Bike Sense
Bike Sense: the podcast of The BC Cycling Coalition.
Join Host Peter Ladner as he interviews guests to talk about all things related to cycling advocacy, education, and road safety in BC. Listen to stories that can influence changes that make active transportation and mobility safer, more equitable, and more accessible, so we can meet our climate, health, social justice, tourism and economic development goals.
Please visit our website at bccycling.ca to find out more about what the BC Cycling Coalition is doing and how you can join and support us.
Bike Sense
A Cycling Champion in a Pickup Truck Town
What does it take to transform a car-dependent small town into a place where cycling feels safe and accessible? Ruth Lloyd is finding out firsthand in Williams Lake, BC.
As a returning resident to her hometown, Ruth experienced the stark contrast between places where active transportation was normalized, and her pickup-truck dominated community where, as in many small cities or towns, the highway consititutes Main Street. Rather than accepting the status quo, she co-founded Streets for All Williams Lake and began methodically building support for cycling infrastructure through creative advocacy.
Ruth's approach blends journalistic storytelling with strategies such as lending an e-bike to the mayor to bring him onside. Now she's tackling an even bigger obstacle: provincial highways that create barriers within communities.
Find out more about Streets For All Williams Lake HERE.
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Welcome to Bike Sense, the BC Cycling Coalition's podcast, where we talk about all things related to active transportation advocacy in BC. I'm your host, Peter Ladner, Chair of the Board of the BC Cycling Coalition. I hope you enjoy the show. We've all heard how small groups of dedicated people are the real agents of change in the world. Today's guest, in my opinion, is one of those people. Ruth Lloyd is a journalist in Williams Lake who seems to have unlimited energy to campaign for safer cycling in her community. I invited her on the podcast not just because I too, used to be a journalist in small town BC, but because I was bowled over by a few of her initiatives that really seemed to be moving the dial in Williams Lake. Today we're going to talk about those. Welcome, Ruth.
Speaker 2:Hi Peter, Thanks for having me. I feel like one of those people on the radio, a long-time listener, first-time caller.
Speaker 1:Well, I introduced you as a journalist, but that doesn't explain to me how you got into being an activist for cycling in Williams Lake. Can you tell us how that happened, how long have you lived there and what prompted you to get active?
Speaker 2:Well, I'm actually from Williams Lake originally. I grew up here and you know I was kind of born into the I don't know driving culture of Williams Lake. I took it for granted that driving was how you had to get around, though I did spend my childhood riding my bicycle around my neighborhood. That's how I spent my evenings and I loved it.
Speaker 2:And then I got away from it. And then I just moved away for university, lived other places and when I came back here it felt like Williams Lake was on the right track. And then I moved away again and I lived in a place where everything was close. I was walking and cycling to all my errands and then I moved back and wondered why can't we do that here?
Speaker 1:Do you have a vehicle? Do you have a F-150? Do you have a vehicle? Do you?
Speaker 2:have an F-150?. Oh well, we actually. Yes, I have a vehicle. I live a little bit out of town from the downtown and we have 20 acres, so we have a truck and we have another vehicle, but I prefer to bicycle if I can.
Speaker 1:Do you bicycle into work?
Speaker 2:Yes, I do.
Speaker 1:And then what happened?
Speaker 2:You discovered that it wasn't what it ought to be. Yeah, there's only a short stretch of highway that I have to take and then I can kind of get on side streets and go different ways. But I'd been living these other places where I was just so used to acting like a car, as you're supposed to able to move with traffic and kind of take it for granted that you could follow the rules and feel okay doing that. But unfortunately here drivers aren't used to seeing bikes on the road and acting in that way, and I had a lot of really negative experiences that left me wishing for safer infrastructure and I found myself breaking the rules way more than I normally would to make myself feel safer.
Speaker 1:What do you mean by breaking the rules?
Speaker 2:Riding on the sidewalk, having to sometimes take, yeah, just kind of choosing my route in a way that wouldn't you know, I'm kind of making connections via sidewalks and some other things that aren't necessarily how you're supposed to do it.
