The City of Vancouver government needs much. Oh Lord, we know this. How we do.
It needs many new leaders – even if we muse about the person at the top for a moment, it needs a new city manager and now, suddenly without explanation, a new chief planner.
But before we fix the upper echelon to create Utopia, may we add to the list a chronic need to address so much tension and animosity in what ought to be the Zen capital of the country?
We need a Chief Motorist-Cyclist Mediator, a Director of Rational Transport, a Guru of Resolving Vehicular Quarrels.
In living for nearly two decades in this city and in travelling near and far, I’ve never seen a place so engrossed in grievances and utterly bitchy about the other person’s bike or car. The belittling and bickering prevents us from getting along. It’s our designated municipal sport.
The antagonists and advocates on either end of the discussion do not represent the vast majority they profess to, yet hog the attention and activities of the city administration and across the airwaves and internet. The result is policy that pleases no one, brooks victory and defeat episode after episode, and ultimately entrenches the cleavage.
Before mounting arguments for either party, let’s admit: we are a city replete with terrible drivers and terrible cyclists.
Judging by the roads of Vancouver, it appears some cars do not come in 2021 with signal indicators as standard equipment. Many driver’s licences seem to have been issued in exchange for contributions at Christmas toy drives. Some attempting to parallel park will still be doing so by the time you’ve finished reading this column and posting it to multiple social media.
Then again, judging by our roads, it also seems there is a worldwide shortage of cycling helmets and lights. Stop signals are in the best interest of cyclists, but often not of interest to them. And their headphones guarantee they don’t hear cars when they should and animosity when they shouldn’t miss it.
Apart from a common characteristic of chronic per capita incompetence, these two cohorts share one trait: mutual, dripping disdain.
Where most cities of Europe and Asia evolved with congruent reciprocal appreciation – where people both drive and cycle and grew up that way – our municipality has pitted them as zero-sum game participants.
Which is silly. Both modes are needed and deserve the best available infrastructure.
It’s an absurdly expensive city with generally insufficient incomes, so the bike is an economic necessity for many beyond what it provides as health in a year-round decent climate, save the rainy days. And we are years behind on adequate public transit, with hilly topography and odd commutes, so the car is an essential but expensive option for many beyond what it provides as comfort and convenience.
It would be a mistake to deepen the divisive situation by further taxing the car or licensing the bike, much less any further crackdown on the suboptimal conduct of either. We don’t need any further prickliness. We need some soothing and brokered partitioning for our joint safety.
This does not appear in the strategic vision of Vancouver, which has retrofitted bike lanes like duct tape on bulging luggage for transoceanic travel. The public consultation has been farcical, almost fraudulent. Thus, Chip Wilson Way in Point Grey instead of a milder shared route near the water and the Park Board move in recent days to halve the Stanley Park main road and essentially gouge the businesses within.
But the drivers are hardly deserving of victim impact statements in the court of public opinion. It is hazardous nonsense that 50-kilometre limits are the norm on narrow streets away from arteries – 30 is more than fine and much more safe – or that bike-heavy roads still feature cars that practically run them to the gutters. It is risky business to cycle here. Drivers would better fixate on their ubiquitous scrapes with curbs and poles and other cars that inflate insurance premiums than with the occasional numbskull on two wheels.
Some of the solutions are simple.
For one, we have more than enough streets for our vehicles. It is time to cede several to create a prominent latticework of routes for bikes only – and to be clear that bikes ought to ostensibly stick to them and not commute and commingle every which way. We would all benefit from a graceful, brokered plan of that sort instead of imposing expensive half-measures.
No one is pleased and no one will be as long as the city does not referee the game. Instead, it has chosen to put away the whistle. It pursues a bike plan instead of a broader transport plan.
There is blame on both sides: on the bike lobby that intimidates politicians, on the car crowd that sneers at cyclists the way a generation used to at long hair.
We need a Mobility Whisperer, a Transit Dalai Lama. We aren’t going anywhere properly without one.
Kirk LaPointe is publisher and editor-in-chief of Business in Vancouver and vice-president, editorial, of Glacier Media.