remember how wonderful it was to take the cycle path on the old bridge across the Severn River inlet, while cycle touring in Scotland. Once past the south arm of the Fraser River things improve for cyclists as there are some good cycle routes and Skytrain accepts bikes. Stanley Park is a nice place to ride, but very congested and therefore somewhat dangerous. People like to walk, cycle, bus, drive and park to stroll, in Stanley Park and I think everyone should be accommodated. I think we should keep the car roads in the park and build new vastly expanded cycle routes and sidewalks. Cutting down some trees to accomplish that is fine with me... and get rid of the coyotes. Stanley Park is a city park that should welcome people of all ages and levels of physical ability, not a pristine nature reserve suitable only for the fit and woke. In Canada, we have literally millions of acres of remote wilderness for coyotes and trees. People should be welcome and safe throughout the park, like Central Park in New York.
Richards is the worse for lights. Every morning I hit every single light going north. It’s so stupid
The phenomenon of parents driving their kids to school (usually one or two kids riding in an SUV twice a day) has gotten out of control. Some parents want to drive right up to the school door and this has raised exhaust emissions, causing the school to implement bans on driving to the school within a few hundred meters. Some parents do not respect it and get fined, then challenge the fine in court. Most kids will have no more than 1km to walk to school or take a bus, but parents do not want their kids to walk or ride the bus. In Portland, they have organized the "bike bus" which is a group ride to school everyday, where a few adults ride a circuit with the students on their way to school. Maybe something similar can be done in Vancouver.
I wonder what kind of challenges they raise, and how effective those are at getting the fines removed.
That's the schools. They mandate the kids get driven to school and go after parents that don't.
@@grahamturner2640 In Ontario, some parents have gone to court (to contest tickets) because they think the by-law was unlawful, but I don't think they have won. They just pay the fine and wait until the next one. It is OK for them to spend $1500 on fines.
@@CrazyHowie What school does that? What school requires that a kid be driven (if walking or using public transportation or the school bus is an option)? Of course, some students have to be driven to school because there is no bus service, but I'm talking about cases where there is a school or municipal bus or the walk is less than 15 minutes.
@bengt_axle here in BC it's like that. If your kid takes the buss you have to meet them at the bus. It's stupid.
I'm a driver and dont cycle. You made some really great points about the infrastructure. I want you guys to have your own lanes too! Better for everybody
Coming from Duncan, which has absolutely terrible bike infrastructure, Vancouver is amazing.
But as someone who has lived in Vancouver for nearly two years now without a car, god i wish it was just a little better.
I used to cycle to school everyday, but there were two places that just plain felt unsafe. One was a place where i had to cut across the sidewalk twice (at sharp 90+ degree angles) to get to a crosswalk to cross a semi-busy road, and the other where the road bent weirdly with low visibility and cars speeding along the crossroad.
Every bike trip i take (outside of 10th, i do like that route) i inevitably have some area of conflict that makes me feel unsafe.
Though i love my bike, i seldom use it as its often just safer for me to transit, just so that i dont have to worry about the sketchy intersections or having to ride on the sidewalk for blocks at a time.
I'm not sure I've ever made a light on Hornby.
Edmonton actually does have some smart traffic lights for bikes, but they're few and far between, and mainly exist in the city centre.
There are some on the south side as well.
They still have the Strathcona bike co-op FORCING masks after 4 years of this totalitarian BS.
Skinny car lanes are NUTS.
It always sucks to see politicians delay or prevent bike lanes / traffic calming. Mayor Bowser here in DC has recently dragged her feet on adding a bike lane to a notoriously dangerous street. Keep fighting the good fight!
Why is there car-parking on the bike streets? This sends some serious mixed-messages.
Likely because many are renting out rooms to pay their $6,000 a month mortgage. Even 15 years ago I saw this at a friend's house on Keith street in N Van. The Pinoy owners with 2 kids were living in the basement. That was only a $420,000 house.
Plus many grownup kids can't move out I guess. Back alleys are even more cramped.
Vancouver has some great biking. . .if you’re downtown. There are way too many gaps. It’s not really a “network”, it’s some good routes here and there
Thanks for highlighting this. It's my major complaint as well. The lack of modal filters is absurd.
