Bike lanes are a necessity for many students, especially those who can’t afford a car. Many other community members also need bike lanes to travel, as riding bikes to work or elsewhere saves a considerable amount of money on bus tickets, gas, and insurance.
In addition to saving people money, bike lanes encourage greener forms of transportation. They encourage people to be active in the midst of an obesity crisis. They also help the local economy by allowing people easier access to local shops and provide safety to pedestrians by adding an extra barrier between them and cars.
Despite all of these good attributes, there are still some major and very valid concerns about the bike lanes in Victoria.
One of these is that some portions of the bike lanes are too narrow for people with disabilities to safely ride their three-wheeled and four-wheeled vehicles. In fact, many sections of the bike-lane system only meet the bare-minimum standards imposed by the Transportation Association of Canada.
To make matters worse, these bottleneck areas are located in areas with high congestion, such as downtown Victoria, where a lot of people travel to for work or other reasons. This makes it very difficult—if not impossible—for disabled commuters to bike to and from downtown.
Perhaps the greatest concern about bike lanes relates to road safety—specifically, to the lack of regulation and training of cyclists on proper road etiquette. This lack of clarity and training can be very dangerous when dealing with vehicles. There should be stricter enforcement of the laws that do exist, and there should be more laws put into place outlining exactly what cyclists are and aren’t allowed to do on the road.
The ICBC website has general guidelines about cycling safety, and the BC government website does have some laws in regard to cyclists on the road. Clearly, however, not enough people are checking these laws before they start riding.
Victoria recently released a plan to expand the bike lanes in 2020. This would definitely benefit the community at large; however, the City of Victoria should definitely try to fix the problems with them first. This way, when the new bike lanes are created, Victoria will have stayed true to its promise to have bike lanes that are accessible to all.