Excuses Not to Bike Aren’t Coming From Cyclists

To read the most common excuse to not build more cycling infrastructure, read yesterday’s post: Winter Cycling is Ridiculously Possible.

Winter is the excuse I hear most when people talk about places not being appropriate for cycling, but it’s far from the only one. Even on a perfect summer day, people will tell you Orléans is too spread out, the roads are too dangerous, there’s nowhere to park a bike, or there are too many hills. Some of those concerns are fair, and some aren’t. Let’s dig into it.

Far apart and hard to cross

Compared to winter cycling, the rest of the year isn’t much easier for those wanting to actually get around by bike (and not just cycle for recreation or sport). Everything in Orléans is far apart from everything else, and roads like Tenth Line, Innes, St Joseph, and Highway 174 cut Orléans into sections that can be treacherous to cross outside a car. Some newer areas have multi-use pathways (MUPs), paved paths shared by people walking and cycling, running alongside the road. But even those still don’t typically connect to each other through protected intersections, which are intersections designed to keep pedestrians and cyclists separated from turning cars.

The main exceptions I am aware of are the brand-new roundabout and MUP near Jeanne d’Arc Station and some of the separated infrastructure crossing the 174 at Trim Road. Everywhere else, you stay on the paths or you ride in traffic and cross where it isn’t really safe. If you’re younger, just starting out, or simply not comfortable riding with cars, I completely understand why that keeps you off a bike.

Nowhere to lock up

And even when you get where you’re going, there’s often nowhere to lock up. Business owners are hesitant to invest in things like bike racks, especially when they see customers arrive and assume they came by car. That said, research into this suggests businesses would be better served catering more to active transportation. People who arrive by bike tend to live nearby and come back more often. A Portland study found cyclists made more trips per month to restaurants, bars and convenience stores than drivers did, and spent more per month at those places, even though drivers may spend more per visit (Clifton et al., 2013). On Toronto’s Bloor Street, people who walked or biked visited most often and reported the highest spending (Smith Lea et al., 2017, updated 2019). In other words, pedestrians and cyclists are likely to be your regulars.

About those hills

Hills come up a lot too, but mostly from people who don’t ride. I grew up in Mount Pleasant in Calgary, just on the edge of Confederation Park, in the river valley, with a giant hill a block from my house. We went up and down it every time we went to Confederation Park, and we did that as kids A LOT. When you ride for transportation and there’s a hill, you just go up the hill. I’ve never heard someone who actually rides say, “We shouldn’t build bike lanes in this spot, there’s a hill.” But it’s a common refrain from people who don’t bike to argue against making that trip safer on a bike.

Who’s really making the argument

Here’s what bothers me most. In my experience, the people who say we can’t have bike lanes because of winter, or hills, or distance, don’t bike anywhere, at any time of year, except for recreation or sport. Not at 15 degrees, not at 25, not at 35. Not for a 1 km trip or a 3 km trip. The limits they describe aren’t what’s stopping them. They have never tried riding a bike for transportation on the best possible day, so of course they argue against it on the worst.

Come back tomorrow, I have the exciting conclusion to what turned out to be a 3-parter, where I talk about the easiest way to start cycling for transportation.