Nelson: Calgary's bike lanes are ruining us
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Cities around the world provide examples of how bike lanes can be added to roads without disrupting car traffic. What major city would deliberately degrade a vital part of its infrastructure, internationally recognized for its excellence? Well, that's what we're living in, my friends.
Five years ago, an international survey by a UK-based automotive company ranked Calgary first among 100 major cities tested on 15 different measures as the best city in the world to drive in. Our most impressive result came in the speed category, measuring how quickly drivers can get from one area to another. Most cities would celebrate such an honor, which could lead to congratulations from municipal transportation officials. But not at Calgary City Hall. That's right.
That's because our city leaders have a bigger mission in mind: saving the planet from climate change. And those carbon-dioxide-emitting cars and trucks speeding through Calgary at thousands of miles per hour are proving to be the biggest obstacle to overcome if the city is to achieve carbon neutrality by 2050. According to the Calgary Climate Panel, total vehicle emissions are not only refusing to go down, they're actually going up. And until that changes, all this talk of "we're a city in a climate emergency" will be nothing more than hot air.
So if Calgarians refuse to voluntarily give up gas-powered vehicles, we're going to need a big push to see the environmental light — and being designated a safe place to drive first certainly won't get us there. But what can we do? Well, say hello to bike lanes. Most Calgarians imagine that the bike lanes that have sprung up in recent years are a personal project limited to the city center, which doesn't bother us too much, as long as we don't regularly get delayed while driving downtown.
Sure, we complain about the cost of tearing up roads to install such things, while scratching our heads at the absurdity of reducing vehicle space while promoting the joy of cycling in January. But at least it's not happening in our neighborhoods.
Consider this little nugget: the city's comprehensive plan, which will soon be submitted for final approval by council, calls for bike lanes to be located within 400 meters of every residential unit in Calgary. Yes, it's there, on page 100 of the Calgary map. It's written in black and white that this goal must be achieved by 2050.
Oh, and the plan also calls for this future massive network of bike paths to be regularly cleared of snow and ice during the winter.
The cost of this "continuous strategy" will be astronomical. For example, a current bike path project that stretches for several miles along the Beltway would eventually cost about $10 million. At last count, there were 17,000 miles of road in our city, so be prepared for big toll increases over the next quarter century to fund this project. It will also be necessary to plan for the additional costs of creating large parking lots to accommodate all these bicycles left at public transport stations.
Anyone who has visited Amsterdam has seen such facilities. They are truly impressive, as are the numbers of people happily pedaling. But Calgary is not like the old capital of the Netherlands. We are a modern city, which has expanded in depth for two reasons: to be landlocked with no oceans, mountains or other cities, and to be able to count on motor vehicles. That's why an efficient, quality road network was so important, and the city government understood that.
But the zeal for climate change has changed that. What should have been a serious but practical problem to solve has become the altar on which other people's lifestyles are sacrificed while having the absolute audacity to expect them to foot the bill too.
Demolishing and reducing the road surface for vehicles and replacing it with bike paths everywhere is the plan. It's that simple and that scary. Woman who killed future wife, still in wedding dress, in drunken car crash gets maximum sentence
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