It’s exciting to watch our little city growing and growing up.
Encouraging people to get out of their cars and use their bikes has so many benefits, both short and long term.
A lot of people are confused and perhaps not well-informed about the new additional bike lanes being planned for Shelbourne Street from Hillside to Haultain.
This stretch is being significantly densified with multiple townhouse and condo developments. Housing that we badly need.
Every new development along this corridor has a maximum of one parking space per home.
Many of these residences are for people who work in areas far from home that are simply not conducive to using a bike to get to work, or have owners or renters who are elderly and cannot use a bike.
So far I kind of sound like I’m anti-bike-lanes. But this is not the case as there is already a wonderful bike lane one block over that glides along nicely and passes through a lovely park.
It runs from Doncaster Drive right to Bay Street. It’s safer than using Shelbourne, even with the proposed new bike lanes.
So, the combination of making the densification of Shelbourne less attractive, combined with perfectly wonderful bike lanes already in place makes no sense. Never mind that people’s house values will drop because of a lack of parking along the street, or push a bunch of cars onto side streets.
But folks, unless you make your voices heard this unnecessary change will and is getting quietly pushed through and in a few weeks you are going to see completely unnecessary bike lanes messing up this area.
Note: there has been no public consultation on this.
Gord McDougall
Victoria