I took some interest in the city council discussion about the new bike lanes, but clearly not enough to comprehend the length, breadth and enormous cost behind yet another expensive pet project.
The reality of the project has become very evident as Red Deer motorists begin to notice the sudden disappearance of driving lanes on city streets.
The lanes have been allocated for pedal-power-only transportation and the lines have literally been drawn on the streets of Red Deer, along with puzzling little geometric shapes, bike symbols to mark the bike lanes, along with bike lanes that abruptly end on a random block of a designated bike street.
The pilot project is estimated to reach $800,000 during its initial phase, with about $500,000 estimated to be spent on bike lanes by the end of this month.
The success of the pilot project will determine whether even more money is spent to modify major traffic routes into hybrid bike/car streets. The conversion of the streets was spearheaded by some local bike commuter interest groups who felt that Red Deer should become a bike-friendly city and almost a million bucks should be spent in pursuit of this noble cause.
The steering committee was composed of avid cycling advocates who believe that Red Deer citizens should embrace a new two-wheeled commuter philosophy. It is an idea that makes perfect sense in temperate climate cities that have concentrated city centre populations, which are the hub of the economic activity in those communities.
Red Deer is a little different.
We have massive employment in our large industrial subdivisions because we have so many people employed by the oil and gas industry. The areas are scattered about the perimeter of the city, as well as the county industrial subdivisions bordering on the City of Red Deer. They are not easily served by bike paths and will never find massive appeal with the people who work in these areas.
However, every Red Deer motorist will be affected by the new bike lanes, even though they will serve little real purpose and cost a horrific amount of money for a feel-good project.
I am sure that I will alienate every avid cyclist in Red Deer but, as a guy who cycled tens of thousands of kilometres on two wheels over several decades, I have a working idea about bikes.
Most of my riding was done outside of Red Deer on the open road to Sylvan or Gull Lake, when I was smart enough to cycle on a regular basis. I had little inclination to share the major streets of Red Deer because of their excessive number of cars and traffic lights, so my limited city riding was done on side streets or bike paths.
I never rode in winter because the icy streets were too dangerous and poorly cleared from snow accumulations.
None of this mattered to the overzealous champions of bike lanes because now they have their own lanes on some major traffic routes in Red Deer. A handful of people who want to be dedicated bike commuters have managed to screw up the traffic flow in a city where traffic flow is a critical problem every day.
Imagine how happy Red Deer motorists will be on a dark frigid winter morning when they are prevented from using the extra lane on streets like 55th Street, 39th Street, 59th Avenue and 40th Avenue, to name but a chosen few.
There may even be a few stubborn and hardy cyclists in the bike lanes on some of those frosty mornings who will tempt fate and ride against sound survival judgment in winter. But will there be enough to warrant seriously screwing up the traffic flow on Red Deer’s crowded main streets? This is a rhetorical question in case anyone missed it.
One of the biggest grievances I have with green advocates is their lack of accountability in terms of financial investment and consequences. They like the idea of publicly-funded projects where Uncle Government pays the freight on their experiments and they invest nothing except an attitude that they are morally right and saving the world.
This bike lane experiment is nothing short of an expensive disaster and I suggest that those of you who are affected by its sheer lunacy let the appropriate City Hall people know how you feel about the project after you get gridlocked in a highly unnecessary traffic jam. Use your spare time in halted traffic to count the number of cyclists in their expensive new lanes, it won’t take long.
Jim Sutherland is a local freelance writer. He can be reached at jim@mystarcollectorcar.com.