District of North Vancouver crews will begin work on a new cycling route and new sidewalk on the north side of Main Street between Harbour Avenue and Lynn Creek. Some trees will be removed to facilitate construction, which will take approximately four months.
This cycling improvement project will connect a two-block westbound section on Main Street to a priority active transportation route from Ironworkers Memorial Second Narrows Crossing to the City of North Vancouver border. It will provide cyclists with a dedicated space to ride along this stretch of Main Street. The district of North Vancouver council identified the Main Street cycling link as a priority in the November 2019 workshop and approved the construction of the westbound link.
This section of Main Street is one of the district’s busiest cycling corridors, according to a staff report to council in April last year. In 2022, the average for both directions was 512 cyclists on weekdays and 809 on weekends, with the busiest day recording over 1,000 cyclists. The project will cost an estimated $1.9 million. It is expected to receive approximately 50% in external grants.
Route information
This westbound two-block section of Main Street fulfills a critical gap in the cycling network, connecting from Harbour Avenue to the City of North Vancouver border at Lynnmouth Park.
With intersection improvements at Main Street and Harbour Avenue, the route connects to the existing shared bikeway on Barrow Street, and ultimately to the Ironworkers Memorial Second Narrows Bridge and beyond. Travelling west, the route connects to existing cycling facilities in the City of North Vancouver on Cotton Road and Brooksbank Avenue, tying into the recently completed multi-use paths at the Mountain Highway Interchange.
Future planned active transportation improvements will connect the Spirit Trail through Seylynn Park and Lynn Valley via both Mountain Highway and Salop Trail routes.
I believe these cycling numbers are distorted favouring good weather travel…..The press release quote’s up to 1,000 cycle trips, on the busiest day, but they do not quote bottom December/snow/slush/heavy rain, dead of winter which would read something like “as few as 15 trips in poor weather”, a deliberate oversight meant to keep the narrative a positive, a project that needs to happen……..HUB in control, getting their way, working the political room………more political spin…..
For now I don’t care about this particular bike route (wait and see the finished product and what effect it has on safe and reasonable vehicle navigation), but perhaps it should have been done before all the painted lines/lanes of traffic that jump everywhere were put together, what I call ‘The Dark and Rainy Goat Trail of Your Guess is as Good as Mine’, also known as ‘Main Street, heavy truck route, North Vancouver’, sister street to the other trucking corridor – ‘Esplanade, where the City of North Vancouver – ALLOWS – trucks to share the road with cyclists’. Oh, and lets not forget West First Street – the bike route design from hell – where cyclist’s come out form behind lane separation objects/planters/concrete barriers claiming right of way over vehicles large and small simply trying to drive safely, turning right or left from one street to another, absolute nonsense.
The Other Hand
In review, my first comment on this project would seem a little too negative and shouldn’t be taken the wrong way, as it is not that I am against cycling infrastructure – a critical component of our transportation path forward – more sometimes the application, the design, where and how that it is done. If a cycle route is fragmented and has dangerous sections, then where possible improvements should be carried out.
If though a safe and common sense design is not workable when mingled in and with certain high traffic and critical heavy-truck routes, then perhaps alternate cycling routing should be considered and promoted.
Safe and proper road design – for all appropriate users – should come first. Heavy truck routes especially should have clear and direct lanes with which to follow. Sight lines should make sense and the road should not zig and zag.
Finally, any form of transport when separated from the principle lanes of traffic (i.e. west bound cycle lanes, west First street), when emerging from said cycle lanes to cross traffic, users should yield the right of way as much as possible – a common sense approach, for one’s own safety.
The Other Hand