Another route that has a severe problem with this is the 37th ridgeway, which is one of the best 'southern' east/west bike routes for access to UBC. It quickly falls off a cliff, though, especially as you get into point grey. Despite the population being lower over there, the lack of filters means you're constantly bombarded by car traffic on what should be a slow-speed bicycle route.
On the beg buttons: I often arrive at one and click it automatically, and then realize the light doesn't want to change, but the way is clear. So I cross, and then the light turns red and stops traffic for me after I've already left the intersection. This kind of thing would be completely solved by an automatic light.
Even the parts at the West End are a bit of a mess, there is a lot of variation and holes in the network that you end up with a hodge podge system. There is a school on this main route, but while the two streets that connect to the streets that the school on have nice separated bike infrastructure, the section that the school actually sits on lacks ANY bike infrastructure or pedestrian safety features at all, apart from a couple of very minor speed bumps.
And this is classified as a AAA route, but the section at the school is a "you figure it out" design.
You do a great job encouraging people to get more involved. A very positive message.
100% of problems is caused by people being selfish. As both a cyclist and driver, I have absolutely no problem with drivers if they are aware of cyclists and do their part in road safety. The other side is the people that dont care about cyclists, block bike lanes, turn without signaling, cutting off others, dont know what a roundabout is, dont know how to stay in their lane, etc. The thing is that most, if not all, of those negatives affect not just cyclists but other drivers too.
The problem is not drivers vs cyclists, its just people being selfish jerks, full stop.
title should be "Commuting with a bike in vancouver sucks" because van is an amazing place for cycling. You got UBC to richmond, east van over to north shore, stanley park over to horseshoe bay/whistler, you got the three ski mountains. Cycling in vancouver is amazing. Commuting in the city sucks
Great video and thanks for taking the time to advocate for a better Vancouver!
As a lifelong cyclist in Nanaimo I was amazed at how awesome it felt to bike in Vancouver when I went over in 2018. I ended up on the newly built Arbutus Greenway to get to one of my destinations and was thrilled at the wide path and (mostly) ease of use. But I know the bar was set extremely low given I was used to riding on the roads in Nanaimo.
Given the climate of the area, we should be a cycling hotspot in our country. It's a real missed opportunity that in 2024 this is still not the case.
The thing I hate most about the cycling slow streets, especially 7th Ave W between Heather and Laurel, is that cross traffic treats the slow street as a green light for ignoring the stop signs. That street does a great job of stopping traffic going _along_ the street, but that just emboldens drivers going _across_ the street, because they know there are no quick cars on 7th.
I just watched a Vancouver's Worst Drivers video right before this, it's funny how many streets I recognized.
Suckiness depends on the type of cyclist you are. Tourists moseying around Stanley Park and downtown will likely be quite satisfied. Short-distance commuters are probably OK too. But if you commute 20km each way, you need speed and your risks go up. If you cycle for a living, doing Doordash deliveries, of course the network is inadequate and you gotta do what you gotta do! And then you have the serious and semi-serious road racer in singles or in groups. Roads and cycle paths were definitely not designed with them in mind, and in declining order for the other groups too. Not sure how much the taxpayers are going to support expenditures for each group. The poor sucker who has no choice but to drive 40 km to work gets no sympathy or preference over people who cycle for leisure.
I was living in Strasbourg, my only transport was my bike. Moved to Vancouver 3 months ago and still did not buy I bike. Just too dangerous. All the cars impede me of using my bike. One extra important thing to have more bikers is having a public transportation that accepts bike inside. This is important for a big city as Vancouver so people can do half of their trip in the public transport if it is too far.
Integration in transit is what ultimately killed my attempt to use a bike to cycle to Langara - I arrive from the southbound platform, meaning I have to ride three elevators just to get out, and there's only one elevator for each part, so if someone else is using them, it wastes way more time than if I just walked all the way out the station. And god forbid any one of those elevators goes down.
What sucks even more are traffic lights that work by detecting the presence of a car. You are basically forced to just run the red light. That’s the sort of lights I have to deal with in my small town.
