Hi everybody. We are in Vancouver today. I'm here with Chris Bruntlett. He and his wife
Melissa are the authors of this great new book Building the Cycling City: The
Dutch Blueprint for Urban Vitality and today he's going to take me around
Vancouver a bit and show me some of the spots in the city that have been
inspired by this sort of Dutch approach to building a bike-friendly city. Thanks
for joining us today. Thanks for having me. So maybe you could just tell
me first: Vancouver has come a long way in the last 10 years when it comes to
bike infrastructure. How does that relate your book? Was that inspiration
for your book? Was the city you live in part of what motivated you? Yeah, well
the book is broken down into ten lessons, ten themes or takeaways from
the Dutch experience, but also finding examples of North American cities that
have implemented those ideas. And the theme around the chapter discusses
Vancouver's political bravery. And to us, you know, it's the story of a mayor that
was elected on a pro-bike platform, he came in and started implementing changes,
fully separated bike lanes in the city, to the ire of a lot of people
in the in the business community, in the in the political community, in the media.
There was a lot of noise made, a lot of predictions that this would be the
beginning of the end of his political career but, to his credit, he stuck to his
guns, him and his city counselors. They expanded the bike network and they've been
glowingly re-elected on two more occasions, and here we are 10 years
later with a rather robust bike network that spreads from one side of the city
to the other. All right, we're going to go check out a few more spots around
Vancouver, and we'll let Chris step out of the bike lane now.
The Burrard bridge was the the first project of Mayor Robertson built shortly after
being re-elected and it was in response to critical mass rides that were
protesting a lack of safe bike infrastructure, and the number of
injuries and fatalities that were taking place on the bridge. There was no safe
crossing from the West End of Vancouver into the downtown peninsula. But if
he thought it was going to be easy addressing those safety concerns he
quickly found out that everyone was going to lose their minds and that the
media had a heyday. They sent helicopters in the sky to document the impending
traffic Armageddon, but none of it materialized. And here we are
ten years later this bridge is the most popular bike route in the city with a
million crossings per year.
So where are we? We are currently riding on the Hornby Street cycle track which was basically one of the first projects that was
installed by City Council and Mayor Robertson
so it's a bi-directional cycle track on a
on a one-way street, again with the with the early bike infrastructure
projects on a one-way street, there was a lot of vocal opposition the business community in particular the
downtown Vancouver Business Improvement Association vehemently opposed the
project. But we're we're pleased to report that a decade later it's
seeing record numbers and the the business community has learned to
embrace it and have done a complete public 180 on on the cycling
infrastructure, and has now started supporting new projects. Where are we now?
We are on the Dunsmuir cycle track which was built again in the very early days
of Mayor Robinson's tenure. It's probably one of the most popular east-west
connectors into the downtown. I think this bike lane proves that if you
take a context-specific approach, and that's definitely what the
Dutch subscribe to, you can find solutions that work for your city.
That's kind of the underlying message of the book is the Dutch really, in a lot of
places, built into the dream of car-centric development and they they
changed their land-use zoning codes and and built the wide streets and and
demolished a lot of parts of their cities to make way for the car, and later
in the 70s and 80s, realized how it was a destructive pattern of
development and started reversing those those patterns and started building for
bikes.
OK, I don't know if this will work or not but I want Chris to show some of the
practical bits on this bike because this is about as Dutch as you can get for a bike in North America.
Yeah, it comes down to two things: It comes down to comfort and
it comes down to the completeness of the bicycle. So they they ride very
utilitarian machines that are designed to be used in an upright riding position.
So, yeah, very straight back. It's like you're sitting on a stool and they're
not designed for speed or for sport. They're designed for transport.
So what have you got on the back here? So there's a fully integrated back rack
which is literally built into the bike frame, so there's no weight limit, so
we're able to throw a 100-pound child or even a 200-pound adult
on the back of the bike for short trips if if need be. Or any kind
of large items that you want to carry with bungee cords and the like.
And this is important too, you never see these on North American bikes
very often, the chain guard. Yes, a fully enclosed chain casing which means the
chain kind of remains in immaculate condition, through rain and sleet and snow.
It also means you don't have to
worry about your your pant leg getting chewed up by the chain. And one last
thing is, you have the world's most popular front rack, which is the milk
crate which I remember seeing in Europe a lot too. It's very practical.
Yeah, exactly. It's a a kind of a
$10 job from Home Depot that mounts to the front rack of the bicycle
and you know it fits a couple bags of groceries or my laptop or whatever I
happen to be rolling around with. We have a great public transit
system here and and do walk and car-share from time to time, but we've been
living without, our family's been living without, a car for eight years now.
There's hope. Yeah I mean the Dutch maybe have a 50- year
head start on us, but not only can we do it, but we we are doing it here in North America.
There we have it: some great examples of Dutch-inspired bike
infrastructure here in a great bike city of Vancouver. Thanks very much Chris,
and make sure go out and buy his book. See you next time.