Join EBC and the Edmonton Symphony Orchestra for our eighth annual Bike to the Symphony next Thursday, June 1! Ride with the ESO’s Artist in Residence Lucas Waldin from BikeWorks South, or District Cafe if you prefer to meet the ride downtown, to the Winspear. The ride itself is always free, and everyone is welcome to join. Tickets to the concert are available through the Winspear Box Office. If you have a current EBC membership, you can use your promo code to access $24 tickets for the best seats in the Winspear.

From Debussy's Clair de lune to Ian Tyson's Four Strong Winds, from Rimsky-Korsakov to Star Trek to Mack the Knife: the Edmonton Symphony Orchestra will display the breadth of its talent in this performance.

For more information about Bike to the Symphony, including ride details and times, visit http://edmontonbikes.ca/symphony

If you head downtown, you will see the downtown bike network of physically separated bike lanes under construction, with a completion target of June/July. These lanes use a combination of large planters, concrete barriers and bollards to create a physical separation between bicycles and other traffic. New signal controls are being installed at intersections as well, including bike traffic lights, and other treatments will also be used to improve safety at intersections.

The future is coming! First #yeg downtown protected #cycling network street is shaping up nicely! So wide too, more than 3 meters! #yegbike pic.twitter.com/63oaiDB38e

— Darren Proulx (@dnproulx) April 22, 2017

Bike path installation on my route to work! #yegbike #yegUrbanCycling pic.twitter.com/7Gqj5BdhKF

— Kim (@saysyrahsirah) April 24, 2017

The map of the planned grid looks like this:

• 103 St north of 103 Ave won't be complete this year because of ongoing construction related to the Ice District scheduled to continue until 2019.
• 102 Ave east of 103 St also won't be complete this year, due to Valley Line LRT construction targeted for 2020.
• 99 St south of 102A Ave will also be completed later.

A more detailed map showing the roadway placement of the bike lanes should be released in the next few weeks; if you have any specific concerns about how the bike lanes will work, please contact us so we can share your feedback with the City of Edmonton. Most of the feedback and subsequent changes are planned to happen after the bike network has been constructed and opened for use, following Calgary's model, which allows for people to truly use and interact with the network in order to get the most useful feedback. Calgary made over 100 adjustments in the first few months of its bike network.

BikeWorks South and BikeWorks North are open this Saturday, April 15, 2017, but will both be closed Sunday.BikeWorks South will be open Monday regular hours.

The shared-use path in Mill Creek near 88 Avenue will be closed for approximately 5 hours some time on April 13, 2017.

In preparation for the construction site of the new overflow tunnel along the alignment of 88 Avenue, west of Mill Creek, the City of Edmonton’s crew will conduct hydro excavation work from the surface down to expose and verify the location of buried utilities close to the site of the shaft that will be used for construction.

This work will take five hours to complete on April 13th, 2017, and will interrupt the bike lane at the work site location as indicated on the map in the attached notice.

Please attend tonight's free presentation, Cycling the City: The Mainstreaming of Urban Biking, Tuesday, Apr 4 2017, from 7pm-8:15pm at the CN Theatre (Room 5-142), City Centre Campus, MacEwan University (the first floor of the the 105 St building on 104 Avenue). Presented by Tom Babin and hosted by the MacEwan University Office of Sustainability as part of their Sustainability Speaker Series.

Cycling is rapidly growing in popularity as a means of getting around North American cities, even winter cities. More and more places are introducing cycling-specific infrastructure to provide safer dedicated routes for cyclists, pedestrians, and motorists.

This summer, Edmonton launches its downtown grid of separated bike lanes. Calgary author, journalist, and blogger Tom Babin looks at recent trends and infrastructure developments in urban cycling in Calgary, Edmonton, and around the world.

Presented by: Tom Babin Tom is a Calgary-based author, journalist, and blogger who has written for the Los Angeles Times, National Post and Explore, and has spoken about cycling all over the world. He is also the author of Frostbike: The Joy, Pain, and Numbness of Winter Cycling.

