It would seem that city hall may be evoking a closed ear policy, as far as this bike lane project is concerned. They seem to be turning a blind eye to the possibilities of incident or accident if the bike lane goes in. I suspect now that fall is here crews may be scrambling for work. Hence, a make work project, possibly?
Let’s look at the real picture. I use the Dartmouth corridor about two to three times per day. In the last three months, I saw 12 cyclists on that hill as I used the corridor through the day and into the evening.
One day, I parked near the SPCA for 20 minutes and 36 vehicles passed either up or down and not one bike. Did the city do a bidirectional traffic count? I suspect not, as nothing was made public. I did the same park and observe about three days later and counted 31 vehicles and again, no bikes.
The following Saturday, I counted 27 cars and still no bikes. Each of these days, I did the observation stop at different times from early morning; through mid-afternoon to around 4:30 p.m.
Each time no bike traffic, yet, the bike lane is justifiable? What studies were done? The residents of the area have a right to know as they were subsequently told it was going to happen.
I guess the real question is what justifies the need for this bike lane?
Couldn’t the human resources and taxpayer’s money be put to a more needed and justifiable use? Wake up and smell the coffee, city pundits, taxpayers deserve a better bang for our tax dollars!
Ron Barillaro
Penticton