Skip to content
Join our Newsletter

Editorial: It’s a rocky road to cycling utopia

Getting more people to travel by bicycle is a worthy goal, but building a cycling utopia is a process with many challenges and obstacles.

Getting more people to travel by bicycle is a worthy goal, but building a cycling utopia is a process with many challenges and obstacles. The City of Victoria has the highest rate of bicycle travel of any major city in Canada — 11 per cent of commuting to work and four per cent of all trips within the city — but it wants to do better.

“We are committed to becoming one of the best cycling cities in the world,” says the city’s web page on Biketoria, the name for the cycling initiative.

Victoria’s official community plan has a goal that by 2041, 70 per cent of all trips to work will be by bicycle, walking or transit.

As the interim Biketoria report notes, Victoria “is a livable, prosperous and vibrant community. With a mild climate year-round, relatively gentle topography and a compact urban area with unique neighbourhoods, Victoria is an ideal community for cycling.”

The Capital Regional District’s Pedestrian and Cycling Master Plan proposes “a series of infrastructure investments and supportive programming to aid in achieving a regional mode share of 15 per cent each for pedestrians and cyclists — with 25 per cent in densely populated areas — by 2038.”

Cycling brings many benefits, as pointed out in a report by the Greater Victoria Cycling Coalition:

“Individuals benefit from improved health and fitness, lower personal transport costs and more travel options. Cities and communities realize dividends from less congestion, air pollution and vehicle emissions, as well as reduced demand on parking and lower transportation costs.”

Achieving the cycling ideal, though, comes at costs not everyone is enthusiastic about paying. It takes infrastructure — dedicated lanes, separate bike roads, signs and so forth. Dedicating lanes for bikes sometimes restricts car traffic, resulting in congestion and bad tempers. Merchants in Cook Street Village fear loss of parking to bike lanes.

A huge detriment to cycling, says Cindy Marven of the advocacy group Women’s Everyday Bicycling, is the concern for safety. More people would cycle if they could be assured they could do so without having to encounter motorized traffic.

The aim of the Biketoria initiative, says Ray Straatsma of the cycling coalition, is to create a connected network of bike routes that cyclists of all ages and abilities would be comfortable using.

Creating those routes is, of necessity, done on a piecemeal basis, though. And a dedicated bicycle route isn’t much use if it’s only three blocks long, when your journey across the city is a mixture of bike lanes and dodging traffic. Making society less car-dependent must be done in stages.

And even when that is achieved, there are other obstacles: aggressive cyclists and those who flout traffic rules.

Straatsma says cyclists behaving badly are a source of conflict in every city, but creating the proper infrastructure will go a long way to mitigating those conflicts.

It would be wrong to condemn all cyclists for the misdeeds of a few, but it takes only a few to create risks on the bike trails.

And boorish behaviour is not confined to the two-wheeled species — those on four wheels should also share the road and extend courtesy, especially since they enjoy a huge advantage — they are more likely to survive a collision between the two modes of transportation.

Straatsma says a transportation transformation is underway that envisions a blend of modes: walking, cycling, cars and transit. It’s a vision worth embracing, but it will require patience on the part of everyone, regardless of how they travel.