Dutch-Inspired, Bike-Friendly Street Design for British Columbia

BC keeps getting compared to the Netherlands, usually with a shrug: we've got hills, we've got rain, we are not Amsterdam. But scratch the surface and the similarities outweigh the differences — and the lessons are more transferable than you'd think.

This week, Roy Symons joins us on the podcast. He's an engineer and sustainable transportation specialist with ISL Engineering and Land Services, and has spent years studying Dutch cycling infrastructure and translating what actually works into BC street design — from major urban corridors to small-town main streets.

In this episode, Roy covers:

• The "complete streets" philosophy driving continuous sidewalks, protected bike lanes, and safer intersection design across BC communities
• Why getting the modal hierarchy right changes everything for people walking and cycling
• What a reformed BC Motor Vehicle Act should look like for active transportation
• His own BC Bike Infrastructure Index, ranking communities by cycling mode share and network coverage
• The case for secure bike parking and bike parkades as the missing link for everyday cycling

Please note: At the upcoming Active Transportation Summit in Victoria this October, Roy will be co-hosting a film night with Nic Laporte, sponsored by his employer, ISL Engineering and Land Services. Don't miss it!

Subscribe to Bike Sense for more real-world active transportation conversations, share this episode with someone who cares about safer streets, and leave a review so more people can find the show. Thanks for listening!

Transcript

Welcome and Why Netherlands Matters

Peter Ladner 0:04

Welcome to Bike Sense, the BT 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 BT Cycling Coalition. I hope you enjoy the show. My guest today is Roy Symonds, an engineer and sustainable transportation specialist with ISL Engineering and Land Services. Roy has a special connection with the Netherlands and has written three books about cycling focused on the Netherlands and what we can learn from them. We're going to find out why he's so hooked on the Netherlands, what we can be realistically transferred from the Netherlands to BC, and how BC communities rank and what changes he'd like to see in the Motor Vehicle Act, among other things. Welcome, Roy.

Roy Symonds 1:04

Hey, thanks, Peter. Thanks for having me on.

Peter Ladner 1:06

Well, let's start with the basics. Tell me about your latest bike ride.

Roy Symonds 1:11

uestion. Where did I last ride my bike? It was probably actually down to Granville to catch the final game day for the World Cup. I hadn't had a chance to get down there for the last what three weeks of the World Cup's been happening, so didn't want to miss out and seeing what Granville could potentially become. Yeah, I didn't see the bike parkade there, so that could be one upgrade I could use in the future.

Roy’s Work and Complete Streets

Peter Ladner 1:42

We could talk about that. But first, could you just introduce yourself and say a little bit about what you do and how you see yourself?

Roy Symonds 1:50

Yeah, so by day I work, as you say, for ISDL Engineering. I'm a sustainable transportation specialist that essentially tries to cover the many things that I do at work, but really it's planning and design of bicycle infrastructure, complete streets and transit priority, any kind of what we call sustainable transportation. And I have a passion for photography. So my blog rolling in the city is kind of a little outlet to share photos of good things that are happening, whether it's here, the Netherlands, wherever else we might find ourselves.

Peter Ladner 2:27

I like the way that you have used photography to make your communications very interesting and accessible. Tell me what's a complete street is.

Roy Symonds 3:13

I think a lot of people, , when we go out to engage with the public, think we're trying to force bike lanes down their throats, and that's not the goal at all. It's giving people choices, uh, making the street work for everybody in the community.

Peter Ladner 3:27

When people talk about, oh, he's been to Holland and come back with all these ideas, and then they go, but doesn't he know BC is very different? It's got mountains, it's big spaces, and it's not flat and everything. But uh, before we get to why what happens in Holland is relevant here, what are some of the similarities? There must be some things we have in common.

Roy Symonds 3:49

Um yeah, it's a it's an interesting one because everybody focuses on the topography, the the hills. And that is, , for sure a barrier. I live up on Burnaby Mountain and I have a 300-meter climb on my way home every day, and not everybody's willing to do that. But but what? I see a lot more people doing that today, now that e-bikes and even e-scooters are becoming more popular. Like that's essentially flattening our cities. Um if you want to speak to what we have in common, the weather is pretty similar, I would say, in BC at least. Dutch or the Netherlands is uh is a very rainy place at times, as is BC. It definitely is windier there than it is in Canada. That's one of the first things that I noticed when I moved here from Scotland was like, where's the wind? Um, because it's just a fact of life in Scotland or the Netherlands, right?

