Cycling strategy continues to move forward
Year three of Calgary’s cycling strategy saw some notable advancements towards the goal of making this a bike-friendly community. Of the 50 tasks listed when council approved the strategy in July 2011 39 are currently underway according to the latest annual report.
In 2013 the city hired a bicycle traffic engineer and an education and promotions planner.
To aid cyclist mobility there are 13 kilometres more on-street bikeways this year with police officers often on hand to pull over motorists and cyclists alike to explain the traffic rules concerning bike lanes and sharing the road. Thanks to a bylaw enacted in 2013 it is now illegal for cars to park or drive in bike lanes.
To give bikes something to do between rides the city added 190 short-term bicycle parking spaces this year for a total of 1800 since 2002 and 150 spaces in the Calgary Parking Authority’s downtown parkades.
Perhaps thanks to all this the number of all-day bike trips in and out of the city’s core is up 20 per cent over 2012.
The annual report states that for 2014 Cycling Strategy staff plan to create a bicycle design guide to “provide guidance for the inclusion of cycling facilities into the Complete Streets Guide.” The city also intends to retrofit traffic signals to detect the presence of bicycles at various intersections along Second Street N.W. Kensington Road Crowchild Trail Centre Street and along the West LRT route.
The annual report will be presented to city council on December 13.