In partnership with Paths for People and the Edmonton Bicycle Commuters Society.

Join us for our fall MEC/EBC Club Night at the downtown MEC (12328 102 Ave) on Tuesday, November 29 from 7-9pm! EBC members can purchase regular priced merchandise at 10% off – even bikes and boats. Products on clearance or marked down or products that get a discount from packages are not eligible for the 10% discount.

Door prizes will be awarded throughout the night!

Please note that you must be a member of MEC ($5 lifetime membership) and EBC ($15-$20 annual membership) to take advantage of this discount. Both memberships will be available for purchase the night of this event.

You can also purchase or renew your EBC membership online.

Iif you have your EBC membership card, please bring it, though it is not required. As long as you are a current member of EBC, we can verify your membership online and/or issue you a new card on the evening of the event.

Discount applies only to items that are in stock in the store at the time of the club night. No store transfers or web purchases.

Blundstone footwear is exempt from this discount.

Following in Calgary's footsteps, Edmonton City Council has unanimously approved building a network of protected bike lanes through downtown Edmonton, to open summer 2017. Thank you for sending us your stories, and for writing to your councillors, and a huge thanks to Paths for People for their work to make this happen. Please join Paths for People if you haven't already, and follow them on Facebook and Twitter.

Please write to your councillor one more time: to join us in thanking them for their leadership and for supporting this decision. 

#yegcc unanimously passes #yegbike grid. Mayor @doniveson adds motion to see if it could be expanded into University/Strathcona area in 2018

— Edm Mayor Office (@YEGMayorOffice) October 11, 2016

You can also send a tweet to Keith Shillington, Senior VP at Stantec, @shillington_k thanking him and Stantec for their initiative and the donation of their resources in developing this plan.

Edmonton's Downtown Grid

Stantec donated resources to develop a downtown bike network plan. The City of Edmonton has already started more detailed design work. The current plan is to open the grid by the summer of 2017; city administration has agreed that this is feasible, though an aggressive schedule. You can read a summary of the plan here.

Councillor Scott McKeen brought forward the original motion to study a minimum grid in July, with Coun. Ben Henderson amending it to consider a minimum grid including the entire core, including Old Strathcona. Due to constricted resources and timelines, Stantec's report only studied the downtown, but Mayor Don Iveson added a motion on Tuesday to look at using provincial or federal grants to help expand the grid to the University/Strathcona area in 2018.

You can watch video of the vote and view the bike grid reports by clicking on agenda item 6.12.

Contact your provincial and federal representatives

Federal Transportation Minister Amarjeet Sohi has responded, "We are seriously exploring how do we support municipalities to build the sustainable modes of transportation, dedicated cycling infrastructure, or other ways to reduce our dependency on the personal automobile.”

Edmonton-Centre MLA David Shepherd also expressed his support of the downtown grid.

You can contact your provincial and federal representatives to ask them to support active transportation funding for municipalities, which will help Edmonton to expand the grid to Strathcona:

• Provincial
  • Minister of Transportation Brian Mason
  • Minister of Environment Shannon Phillips
  • Minister of Health Sarah Hoffman
  • MLA for Edmonton-Strathcona Rachel Notley
• Federal
  • Minister of Transportation Amarjeet Sohi
  • Minister of Environment Catherine McKenna
  • Minister of Health Jane Philpott
  • MP for Edmonton-Strathcona Linda Duncan

Learning from Calgary's success

Edmonton's bike grid is specifically designed for Edmonton, with very careful analysis of each road, but the concept is modelled after Calgary's downtown bike grid, which was also designed by Stantec. Their grid, which only opened in 2015, has been hugely popular.

In 2011, there were just six communities in Calgary where at least four per cent of respondents reported commuting by bike. In 2016, that had risen to 43 communities. Ridership on some stretches of their network has doubled, tripled, or even quadrupled in two years.