Continuous Sidewalks Explained Simply

Peter Ladner 4:46

Tell me about some of the things that about or maybe you've worked on that have brought some Dutch innovation to BC streets uh in towns of varying sizes.

Roy Symonds 4:58

Yeah, so the thing that j ps out above all else is really continuous sidewalks and bike paths. I went to Amsterdam for the first time in 2015, just a very short trip, and met up with my parents who still live back in Scotland. Um and that seemed like the one very easy thing to do. It doesn't really impact anybody, but it just gives people walking or cycling if there's a bike path, priority over turning vehicles. And it's very obvious through the design, , design effectively reflects the modal hierarchy that we always talk about, , prioritizing people walking and cycling over traffic. Um so I tried to do that in a few places and didn't really get any traction until we were helping the Naimo with their complete street design guide. You know, just throwing ideas on the table, kind of as we're brainstorming things, just like we do this in the Netherlands, like maybe we can bring this to the Naimo, and everybody was on board with it. Um, we got it into the guideline. And at the same time, we were doing our Metro Drive Complete Street Design project, and we were able to build them on that corridor as a bit of a showcase of what it could be. And off the back of that, I work with Tech, the Transporting Association of Canada, , through their working groups. Um, we were able to complete a synthesis of emerging practice on the topic, , which is, from what I've heard and from other cities, has really helped other cities kind of pursue that. And, , Edmonton are doing them, , Kitchener are doing them, Ottawa's doing them, Montreal's doing them, Victoria's doing them, Vancouver's now doing them. Um, so that it's really captured people's attention. And as I say, it's a very easy thing to implement without really impacting anybody.

Peter Ladner 6:49

When you say Victoria, for example, is doing them, what do you mean by them exactly? Uh continuous sidewalks.

Roy Symonds 6:56

And that means uh curb ramps or yeah, so sorry, maybe I should have explained what that was. So a normal sidewalk has what we call curb returns. So you're walking along the sidewalk, you go down the curb ramp, cross the road at the road grade. So you're crossing the asphalt. Essentially, as a pedestrian, you're crossing the vehicle space. And so this flips it on its head. The sidewalk space continues across the intersection. Um, there's a ramp for the driver to come up and over the sidewalk and back down onto the local street. So they're now crossing, the drivers are crossing the pedestrian space rather than pedestrians crossing the vehicle space. And so it flips that whole hierarchy on its head, if you like. Pedestrians always had priority in that situation, but the design didn't reflect it, right? So design is now reflecting the model hierarchy. So it's been really good to see so many cities starting to adopt it. And I don't know if I can say really, but when the new BCAT design guide comes out, I think that'll be a a part of that update.

Peter Ladner 7:59

Interesting. I saw in your blogs things about digital signs at intersections that read whether there's a cyclist there and how long it takes to cross. Some kind of complicated stuff. But that sounds like a fairly simple, understandable, and effective tool that would be very easy to implement.

Roy Symonds 8:20

Yeah, and that's , and I think it's some of the simple things we could adopt from the Netherlands. Like all their local streets are very comfortable and they look very different from the collector streets, the arterial streets. So, like, , at an intersection with two local streets, they would often have it raised. Um so again, just slowing everybody down, making it impossible to speed along that street. Um, and then where that local street interfaces with a collector street, , possibly an arterial street, you would have the continuous sidewalk, kind of almost acting like a gateway into like a slower zone, right?

Peter Ladner 8:55

So that would be an example of not needing to have separated bike lanes where you could integrate cars, pedestrians, and cyclists all in the similar kind of spaces, but everybody feels safe somehow.

Roy Symonds 9:08

It depends on the whole context. So when I talk about continuous sidewalks, if there is a bike path, so like Metal Drive in the Naimo has uh protected bike lanes behind the curb adjacent to the sidewalk. So both the sidewalk and the bike lane are continuous across the intersection.

Peter Ladner 9:25

Just a little aside here, uh I was at a festival, uh Vision Zero had a booth, and they had a question for me how long in the city of Vancouver would it take at the current rate to build out the sidewalk infrastructure to complete it? This is just to put sidewalks on streets. And the choices were uh two years, five years, twenty-five years, or four hundred years, and the correct answer is you would answer, you would know.

