363 - 369 Perspectives

Tom van Ommeren - COMS369 L02

Cycling in Calgary is on the rise. The City of Calgary recently hired a bona fide cycling strategy coordinator. It is inevitable that motorists will increasingly find themselves sharing their infrastructure with cyclists. Differing views on responsibilities, privileges and courtesy of road use are bound to result in increasing conflicts. While cyclists deal with both the inefficiency and lack of safety of the road network, motorists now have unpredictable and at times law-breaking road users taking over their much-needed space.

Calgary is a city built to honor the car. Work, shopping and leisure are often far from home, and neighbourhood layouts discourage walking or cycling. Space is at a premium on our roads. Cyclists and especially cycling commuters are often seasonal creatures, unpredictable and abusive of the maneuverability of their vehicles. So why are they rewarded with bike lanes that often appear empty? Why do so few of them follow the rules of the road? Can we not license and tax them, so they pay for their share?

Many cyclists understand this viewpoint: They are motorists themselves and do pay road taxes. They see fellow cyclists pull some dangerous stunts, yet find themselves using shortcuts when taunted by long waits. Fear of being taken out by a door on a parked car or an inattentive lane-swerver puts many cyclists on the defense. Every cyclist has stories of blatant aggression from drivers, being honked at for no obvious reason being the mildest consequence. The city’s initiative feels like a welcome relief: Give cyclists their own space, legitimize their use of the roads and things will get better.

Certainly, part of the solution is just getting used to one another. The more cyclists on the road, the more familiar drivers will be with their navigation patterns. But to truly present cycling as a viable, progressive transportation alternative we need to clear up some basic misconceptions to both motorists and city hall. For cyclists do not seek to disrupt traffic – they seek to reduce and escape it for the betterment of everyone.

Commuting by bike is not for everyone. In the City of Calgary’s 2010 cyclist telephone survey, only 2% of respondents were described as fearless and 20% were confident cyclists, the 78% majority was either “interested” or “reluctant”. So what makes one-fifth of Calgarians want to cycle everywhere? Are they crazy? The survey revealed that exercise and fun and enjoyment were the greatest motivators for cycling trips of all kinds, whether recreational or commuting. Imagine your 30 minutes of frustration on Deerfoot Trail replaced with 40 minutes unfettered movement on forested pathways, receiving smiles from other good-natured cyclists and being surprised by the odd wild animal along the way. Counter intuitively, cycling to work charges your battery rather than depleting it with frustration. Cyclists are also largely non-political: The environment was quoted as the 5th ranked motivator. They ranked lack of safety as the #1 barrier to cycling, followed by weather, inability to carry things, and lack of facilities to lock the bike and shower.

Motorist’s perceptions of cycling contradict the harmless picture painted by this survey. If safety is cyclists’ #1 concern, why do they put themselves in harm’s way? And even if cycling purports to be non-political, it still represents a threat to the taken-for-grantedness of a fossil-fueled lifestyle. Calgary Herald blogger Tom Babin elaborates:

Some people see bike lanes as a threat to their lifestyle, and they feel accused and judged by it. I spoke to one downtown resident this summer who said simply selling his car — he isn’t even a cyclist, he uses transit — sparked anger from friends and acquaintances. Many of the reactions were akin to this: 'So, what? Now you think you’re better than me because you don’t have a car?'

The first step to reduce this tension is for motorists to understand that cyclists are not judging them. It is not unusual to feel challenged by other people flaunting their supposedly healthier, more wholesome lifestyles. Keep in mind that the car still has a prominent role in most cycling households, and if anything the cyclist is a reminder of our own priorities. Be inspired or feel sorry for their fanaticism, but don’t disparage it.

All road users stand to gain a lot from decisions surround cycling safety. Anyone who had shared a lane with a wobbly, uncomfortable cyclist has felt the added stress of accounting for the behaviour of this fragile vehicle. What some motorists don’t realize is that cyclists already make mutually beneficial choices in favour of safety and efficiency, which unfortunately challenge the legality of their behaviour. For example, on high-flow roads where speeds exceed 60 km/h many cyclists will illegally ride the sidewalk instead of blocking traffic. This is precisely why the city’s 10th street bike path was such an ill-advised and now underutilized project: There is a luxuriously wide sidewalk right next to it. All that the city planners need to do is recognize the time-proven cycling patterns and legitimize them.

Momentum is sacred to cyclists. Once past the effort of acceleration the legs spin freely, producing a satisfying whirring of gears. Even polluted air is refreshing once rolling at speed. What a letdown it is then to be caught in downtown traffic, hovering behind the tailpipes of endless single-occupant cars, waiting to trade 20 seconds of hard work for another 2 minutes of impatience. This congestion is a product of car-centric city planning: The scale of our road system (4-lane roads) simply does not mix with the slower, more random movement of pedestrian traffic. With a few more cycling lanes added, cyclists would have just the right granularity to pass efficiently through the rush-hour grid-lock. But without this relief, two-wheelers are looking for their own route through the madness: Squeezing between cars or bypassing traffic on the sidewalk.

To avoid further complicating traffic arteries, city planners often direct cycling routes through quieter neighbourhood streets. Besides the often comically indirect routing, these streets are often designed to deliberately waste momentum by the most inexcusably inefficient kind of intersection: The four-way stop. Additionally, traffic-calming measures like medians and S-turns often put cyclists at risk by squeezing them through narrow road sections between cars, while being no more effective than cyclist-friendly roundabouts.

Between arterials that are either high-speed or congested and the inefficient residential routes, cyclists themselves stand to benefit the most from modern city planning initiatives. Motorists too will benefit when the viability and safety of cycling calms the increase of car commuting. Yes, there is a cost to these initiatives, but progress will come quicker and cheaper if we apply our understanding of cyclists both on the road and when evaluating city planning.

By far the largest motorist misconception about cyclists is their appreciation for special courtesies. Once precious momentum has been given up for a stop sign, most cyclists are content to just wait and rest. When a motorist decides to stop and courteously let a cyclist through despite their right of way, several tensions are created: The cyclist is rushed back on the saddle, has to quickly review for a safe situation, and is asked to consent with the breaking of traffic laws. Finally, the motorists categorizes the cyclist as a special vehicle, the same kind of treatment that judges cycling unfit for major roads or winter conditions.

There is no question that cyclists should improve their behaviour. Cycling communities are aware of their image problem and do self-regulate. As a cyclist it is important to consider the driver’s view: Am I visible? Is what I’m about to do unexpected, unfair or putting myself in danger? To promote peaceful co-existence with pedestrians, don’t ride on occupied sidewalks.

As motorists, our courtesy towards cyclists needs to take the cyclist’s goals in mind. Consider them a slow-moving vehicle that likely won’t be in your way for long. Give them a wide berth. Most importantly, be supportive in the city’s attempts to accommodate cycling in our infrastructure. The city does get it wrong, as the 10th street cycling lane proved. Critique is important, but also the realization that car commuting will likely never improve, while cycling will at least relieve some pressure on our infrastructure.

Therefore, we should support city hall’s initiatives that see cycling as more than mere recreation. We should promote direct, momentum-respecting cycling routes on roads that are reasonably maintained in winter. As Gary Beaton of Calgary’s tour de nuit society puts it:

We have to build the right thing and you need to market that thing. If you build these massive infrastructure projects and nobody uses them, then that sets us even farther behind.