The Hollis Street bike lane has taken so long to get here, you might think you’re dreaming when you see it. Which is about the only excuse drivers have for parking their cars in the bike lane.
Brand-new as the Hollis lane is, we’ve already seen so much rude parking that we decided to make a helpful instructional video. It’s short, sweet and gets the point across with a bit of humour—and a whole bunch of confused pedestrians. Take a look and remember, bike lanes aren’t parking lots.
This article appears in Oct 1-7, 2015.
Call the police and have them fined. No? Make a video instead as car owners who park on bike lanes enjoy this site as much as they do your videos! Well done Coast!
Why do bikes need designated lanes? From what I’ve seen they already have them and they’re called sidewalks.
How many people cycle along Hollis ?
Why two lines ?
Cheese Whiz, I don’t know what’s so hard to understand about bike lanes. It’s a bike lane. That means no cars allowed.
It’s actually illegal for bikes to use the sidewalk and it’s not safe to have a bike rushing down a sidewalk when you have children, seniors, and people with mobility issues walking. Just like it’s not safe for cyclists to have giant metal objects rushing by them. The bike lane keeps the people safer from the bikes and the bikes safer from the cars. Great video PLANifax!
I work on Hollis St. During the day, about 90% of the cyclists I see biking past my office are NOT in the bike lane (left side of the street), they are on the right side of the road (where they should be) according to the Nova Scotia highways regulations. Folks in my office who bike to work refuse to use the left side bike lane as they find them confusing for drivers and therefore dangerous…and confusing for some cyclists, making the dangerous for other cyclists who know how to use it.
However in my experience a large % of cyclists do not use provided bike lanes anyway (ie. Purcell’s Cove Rd) where bike lanes are provided yet most cyclists drive on the car’s side of the white line refusing to move out of the way when cars, trucks and busses want to pass often time cycling 2 or 3 abreast on blind curves and corners.
If this city actually wanted to increase cycling, the bike lanes would have physical barriers so that people would not be able to park in them and they would actually connect a network of desirable routes so that people would feel encouraged to cycle more. Anything short of that is ineffectual, as is clearly demonstrated by the Hollis bike lane. The cyclists that are currently out there are ones that generally don’t fear riding in traffic. A safer, separated route, would mean that “cyclists” as a group would include a higher percentage of moms, kids, and people who would not be as brazen in regular traffic. Why wouldn’t you want that?
This could easily be solved. Have Police and parking enforcement drive along here once an hour and ticket everyone violating. The message will soon get round.
One of the main reasons why the left side was chosen was that it was much less expensive. To have the bike lane on the right, would have required that ALL of the parking meters presently on the right would have had to be removed and reinstalled on the left hand side of the street. Also, IMHO, it makes more sense to have the bike lane on the right because most cyclists who use Hollis street are more likely to be turning to the left towards the waterfront, rather than up hill to Barrington.
This is also true for car traffic. The majority of traffic cars/trucks that use Hollis are eventually turning left towards the waterfront.
Correction. Previous, should read.
It makes more sense to have the bike lane on the LEFT…
Why does a street that’s 3 blocks even need a bike lane?
Oh oh so you can STOP on a bike path but can’t PARK on a bike path. Yeah, there seems to be a BIG DIFFERENCE there. Makes sense. ………….. NOT.
JamesK: The bike lane is an actual lane of traffic.
Bicycles have to stay to the right when they are sharing a lane. Since a bike lane isn’t shared with anything else but bikes, it can be put on the left side of a one way street.
So… sorry to ruin your anti-cyclist tirade there.
City by-law does allow for delivery vehicles to temporarily park in those lanes, excluding 7-9am daily and 4-6pm daily. As one that has to face delivery and parking issues downtown, I try my best not to park in them, but sometimes you just have to-but normally I’m in and out in under 5 minutes. But for those that just park because their lazy- hit’m with a fine and or tow them out.
The law says you cannot bar access to a home with a sign or object yet this so called bike coalition says an apartment building on Hollis is kept hostage 4 hours a day by saying they cannot be picked up by a taxi or a friend during these 4 hours. They want these seniors to negotiate the truck traffic and heavy car traffic to cross the street. Not going to happen people–they will be picked up or dropped off on the left side of the street. Yesterday for another three hours 6 bikes used Hollis ONE bike used the lane and during the first hour-3 used the sidewalk going the wrong way and 2 drove South on the right side where they should be. Erase this Hollis St Mess and let the bike drivers chose where they feel they are safe.