Roy Symonds 9:56

I don't know, but guessing there's the larger n ber there, one of the larger n bers.

Peter Ladner 10:00

You are right, 400 years. We talked about in a previous podcast with Tony Valente about bike lanes. He says he likes to call them mobility lanes. Do you think that's a correct way to approach them?

Roy Symonds 10:15

Um I think it's a reasonable way to get away from the kind of bike lash. Um, my problem, and I've thought about this so many times and might have even talked with Tony about it. Um if it's called a mobility lane, , a car is mobility, a bus is mobility. So it does it become a micro-mobility lane or a I don't know, low power lane, or there's all sorts of nuances to any definition, but I think I think it's reasonable, honestly. I would like to see a move away from bike lanes because they're definitely for far more than bikes these days.

Micromobility Changes Bike Lane Design

Peter Ladner 10:56

Well, let's talk about that because you specify that these lanes should be wide enough for uh easy passing, uh, in part because there are now so many different speeds going in those bike lanes with the faster e-bikes and scooters and so on. Tell me about the impact of these new so-called micromobility devices on bike lanes.

Roy Symonds 11:21

Yeah, I think when all we had were painted bike lanes on the street and you only had, , the 2% super constant riders using them. The width was never really a big issue, , 1.2 meters, 1.5 meters. It was a little space you had at the side of the road, and if you were willing to cycle there, it was fine. And if by chance you did have to pass another rider, you would just pull out in a gap in the vehicle lane and pull back in. And as we start to move the lane behind curbs, obviously that restricts your ability to pass in the adjacent lane. Um, so we need to make it wide enough for people to pass because it's gonna happen, right? Whether if it's on a hill, you're gonna get people of different fitness levels on electric bikes, on electric scooters, , maybe in , around downtown and things, you're gonna have people in , motorized wheelchairs. So people of all different widths, , all different speeds. For it to be like truly functional, I think it it needs to have enough space to pass. And I say that knowing that it's not always possible to build a perfect bike lane, like every project has its constraints. And where we do have those constraint conditions, raising it up so that you're not catching pedals on either the existing curb and gutter or any kind of precast curb or , curb that's been added to protect the bike lane is a huge benefit. Like you can ride side by side in actually quite a narrow space if you don't have those things to catch your pedals at either side.

Peter Ladner 12:59

Uh interesting. You've spoken out about uh against door zone bike lanes. Can you describe what that issue is?

Roy Symonds 13:08

Yeah, I don't think I'm alone in that opinion.

Peter Ladner 13:10

Uh I hope not. But and yet if you look at this the bike infrastructure in most places.

Roy Symonds 13:15

And honestly, even in the Netherlands, you will find door zone bike lanes.

Peter Ladner 13:18

Logistics, describe what a door zone bike lane is and what the alternative is.

Roy Symonds 13:22

Yeah, it's it's a legacy design. So I guess when people were coming up with street design standards, , 30, 40 years ago, , you had your space for parking, you had a bike lane often next to it, squeezed between the parking and the vehicle lanes. And nobody really thought about the fact that people are opening their door into that bike lane. And of course, bad things can happen if that happens. You know, at best you might come off injured, at worst you might end up under a truck, which which of course has happened too many times. Yeah, honestly, you'd be better having almost no bike lane than having door zone bike lanes. And then if if you have space to do something better, then of course you should do something better.

Peter Ladner 14:06

Which would be to move the parking out into the adjacent to the passing traffic and and the bike lane adjacent to the sidewalk.

Roy Symonds 14:14

Yeah, so putting the putting the bike lane behind the parking is a good thing to protect the bike lane, but it doesn't take away the fact that the passenger door can still open into the bike lane. So you still need that buffer space. And , guidance will say the minim width is 0.6 meters, which is kind of the width if if you push your car door open on the first where it first catches, that's about 0.6. But if somebody throws their door open wide, , that's probably closer to a meter. Um, so ideally you'd have a meter buffer. Again, working within the constraints of our right-of-ways and and all the other competing needs, it's not always easy to get that. But ideal world, yeah, it should be at least a meter or door zone.

Peter Ladner 14:59

Roy, I just want to comment here that you have brought some very high ideals and visions to the discussion of what we should do with our cycling and transportation infrastructure, but you don't uh strike me as somebody who's sort of shrill and adamant and determined it has to be this way or not, not at all. So I

Making Multi-Use Paths Work

Peter Ladner 15:19

love that you've got that flexibility. And one of your areas of flexibility is multi-use paths, because in more rural areas, because I've heard people say it's just not going to work if you have the pedestrians and the cyclists in the same area. But obviously, for budget reasons and and other reasons, that has to be the way in some places. Tell me how they can work.

