The summer season has reignited debates about bike lanes in Canada's major cities.
In Canada's largest city, Mayor Rob Ford's council recently announced the axing of bike lanes on Jarvis Street in a move to exclude cyclists from busy downtown thoroughfares.
Ottawa's city council implemented its first downtown segregated bike lanes with a two-year pilot project on Laurier Avenue West.
Detractors of the project argue the lanes use access for parking, ambulances and fire trucks, and for loading trucks.
And, in Vancouver, businesses along a $4-million separated bike route on Hornby Street are reeling after a new report noted the bike lane, along with the resulting loss of parking, has collectively cost them 10 per cent in sales.
But pro-cycling advocates and environmental groups say these growing pains are worth it.
Andrew Devlin, a graduate student at the UBC Institute for Resources, Environment and Sustainability, told the Tyee the 'daily commute' is the most consistent cause of greenhouse gas emissions.
"Substituting our cars with a bike for this trip then has big potential for helping reduce our daily travel emissions," he said.
Canadian cities lag behind international ones, particularly in Europe in terms of the number of people cycling to work.
Only two per cent of Metro Vancouver residents and two per cent of Torontonians ride their bicycles to work compared to 35 per cent in Copenhagen.
"Copenhagen injects millions of dollars annually into building a good network of cycling infrastructure to make it easier for people to use their bikes to get around," Devlin said.
Richard Campbell, a member of the City of Vancouver's bicycle advisory committee, is also a believer in the "build it and they will come" theory.
"There's other cities that are really making efforts to complete their bicycle networks," Campbell told the Georgia Straight newspaper.
"Seville, Spain, they spent $42 million over four years building a network of 78 kilometres separated bicycle routes, and their cycling increased from practically nothing, 0.02 per cent, to almost seven per cent. So they really got results."
(CBC Photo)
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