Side-Street Bikeways Are Great- If You Have Protected Bike Lanes Too

Can we, as a planet, please retire the idea that cities face a choice between putting all-ages bikeways on low-traffic side streets and putting all-ages bikeways on busy arterials?

The data show exactly the opposite — and also suggest that putting bikeways only on side streets might actually be the worst course of action.

On Monday, Canada's national Globe and Mail newspaper offered the latest installment of this understandable but misguided narrative. It's part of a series about projects "that aren’t often talked about because they actually work."

The idea is that the bike boulevards of Vancouver are uncontroversial, and therefore good:

[Protected bike lanes'] most ardent critic, CKNW radio shock jock Bruce Allen, has spent numerous segments railing against the “big ugly cement barriers that turned our streets into eyesores.”

And yet, he is a fan of the more understated network of traffic-calmed residential streets that allow cyclists to traverse the city in relative safety and peace. ...

Urban-planning and transportation experts have long feted Vancouver’s extensive system of bike-friendly side streets as a cheap and uncontroversial way for bike-resistant North American cities to create the infrastructure that gets people out of their cars and onto two wheels.

It's true that Vancouver's bike boulevards are relatively cheap and uncontroversial. It's also true that they're good.

Read the rest of the story here.