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Bikes aren't the answer to reducing gridlock
Dallas Hansen
Sat Jun 3 2006
LAST week's Critical Mass ride, in which a "leaderless group of
cyclists, boarders and bladers" took to the downtown streets
"celebrating human-powered transport" amid the frenzied evacuation of
automobiles that happens each weekday around 5 p.m., has in recent days
provoked much conversation and passionate opinion among
Winnipeggers.
That the Winnipeg Police Service would act to quash Critical Mass's
"celebration" is just further confirmation that attitudes and
priorities at City Hall have not changed since 1984, when Free Press
columnist Christopher Dafoe wrote, in a piece headlined The Road to
Urban Suicide, "Winnipeg is about 30 years behind many other North
American cities in its attitude toward urban sprawl... It is still
possible, for example, to hear civic officials talking about the
importance of 'traffic flow' as if the speedy flow of traffic back and
forth from the suburbs was the major concern of civic
government."
When the 1957 Wilbur Smith freeway scheme did not come to fruition,
Winnipeg traffic engineers -- almost spitefully, it would seem --
carved quasi-motorways out of our city's streets, creating what we now
know as the City of Winnipeg Route System. Portage Avenue became Route
85, and eight differently named streets were connected and dubbed Route
62. Some of the key features of these city routes are what the
engineers term "exit ramps" -- those angled turns with the yield signs,
which require pedestrians to perambulate two additional streams of
traffic when crossing a street -- and ridiculous parking restrictions
that, again, not only make crossing a street between traffic lights
more of a challenge, but discourage motorists from actually parking and
patronizing the storefront destinations they zoom past
daily.
While the vast surface parking lots and tremendous number of vehicles
stored downtown during business hours have lately been much discussed
and critiqued, the corner of Donald Street and Broadway Avenue, where
seven of the Critical Mass cyclists were arrested during the May 26
event, might be considered the epicentre of Winnipeg's daily traffic
disaster -- a fact of which the Critical Mass bicyclists are
undoubtedly aware. By staging their event during rush hour and along
Broadway -- which at 5 p.m. on any given Friday is invariably
gridlocked from Main to Memorial -- some have accused Critical Mass of
being deliberately provocative. "Look at us!" the event seems to say to
the motorists, stuck in the cramped interiors of their vehicles,
typically enduring a post-work, pre-dinner hunger without even the
benefit of conversation with a passenger or two. (The driver is the
lone occupant of almost all vehicles leaving downtown during rush
hour.) "We on our bikes are free, and you in your car are
not!"
Bicycle activists are prone to a certain moral elitism, a
holier-than-thou attitude that prompts them to look with disdain upon
those who fail to make the sacrifice of living by the bike. But
bicycles -- regardless of their benefits to human health and the
environment -- will never be embraced as a primary mode of
transportation by any more than a small percentage of the commuting
population: 2.5 per cent for the inner city, and 1.5 per cent for the
entire city, according to the 2001 census. Beyond the limitations of
winter riding, there are the issues of helmet hair, chain oil on one's
trousers, body odour and limited carrying capacity -- all of which will
continue to keep the bicyclist among a small minority. In
Winnipeg, the prevailing attitude is that, while it might be acceptable
to commute from the suburbs to downtown by bus, anyone with a
middle-class income who does not own a motor vehicle must be a kook, a
"hippie type," or just stubborn.
Indeed, the 2001 census also shows that 77 per cent of Winnipeggers get
to and from work inside a car. Since a car is deemed a necessity and
most of the ownership costs are fixed, it makes sense that people who
own cars would want to use them -- at least in the absence of an
acceptable alternative. The only proven alternative to vehicle use,
even vehicle ownership, is rapid transit -- of the rail variety. The
five boroughs of New York City, served by 468 subway and elevated train
stations, comprise the only city in the U.S. where the majority of
residents do not own a car; in Manhattan, according to the U.S.
Department of Transportation, more than 75 per cent do not. Although
Winnipeg does not have a rapid transit system, this phenomenon finds
its echo here downtown in the city's densest neighbourhood,
Broadway-Assiniboine, where 34 per cent of workers commute by car and
37 per cent do so by walking. (Again, here only 2.4 per cent of the
population are bicycle commuters.) Given our flat
topography, tree-lined streets and pleasant summers, bike-riding can
make for a pleasant pastime. But, for most, an all-encompassing
lifestyle it can never be.
dallashansen.com
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