A day after Vancouver celebrated the millionth cyclist to use the Burrard Bridge bike lanes, city council is looking to make the lanes more permanent.
Council has approved $2 million in funding to come up with a rehabilitation plan for the nearly 80-year-old bridge. City staff have recently had to install nets over walking paths below the bridge to catch falling hunks of concrete.
Any rehabilitation plan would also include replacing the bike lanes' current concrete barriers.
"The work that we're going to undertake now will basically decide what the best kind of barrier is that maximizes safety but looks a lot better and doesn't take up as much space. So it'll be a thinner profile barrier," Mayor Gregor Robertson said.
He hopes the bridge improvement work will be complete within the next year or two, and bikers may not be the only ones noticing a change.
"We haven't seen a big impact on traffic -- a slightly increased time coming out of the city at certain times -- of day. Some of the permanent changes will help alleviate that. There will be some tweaks to make it a little faster," Robertson said.
The bike lanes were put in place almost a year ago, and the city estimates that in one week, roughly 6,000 bike trips are made across the bridge.
With a report from CTV British Columbia's Maria Weisgarber