Roy Symonds 15:41

Yeah, again, it's very context sensitive. Um the one thing I'd say is if you if you ride around the Netherlands or look at a map of the Netherlands, you'll see a huge network of bike paths. But realistically, in rural areas, they're multi-use paths. You don't see people walking their dogs, running, doing whatever it is that they need to do to get from to get where they're going. Um, but it's usually the the pink asphalt, it's a bike path. It's called a bike path, but it's a multi-use path. So they have them there, they just don't call them that. It's a bike path that other people are allowed to use. Okay. Here the same rationale applies. If it's in a rural location, , the likelihood of conflict is much less. You know, maybe you're passing one or two people on your trip of however many kilometers, right? It requires a little bit of respect, I would say. You know, we have people moving fast on e-bikes, , so , give people space, slow down as you're passing, , definitely applies to all modes, whether it's cars being courteous to cyclists, cyclists being courteous to pedestrians. Um, and then in terms of the design side, there's times where we might want to widen that multi-use path to make it more effective. So if if there are steep grades, for example, speeds are obviously going to be higher, not just by the e-bikes, but all bikes as you're going faster downhill. So that might be somewhere we might want to widen the multi-use path. If we're if we're building it just to the kind of minim three meters in a very rural section, but then there's a steep hill, maybe we widen out to four.

Peter Ladner 17:26

Um just the way we do with cars. You widen it out so there's a passing lane.

Roy Symonds 17:32

Yeah, exactly. Um so again, everything's context sensitive. I do have, I would say, very high ideals, as you say, but , that's kind of grounded in the practicality of having to like plan and design this infrastructure and knowing that we can't just do the perfect complete street in every situation. It's just we're gonna end up with nothing, right?

Reforming The Motor Vehicle Act

Peter Ladner 18:10

When it comes to ideals, designs, and guidelines, uh the Motor Vehicle Act is a big factor. And as , it's under review right now. Uh you've advocated it should be under constant review and and always being updated. And if I may just throw this in, I think it's kind of weird that the ministry is requiring nondisclosure agreements from people that they're discussing this with. But since you're not, I know, part of that NDA process, share your thoughts on what you think we should be putting into a revised, reformed Motor Vehicle Act. And I've won you I, first of all, to talk about you've talked about how you we need to rethink how cyclists are asked to act. What does that mean?

Roy Symonds 18:53

I mean, there's many things that the MPU needs updated to address, and I'm not going to get into the weeds of it all, but there's two primary challenges that I feel like we face when we're planning and designing things today is cyclists right now are motor vehicles are the same as motor vehicles, right? They're expected to be on the road, acting like a motor vehicle. And that was fine while all we had were painted lanes on the road. And to some extent, it still works when we have like a on-street protected bike lane. Um but as soon as we start to move bike lanes behind curbs, , raise them up, , just as we did on like Metro in Naimo or Esplanade in North Vancouver, the interaction you might say between people cycling, walking, and driving changes a bit. Um and people cycling are start to operate more like a pedestrian. And so we've had this debate, , especially like stop-controlled protected intersections, which there's not too many of them in BC at this time, but there is a few. And my preference is that they get priority over vehicles rather than having to act as a vehicle because they're they're operating more like a faster-moving pedestrian. They're crossing the roadway, not they're not on the roadway, right? So would no-right turns on red lights be an example of that? Not really, because a no-right turn on red, again, if a vehic if a bicycle is on street, they should be obeying a no-right turn-on-red just as a car would. But if the bicycle is on a protected facility behind the curb and they're transitioning to a protected facility behind the curb, the no-right turn on red doesn't really come into effect because they're not crossing the stop bar effectively, they're just making a move kind of in the periphery of the intersection and not really conflicting with anybody, maybe pedestrians. Um if it was going from like a facility behind the curb raised behind the curb on street as they turn right, then there might be some rationale for that. Um, maybe because again, as much as I would like no right turn right to be the default everywhere, it's not. So it's often used where the flight lines are challenging. Um we're starting to use it a lot more for there is protected bike infrastructure now. Um, just to avoid those, reduce those conflicts.

