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Bike lanes a step backward

Since everybody’s talking about these bike lanes, I thought I’d throw in my two bits. What a complete waste of $800,000 of our tax money.

Since everybody’s talking about these bike lanes, I thought I’d throw in my two bits. What a complete waste of $800,000 of our tax money.

What puzzles me is that this decision for bike lanes couldn’t have been the decision of one person. It would have had to be put before a city planning meeting and passed. I couldn’t imagine that many dim bulbs in one room at the same time.

If the intent was to save on pollution and make Red Deer greener, you’ve really missed the mark. I was travelling south on 40th Avenue to turn east onto 39yh Street and it took three lights to get through the intersection. Cars were backed up halfway to Ross Street and school hasn’t even started yet.

So in all of this committee’s wisdom, they’ve ultimately degraded our road infrastructure back to the 1970s when we only had 25,000 people. It doesn’t take a genius to foresee what would happen when you put a 100,000 population on single lanes.

It costs a lot of money to live in a city with high property taxes, water, electric, garbage costs, etc., and if that wasn’t bad enough, now we have to spend more on gasoline due to all the idling at lights, not to mention the added time to get around the city. All of this for a few cyclists who aren’t in any hurry to get anywhere anyway. If they would, they would take the car. What was wrong with the way it was?

I was under the impression that our wonderful bike trail system was for the cyclists to get around town. Why are we trying to fix things that aren’t broken? City infrastructure should be moving forward; in my opinion this was a step backwards. This seems like another one of those situations where the masses have to suffer for the few. Wouldn’t it be nice if we all just rode bikes and were never in a rush to be anywhere, but sadly that is just not the case.

In closing, I think I speak for the masses in stating that we deserve and expect better city planning in the future.

Jim Martin

Red Deer