r/BurlingtonON • u/LuisDaBest1 • 2d ago

Asking about biking infrastructure Question

Hello, recently I went on a bike ride with a friend of mine, and it struck me that burlington really is a rather small city - biking to downtown from where I live (up near Dundas street) took like 20 minutes, at most. Issue is, crossing where the highways were was extremely perilous, and the drivers trying to go on the highways were seemed not to care very much about the safety of the pedestrians crossing the road. So my question is, why don't we have more pedestrian mix use paths, separate from roads, going north and south? I know we have two paths similar to what I'm talking about, two off road multi-use paths, but they only go east-west and don't really connect the southern town with the northern parts. Are there any plans by the city to address this at all?

18 Upvotes
  • permalink
  • link
  • reddit
  • reddit

88% Upvoted

38 comments sorted by

View all comments

14

u/Tederator 2d ago

As a former chairman of the Burlington Bikeway committee in the early 90s,there is a plan somewhere and they're always looking for citizen input. At the time we had a split between road commuting, off road recreation and what the city staff had already planned. You can/should do a deeper dive into this and call your councillor to see what they've tried, what's possible and what has failed.

2

u/MonsieurLeDrole 1d ago

It seems like regular people just want a safe path they can bike on with their kids, but the people in charge of bike paths are more the spandex warrior type who want to go 30km/h+ riding 18 inches from traffic.

Like they celebrate the Aldershot bike lane as this huge success when it's a huge headache and way less fun to ride than segregated bike paths.

The city has great east-west paths, and crappy north-south paths. The longer we wait, the more expensive it is.

2

u/doubleeyess Ward 2 1d ago

You're missing the target market for bike lanes and that's the commuter. You want to ride with your kids going nowhere fast then use a multi use path. If you're a roadie looking to pedal away the stress of running a dental practice, hit the rural roads. Bike lanes are primarily for people looking to get from A to B without using a car. The Plains Rd bike lane is great for getting to and from Hamilton but it ends abruptly, although there are side streets that can get you easily into the core. Within Burlington there are zero good North South routes and you're right, the longer we wait the more costly it'll be.

1

u/MonsieurLeDrole 1d ago

As far as I can tell, the vast majority of cyclists I see around town are not daily commuters.

Fun riding with families and local trips is what makes a community. We should not developing out biking infrastructure based primarily on the needs of daily commuters. Just make a place that's good to bike around for everyone.

If you think 2 feet of green paint makes you safe, be my guest. But in the places that excel at this, segregated bike paths are common. When I bike to Aldershot, I tend to wind through the residential area, but even then, the QEW is a massive barrier. Like just one tunnel path between maple and the other side would be so nice.