Peter Ladner 21:26

I sort of interrupted you when I was asking for your thoughts on MVA reform. Other things you think that that should be changed?

Roy Symonds 21:33

Um the other main one is just it's tricky because because it is the law, so it's hard to provide flexibility in that uh without creating all sorts of legal problems. But , right now there seems to be, and I've tried to interrogate the MVE in so many different ways to see if there's a way around it. But , take bicycle signals, for example, which I'm pretty sure. Looking at. They're not defined in the MVA, but they are defined in our TACS Manual of Uniform Traffic Control Devices. And so a lot of equivalents to the MVA will reference this TAC doc ent because that's a national doc ent intended to regulate traffic control devices in Canada. So I would like to see the MVE either reference that or have a mechanism in there to ensure there's regular updates because the active transportation world has evolved so quickly in the last 10 years that it's it's struggling to keep up. And that's like what we're just speaking about, really. So those are the big things like enabling us to do to legally install things that are in other guidance, , and a way to like just have that brought into law almost automatically, if not on a yearly reviewed basis. So something like that would be ideal in my mind.

Peter Ladner 23:01

Another change in law that's affected cyclists in BC is no-fault insurance. What's your view of no-fault insurance and its impact on cycling and cyclists?

Roy Symonds 23:11

Yeah, I'm not an expert on the insurance world. Doesn't sound like a good thing to me. Um I'm gonna refer you back to the Netherlands again. And again, I'm not an expert on their system, but , they place the onus on the larger, faster moving person to prove their innocence when they're in a collision with a pedestrian or a cyclist. So it's it's very different than the way we were starting to do it in BC. Um, the point of insurance should be to encourage you to drive safely or , face penalties. The no fault system, yeah. Doesn't make a lot of sense in my head.

Peter Ladner 24:01

Roy,

Ranking BC Communities For Cycling

Peter Ladner 24:02

you've worked a lot on rankings and uh looking at how by different measures different communities stack up. Is it possible to say which community in BC is the most bicycle-friendly? And if not, how would you rank BC communities by what standards?

Roy Symonds 24:22

Our BC bike infrastructure index is based on length over area, length over population, and uh mode share for cycling, for commuting. And I gotta shout out my wife, Dragona. Um, she's the brain's behind the maps and the data that inform those rankings. And the winner is. So that's the thing. I was like, I had one big list originally, and then some of the small communities were actually coming out on top, and I was like, okay, I can see why that's happening, but it's it's not again, it doesn't make sense in my head. Um, so doesn't sound right. No, so I ended up splitting it up into large, medi , and small communities, large being over a hundred thousand population. And so, as expected, Victoria comes out on top there, followed by Vancouver and New Westminster. Um when we look at the medi -sized communities, which I took as 15,000 to 100,000 population, Whistler actually comes out on top there. And that makes sense when you actually think about it, because they have a huge network of , multi-use paths connecting all the different neighborhoods. City of North Vancouver scores well. Again, kind of like Victoria, small compact urban community that does have quite a lot of bike infrastructure. So that was no surprise. And then maybe the outlier there is Oak Bay, , which doesn't have a whole lot of bike infrastructure, so it starts to make asked questions about how that could be. But of course, they're they're right next to Victoria, so they probably get a lot of people commuting into Victoria. Um, plus they're kind of at that kind of bottom corner of the peninsula, so maybe not a lot of through traffic. Um, I certainly cycled through there a few times on some of the local streets, , and it's pretty safe and comfortable, right?

Peter Ladner 26:15

Well, except I I was there recently. I came off of a really nice separated bike lane in Victoria, get into Oak Bay, and you're out in the street with all the cars. Yeah, anyway.

