To make it easy for people to choose the bicycle as a way to get from “A” to “B”, you start by planning a network; step two is safe and effective infrastructure.
Vancouver’s 10th Avenue corridor spans Victoria Drive in the east to Trafalgar Street in the west, and connects to several north-south bike routes, like busy-busy Ontario, Heather, Cypress and the Arbutus Greenway.
The corridor sees around 500,000 bike trips per year, a good portion of which passes through the hospital precinct between Heather and Oak streets, which now has mostly-completed separated cycling and walking paths.
Here’s a gallery of some of the facility.
As usual, click any image to see a large size version.
Things to note:
- separated bike lanes (and bike flow control at Oak & 10th)
- pedestrian markings
- motor vehicle zones for drop-offs (note wheelchair accessibility via ramped designs)
- sidewalk markings for visual emphasis (orange with raised texture)
- protective bollards to help reduce motor vehicle threats
It’s a nice job they did from what I can tell in the pictures. I’ll have to go check it out soon.
From what I can tell there’s a part where, when cycling, you go on to the road. The part at Oak looks good. That’s a design I’ve seen in other places.
The traffic signal changes at Oak are problematic for eastbound cyclists. Doesn’t change to green unless you push the button (so no ride through even if westbound has a green and no south turning cars). Pushing button late in red cycle sometimes won’t result in a green so you might need to wait through a full cycle. Sometimes westbound gets advance green, but not always….some cyclists are patient to wait for a green but many cross against the red. Accident waiting to happen unless the signal operation is made simple and consistent at all times of day.
Traffic islands are there to pedestrian but not cyclists too bad. I told the engineers and project manager how they are important when they were consulting with the public.