Next steps

As Edmonton pushes forward with its bike network, two priorities emerge:

Thank you again to the Mayor, City Council, Paths for People, Stantec and everyone that wrote in support of the downtown grid. We are excited to celebrate this momentous turning point for Edmonton.

On Wednesday, September 28, at 1:30pm, Stantec's technical assessment of a downtown Edmonton bicycle grid will be presented to council's Urban Planning Committee. The report describes a 7.1km network of protected bike lanes, separated from traffic, in downtown Edmonton, connecting a grid of north-south and east-west routes to shared-use paths surrounding downtown. The entire report is 55 pages long, but we have summarized it here for you.

If it receives support at the Urban Planning Committee, the report will go to all of city council on October 11 for a decision on funding and timing. One the two funding options presented would see the downtown bike grid opening as early as summer 2017. But council needs to hear from you.

Contact your councillor immediately

Please contact your councillor prior to the October 11 meeting to express your support for a downtown bike grid. Paths for People has created a quick tool for you to use to contact your councillor, including a sample letter for you to send.

Just these few lines can be immensely effective:

They need to hear your voice to understand how important and urgent this is.

We need organizations and employers too!

Does your workplace care about employee health, limited parking stalls, or the environment? Are you involved with an organization that is active downtown? If you host events downtown, or are connected to a downtown school, or businesses big and small, please talk to your organization or workplace about writing a letter of support for a downtown bike grid. This network will help ease parking concerns, improve employee satisfaction, and can increase attendance/sales.

Downtown Bike Grid

Calgary built a 6.5km downtown grid of protected bike lanes, also called cycle tracks, in 2015. It was given the same budget as proposed for Edmonton's ($7.5 million), but came in under budget and was built for only $5.7 million. Hugely successful, the network led to a 95% increase in weekday bike trips in the months after opening, and celebrated over 1,000,000 cycle trips across its three main embedded counters about a year after opening. (Its 10 automated counters tallied nearly a million trips in the first 6 months.)

Will it feel safe?

Here are videos and images of Calgary's cycle tracks, which Stantec also helped design. Based on their experience, Edmonton's will be similar, with improvements based on lessons from Calgary.

Edmonton's Minimum Grid

You can view the full report here, but some of the highlights include:

• The implementation is flexible. If adjustments need to be made with this design, they can be made quickly. Calgary has made dozens of adjustments to its cycle track network based on feedback from users, drivers, and businesses. Calgary already made adjustments as early as the first initial weeks of operation.
• The report assessed existing capacity during AM/PM peak traffic conditions. Most roads are under capacity; those that were at capacity were removed from consideration. The analysis indicates that the bike lanes will not have a great impact on traffic. Calgary was much more constrained, but saw only limited impacts on travel time for drivers.

  

• The selected routes connect to almost all the major existing bike routes leading into downtown, including 100 Ave, 102 Ave, the High Level Bridge/Railtown, 105 Ave, the Capital Line LRT shared use path, the Metro Line LRT shared use path, Grierson Hill shared use path, and the river valley.
• The report addresses transit interactions (they're minimal on most of the selected routes) as well as maintaining access through downtown construction.
• Maintaining on-street parking was prioritized in the route selection and design. Most of the routes maintain existing on-street parking; a couple routes maintain parking on only one side for some sections. Downtown Edmonton has an abundant supply of on-street and off-street parking, including an increased supply as previously private parkades are in the process of opening access in anticipation of demands from the arena.
• The recommended barrier design includes self-watering planters for flowers, and a concrete base to better limit snow, slush and gravel from migrating into the bike lane. The report includes $625,000 annually for operating costs, including snow clearing at the same priority as the rest of the road (for downtown, this means within 24 hours of the end of snowfall).

  

• Over half of the capital costs are for upgrading intersections. Most of the intersection costs will go towards non-bike specific improvements such as replacing aging traffic controllers. The entire capital cost of the network will be paid using existing funds: no new funds need be allocated for the $7.5 million cost. Budgets are already allocated for traffic controller upgrades, a 102 Ave protected bike lane, complete streets, and active transportation. This downtown bike grid just gives a focus for those budgets.
• The 104 Ave section will be a shared use path on the north side of the road.