Oh good, I got 60+ dislikes on my sarcastic comment, it looks like I’m on the right track. All I ever hear from mouth pieces like the cycling coalition ars expensive solutions to non-problems that cyclists will never have to pay for, never solutions like safety courses for new cyclists or owning up to your own poor decisions that put yourselves (cyclists) in unnecessary, dangerous situations. As someone who navigates a 75 foot long vehicle through the narrow streets of Halifax on a daily basis, you would not believe the stupidity I see on a daily basis, from cyclists not paying attention to signal lights to cyclists passing me on a sidewalk to get in front of me at red lights so I have to pass them again 10 seconds later. Mandating safety on everyone around you while thumbing your nose at people whose workplace consists of the city streets we all share is not doing anything but pitting one group against another. Same goes for pedestrians. There has to be a complete shift in attitude across the board before any of these points of contention will become non-issues. Driving is a privilege, or so we are taught in defensive driving courses, and I don’t see cycling as any different, and that is something I never hear from the mouths of cycling advocacy groups.
Car drivers are subsidized by cyclists, whose impact on road infrastructure is much less. People driving pay NOWHERE NEAR what driving actually costs. The only reason cyclists are in “dangerous positions” is because of having to ride in traffic. So while you call people “stupid” it you who is driving a dangerous vehicle and needs to be constrained by rules. And it is why we need separated bike lanes. And while the shift in attitude may be everyone behaving better, making walking and cycling safer would actually be better for everyone.
Ha ha all, most of you got this all wrong:
Downtown Halifax is a Peninsula, check dictionary for definition if you do not know the meaning.
1) City Officials, elected and staff, allow Bayers Lake and Dartmouth Crossing to be built.
2) Stores close downtown as people start shopping in Bayers Lake and Dartmouth Crossing
3) Downtown starting to look like a run down vacant city. Boarded up Windows
4) Most elected officials get campaign contributions from developers
5) It is decided to re-vamp downtown, densification, move people to the core ” Whitman”
6) Developers start building more apartments and condos to ” move people to the core”
7) traffic gets worse, worse, worse.
8) city Officials, elected and staff, get massive complains about traffic
9) Great Idea, lets get cars off the streets
10) Bike lanes will fix it all
11) Lets spend tax dollars on bike lanes
12) Bike lanes are added
13) few use them
14) Wait, this is Nova Scotia, rainy spring, harsh winters of snow and freezing rain, humid summers, older population, how come nobody is using bikes ? read line 14 again
When I see Mayor Savage, Waye Mason, Matt Whitman biking to work daily, I will buy a bike and use it often .When I see the business elite and wealthy ditching the Lexus, BMW, and Big SUV and start biking, I will join.
You can’t fix the traffic woes in Halifax, read first line and understand the word Peninsula, dictionaries are available online if you do not understand
What’s with the unnecessarily condescending comments, Andy? Actually, traffic needs to be “worse and worse” so that people get frustrated by driving and take public transit or walk or bike instead. This would make the downtown increasingly liveable. Lots of traffic does not translate to being a great neighbourhood. And one person in one car is simply not efficient if you want to reduce cars on the road. And any time it’s too cold or snowy your likelihood of being able to take a bus is no worse than taking a car, even if biking isn’t possible and walking is difficult. Also, “tuggy”: ideally separated lanes are built where the pavement of the lane rises to be flush with the sidewalk at certain places and therefore extends the level of the sidewalk right to the road, so that folks needing level surfaces are able to access transit and taxis, etc. Bike lanes will not “fix all” and those opposed to them are often characterized by hyperbolic, catastophizing language rather than discussion. And as I said below, bike lanes are not very effective when they are a few lines of paint that drivers can ignore (and therefore cyclists don’t feel safe), and when they are not connected to what feels like a safe network of routes.
Beiber, I wrote the truth, do you think the politicians, the business elite, and the wealthy are going bike to downtown for work or pleasure……..no………they want the poor and the average Joe to get their vehicles off the street so there is less traffic for them. They created this mess by packing more and more people in the core of a city with how many ways in and out of the downtown ? Ha, Use you head, its basic math and geography. That is what I find so funny, you got the mayor, Mason, and Whitman all over this but do they bike to work ? The odd time for Whitman and Mason, the odd time on a sunny day is no good. Read my words, its the plain truth.
Although I am not a cyclist I have no problem with the cycle lane on Hollis Street; however, the no stopping/no parking signs that were in position before the cycle lane was established still remain. These signs indicate that parking/stopping is not allowed between certain hours, implying that parking is allowed outside those hours. At least that was what I inferred one evening last week, and somewhat optimistically thought that this signage trumped the cycle lane regulations. Result – a $25 fine, which I promptly paid. I admit I made a mistake, and that ignorance of the law is no excuse, but perhaps HRM could see their way to removing these misleading signs.