I saw myself twice in your video during Critical Mass.
I was born and grew up here, I've also lived in Holland for 15 years. We are 50 years behind.
100% agree that Vancouver’s biggest obstacle is its over-reliance on shared bike streets. They manage to both be an intimidating and occasionally dangerous experience, and a big disincentive to investing in real infrastructure, because the city (esp. the current gov) can just point at a map with a lot of green lines on it and say “look at all our existing bike infrastructure”
It's kind of a shame that the standard color for bike lanes in North America is green because it means if we tried implementing an actual fietsstraat you'd be painting the entire road bright bike lane green. Red is so much more pleasant.
Its a typical branding thing. Green for da environment durrrrrrr
Nice video. Dumfries bike route and the Masumi Greenway Trail have pretty dangerous sections where the cyclist has to yield. Change is slow in Vancouver.
The 2 biggest problems for Vancouver cycling are the weather and theft.
I feel like I upgraded my parts for my bike, to bike around Metro Vancouver but traveling around transit made me see that it seems dangerous with the bike lanes in the middle of two car lanes, unprotected, or just painted. Feel like I just got it now to do some recreational stuff than actual commuting. Felt like I got spoiled trying out to bike in Montreal first and a bit of Toronto, and seeing Vancouver not somewhat on the level of the former.
This is a great breakdown. It's very much like this here in Portland, Oregon.
Not a citizen here, but I’d like to see these changes. One of my closest friends was put into the ICU after being hit by a box truck while riding in a bike lane. Thankfully he’s almost completely recovered, damn ankle is still a bit off, but not everyone gets to be so lucky, and I swear I didn’t need those 2 years shaved off my life from stress
Many cities have the same problem. The recipes have been known for a long time, but in many places they are simply ignored due to lack of demand, political will, and because "it's not for our people." I wonder why the Netherlands was able to pull itself together and escape the trap of car-centricity, while many other countries did not? Maybe it's because they don't have their own automakers?
PS. Thanks for your video.
What an excellent video, summing up most of the problems of the cycling network in Vancouver. I lived in Paris most of my life before moving to Vancouver and riding in Vancouver these days feels pretty similar to riding in Paris in the mid/late 90s, both in terms of infrastructure and in terms of confrontational driving culture. The major difference is that Paris (and a lot of European cities) kept moving forward, which took a lot of political spine, as the improvement of cycling and transit infrastructure were NOT popular at all at the beginning.
it seems that the scarcest resource in Vancouver is political will. And it is quite obvious that nothing good will come out of the 60's planning handbook used by the current council, but the previous council had been very complacent too with hardly any significant transit or bike infrastructure stated or completed during their term.
bike lanes in vancouver seem to just be for short pleasure rides. There are short routes in the more desirable neighbourhoods and in parks, but very little or no consistent routes that would get you from one side of town to another uninterrupted. I am a car user because the cycle routes are so un-usable. The bike routes don't go where most travelers actually need to go, and bike lanes will disappear at random points. Having a separated bike lane for 2 blocks and then it disappearing doesn't accomplish anything.
What's your take on Victoria cycling? Since moving from Vancouver to Victoria I cycle way more!
Well said. We have similar problems over in Victoria too.
I'll add the terrible Uber drivers who always park in the green sections. I ride down Beatty Street and everyday down that 4 block stretch there is one of them parked there. They even pass free parking or even crazier drive through that park in the bike zone.
I doubt anyone is actually aware that designated bike streets in Vancouver have a 30km/h speed limit. I wasn't until I googled it to find where you got that number from. While it is documented if you look, it is not widely published or enforced.
Wow.
"This is not AAA cycling infrastructure"
Not wrong, but here in the USA, my last mayor got derided as "Bike lane Bill" for daring to build some C minus infrastructure.
Its worse in Burnaby were there are hardly even sidewalks
Also troublesome are signs that say "Cyclists take the lane" - where you get an unbearably slow cyclist riding at 10 km/h across a lengthy bridge with a line of cars pooling behind them for a block or more.
As a person cycles everyday in all corners of metro van, I would consider this an absolute bang on state of the union. Thanks so much for your video!
