It's All Too Unnecessary

Yesterday, two connected events took place in Ottawa. I call them events for lack of a better term although one was nothing less than a tragedy, all the more so because it didn't have to happen.

A woman was cycling to work on a downtown street the City recommended for cyclists. The driver opened the door of his parked car, struck the cyclist knocking her into the path of an oncoming van which ran over her. The woman died in the ambulance on the way to the hospital. Ironically, just a few blocks away, the trial of a man charged in an incident two years ago when the vehicle he was driving struck five cyclists was about to begin.

The second event happened on a three-lane, one-way street that runs from the expressway to the downtown core. Always a busy street, this is a feeder road and is particularly busy during morning and evening rush hour. I had just picked Maggie up from work and turned onto this street when we saw the incident. Traffic was stopped at a light and a woman cyclist was pounding on the driver's window of the Mazda in front of us, screaming invective and yelling obscenities. She was like a harridian and completely out of control. Sensibly the driver didn't respond but merely pulled forward slowly when the light changed to green which prompted the cyclist to turn her bike around and peddle her ass up the street against traffic.

It didn't take long for both these events to once again heat up the debate about adding more bike lanes, even though bike lanes would not have helped in either of the two cases mentioned here. Already cycling advocates have ratcheted up the rhetoric, demanding more bike lanes and even eliminating vehicle street parking because "dooring" as they call it is a problem for them.

Here's the thing. Just as motorists need to understand that cyclists have as much right to use the roads as they do, cyclists need to understand that the roads are there for the benefit of all, not just them. Oh wait...that's the same thing isn't it. It appears that  both sides of this divide have some learning to do so I'm going to put that debate aside for a moment because I believe it has become too polarized and serves only to divide us and prevent us from finding real solutions.

Here are the issues that frustrate motorists. Too many cyclists use the streets like the entire street is theirs alone and the rules don't apply to them. They don't follow the traffic code, don't signal turns, come up on vehicles on both sides of the vehicle, weave in and out of traffic, don't use night lights to make themselves more visible and too often ride the wrong way down one-way streets.

It isn't one-sided and cyclists are just as frustrated that a simple thing like riding your bike is too often an activity that threatens injury and even death at the hands of a vehicle. They are frustrated by drivers who bully by crowding them, fail to yield the right of way, cut them off and who yell at and honk their horns at them.

(Everyone is frustrated by tour buses parking on main streets and further clogging traffic for both motorists and cyclists.)

We are divided when we should be unified. The problem isn't cyclists nor is the problem motorists. Both simply want access to their streets so that they can do what is they need or want to do. The problem is government and both The City and The National Capital Commission which administrates federal lands in Canada's capital need to get off their butts and do more than offer slogans, videos and a patchwork of half-solutions.

The head of the NCC has stated publicly that she wants to see the city become more bike-friendly and that her vision (as she likes to call it) is to see more and more people using bikes to access the downtown core rather than motor vehicles. Fine. Where's your comprehensive plan to make that happen? It isn't enought to simply encourage cyclists to bike in the core, there needs to be changes in the infrastructure and in attitudes to accommodate that. The NCC currently shuts down one part of the Ottawa River Parkway on Sundays during the summer for cyclists and pedestrians but that isn't a plan, it's absurd. (Ironically, the Ottawa River Parkway has an extensive network of bike and pedestrian pathways which make you wonder at the need for the Sunday morning shutdown).

The City also wants to accommodate increased bike use in the core. Great. Where's your comprehensive traffic user plan?

The truth is that there is no plan because government has never moved beyond pandering. They built a single set of  bike lanes on one street downtown "as a trial" at a costs of $1.5 million (isn't it strange that it cost this much when the basic roadway was already there?)  This was done to appease cyclists who were pressuring the City but it is not part of a comprehensive plan for safer use of our downtown streets.

We live in a city that was never intended for both motor vehicles and cyclists. The streets aren't wide enough and the city was expanded based on a concept of suburban sprawl which meant more and more people needed to drive to work, if they worked downtown. To further complicate things, the City created over-sized pedestrian sidewalks which have a nice boulevard feel to them but which encroach on roadways. They also installed bus/taxi lanes which further reduced the amount of space available to motorists on many streets.

The downtown streets are used by many. Pedestrians, motorists, truckers, transit buses, tour buses, delivery vehicles, cyclists and every summer, construction vehicles. It's not easy figuring out how to accommodate all of them (simply doing a knee-jerk reaction to one group or another isn't a solution, it only aggravates the problem) but that is exactly what needs doing.

Instead of protecting the wide pedestrian sidewalks like they are part of the sacred path to Lourdes, we need to look at the total available space on each major street, the total volume of all traffic (vehicle, cyclist and pedestrian) and then began the process of determining how to best accommodate it all.

Will it be difficult to achieve? Absolutely but that is no excuse for patchwork solutions which in the end only make matters worse. We need a little hard work and vision here, not rhetoric and videos on how to use a bike lane. Will it cost money? Yes, if they ever get a plan done and begin to implement it. No matter how much it costs, it will still be cheaper than a single human life lost to poor planning and a divide between motorists and cyclists. Will it take time? Yes, but not as much time as building a light rail tunnel under the city for rapid transit. Can it be done? Yes but only if all of us are united in pressuring government to get off its butt and demand that they stop pandering to us and start thinking.

Here's the bottom line. We can either continue to argue between ourselves about how to use our streets or we can come together and force government to act. I'm not a big fan of bike lanes, especially in their current iteration but I am even less fond of the ongoing argument and the tragic and completely unnecessary injury or death of a single person because of this issue.

Don't argue for or against bike lanes, push your councillor, your government to start planning an integrated strategy for road use in the downtown core or to put it another way, take back the streets. You and I paid for them, it's time we all were able to use them conveniently......and safely.

© 2011 Maggie's Bear
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