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Calgary Bike Lanes and Bike Paths

If you commute on any of the main pathways and the temps aren't that cold you can unfortunately get them walked all over before plows come. Once they do clear you are left with a pathway full of compacted bumps you get the pleasure of riding over.
 
I have studded, knobby MTB tires on my winter commuter, the bumps and packed ice don't bother me. When you get a partially packed single "rut" it's annoying because you can slide off the edges of it where the snow isn't packed down, but that's minor.

On the sidewalks, one thing that's always driven me nuts is the amount of sidewalks that aren't even shoveled, people just salt them and make it slipperier than if they left it alone. Also, the city sidewalks seem to never ever be shoveled, they are too busy harassing property owners to get out and cover their parts it seems.
 
Mountain Man said:
Also, the city sidewalks seem to never ever be shoveled, they are too busy harassing property owners to get out and cover their parts it seems.
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Well... apparently not, at least last year.

This was the performance last year, article was from March 2023. A total of 7 tickets issued, on 7,000+ infractions and 15,000+ complaints.

https://calgaryherald.com/news/loca...r-uncleared-sidewalks-so-far-this-winter-city

If we'd actually enforce the bylaw we'd cover a 50% increase in the snow budget. Plus we might improve on the rate of people who shovel regularly. But that doesn't seem to be the goal here.
 
With 26ave SW getting some wheeling improvements (link), I would love to see 20st SW (between 26ave and 33 ave and further south) go from a painted bike lane to a protected one. There is definitely enough space to do so. Does anyone know if that appears in any long term plans or if there will be an opportunity to push for that in the future? The two projects would create a relatively complete corridor to access marda loop.
 
Mountain Man said:
City is considering fines for people who shovel snow into bike lanes and onto city streets. I fully support the bike lane part, almost taken a few shovel fulls to the face a few times! Article
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I support the move, I hope it'll help discourage people from blocking bike lanes with snow. I wonder how this will play out ....

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Thousands of warnings, but only a handful of tickets? 34 reported fall injuries for every single ticket issued? Well, maybe an education-first approach is the right one for something as important as sidewalk clearing. After all, unless every single sidewalk is cleared, people -- especially those with limited mobility -- can't get around.

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The thing is you can't always clear the damn sidewalk. I got a warning last year and the bylaw officer told me she wanted to "see completely bare pavement". This was during the spring melt/freeze cycle, and we all have sloping front lawns/setbacks around here for snow to melt down. I'm even on the sunny north side of my street. The people on the other side had it worse.

I ended up putting like 1/4" inch layer of salt down, and probably poisoning the Elbow river down the storm drain.
 
ByeByeBaby said:
I support the move, I hope it'll help discourage people from blocking bike lanes with snow. I wonder how this will play out ....

* flashback music begins playing *








* dreamy flashback music fades out *

Thousands of warnings, but only a handful of tickets? 34 reported fall injuries for every single ticket issued? Well, maybe an education-first approach is the right one for something as important as sidewalk clearing. After all, unless every single sidewalk is cleared, people -- especially those with limited mobility -- can't get around.

* record scratch sound effect plays *
Click to expand...
Bylaw consistently doesn't like to do jobs it doesn't enjoy. Derelict properties? Nah. Snow? Nah. Parking enforcement, their only job is parking enforcement, so they do it.
 
badc0ffee said:
The thing is you can't always clear the damn sidewalk. I got a warning last year and the bylaw officer told me she wanted to "see completely bare pavement". This was during the spring melt/freeze cycle, and we all have sloping front lawns/setbacks around here for snow to melt down. I'm even on the sunny north side of my street. The people on the other side had it worse.

I ended up putting like 1/4" inch layer of salt down, and probably poisoning the Elbow river down the storm drain.
Click to expand...
This is a fair point, but needs to be solved instead of concluding it's too hard and therefore the rules make no sense.

100% compliance on snow parking bans are probably not actually an achievable thing - but it's the goal. They push for the goal, there's probably a bunch of weird exceptions where they give a warning rather than a fine but the goal remains clear.

For sidewalks it has to be this clear too - because for every example where there's a legitimate difficulty due to unique sun/melt/slope factors, there's 100x that of people that don't bother shovelling at all and hide in that "meh, no one tickets, and no one else shovels so who cares".
 
darwink said:
Bylaw consistently doesn't like to do jobs it doesn't enjoy. Derelict properties? Nah. Snow? Nah. Parking enforcement, their only job is parking enforcement, so they do it.
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I’m pretty sure Bylaw and Parking enforcement are completely different groups.
 
Seeing this thread bumped has me thinking, is the city planning any more bike lanes? It seems like for the past couple years not much has been added to the network. I think/hope they're doing one on 34 ave in marda loop. Anyone have and idea?
 
Does the city have bike counts for some of the more suburban parts of the cycle track? Planning & Development are requiring 1 class 1 bike stall (bike room inside a building) per unit in suburban multi family sites, curious if there's actual demand for them.
 
Mountain Man said:
Does the city have bike counts for some of the more suburban parts of the cycle track? Planning & Development are requiring 1 class 1 bike stall (bike room inside a building) per unit in suburban multi family sites, curious if there's actual demand for them.
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I think it is likely better to start with active transportation to work in the census, which is found to correlate with being a renter.

censusmapper.ca

Active Transportation to Work

This map show the mode share of walk and bike to work. Use the search bar, geolocation button, the overview map or zoom and pan around to explore other regions in Canada. Also compare this to the bik
censusmapper.ca censusmapper.ca

and bike to work

censusmapper.ca

Bike to Work

This map shows the percentage of the population that list cycling as their main mode of transportation to work. Areas where we detect data quality issues are greyed out. Compare this to the walk or b
censusmapper.ca censusmapper.ca

and probably better to use 2016, due to covid:
censusmapper.ca

Bike to Work

This map shows the percentage of the population that list cycling as their main mode of transportation to work. Areas where we detect data quality issues are greyed out. Compare this to the correspon
censusmapper.ca censusmapper.ca

In my experience bike rooms are relatively easy to add in otherwise hard to use space (not usable by vehicles in parkades, has no windows in podiums) plus are valued just for de-cluttering value by many enabling smaller units.
 
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