Vancouver is heaven for me, Richmond absolutely sucks
Vancouver and the region have stalled with safe cycling infra improvements, pretty much, right after the pandemic. Beach ave, being a major improvement, still has abrupt ends both on Hornby and Pacific. There are too many examples of this patchy design. It sucks that the infra is really 3rd class, compared to roads for cars.
Whats scary is our family come to vancouver specifically because it’s leaps and bounds better than here in Alberta. Im euopean so it will never be good enough because i view it as good as it could be.
It’s as if it’s a short term project only as long as they have money to spend on capital improvements. What almost every municipality in English speaking North America is that maintenance & iterative improvement with experimentation is key to making that ribbon-cutting money effective beyond the initial season!
The potholes on the slow streets are horrific too, there’s no investment in their maintenance in Vancouver
Agree with most the video except...
Stanley Park Bike Route: Made me quite cycling around there because of being trapped in the bike lane with shitty cyclists. There were also a couple super-dangerous areas where the divider took away your only escape route. Bad (and expensive) bike infrastructure isn't going to help (even if the lane itself was a good idea the lane we got was poorly engineered/planned). The real solution to the Stanley Park issues is just punishing the bad drivers. 95% of the drivers there are pretty okay. We could spend millions of dollars on separation (some bikes routes should be separated for sure), but why do we let the worst 5% of the drivers drive like they do? That's not just a cycling issue; write off one SUV and you're basically a tax liability for at least a few years. There's people in this city that have wrote off 3+ SUV's and still drive the same way.
Broadway Bike Route: I disagree with this because it will just create too much tension. Not to mention that there are two parallel bike lanes just North and South of Broadway. Proponents of cycling directly on Broadway are falling into the same mentality of the zero-compromise car-only crowd. Remember that not just cars but also buses need to use this route to get to UBC. If those buses had to deal with bikes it would further backup what is already the busiest bus route in NA if I'm not mistaken. Maybe they'll do it and maybe I'll eat crow because it will be awesome... but even as a cyclist unfortunately I don't see it quite like that right now.
The entire debate about the Broadway bike lanes is that the street is being ripped up anyway so might as well add bike lanes in- it’s going down to 4 lanes with or without active transportation infrastructure.
The 99 won’t be nearly as busy with a skytrain line essentially replacing most of it.
Hard disagree with both points.
1) Infrastructure is always a better long term solution than enforcement, which cannot really be done consistently at scale and has been shown to rarely create lasting behavior change. And talking to a lot of other users of the lane (most of who were, like me, casual cyclists rather than sport cyclists) it seems like your opinion is in the minority. Also your use of the term ‘shitty cyclists’ to describe cyclists like me labels you an elitist, a crank, and basically disqualifies your opinions on cycling matters.
2) The ‘bike lanes’ north and south of broadway are perfect examples of the useless and dangerous ‘shared bike streets’ described in the video. I have to bike on broadway occasionally because i’m trying to access businesses on it, and it’s terrifying. Buses will be a lot less of an issue given that most of them will be substituted by the new skytrain line, and current construction shows that broadway doesn’t need as many lanes of car traffic than it used to have. We’re also trying to plan for the next 50-100 years, and the best time to put in the lanes is now that the whole street is being rebuilt. In what way is asking for a slice of broadway to be dedicated to bikes considered a ‘zero compromise’ stance - this may have been the case 20 years ago, but baseline expectations have changed.
In your first point you make a blanket statement that is inherently wrong. Even with separated bikes lanes for example we still have to deal with reckless e-bike riders. Enforcement of traffic laws is pretty damn important. Even just enforcing existing laws (they don't in Vancouver fyi) will go a long way. But laws also have to evolve (to deal with the e-bike problem for example).
I dunno... I hate when people make statements like you did without any case studies or evidence and using terms like "always". The issue I take with your premises is that we should just pour more and more money into our road infrastructure to deal with worse and worse drivers. F'k that.