You can review the full report to see detailed assessments, including road surface conditions, parking impacts, and the proposed design of each route.

A few things not fully covered in this report include:

• Clear connections to the new funicular at 100 St and MacDonald Dr
• A protected bike route connecting 107 St down Fortway Dr (behind the Legislature) to River Valley Road
• Protected lanes along 100 Ave west of 110 St to the 121 St bike lane
• Discussion of the south side of the river (University, Garneau, Old Strathcona). The original motion from council included a request to consider these areas as well, but due to time and funding constraints the scope of this report is limited to downtown.

  

Why a downtown bike grid?

• It works. Calgary's city-wide cycling mode share has doubled since 2011. People feel safe enough to ride with young children; even to teach their children to ride. Separated bike lanes reduce the risk of collision by 90%.
• Good bike infrastructure dramatically reduces sidewalk cycling.
• Edmonton's lack of infrastructure doesn't work: at least 19 cyclists/year are injured within a 5 block radius of the downtown core. Many more incidents of harassment and collisions go unreported.
• Public health: increased physical activity is one of the best ways to improve individual health and creates massive public health benefits, and therefore cost savings.
• The selected routes are on roads with excess capacity. That capacity can be more equitably distributed.
• A single lane is not very useful; a network is essential. This network passes near to all downtown destinations, and connects well to other heavily-used routes.
• More people biking means less wear and tear on the roads, fewer potholes, less congestion, and more available and cheaper parking.

• This is city building (and about as cheap as you can get it). It enhances the public realm, increasing vibrancy in Edmonton's downtown.
• There is significant latent demand for cycling infrastructure that's safe for ages 8 to 80. Downtown has high existing and higher future concentration of people, jobs, and destinations, but due to high traffic volumes and lack of safe infrastructure, the majority of people don't currently feel comfortable biking downtown, even though the majority of Edmontonians are interested in cycling.
• The current allocation of our roadways is inequitable. We all pay for the roadways through our property taxes. People shouldn't be treated as second-class citizens simply because of their mode of transportation on any given day. The average Edmonton household spends over $11,068 each year on transportation. The median household income in downtown Edmonton was $35,858: almost 31% of the household income went to transportation.

Please, use this easy form to contact your councillor to support the downtown bike grid.

When you step out of your car, do you immediately don your safety vest? When you step out of the office after work, do you flick on the flashlight that you always carry with you?

Are you properly equipped to cross the road?

According to the City of Edmonton's latest "traffic safety" campaign:

"wearing a strip of reflective material or a reflector can save your life."

"pedestrians always come out the losers"

"If you are lucky, it will only bump you."

Zero Vision

Under the banner of Vision Zero, Edmonton's "Heads Up" campaign firmly offloads responsibility for pedestrian injuries and fatalities from the City's poor road designs and dangerous speeds and onto pedestrians themselves.

This is the antithesis of Vision Zero.

Give the City your feedback

The City is conducting a survey that includes a question about this ad campaign. You can give your feedback until noon, Tuesday, September 20.

Vision Zero is the Swedish approach to road safety thinking. It can be summarized in one sentence: No loss of life is acceptable.

The core principle of the Vision Zero concept is that in every situation that a person might fail, the road system should not.

In Troy Pavlek's excellent post on this campaign, he writes:

Vision Zero accepts that humans will make errors, so the system must account for that. Typical roadway design has focused on maximizing capacity, and then assigning blame to users when incidents occurred. But with Vision Zero design, the entire system is focused on increasing safety at every turn, so the system takes leadership in preventing scenarios where user error could cause injury.

The City's responsibility in Vision Zero is to use its limited resources as efficiently as possible to make the roads safer. It can do this by designing better roads, improving pedestrian connectivity, and improving dangerous intersections. An ad campaign that misdirects responsibility and implies that pedestrians (even those wearing yellow or orange!) are "lucky" to only be "bumped" by cars does not improve safety.