Roy Symonds 26:24

I'm not saying every street's perfect, but if you if you go away from the ocean road, it's it's all local roads and they're pretty low vol e, low speed. Um, and then maybe just yeah, to speak to the smaller communities, Tefino came out on top. I think largely is there as well to the pathway to Gulu. Um, and the section that was within the Tefino boundary. Um, Vailmont, which I had no real clue about, but I guess again, small town, low vol e of traffic, probably low speeds, very comfortable, very easy to bike around. And the same goes for Revelstoke. Maybe Revelstoke has a bit of a more of an outdoor, , bike-friendly culture, I would say. Um so those are the communities that really shone, and for the most part, the index is making sense in my mind. By one thing, I might look at a way to to incorporate in future iterations is removing those kind of natural areas from the density calculation because they kind of skew it towards those more compact urban urban communities. You know, it's gonna be a long time before we get there. That's part of this index wasn't to say really who's good or bad. It's like here's where each city is on their journey. And , most of them have pretty ambitious plans to to get a lot more mode shift towards active transportation and transit. So yeah, I'm hoping this is a kind of annual thing. I would love to see the update when the the next census mode share information comes out, because I think in the last five years we've seen an explosion of e-bikes, and you need to think about how e-scooters are factored into that, if it's as a bicycle or as the other category, which might complicate things a little bit. And hopefully, again, over the next few years, doc enting how those cities are changing. Like this is a baseline, this is the first time we've done this index, but we'd like us to do it every year and be able to speak to who's the most improved, for example.

Peter Ladner 28:29

Well, we'd love to, at the BC Cyclone Coalition, we'd love to help you publicize that. It'd be wonderful to have an announcement every year. Here's the most improved communities, and uh here are the ones that have continued to rank high. And uh I know in Ontario they have the the bike friendly communities program, and they give the municipalities a sign to put at the entrance of the city to say this is a bike-friendly, we've we've we've reached some kind of standard. And uh I don't know whether that kind of thing would be effective too, but then you have to have an agreed-upon ranking and all of that. So Yeah.

Roy Symonds 29:04

No, I was gonna say I think all those little things help, , whether it's the bike-friendly community or bike-friendly businesses that maybe don't mind, , they have the bike parking outside or they don't mind you bringing your bike in. There's all sorts of little things. I'm gonna sound like a stuck record just going back to the Netherlands every time, but there's so many like little nuanced things that they do to make it easier to bite. We need to get there. We're we're starting to build, , the big important pieces of infrastructure, the protected bike lanes and pathway networks. But once you've done that, it's things like the bike parkades and making it safe and easy to leave your your nice bike uh for long periods of time while you go enjoy the town.

Peter Ladner 29:51

Well, that

Secure Bike Parking and Next Steps

Peter Ladner 29:52

is the difference that you've pointed out between the Netherlands and here, in that they tend to have simple, basic, standardized bikes, and there's so many of them they don't even lock them up. Yeah. And you're recommending uh secure parking in all parquets?

Roy Symonds 30:06

Is that what you'd like to see? I that's maybe a misconception because so most people in the Netherlands will ride these relatively cheap bikes, like when we did the fietspad trip, we bought Dutch bikes for I think it's like 100 euros each, and we sold them back to the same shop at the end of the trip. Um, but like if Mr. Tyson, I think pretty much every town and city, it's not people leave them on the street because they aren't that expensive, they'll lock them up with a the rear wheel lock. But there are also staffed parkades in most towns and cities where you can secure your bike inside with a lock to these kind of two-tier bike racks. So there's options for everybody, right? We go there with our Bromptons now and we'll leave them in these bike parkades without without fear of them being stolen.

Peter Ladner 30:59

So the bike parkade sounded some way to be sort of a stepped-up version of bike valet, where instead of just a fence and a field, you've got an actual building and a staff person. And uh do you need a critical mass of cyclists to make those work?

Roy Symonds 31:14

I'm just trying to recollect, but I'm pretty sure they're all free to use. So something is the city is typically funding that that, and probably because they recognize the benefit of bringing people downtown and letting them linger and spend money in in the downtown. So I think there's different economic ways to look at look at the benefits of those. When I look at , like downtown Vancouver, for example, , we have tons of vehicle parquades. Like, how hard would it be to section off a small a small corner of many of those parquades and staff them, even if it was like a one dollar fee or something, like so they make a little bit of money back, I wouldn't complain too much. But obviously, free is better. Um when I look at Transit Link's book bike parquade program, like that's that's a great thing to have. Um and they're starting to add that to more SkyTrain stations. So I don't think I've ever taken my I've taken the Brompton on transit, but I've never taken my actual bike on transit. But I have signed up for the the bike parquet program because when I'm certain places I will park my bike there rather than leaving it on the street, just because it's a little bit more secure, right? Not perfect, but a lot more secure than it being accessible on the street. So I think there's different ways we can look at that. In terms of n bers, , Victoria have their bike valley that's open year-round now. Um, and I think it sees a lot of usage. Um, so , Victoria is n ber one in my my rankings. Maybe that's the level of ridership you need to get to to make the bike parkade worthwhile. And I think it also depends on the city as well. Like maybe the small towns, people generally feel safer leaving their bikes outside compared to a big city where theft is the has a higher probability.