Speaker 1:Well, on a more positive note, you did a program with some of your counselors where you got them onto bikes to have that same experience. Tell us how that worked and what happened.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it was really great. It was in 2023, and we got a grant from Emotive BC and we do these electric vehicle grants, and so they opened it up that year for e-bikes as well. And so they opened it up that year for e-bikes as well and we thought that it would be really great to try and show people. It was kind of a combination you not only get to show your elected officials some of the experience of riding a bike in your community, but you also get to highlight how much an e-bike is an advantage in an area like ours.
Speaker 2:We have a lot of hills. We're in a valley, so it's really advantageous. Once you have an e-bike, you flatten out those hills and basically anyone can get around without, you know, getting too sweaty and out of breath. And we actually didn't just do councillors. We had our mayor, we had MLA Lauren Dirksen, our local provincial representative. We had some different leaders from community groups. We even had the Citizens on Patrol, community policing leader, lead our parade. He does a lot of work at the parade. Thousands of people come down to watch it and we had him out there riding around to do his work for the parade on e-bike to show off its advantages.
Speaker 1:So you managed to get an e-bike from somewhere with this grant and then you offered it to these people for 48 hours or something, or how did it work?
Speaker 2:He had it for. He didn't want to give it back actually, but he had it for over a week. He took it to City Hall for City Hall meetings, parked it right in the room in the chambers while they were meeting and he brought it to his gurdwara for his Sunday at the temple and then he yeah, he took it on rides. We would try and escort them on a ride so that we could film them. So at least part of the demonstration was filming them riding the bike and then we could do social media posts around it to help raise awareness. And some counselors or users just wanted to have it and then take some rides and they wanted to do their own videos. So it varied actually, but we worked in partnership with two local bike shops and they helped us out with Lampus.
Speaker 1:Were some or most of these people first time e-bike riders.
Speaker 2:I think it was probably two thirds or so. We actually did a dozen different community leaders on these bikes, so we had the M. Our MLA learned Dirksen. He had it. That was his first e-bike ride and he had it, for I think he had that bike for four days maybe. And he had it for I think he had that bike for four days maybe. And yeah, our mayor, he hadn't. He'd grown up riding a bike in India and then he came to Williams Lake in the 70s when he moved to Canada and he hadn't ridden a bike the whole time he lived here, and so then he got on this bike and he said it made him feel like a kid again. It was really fun.
Speaker 1:Oh, nice to hear it Now. You have also been very active in promoting I don't know whether I should say initiating getting an active transportation plan done for Williams Lake. Tell us about that.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I definitely can't take all the credit. We've had this amazing active transportation working group that was formed through the city transportation working group that was formed through the city. We were asking for the city to kind of lead something like an active transportation committee or working group. To look at that, because our city had had one in the past and so we wanted them to revive it and when they got that group together they were amazing. Everyone on that group is, you know, we have this passionate team and some of those people.
Speaker 2:We were out canvassing for people to fill out the survey during all the engagement sessions and we had the most responses on the survey that the city had ever seen and just really worked hard and so much input and positive engagement. It's been really great. We had, you know, quite a good turnout for our live in-person engagement session with the planners. It was really positive. But yeah, we just started asking for the city to apply for the provincial funding to do a transportation active transportation network plan and we had this great person at the city who was staff at the time. She applied. She's no longer with the city, so then it kind of was on pause. We kept kind of pushing and then they hired a consultant to kind of help move it forward again. And then urban systems came in and did the project and they did a great job.
Speaker 1:So it was definitely a team effort now you mentioned an active transportation advisor group or council or something, but when you say we are you part of an association. Do you have your own cycling advocacy society or organization, or is it just random citizens getting together?
Speaker 2:So the Active Transportation Working Group is a group that has a bunch of different stakeholders and I personally represent and one of the members of that group, but I'm also a representative from Streets for All, Williams Lake, which is the advocacy group that my friend and I co-founded.
Speaker 1:Streets for All Williams Lake. So that active transportation plan has passed. Is it now an official plan?
Speaker 2:Yeah, so the city has adopted it and it is part of the city's yeah active transportation. Well, it is the city's. They paid for it because it was partly paid for through a provincial grant that they applied for and then the city had to check in as well. So it's the city's active transportation network plan. They've adopted it and now they are currently working on a official community plan review and we're hoping that that will be integrated into it, so it will basically be embedded in ACP going forward.