Regarding Broadway: If you plan your trip you can easily go up most side streets to your destination. Or god forbid, walk your bike an entire block. Things like this are why there is such a divide: People on both sides are just unwilling to compromise. Unfortunately we have people on the pro-cycling side who thing tax payers should spend millions on extra bike lanes so they don't have to walk their bike a half block. @@leopoldleoleo
The argument of "just ride on the street 2 blocks over" is fine I guess but there are cars all over those routes too? Maybe close off 1 of them? There are a DOZEN parallel 100% car streets - why can't they just drive on them instead of 7th or 10th??? Why is it 100 to 0?
All I'm asking is that if they spend $10 of my tax money on places for cars to move freely spend $1 on protecting people walking or biking from them? That's all, just spend a tiny percentage. It's nicer to drive in a safe city as well because you are physically separated. If a right of way is 100' wide, give pedestrians and bikes half of that. It should be 2/3 but who are we kidding here.
I totally agree with you though about traffic enforcement and how ICBC operates. If you total a car they just give you money for a new one. If you injure someone on the road the police let you keep driving, they let you drive home if your car still works. We can renew our licenses online so we can be 90 years old or legally blind and still keep driving.
@@randomCADstuff Wanting better infrastructure that benefits all isn’t an unwillingness to ‘compromise’.
Why are we ripping up the entire street for subway construction anyway? Spending billions of dollars just so the 99 bus riders can have a speedy train to get to where they need to go? Can’t they just compromise and stick with taking the bus?
Unfortunately bikes being more affordable than cars means no big bike to push law makers. Idk if Canada is as dependent on bribery as the U.S. but that is the case here.
Question: are Auto-Mobiles strictly designed for highways and byways; and not designed for human consumption?
That's a great example of a "punishment pass" at 0:08
it'll be sound pessimistic but you know it disappointing to see we still at almost square one for bike infrastructure, all canadian cities (montreal and vancouver included) SUCK at it and we just hope upon hope to some day we get what we are fighting for. until that day just try not to die on streets as a bike commuter and keep hoping
The biggest problem for me is all the drug addicts stealing bikes. Not worth riding anything nice or anywhere you cant have eyes on your bike. Loose a bike every year or two living downtown.
North south travel just sucks also. The hills are crazy and bike toutes have steep inclines compared to the major arterial roads
I would have never opted for bikes until e-bikes came out and now I ride my eBike everywhere.
One of the many beautiful things about ebikes! Hope you're enjoying your ride.
Hey Nic, I'm curious what you think of the idea of covered bike corridors? It wouldn't have to be enclosed or anything and could even be transparent. You wouldn't have to put them all over but a few core routes. The cover has 2 effects, 1: it rains a lot here and rain cover is nice, 2: in the winter even when it's 1-3 degrees we get freezing on the roads by falling dew, covering prevents this considerable risk. As someone who made the switch from car commute to ebike a few years ago I think it's super feasable with ebikes to get ridership way up in this city but what's the point if it's only 6 months of the year?
That is something I have yet to see in person. Is that used anywhere? The closest thing that comes to mind are pedestrian malls I've visited in Japan, but those are strictly no-no zones for bicycles.
It's an interesting idea, but it's hard enough to get typical infrastructure built as it is 😅
I am of the mind that we need a cultural shift, one that understands we aren't made of sugar. Dress for the weather. That won't work for everyone but it seems to work for a large portion of the population in the cycling meccas of the world.
I think safe bicycle parking is the most important for Vancouver.
Great video! I really, really appreciate that your first point is about our local street bikeways. It's such an underlooked part of the network that could be improved relatively easily!
As a Dutch person I always notice abroad that in most places traffic lights take ages. I don't get why. It's really not that hard to put a sensor down and optimize the timing algorithm for flow. You just need a few smart, dedicated people to figure it out and then share the knowledge. I wonder who the people in the municipality are who make the decisions to keep everything dumb. Maybe it's just a lack of education of urban city planners and it's not even considered an option
I also think education for drivers and cyclists needs to improve.
The City installed new roadway infrastructure without explaining to people (both on two wheels and four) how to use it. For instance: little traffic circles on residential streets that no-one (including the City) seem to know whether to treat like traffic circles (yield to traffic to the left) or four-way yields (yield to traffic on the right). Or how to turn right when intersecting a non-separated bike lane; does the bike approaching from the rear have to yield to the turning vehicle because it’s already signalling its intention to turn, or does they cyclist pass on the right because they have a lane and the vehicle has to yield to them.
