Commuting trends: transit vs driving vs ...

[danbrotherston]

The perception of safety is what's important. We need to stop using paint and start separating cars from traffic. I have coworkers who do bike (who have kids, and probably busy lives, unlike mine), but they're the ones who happen to live right near a trail and can avoid cars for the most part. This is my situation- when I bike, I don't do it because I really like it, I do it because it's cheap and the trail lets me do it in relative safety.

I have other coworkers, on the other hand, who don't live much further away, who might bike at least part of the week during parts of the year, but don't because it would mean spending some time on a street like Victoria or Weber. They openly laugh at things like the green paint force field on Northfield near the expressway onramp, and wonder why we bother with that.

My reasonable and achievable proposal would be to find the most common short-ish (less than the median) commutes in the region, and start installing separated bike paths on them. I'm thinking streets like Weber, Victoria when Highway 7 opens (politically I think that would be possible), Northfield, University, one of either Bridgeport or Erb- and any other four lane street whose traffic volumes could be accommodated with two lanes and a turning lane.

You mention Northfield, Victoria, Weber.  These are all major streets (maybe all regional roads, too), and really need some bicycling infrastructure to be comfortable for casual cyclists (who I agree we need to target). But how about residential streets, are they OK without infrastructure? If yes, where and how do we draw the line?  That should enable us to have a map of comfortably bike-able streets and trails, and then identify the key gaps, rather than looking at just the trails.

Or is the idea if bicycling (without infrastructure) on residential streets unreasonable?

There are multiple types of residential streets.  Residential collectors like Keats Way and Westheights Dr. are busy enough to need infrastructure, but slow enough that bike lanes are probably comfortable for most users.

Other smaller residential streets are probably fine without.

But that's just my opinion.

What I would say though, is virtually every residential street in the city with only a few exceptions is way overbuilt and encourages dangerous speeds by being so.  These are the streets where people live and children play, they should not be designed for 50-60 km/h speeds.  If they were 30 roads, they'd be safer, and people would be more comfortable biking....but this issue is much larger than just cycling.