Posted by Fat bottomed girls they’ll be riding today
So look out for those beauties oh yeah – Queen
When I was young, I used to ride my bicycle all around the City of Calgary. Even downtown through traffic. I don’t ride my bicycle much these days even though it is a beautiful carbon-fiber masterpiece. Once our nanny-state started to regulate everything from mandatory helmets, bells, and even speed limits on bike paths (given bikes don’t have a speedometer, I don’t know how you enforce that in court) I kind of lost interest. What our nanny-state doesn’t enforce is any kind of tax or licensing on bicycles. So the projected C$7.1m budget (came in under budget C$1.6m) for the 18 month downtown cycle lane pilot project is funded by everyone else for the 1.8% of Calgarians who say they cycle. Motorists pay (probably not completely though) for their use of roads and carbon emissions supposedly through heavy petrol taxes and fees on licenses both for the car and themselves. The fact that governments just take that money and shove it into general revenue instead of earmarking it for roads and infrastructure is irrelevant.
This pilot project will not die. I will bet money that it is virtually guaranteed that it will live because of the lies and misinformation that the politicians and media feed us. This is what the Canadian Brainwashing Corporation (CBC) reports. As usual, I am sure the reporters and editors believe that they are the paragon of truthfulness and impartiality. Sadly, their bias could not be more obvious as “green” cycle paths fall well into the liberal left bias of the CBC. If I were being charitable, I could say they are just being lazy and parroting the same biases that the City’s final report exhibit. Here are the five goals of the downtown cycle track project:
- Ridership: The City’s goal is to double, triple or even quadruple ridership targets from the 2014 baseline. “The presence of bicycle lanes that are, for the most part, separated by a barrier from people driving and walking has led to a tripling of cycling along the network and the largest recorded single year increase of bike trips into downtown (up 40% from May 2015 to May 2016).” Wow, the way this sounds, the project must be an unqualified success. On the other hand, here are the statistics from the City’s own census which I had to compile myself from historical records.
Mode of Transport (%) 2011 2014 2016 Bicycle 0.9 1.4 1.8 Carpool, as passenger 1.6 2.0 2.3 Carpool, as driver 2.6 3.2 3.9 Drove Alone 69.6 67.4 67.3 Motorcycle 0.1 0.3 0.4 Transit 17.2 18.0 16.4 Walk 5.1 5.0 4.9 Work from home 2.6 2.3 2.7 Other 0.4 0.3 0.4 Totals 100.0 100.0 100 It is always easy to show a great percentage increase when the base is tiny. That is the case here as it clearly shows that despite all the bike lanes (not just this latest pilot downtown but other feeder routes), the number of cyclists remains extremely low. It certainly has not even come close to doubling since the comparison base in 2014 when the project was implemented. In fact, the decline in transit ridership is even more problematic as that more than offsets any minor increase in bicycle trips if your primary goal is to reduce traffic congestion and pollution.
The report is amazingly opaque and selective in its use of data when assessing the increase in cycling downtown. I have extracted a much simpler table from the City of Calgary which clearly shows that the number of bicycle commuters downtown has risen from about 6,300 in 2014 to about 8,600 in 2016 or an increase of about 35%. If your objective was to double, triple or even quadruple (let’s consider that worst case, base case and optimistic case), the truth is that this project has fallen far short of even the most pessimistic goal.
- Satisfaction. Here, the report confuses the hell out of you by providing different statistics for the four different routes and no aggregate numbers. I have taken the MOST favourable numbers which was for 5 Street S.W. showing cyclist satisfaction has increased from 37% to 78% while driving satisfaction has declined from 51% to 46%. This is summarised by the CBC, “As you can see, the biggest gains in satisfaction came among cyclists. Changes in the number of satisfied pedestrians and motorists, by contrast, were small and mixed.” Again this is an artifact of the small base of cyclists as I noted above. To make numbers easy, let us assume one million people. 1.8% is 10,800 cyclists of which there is a 41% increase in satisfaction or an increase of 4,428 happy cyclists. 73.5% drive or carpool or 735,000 of which there has been a decline of 5% in satisfaction or a drop of 36,750 unhappy motorists. In other words, 8x more people have suffered than have benefited but somehow this is reported as a plus by abusing the data.
- Safety. Giving cyclists a separate segregated lane, I would be extremely surprised if it wasn’t safer. “The number of crashes declined on Fifth Street S.W. and 12th Avenue South — the two most collision-prone routes — to levels below the target. There was no change on Eighth Avenue S.W., meanwhile, and an increase of six collisions on Stephen Avenue.” If safety (for the cyclist) was the only concern, of course having bike lanes is safer just as a sidewalk is safer for pedestrians than walking on the road.
- Driving Time. The goal here is that the addition of the cycle paths should not increase commuting times for drivers as it effectively takes away parking/driving lanes for cars. Here the report basically says commuting times have not been affected by the project; I am inclined to believe this. Now here’s some sad facts: Calgary’s unemployment has topped the nation for the past five months at over 10% and downtown office vacancy is north of 25% as people have been laid off by the truck load given the collapse in oil prices. Given that the number of workers downtown has declined by a fifth or more, you would expect the number of commuters has also plunged which should have resulted in a huge reduction in congestion and commuting times. It is impossible to separate this out but to form the conclusion that the cycle paths have not impacted on driving times is a huge lie hiding behind poorly interpreted data.
- Unlawful cycling. The goal was to eliminate and/or reduce the amount of illegal cycling (i.e., riding on the sidewalk or against the flow of traffic). Illegal riding on the sidewalk has declined from 16% to 2%. As in the case of safety, it is not surprising that the addition of a cycle lane has accomplished this; at least of the routes with a cycle lane.
The Centre City Cycle Track Network doesn’t really impact on me one bit as I almost never drive during rush hour and very rarely go downtown. What I don’t like is the lies, misdirection and horrible misuse of numbers, statistics and facts by the government and a small number of enthusiastic lobbyists to bamboozle the rest of the population. To claim ignorance is very unlikely as when addressing the decline in revenue to business on the cycle routes (one of the secondary goals was to increase traffic and commerce), “The report notes the baseline measurements were taken in 2014, however, before the economic downturn that has since gripped the city in the wake of the oil-price crash.” How is it possible that they can acknowledge the effect of the economic downturn on business volume but yet fail to recognize that same impact on traffic flow and congestion. The answer is simply that they haven’t failed to see this, they just chose not to report it as it does not fit their preconceived conclusions that they wanted to make.
While not every target was met, the objectives of the pilot have been achieved:
- People cycling can safely access more destinations.
- The number of people cycling on cycle tracks and downtown has increased.
- The impacts to people walking or driving have been modest.
As I have outlined above, with the exception of the objectives on safety, the other conclusions are suspect. This blatant lying is made worse by the fact that the vast majority have to subsidize a tiny minority financially and are inconvenienced by the same to meet a very narrow agenda. Is cycling environmentally friendly? Not necessarily if you add-on the increase in fuel from longer commute times for the rest of the people who are stuck in traffic due to the loss of lanes and cyclists/bus first lights at intersections. It is probably healthier for those who choose to do so and I applaud insane enthusiasts who brave -20C weather and frostbite to cycle to work (even though there is no way in hell I would do it myself). We’ll find out on 19 December at the City Council meeting if the pilot project will be made permanent but my books are still open for wagers that this was already a done deal 18 months ago.
Update (December 20, 2016): The pilot project was approved by City Council in a vote of 10 in favour and 4 against yesterday. Time to collect on my bet with my friend who didn’t believe me when I said that the vote was just a formality because it was already “a done deal.”