Or, how about the fact that for most of my life, we were taught as cyclists that we are vehicles too, and to behave as such. But to do that, we had to know the rules of the road (and most of us were drivers as well, so we did). But now, my kids are growing up uninterested in driving and thus cycling everywhere in a world where drivers around them assume they have knowledge of- or are following- a set of rules they’ve never been taught. I’ve seen some downright dangerous and indignant behaviour from cyclists who don’t seem to know the rules (or are ignorant of a them), that when matched to a driver who expects them to know, is a recipe for collision.
This proves the case for separated infrastructure, but separated infrastructure doesn’t negate the need for better education.
Around here traffic circles have always been treated the same as regular uncontrolled intersections unless otherwise posted. There are a few that are signed as roundabouts, but most of the time the traffic circles are just there to force people to slow down while going through the intersection.
When it comes to cyclists, this is one of the reasons why we probably ought to start requiring some sort of license. I hear so much BS about things like being allowed to run red lights and stop signs and not knowing that you're legally required in this part of the world to adhere to the normal rules governing operation in the street or sidewalk depending upon which you're in. It didn't used to be as much of an issue, but between traffic calming by taking lanes of traffic away and the increase in the numbers of cars, it's become a much increased problem.
The big thing that I feared would happen with those separated Bike Lanes is happening, but I realize that that's a flaw of North America and not the lanes
I'm not cyclist, but I approve that there would be better bike lanes. And maybe better traffic lights for bikes? It's not easy to time to right turn with a bike in your blind spot.
Hey Nic - You mention Strong Towns - is there a Vancouver group? Looking for like minded folks to deal with local issues and it would be great to find those people.
(Google didn’t lead me to a local group.)
You can find them on instagram
At around 6:25, when the car is turning right on a lane given priority to bikes, as a car driver I find this setup completely bonkers. There's no way I'll be able to see a bike moving at 20-30km/hr approaching from behind at an at-grade separated lane. I'll always give way to a bike if I see them, but it's often hard since I may already be turning and I can't see them between my passenger seat, mirrors angled away etc. The setup needs to change. Thankfully, I've had no close calls, but I have had beeps from people behind wanting to go too.
Agree, this is a very stupid and dangerous setup. Who is in charge of designing these thigns?/ Seems ill conceived.
The phenomenon of parents driving their kids to school (usually one or two kids riding in an SUV twice a day) has gotten out of control. Some parents want to drive right up to the school door and this has raised exhaust emissions, causing the school to implement bans on driving to the school within a few hundred meters. Some parents do not respect it and get fined, then challenge the fine in court. Most kids will have no more than 1km to walk to school or take a bus, but parents do not want their kids to walk or ride the bus. In Portland, they have organized the "bike bus" which is a group ride to school everyday, where a few adults ride a circuit with the students on their way to school. Maybe something similar can be done in Vancouver.
Thank‘s for the interesting video! Kind regards from Germany!
Every complaint in this video is of something that still got way more thought than anything in Philadelphia, yet another city where the bike lanes were designed by the paint truck drivers.
Sally the bar is low in North America
I live and cycle in burnaby. Ask me about cycling from the heights to a location in the Canada way tech park.
I'm looking at Google view. Doesn't look worse than any other street like Kingsway or Oak, construction in a few places like anywhere.
I was there on Hastings in the early 90s for a week, an old motel that I think became an old folks building the year after, either on Springer or closer to Boundary. Was a nice ride to Stanley Park past PNE, morning and at dusk.
I was there 8 or 9 days in 2018 on my tour bike, first 5 days at the 2400 motel. I didn't go to East Hastings then tho. Went down Nanaimo in evenings. If I didn't like the road, I got on the sidewalk. Same as when I was in Toronto to Markham where my hotel was 4 nights. I spent 6 days to Powell River and back thru Nanaimo. Had bums screaming there too.
In 2014 I was on my way to Vietnam and ended up with a whole day layover. I got the free hotel rental bike and rode to Stanley Park and back, that was Nov. 11. Gorgeous day.