Peter Ladner 33:07

Well, I know in Granville Island where theft is a significant probability, they have a staffed uh bike bike valet, which I'm sure it helps encourage some people to come down there in their bikes and it helps them deal with their parking lot.

Roy Symonds 33:22

Yeah, Dragon had our bike stolen from Granville before that park uh the bike valley went in many years ago. So we know the pain of going to Granville really. We've since used to Bike Valley there, it's it's really nice to have.

Peter Ladner 33:37

Roy, overall, are you encouraged at what's going on? We've we've seen these cutbacks in AT spend active transportation spending from the the ministry and bike lash rearing up in at Calgary and Toronto and maybe Squamish. Uh are we still headed in the right direction? Are we gonna get there to some place where cyclists can be feel safe and have that option available?

Roy Symonds 34:04

I think so. I think there almost isn't another option. You know, we can't accommodate growing cities and people driving, or all the people driving. So the reality is when you look at the n bers, we're gonna accommodate, , double the population. We need a bunch of those new people that are moving in, a bunch of the people that live there today to be taking other modes of transportation. And every time we ask a community, , how do you travel today? How would you like to travel if like the network better meant your needs? A huge percentage want to bike more. So the light and demand is there. It's just we have to we have to get there with the bike network. And there's always the naysayers can be take a project out to the public, and that's fine. Like not everybody's gonna agree that that's how things should be done, but , that's why the city has its own planning department. It's why we do planning work because we're not just looking at what's happening in front of our doorstep, it's looking at a bigger picture and trying to sensibly sustainably plan for the future.

Peter Ladner 35:14

Well, I want to go back to where we started, and uh you talked about the continuous bike network. You you also talked about nuanced changes, and and to me, uh some simple low-hanging fruit is to provide that continuity because if you have a chain with one link missing, it's not a chain. And those are some things I think we could be working on and and achieving some of these goals that you've so eloquently laid out.

Roy Symonds 35:43

Yeah, and I think honestly, every pretty much every town city is doing that. Um, , that's why we have active transportation plans, it's to it's to look at the existing network, it's to find those missing links, those quick wins. And I think we're getting there. It's it's a slow process. We just did the bike infrastructure comparison with the Netherlands, which I just published yesterday, , showing the extent of their bike network versus BC. So it's like it's not like Victoria's finished, it's like how far do we need to go to match like Dutch levels of infrastructure? And it's still quite a way, , like it's maybe three to four times what Victoria's already built. And it's obviously more for cities that are at the start of that journey. Victoria's 10 years into that journey, but they've done a lot in 10 years. But when you look at the Netherlands, , they started in the 70s, 50, maybe close to 60 years ago. Victoria started 10 years ago, Pandora just celebrated its 10-year anniversary. I think Hornby and Vancouver was 2010. So those two cities are further in. A lot of cities are just starting. It's gonna take a bit of patience, obviously. There's there's only so much money and infrastructure you can build per year, but , year after year, if cities keep doing it, we we will get there.

Peter Ladner 37:01

Well, it's also gonna take people like you who know how to get it done and have that vision of how this can work and how it makes so much sense and can provide answers when people come and say, Well, what are we gonna do about all this congestion? And we can't widen all the roads. There just isn't the space. So we have to widen the options available on those roads, and that's where all your work comes in. And Roy, we're gonna put on the links to the show notes some of these links to your blogs and some of these videos you mentioned with with Nick Laporte, and uh let people see for themselves the great work you're doing and see the examples that are working that will inspire, hopefully, other people to say, hey, we could do that too. Because uh I'm sure you would agree that when you get a successful project that's got some data to support the fact that it actually works, that's a very comforting thing for engineers like yourselves and planners to bring to their councils and say, hey, we could do this too. Yeah, absolutely. All right, Roy, thank you so much. And uh look forward to following all your great work online and in your blogs and uh the books.

Roy Symonds 38:14

Thanks, Peter.

Wrap-Up and How To Support

Peter Ladner 38:22

You've been listening to Bike Dance, an original podcast from the BT 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 peter.ladner at btcycling.da. You can help us amplify BC Cycling Coalition's voice by simply becoming a free member at BCcycling.da.