If you’re tired of talking about 10th Avenue, there’s always the North Shore:
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A good account from Mr. Symons’ blog of some typical NIMBY nonsense. The District would do well to disdainfully ignore this vocal minority, as these lanes were taken from some fairly extensive consultation in the District’s master cycling plan. And even if they weren’t, increasing active transportation mode share is simply more important than protecting one’s sensitivity of nostalgia or suburban entitlement. Nod politely, acknowledge/validate their feelings of anger, and then build the damn cycle lanes.
Blog posts like this do nothing to solve either transportation or environmental problems, but in the era of Trump maybe it’s the best we’ll see.
The poor folks working at the District must pull their hair trying to resolve the howls from the competing “bikes will save the world” and “All bike lanes are evil” camps.
I abandoned Symon’s blog post a third of the way down when it became apparent that it more or less boiled down to “anyone who complains about tree cutting on Lynn Valley Road is a backwards rube who doesn’t deserve to have an opinion.”
Moving in and out of Lynn Valley, on two wheels or four, or on foot, is challenging because in many directions either geography or the highway block us in.
It’s true that Lynn Valley Road is the only practical route for bike infrastructure, and I don’t think any reasonable person would argue against adding better bike lanes between the new Town Centre and Grand Boulevard.
However the District could have done a better job of making sure that at least the homeowners along the road knew exactly what was planned.
It’s obvious that some large part of the local population – myself included – had no idea of the extent of tree removal that was coming, or, if it truly is necessary, how the decisions to cut so many trees were made.
Lecturing people about the Official Community Plan, or hectoring them for not digging through development notices on the District web site is not a valid response.
In simple terms, if the District is going to disrupt a neighborhood to this degree they have an obligation to go out of their way to communicate with the people most directly effected.
That means large ads in the North Shore News. Letters mailed to nearby homes and businesses, Big signs with pictures. Door to door canvassing even.
In equally simple terms, it would have been better to talk to lots of people, one on one, and say explicitly, “We needs bike lanes; we need them here; and we will need to cut down all of the trees between A and B to do it (for these reasons.) And, just a warning, it will look REALLY ugly, but we’ll plants lots of new trees to replace them.
At that point 75% of the outrage would have disappeared.
Sadly that would take a lot of money, and it seems that no-one living in the District wants to pay more taxes to support this kind of outreach.
I would have been much more impressed if Symons, instead of ridiculing people who actually care very deeply about the place they live, had instead taken the District to task for not better managing the message on this one.
My assumption is that the city doesn’t run across two camps like that. Most people are pretty reasonable about things. It’s the news media who need drama to sell ads that search out extremists and present only them giving us a skewed view of the issue. Any moderate reasonable person who inadvertently gets interviewed by them simply ends up on the cutting room floor.
I remember the number of trees removed along Lynn Valley Road were communicated by the District. The residents on Lynn Valley Rd received more information about their property frontage. If you are thinking of digital visualization, it is done nowhere in North Vancouver. The backlash is largely about the purpose of the project – bike lanes. No backlash about much larger impacts on the natural environment and parks from widening Keith Road for cars and building a new highway interchange in North Vancouver. Residents here were given almost no information compared to Lynn Valley residents, despite much more significant impacts.
It is good when people care about their community, but the community includes not only trees but also fellow residents. Some of them would like to ride bikes on Lynn Valley and don’t want to fear for their lives. Others live with the impacts of major road projects that will benefit Lynn Valley residents who drive. There’s a difference between caring for one’s community and being selfish.
Agreed, Barry. An unhelpful post.
I didn’t see any lecturing about the Official Community Plan but the OCP is a crucial document and outlines very clearly – with targets, even – to DNV residents why this kind of work is being done: to reduce car dependency; improve citizen health; ensure economic vitality; reduce traffic congestion and greenhouse gas emissions by encouraging transit use; build more compact, walkable communities etc. etc. etc.
The problem, as I see it, is that the District simply isn’t demonstrating, day-to-day, the commitment to those goals. There’s an awful lot of road construction going on but I don’t hear the bold ideas about imposing parking maximums for new developments to help reduce personal car ownership, improving transit service, installing more sidewalks and improving road safety for pedestrians, building out a protected bike lane network, etc. There should be smaller projects popping up left, right and centre.
DNV’s commitment to sustainable communities, next-generation transportation systems, building a place where people can live, work, and play, where our kids can one day afford to raise their own families… needs to be everywhere. It needs to be visible, tangible. That means: all over the DNV web site; in the lobby of District Hall; on work site signs; newsletters; in regular updates and messages from our elected officials. And, most importantly, it should be reflected in the District’s budget – that’s where any municipality’s true vision is expressed. We don’t even have a full-time, dedicated Transportation Demand Manager or Sustainable Transportation Officer. What does that say?
It’s no wonder people feel blind-sided.
Why should property owners be forced to accept the destruction of the feel if their neighbourhood to humour a very very small group who bike. It’s small enough in Vancouver, in North Van it’s an even tinier subset.
Yes, I agree. Why would we want to make accommodations for all users, rather than just the majority? Driving is 51+%, so let’s proceed with roads exclusively….ignore those pesky other user groups. We should probably also ban transit to the District as well….it’s a minority mode, after all.
To North Van cyclists, you should probably just take the center of the lane, to ensure safety. I’m sure North Van residents will be willing to put up with a massive decrease in driving speed as a trade-off to changes in “neighborhood feel”.
Don’t forget the sidewalks. Not many people walk along busy roads in the District so why do we need sidewalks.
What’s more, my grandparents got along just fine for eighty years with a back yard outhouse. Why are my tax dollars being used to provide other people with expensive fancy sewer connections?
I can confirm. I rode this route once a few years ago, promised myself to never do it again. You do not feel safe at all riding through there, and yet it’s topographically very doable from Lonsdale. This is going to be a huge benefit to North Van cyclists.