We see an increasing number of police on bicycles in Vancouver. This is a great thing and VPD should be encouraged in this. It reminds car drivers, cyclists not only count, but are often faster on a cycle and more versatile than cars. And if it gets them out of their muscle cars and vintage Harleys they may even start to move into the 21st Century.
Because it takes them till 9am to shovel the snow off of all the bike paths while the test of the city is paralyzed by that 2cm of snow.
The pedestrian/cyclist stop lights and ask to cross buttons, yeah there is one street I take around here where we wind up always having to stop when it would be so easy to have some detection of cyclists going on to have it green most of the time. What's really ridicules is that half the time the main light is green for the same direction and it should of already changed for the cyclist before he gets there instead of his having to stop 100% just to punch that stupid button. Very high volume large intersections with huge traffic I understand that better in terms of perhaps the cyclist having far less pecking order, but the one I'm talking about is fairly low volume and is at a much more common bike routing point. The fact is I like your thinking on almost all of this including the physical barriers and streets being for bikes primarily, but as for the photo enforcement which I call "gun cameras" (used as a weapon) I think of that as straight out of "1984" and I'm totally against them anywhere and everywhere. They're all about nefarious state evolution against the individual for the purpose of state organized theft. They make drivers extremely nervous about outrageous fines and that makes for worse, less safe driving. We had some here a few years ago but they were all pulled out. Other, especially larger cities in Arizona have them, but not here. These government entities already have enough other areas to swindle us in. That of course is speaking from a car owner's perspective and not so much a bike owner's perspective.
Another two drawbacks: 1.too much rain 2.too many hills
This channel is underrated fs.
City and regional transportation departments still only care about maximizing vehicle speeds. Pedestrians first is barely on their radar. They'll shoehorn in bike lanes when they're told they have to, but they don't see it as their responsibility. No one wants to lose on-street parking, never mind a driving lane, and there's no room to widen the roads, so bikes just get what's left where it can be crammed in, or most often nothing at all.
TransLink should have provided bike paths and bridge crossings along all SkyTrain routes, but they don't see it as their responsibility. Bike routes dead end at stations and there's no consideration for bikes as an alternative when trains and stations are shut down or overloaded. There are some bike paths, but they're an afterthought that seem to have been provided by individual cities to address the blighted areas under trains more than to provide an alternate mode to get around the city. I say that because little of the surrounding areas connect to them. Bikes just have to work their way to the few trails in the car traffic. Somewhat unrelated, but every time I pass Metrotown, I'm in awe of how they refused to reconnect the pedestrian sky bridge. It's just hanging there while thousands of people every hour walk down to street level every hour to cross in traffic.
Parks departments and neighborhoods sometimes incorporate bike lanes as part of improvements, but they don't want to lose on-street parking and make no effort to connect the dots between the parks and major bike routes. They seem satisfied with 1/2 mile length of bike lanes on major streets around schools at best, but they they dead end outside of that. Infrastructure in Uptown New West is so bad that e-bike delivery drivers ride on the sidewalk, dodging pedestrians. I don't blame them because the streets are unsafe for bikes.
There's a serious case of apathy about fixing much of anything. No one is responsible, and no one cares enough reorganize departments to assign the responsibility to deal with the systemic bureaucratic problems.
Saying biking in Vancouver is better than most North American cities is an extremely low bar. The 3% ride share here, compared with 50% often found in Europe is a telling comparison. I had better biking experiences in Phoenix and and they're more sprawling, car centric and drivers are even more openly hostile to bikes.
It's also not a climate issue. Seattle's bike network was immensely better when I was there several years ago, and it has since been improved. It's not perfect, but they at least have a very good rails to trails and lake frontage network. The Burke-Gilman, Lake Washington, Sammamish River trails, and bike lanes throughout the city put Vancouver's bike infrastructure to shame. I could ride there all day with very little interaction with cars. In Vancouver I can rarely ride more than a few hundred feet without wondering what the bike route is intended to be.
I rode last Summer from New West to Stanley park. It was a beautiful day, but one of the worst biking experiences of my life. Who can we even complain to? No one seems to be in charge.