To be clear: we know very well that as a driver, it can be difficult to see unlit pedestrians or bikes at night. We have hosted workshops on making retroreflective clothing, and making your own bike lights. We sell hundreds of bike lights, starting at $1.49, at both of our volunteer-run, non-profit community bike shops, BikeWorks North and South.

But the City of Edmonton is in a position to do much more than just admonish people to dress shiny: their focus here is misguided. Even if they truly felt that this was the best focus for their resources, they would likely be better served by spending the same money to hand out lights and reflective bands at busy trails and intersections.

But it's likely not the best bang for our buck: a New Zealand study of car-bike collisions found that "the most physically conspicuous group had a higher risk [of collision involving a motor vehicle] in Auckland", i.e. those that wore high-visibility clothing and reflective gear were actually more likely to be hit by a car. A study of Calgary and Edmonton found that "the risk of collisions with a motor vehicle was increased by wearing fluorescent clothing", even after adjusting for commuting and bicycling location.

In Edmonton in 2015, 225 (68%) pedestrians were injured or killed while crossing with the right of way. Only 57 were crossing without the right of way. The majority of pedestrian collisions occurred during regular work hours, between 8am and 6pm. 40% of fatally injured pedestrians have been drinking; before you drunkenly stumble out of the hockey game, will you always don your safety vest and contemplate the anti-jaywalking billboard you saw earlier in the day?

What is the problem, and what are the solutions?

The problem is the City placing lights that illuminate only the road but not the sidewalk. The problem is the City poorly lighting or poorly marking crosswalks. The problem is the City creating long stretches of road without marked pedestrian crossings, encouraging pedestrians (especially those with small children or mobility challenges) to cross without a marked crosswalk. The problem is the City designing road networks that don't have strong pedestrian connectivity, forcing pedestrians to walk along either busy arterial roads or dark, unpopulated trails. The problem is the City designing roads for more cars to move faster and faster without having to worry about slowing or stopping, and then using long signal timings or other anti-pedestrian measures to deter walking.

The problem is the City continuing to unfairly direct blame onto pedestrians rather than taking responsibility.

Imploring anyone on foot to arm themselves with personal protective equipment in case they get "unlucky" is not a solution.

It is a signal of the City's failure to protect its citizens and to provide them with safe, healthy options to move about their neighbourhoods and their city.

Notice is hereby given to all EBC members that there is intention to propose the following resolution to be passed as a special resolution during the EBC Annual General Meeting on October 2, 2016. WHEREAS the Board of Directors of the Edmonton Bicycle Commuters Society recommends amendments to the Society's Bylaws;

THEREFORE BE IT RESOLVED that the Bylaws be amended as follows:

1. Delete from Section 4(a) [Duties of the Board of Directors] in its entirety and replace it with:
   • 4(a) "The Board is required to hold a meeting, which shall be chaired by an Interim Chair who shall be an outgoing Board member or a member at large, within one calendar month of the AGM. The date for this meeting must be set at the AGM. At this meeting, the Board shall elect a President, Vice President, Secretary, and Treasurer. No person who has held any combination of these positions during each of the previous four years shall be eligible to hold any of these positions for a fifth consecutive year. The Duties of the Interim Chair shall terminate on completion of the election of officers."
   • 4(a) The Board is required to hold a meeting, which shall be chaired by an Interim Chair who shall be an outgoing Board member or a member at large, within one calendar month of the AGM. The date for this meeting must be set at the AGM. At this meeting, the Board shall elect a President, Vice President, Secretary, and Treasurer. The Duties of the Interim Chair shall terminate on completion of the election of officers.
2. Delete from Section 6(g) [Election of the Board of Directors] in its entirety
   • 6(g) No board member who has served four years or more consecutively shall be eligible for re-election.
3. Renumber Section 6 accordingly.

For any questions or concerns, please contact us.

