Lots of Haligonians are scared to ride their bikes more, because our streets are built for cars. And as any local bureaucrat can tell you, it’s totally impossible to change the streets now. Except that lots of cities have added protected biking lanes to their roadways—retrofitting the street to be built for more than cars—with amazing results for increasing cycling.
Could Halifax be one of those not-just-for-cars cities? Do we even need protected bike lanes? Can you imagine if pedestrians were thrown out into traffic the way our bike are? The answers are yes, yes and, thanks to this fun video, yes. Enjoy.
This article appears in Jul 3-9, 2014.
Great work! As Councillor Jennifer Watts has pointed out before, this isn’t a cars vs bike issue. Making cycling safer and encouraging people to switch would benefit those who continue to commute by car or otherwise operate a car. Namely, with more people cycling there are less cars on the road creating those insufferable bottlenecks and there’s a better car to parking-spot ratio. Bikes are good for motorists.
And there’s great data on how cycling can provide huge health benefits to our society -helping us live a longer, healthier life, as well as removing a cost and burden from our health care system.
So, let’s do the patriotic thing: advocate for more cycling and protected bike lanes in our city!
i say it over and over i would like to see bus lanes before worrying about bike lanes. One then the other