Speaker 1:Now you haven't stopped at Williams Lake because I know that you've been involved in some way in a motion from I think it's one of your counselors to the North Central Local Government Association asking for the Ministry of Transportation and Transit to take the lead on active transportation infrastructure on highway rights-of-way. First of all, what is the North Central Local Government Association?
Speaker 2:So the local governments in the province have different groups and North Central Local Government Association is the group representing local governments within the kind of northern half. In fact, geographically Williams Lake is not actually quite in the north but definitely fit into that demographic. So the North Central Local Government Association gets together and has a summit every year. Local leaders get together, talk about issues in the north and then a lot of those issues will then be brought forward to the Union of BC Municipalities Conference which happens every year in the fall. So that's all of the local government leaders meeting with provincial leaders every year.
Speaker 1:And you brought a motion. Tell us what the motion is.
Speaker 2:So one of the big barriers in a lot of communities, and absolutely especially in the north and central parts of the province, is the highway infrastructure, and so these highways comprise major throughfares. Sometimes they're the main streets of town, sometimes they create. In Williams Lake, we have Highway 20 and Highway 97, which divide different sections of our community and because those are provincial infrastructure, they cannot be changed by the municipality. So, even though we've got this active transportation network plan, we want to create a more safe, connected active transportation network that's going to help everyone get around, safely access all the amazing things we have, like our crazy, awesome mountain bike trails. But unfortunately they're all divided by these highways and the highways create major barriers, like in Williams Lake.
Speaker 2:Highway 20 is a separation between the west side of the community and the main downtown and the north side, so we've got mountain bike networks on the west side and the south side that you would need to use Highway 20 to get to if you were going to get there by bicycle, but most people feel very unsafe using that and unfortunately the city can't change that. The province has to leave that. We're asking for the province to take the lead on putting in active transportation infrastructure within those highway right-of-ways within municipalities have you tried a direct ask to the regional ministry official saying let's do this?
Speaker 1:Do they have the power to put some active transportation infrastructure alongside or related to the highway right away?
Speaker 2:Well, theoretically that would be who would do it, but they're not doing and I don't know why it's not being implemented. In terms of previously, the province had set a mandate the ministry of transportation it was the ministry of transportation infrastructure at the time for active transportation infrastructure to be a priority, but regionally we didn't really see that play out and there wasn't any follow-through in terms of creating, you know, ensuring that paving is happening, that ensures good, wide shoulders that are kept clean for active transportation, just minor things that would really enable it. But the counselor at the meeting with the city had just been discussing the active transportation network plan. The city was saying you know, we put all this money into it. This councillor said we've got this plan. How are we going to make sure that, you know, these highways don't continue to be this major obstacle for us? And maybe we should put a resolution forward, and so she drafted this resolution.
Speaker 2:It's Councillor Joan Flasspuller and she drafted this resolution. She's talked to the local representatives and so she has a better understanding of what the local ministry of transportation representatives can and can't do, what their barriers are, and so I think she was hoping to try and get that kind of push from the province, provincial level, to try and get everyone to say, look, these are basically our main streets. You know, you've got Townsend Burns, like we've got 14 June, you've got Houston, you've got all these. You know, chatwin, these are places where the highway is straight through the community and, you know, creates this major obstacle that really limits people in feeling safe, this major obstacle that really limits people in feeling safe.
Speaker 1:So you came to the conclusion that it would much help your local manager to have direction from on high to make this happen, and I would confidently say that this is the feeling of many, many communities in BC who feel frustrated. Some of them seem to depend on the passion of that local manager for cycling or not for cycling, which is a kind of a flimsy basis for building out AT infrastructure around the province. And we often hear that if there's a passion from the minister or the senior officials in the ministry that send down the ranks, that it will enable people to do this a lot more. So good luck with that and I hope it gets to the UBCM which I think is in September in Victoria this year, and the BC Cycling Coalition would like to be there.
Speaker 2:Yeah, the City of Williams Lake is going to put that resolution, a resolution forward that basically asks the province to take the leap and help make sure that active transportation infrastructure is being integrated into these municipalities. When you've got the highway going through town going through a pandemic.
Speaker 1:But you obviously felt that having that request amplified by support from all the other municipalities in that local government association would be helpful. So you've done that interim step. Has it gone to that association? Have they approved it?
