I got out for my first bike ride around Stanley Park this year. Coming down Burrard bridge and then onto Beach Ave I was surprised to find that it had been converted to a single lane of one way traffic to make room for a dedicated lane for bikes going both ways. 1/
Now, I’m unabashedly one of those middle-aged dudes in Lycra riding around on fancy carbon fibre bikes and the road at Stanley Park has always been a great training ride (Strava has me at 100+ laps of the park). I’ve shared the road with cars there and it mostly works ok. 2/
The few times I’ve run into trouble, a tourist was busy trying to pull into a parking lot from the other lane and failed to shoulder check, and in other cases, I’ve just gotten caught behind a long line of cars trying to somehow find a shortcut onto the Lions Gate bridge 3/
Today, cycling around Stanley Park was pretty amazing. There were few cars, with the rain and the aquarium being closed. There are sections of SP entirely closed off to cars. I don’t think I’ve ever entered the park so quickly or felt that the park was MINE like I did today 4/
But therein lies the problem. Stanley Park isn’t mine. It isn’t solely for able-bodied lycra-bound cyclists who have no trouble powering up a Prospect Point hill most casual cyclists would struggle with. It’s for families w/ young children, the elderly, ppl w/ disabilities 5/
Making sweeping changes to the road infrastructure to bias even further toward cyclists without considering all these groups while listening to a militant, offensive and tunnel-visioned cycling lobby group largely consisting of able-bodied entitled white men. 6/
To conclude, the answer here isn’t to selfishly eliminate cars from Stanley Park. Many folks do depend on them to get to the park for various reasons, but we do need to get smarter about how access to the park scales so that more people can enjoy it as the city grows. 7/
I’m all for encouraging more people to enjoy Stanley Park by bike. We should expand the actual seawall route so that there’s enough space for pedestrians and cyclists to be socially distanced. We should ensure there are more safe places to park and lock up your bike there 8/
We should look at ways we can improve the safety of the ring road around Stanley Park for cyclists. But banning cars from the park as some bike bullies are pushing to do most definitely isn’t the answer. Please sign @DavidFineGuy’s petition #vanpoli /fin
