Councillors flip-flop on bicycle lanes

The councillors in St. Catharines have flip-flopped on a progressive bicycle lane plan after a Canadian Tire store owner complained the lanes caused traffic tie-ups among motorists bound for his store.

You can read the story from the St. Catharines Standard here, but briefly, a four-lane road went on a diet in September and changed to two lanes, a central turning lane and two bike lanes. The store owner went to council with his complaint and the staff came up with a compromise that saved the bike lanes. Council members ignored the compromise and ordered the immediate removal of the bike lanes to return the street to four lanes, just in time for the Christmas shopping rush. I like the store owner's line that traffic jams will "discourage even more people from shopping." Uh, I thought the traffic jams were there BECAUSE people wanted to shop.

Apparently, if bicycle advocates want to succeed, they need the big boys -- Canadian Tire, Tim Horton's and the like -- on their side. Oh, and don't interfere with traffic flow.

Comments

[geoffrey]

Maybe its time for a BOYCOTT! I'm for extending it to the entire chain.

[Ryan]

This really ticked me off. I wasn't aware of a bike lane on said road (Welland Ave). I've always tried to avoid it because it can be quite dangerous to ride on.

From talking to someone I know who drives a taxi in the city, he said there are NO traffic jams at all (except for regular rush hour traffic). At the most the added time might be about 20-30 seconds.
He also told me that he picked someone up from one of the high schools here (Holy Cross) and that the school is pushing for other bike lanes to be removed in the city.

Two of those bike lanes that they want eliminated happen to be on Scott Street and Vine Street. Both former four lane roads. When they were four lanes for cars, the speeding was insane. Cars would be going 10-15kph OVER the speed limit.
They are now two lanes for cars, centre lane for turning and bike lanes on either side. Cars are now going the speed limit. I'm assuming Welland Ave would have been the same.

Scott and Vine Streets I use on a regular basis now. Before bike lanes on those roads I use to go out of my way to take side streets. With the bike lanes everything is direct, easy and fairly safe to get to.

IMO the city sent a message to cyclists with this decision. Cyclists are still irrelevant in this city.

As for Canadian Tire, I try not to buy anything there. At least in this city (we have 3 CT's) they have a policy where you can not bring in back packs or any sort of bags. (Although women can still carry their purses).
I find this an anti-bike/pedestrian/transit policy. It's not as if you could steal anything from them anyways. Cameras are every 5 feet, employees watch over you like a hawk and you have to pass through a maze of detectors on the way out.

[Ryan]

Here is an article in todays Standard on how cyclists are furious:
http://stcatharinesstandard.ca/ArticleDisplay.aspx?e=2167192

[Evan Rosamond]

It seems that Waterloo Region has or had a policy of providing bike lanes whenever they re-built a regional road. This goes back about 10 years or so. Bike lanes were added to parts of Victoria St. S., Highland Rd., Weber St. E., Bloomingdale Rd. and quite a few others. But this year they rebuilt Queen St. S., which used to have wide traffic lanes that easily accomodated a car and a bike side-by-side. The new Queen St. has no space for bikes but a central island/left turn lane instead. There are several places on both sides of the road where there is a single traffic lane between two curbs. This design is unsafe for cyclists given the quantity of traffic on this road and the kind of motorists that live around here. Unfortunately, cyclists will continue to use Queen St., especially between Mill and Highland, as it is the only street going in that direction for about 1 km in either direction.

[Ryan]

geoffrey, I posted a comment on my twitter account encouraging a boycott of CT stores.

Someone from their communications departed contacted me via twitter immediately asking for more information on the incident.
Still waiting for a reply.