A safety audit of the operation of the High Level Bridge for walking and cycling has just been released. You can view the full report online. There are many good recommendations in this safety report, including:

• enhancing the barriers between the roadway and the paths (ideally in a way that minimizes splashing from cars, ice build-up, and wind), both on the bridge itself and some of the approaches,
• better marking hazards,
• removing barriers such as signs and posts and some redundant fencing,
• fixing uneven surfaces,
• installing rub rails,
• improving lighting,
• widening the approaches and improving sightlines at intersections

One-way operation is not supported

One recommendation that we do not support at this time, however, is the safety audit's recommendation to make any of the paths one-way.

Edmonton claims it wishes to promote active transportation. Placing further barriers to active transportation belies this claim.

Mandated one-way operation would further reduce capacity on the High Level Bridge: a problem now, and in the future if we wish to encourage more people to walk and bike. It would also make the bridge much more difficult to use, requiring long and dangerous traverses.

The City should be looking at solutions that improve the conditions, not jump to rash, anti-solutions that address one problem by making conditions worse.

First, the City should monitor usage and safety issues on the bridge, comparing them to statistics from before the suicide barriers were erected.

We collected many self-reported anecdotes, mostly when all traffic was routed to the east side. These are not scientific numbers. The City needs to collect robust numbers and compare them to pre-barrier baselines. Now that both sides of the bridge are open again, if the injury rate hasn't changed significantly from before the barriers were installed, is there really urgency to change the operation of the bridge?

If the City is able to collect data demonstrating that there continues to be an unacceptably high injury rate, and urgent changes are needed, we may be supportive of limited one-way operation, but only as a near-term mitigation method in conjunction with other changes, potentially with narrowly-defined hours and direction (e.g. east side operates as northbound in the AM peak, southbound in the afternoon peak, and unrestricted otherwise).

Improve intersections, irrespective of other changes

One change that should happen before any changes to travel direction on the bridge is improvements to crossings at both the north and south ends of the bridge. At the least, without any dramatic or expensive infrastructure changes, light signal timings could be altered to allow pedestrians and cyclists to cross the intersection in one phase, rather than multiple phases. There already exists a phase on the south side when no pedestrians are allowed to cross in any direction. There could also be a phase where no cars are allowed to move in any direction, but pedestrians and cyclists could cross in every direction (and clear the intersection much more rapidly).

This improvement, which still falls far short of more substantial improvements to the intersections, would improve safety and recognize the 3500 daily pedestrian and cycling users as more than just interlopers, ducking between turning cars and taking refuge on narrow concrete islands.

Additionally, we know that one of the best ways to influence behaviour (and encourage "desireable" behaviour) is through design. Enforcing one-way operation of the High Level Bridge paths would be extremely difficult, at best, and even more challenging if the City simultaneously maintains the many barriers between the west and east sides. By improving the intersections and making them easier to traverse, many people would opt to use the west side of their own accord, reducing pressures on the east side (and possibly any potential need to make it one-way).

Committee Meeting

City administration's report to committee, which talks about "solutions to make the pathways more cyclist and pedestrian friendly," lists one-way operation under "further investigation" and clarifies that "prior to making any further changes to the current condition, Administration will continue to engage the public to review options to enhance the operation of the two sidewalks/shared-use paths."

The City hosted a meeting with over a dozen stakeholders in August to review the draft safety audit. The consensus in the room was that one-way operation was not currently an acceptable option.

Finally: the committee report lists metrics, targets and outcomes. We are disappointed that none of the metrics consider public health or user safety. We strongly support suicide prevention measures and stronger mental health supports for Edmontonians. Thit is not a mutually exclusive goal from increased active transportation: in fact, the two are complimentary. If additional barriers to active transportation results in fewer people choosing to walk or bike, or indeed in direct injuries, that information should be captured in the City's metrics.

The Urban Planning Committee meets on September 14 to discuss this report. You can request to speak to the committee, or contact your councillor directly.