Construction of a bike-only lane on the Dunsmuir Viaduct could begin as early as March, marking the beginning of an initiative to link the city's most-used cycling routes with dedicated bike lanes through the downtown core.
Following the Winter Games, barriers keeping traffic from one of three west-bound lanes of the viaduct will be moved from the south lane to the north lane, which will become a 2.5-metre wide, two-way bike lane. The barriers were put in to facilitate the construction of the Costco wholesale store on Expo Boulevard, which is now complete.
The project will cost $300,000.
Councillor Geoff Meggs, who is part of the city's bicycle advisory committee, says the lane on the viaduct will provide a secure route for cyclists coming into the downtown core from East Vancouver.
"The Burrard Bridge helped a lot for north-south connections to downtown, but we didn't really have a strong east-west one," he said.
The viaduct will remain closed for Olympic security until March 2.
The Burrard Bridge and the Adanac bike route, which runs through the residential neighbourhood of Strathcona and crosses Commercial Drive, are the most-used routes in the Vancouver, according to information presented to city council.
Ellen Woodsworth, who can often be seen at city functions and council meetings with her bike helmet, frequently uses the Adanac route and said cycling at night on the Dunsmuir Viaduct is "extremely dangerous."
Once cyclists start using the bike lane on the viaduct, the city will decide which downtown streets will be best suited for bike-only lanes. The input of the public and stakeholders, including the Vancouver Business Improvement Association and the Vancouver Area Cycling Coalition, will be brought to councillors who will then decide where to place bike-only lanes on a trial basis.
"We are working on some way of piecing those two routes together through downtown to close that last gap. In the downtown core, painted lanes can be very constricted between the busses and the rest of the traffic and more often with parking and traffic," Meggs told ctvbc.ca.
Existing bike lanes on Dunsmuir, Hornby and Burrard streets are marked with painted lines and white bicycle graphics but are not separated from other vehicle traffic by barriers. The downtown routes being considered by the city include a separated, one-way bike lane headed northbound on Hornby Street with a parallel lane headed southbound on Thurlow Street. Burrard Street would have two separated lanes in both north and southbound directions.
In February so far, as many as 4,000 daily trips are being made across the Burrard Bridge. This is less than the average 5,000 daily trips made at the height of summer, but is more than double the 1,000 to 2,500 daily trips made in November and December.
Meggs says the high use is "fantastic news."
"But we want to make sure that we maintain those improvements over the long term," he said.
Four per cent of Vancouver commuters take their bike to work -- this ranks high among Canadian cities and is second only to Victoria where cyclists make up six per cent of commuter traffic, according to Census figures from 2006.
