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Calgary Bike Lanes and Bike Paths

Maybe it's my social circle, but I've never once heard anyone complain about bike lanes in Calgary. Going to any major cities downtown and streets like 17th will have wide curb cuts, bike lanes, and single lane of traffic. We just re-did the road without adding any of these. We've done the thing bike lane detractors want, put it off the main street to the parallel side street. I want the province to suggest even a single road where bike lanes should be taken out.
 
CalgaryTiger said:
I thought conservatives were about individual choice? Giving people more options than cars is exactly what they should be championing but this isn't about anything other than some weird obsession with car domination.

Why is it the conservatives that do so many weird things like this and the school book thing? They're the ones forcing choices on people, they're their own enemy.
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On bikes they want to bait Nenshi to taking one side, pushing more polarization. It also needs to be seen as a project alongside the introduction of political parties to municipal politics.

Except for one perennial complainer, is there a bike lane issue outside of Chinatown that generated a lot of push back?
 
darwink said:
On bikes they want to bait Nenshi to taking one side, pushing more polarization. It also needs to be seen as a project alongside the introduction of political parties to municipal politics.

Except for one perennial complainer, is there a bike lane issue outside of Chinatown that generated a lot of push back?
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If that is a strategy, it is a bad one. Most of the swing ridings are in Calgary. As you pointed out, bike lanes have not generated much polarization in Calgary..Anti bike lane sentiment might motivate the rural base, which the UCP already ownsm

If the UCP rudely wants to rattle Nenshi, it should focus on personal attacks as he is far too think skinned to be a politician.
 
I think there's a fair amount of people in some of those ridings that the UCP won, opposed to bike lanes. Maybe not necessarily opposed, and are mostly ambivalent, but if it comes down to a political issue, who knows. I've heard plenty of people gripe about bike lanes with the usual complaint that they don't use them and don't want to pay for them, or the disrupt traffic flow.
Of course I don't agree, and I hope that the complaints I've heard aren't from the majority. Does anyone have any survey numbers on bike lanes? I'm curious what the support looks like.
 
trtcttc said:
Maybe it's my social circle, but I've never once heard anyone complain about bike lanes in Calgary. Going to any major cities downtown and streets like 17th will have wide curb cuts, bike lanes, and single lane of traffic. We just re-did the road without adding any of these. We've done the thing bike lane detractors want, put it off the main street to the parallel side street. I want the province to suggest even a single road where bike lanes should be taken out.
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Hopefully I'm in the minority as I've heard a fair bit of complaints over the years. Mostly from older people who live out in the suburbs.
 
darwink said:
On bikes they want to bait Nenshi to taking one side, pushing more polarization. It also needs to be seen as a project alongside the introduction of political parties to municipal politics.

Except for one perennial complainer, is there a bike lane issue outside of Chinatown that generated a lot of push back?
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If they are baiting Nenshi, he’d be better by saying it’s not an issue the province needs to be involved in and that’s up to the city, and leave it at that. Let the UCP scree things up in their own.
 
trtcttc said:
Maybe it's my social circle, but I've never once heard anyone complain about bike lanes in Calgary. Going to any major cities downtown and streets like 17th will have wide curb cuts, bike lanes, and single lane of traffic. We just re-did the road without adding any of these. We've done the thing bike lane detractors want, put it off the main street to the parallel side street. I want the province to suggest even a single road where bike lanes should be taken out.
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I know lots of people who don’t like bike lanes, mostly they don’t like the cost and complain that they never see people using them.
I’m in full support of bike lanes, even I though don’t ride a bike very often. I figure good cities need good infrastructure for everybody.
At my place of work unfortunately it’s a different story, I’m the only person out of a dozen people who supports bike infrastructure. We’ve had discussions about it at the office and it’s the usual complaint of taxpayer dollars, blah blah blah.
 
Surrealplaces said:
Hopefully I'm in the minority as I've heard a fair bit of complaints over the years. Mostly from older people who live out in the suburbs.
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I have a friend who lived in Cliff Bungalow before he retired and was incensed by the idea of a 5th Street bike lane a half block from his house. Just couldn't stand the thought. He was a lifelong liberal voter, too.
 
DougB said:
If that is a strategy, it is a bad one. Most of the swing ridings are in Calgary. As you pointed out, bike lanes have not generated much polarization in Calgary..Anti bike lane sentiment might motivate the rural base, which the UCP already ownsm

If the UCP rudely wants to rattle Nenshi, it should focus on personal attacks as he is far too think skinned to be a politician.
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Have to be cognizant that the person making these strategy calls lives in Airdrie, and they’re all dumbfounded that a conservative as they define it (somehow freezing municipal taxes) hasn’t been elected Mayor in Calgary or Edmonton.
 
Tbh it all comes around to framing and implementation. Low infrastructure paint lanes with no signal changes imo make it more dangerous for everyone and annoy people the most.

By focusing on high quality implementation where there is excess road capacity, you reduce conflict and created predictability for everyone. You reduce anxiety/nervousness of drivers (it’s real - you see a version of it on the highway all the time, people refusing to pass semi trailers unless they have an extra lane between).

If you focus first on benefits first drivers and repeat that endlessly, you can reduce the polarization and even win some converts to high quality lanes.
 
darwink said:
If you focus first on benefits first drivers and repeat that endlessly, you can reduce the polarization and even win some converts to high quality lanes.
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I worry that ship has sailed, people are in their corners now.

A mayor running on standing up to the Province could get themselves elected. Even if you live in Silverado you don't want someone from La Crete telling you how to live. That new Minister of Municipal Affairs seems to want to make some waves.
 
Given the arbitrary and out-of-the-blue nature of the province's interest in bike lanes, it's pretty clear it isn't a grassroots or real issue. It's just a small example of a 100 others to use a rhetorical culture war tool to rally the base:
  1. Create an issue - get everyone talking about it (bike lanes are so important they need a daily opinion piece from party-aligned journalists)
  2. Create your enemy - blame them for it (a progressive city hall, even though they haven't built a controversial bike lane in a decade)
  3. Create the solution - you will solve it (UCP-friendly Councilors in about 3 months will now have something on their municipal platforms)
While a million Calgarians once again debate bike lanes on 0.1% of our roadways for a week or two, Calgary public schools are overflowing and underfunded, strikes of public unions are imminent, shady coal mine deals continue impacting our water, rights are being restricted for sexual minorities, vaccines access is being restricted, health care contracts are being given to buddies and privatized, Alberta pension funds and police forces are being created against the wishes of the majority of the population, and separatist fantasies are being entertained.

Lots of those more real issues are incredibly unpopular in suburban Calgary ridings, but throwing bike lanes (and 100 other non-issues) start to water down the real ones. The UCP only need a few seats in Calgary where the plurality of voters have an opinion of something like "all these other things I don't understand or care how they will impact me (because I have been lied to by the province and party-aligned media my whole life) - but those bike lanes I drove by really bothered me that one time"
 
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