Speaker 2:My understanding is it was passed and now and that's hopefully going to spur something in the province. But you can only try and hopefully the province will start to listen.
Speaker 1:So you've been doing this for several years? How many years now in Williams Lake?
Speaker 2:Well, I moved back here in 2020. And I guess we started now. I think we might have started Space for L Williams Lake in 2022.
Speaker 1:So let's say you've been doing this for three years. How are you feeling? Are you making you feel like you're making progress, that it's worth it, that you're going to get somewhere in the end?
Speaker 2:Oh, this is such a good question. I mean, what advocate doesn't have days where they're what am I doing? Is this even making any difference? And other days you think, oh man, this is so exciting. I mean, there's been great, great community building that's resulted, and I think that that matters. We might not have seen any actual difference in terms of there's no bike lanes happening yet, but we have. You know, we we've done a lot of things that I think have helped up the profile. I think that the response the community gave to the city you know we had over 700 people respond to our serving and that was the most the city's ever had so, um, it was, yeah, really satisfying to see that happen, and I think that the city's now has heard that this is something people want to see, especially with the mountain biking culture. Young people are out riding the trails and then parents want to know that if their kid wants to go for a mountain bike ride and they drop them off at the top of the trail, they can ride back to their house safely.
Speaker 1:So have you been working with the mountain? Does the mountain biking people have their own association?
Speaker 2:They do. They're the Williams Lake Cycling Club and yeah, they. You know we've tried to try and communicate and support what they're doing and they've tried to support some of what we're doing. And you know we have definitely a parallel interest on that and you know we have definitely a parallel interest on that.
Speaker 1:Well, speaking of parallel interest, you are coming to our Regional Active Transportation Summit in Kimberley on September 11th and 12th and you're going to be having an opportunity there for people who want to talk about getting their communities more motivated. So do you have any thoughts?
Speaker 2:Can you share any more about that and what you hope to come out of that?
Speaker 2:Yeah well, I'm really excited to get down there and get together again with all the people who are excited about active transportation.
Speaker 2:It's really just so rewarding to share knowledge and meet people who are doing the same things or similar things and share information. And when I went to the one that was last year, it was that New West it was amazing, it was so great. But I really felt like I wanted to be able to connect more with other advocates, because we just started this group in williams lake, we didn't necessarily know what we're doing. We just wanted to try and support safer cycling and safer active transportation for everyone, and I guess I was hoping to to try and connect with with more advocates, and so we wanted to create a an opportunity at this summit to just share some of what people have have done, what they've learned, their successes, their challenges and how we can kind of support each other to amplify our messages. When we're doing things like this Maybe CM resolution, for example, and other ECCC you know initiatives that they're trying to do on a provincial level how can we all kind of work together to that ship?
Speaker 1:well, that's a pretty good question and I don't think we're going to answer right away, except if you can make it. I'm speaking now to people listening. If they can make it to the conference september 11th, you can sign up at the bc cycling coalition website. Our early bird tickets for those listening to this podcast in July may still be available. Ruth, thank you so much for doing the podcast and for the work you're doing and setting an example, if I might say, for others to emulate and maybe get an AT plan in their community, maybe get an actual expanded continuous bike route network. That will light up the community and let people have fun and have more choices of how they get around other than that wonderful pickup truck that you own. Thanks, ruth.
Speaker 2:Oh, now I'm pegged as the pickup truck owner. Well, guess what?
Speaker 1:I own a vehicle too, so that's fine.
Speaker 2:Well and it's one of those things. We you know, so many of us, I think grew up riding our bikes in our neighborhoods, and you just see less and less of that in North America now, and it would be so lovely to ensure that you know younger generations are going to be able to have that choice and have that opportunity, because I think it's very transformative.
Speaker 1:We're all working on that. Thanks, Ruth.
Speaker 2:Thank you.
Speaker 1:You've been listening to Bike Sense, an original podcast from the BC Cycling Coalition. If you like the podcast, we'd be grateful if you could leave us a rating. On whatever platform you use, you can also subscribe, so you don't miss future episodes. If you have comments or suggestions for future episodes, email me at peterladner at bccyclingca. At peterladner at bccyclingca, you can help us amplify BC Cycling Coalition's voice by simply becoming a free member. Thank you.