JOHNSON – Will Kamloops City council fix its boondoggle ways?

NOTE: This is part one of a two-part column on City council boondoggles.

CALLED IT last summer, but I didn’t use the word ‘boondoggle’ … should’ve.

Talking about the bike lane on 6^th downtown.

Back then, I discussed just how much this bike lane is NOT used, after $2.2 million (of which $1.5 million was federal funding) was dumped into it … because ‘if you build it, they will come’ … or it seems thought Council.

Aaand … come they didn’t.

This past February, discussions from some around the horseshoe left the feeling that they have finally woken up to the real world … albeit two years too late.

Someone on staff charged with the task of watching bike lanes looking for a body count, report that it gets 100-150 users on an average good weather day.

Ya … I’m gonna call them out on that as BS.

If we napkin up this math and divide the average of that by 12 hours of daylight … that should be thereabouts 10 users per hour, every day.

I guarantee you that is not happening, by factors.

I spend a good part of my day passing by there and my better half spends office hours overlooking this bike lane.  She is lucky to see a couple users per day.

We have been told by people who live with a view of 6^th Avenue, that they don’t see much evening or weekend use either.  This monstrosity gets more use by the half dozen mobility scooters in town than commuting or fitness conscious bike riders.

It’s as if someone at the City is taking the busiest weekend summer community festival day usage of this bike lane, and just copying/pasting it to every other day.

And no, the excuses of it ‘not being well connected north or south to other bike infrastructure’ … just isn’t an argument. At one end, we have the bike lane connecting to the path heading up Pederson Creek, which is pretty much a one way for all but the most seasoned Tour de France racer in training, and at the other end is literally a railroad track, even if you can ride to the Blue Bridge or into Valleyview from there.

Anyone on or off Council that thinks more money poured into extending this project to include more bike infrastructure to feed it, thinking it will put new people on bikes at such a significant amount to justify it … is either deft of logic and reason, a Council politician trying to secure future votes from a tiny base, or is emotionally trapped in the ‘let’s be fit and green kum-ba-yah’ crowd.

There will never be the idealized 500 users per day … ever … or at least not before Kamloops population numbers triple.

Boondoggle is a very kindly way to define this whole mess. A mess based on bad forecasting and potentially misleading math.

But what do we do now?

We can spend Timmies coffee time and columns whining about it,  or just roll our eyes, accept that we are here, and start fixing it.

So, let’s do that.

First, and we’re talking this week; reprogram the traffic lights back to vehicle centric use, cover all the special bike timing traffic lights, and have the few bike lane users respect the traffic reds at intersections, and use a delayed left turn vehicle traffic lights to get the bikes and pedestrians across safely.

You know … how every other intersection works.

Then eventually, a year or so on, look at ripping out the concrete and the expensive bike lane lighting (storing it for a future use), and just make that lane … a bike lane determined by paint … or better yet, just move the bike lane entirely to 5^th Avenue, like bikers wanted in the first place.

Do this, though, just seal up and leave the underground wiring and services installed down there alone.  Never know, one day a future Council with no knowledge of this attempt, might want to put in a bike lane.

Let’s save my granddaughters’ future property taxes a bit.

So where are we:

1 – it’s fine for Council members to today recognize that a previous Council did this badly, but they also need to today, talk about a plan to get out of it.

2 – The next time Council want to consider, let’s say … a bike lane somewhere, instead of pouring concrete and going full on permanent on day one, set it up temporarily with orange pylons and paint on the blacktop for a year, and see what the usage will looked like, then move on to the bigger job if it’s justified.

If they did this for 6^th Avenue, I guarantee we would not be there today.

We can expect Council to pull off the occasional boondoggle.  What’s more important is how they learn from it, and adjust processes going forward, before massive amounts of money are spent … again.

I donno … like a pedestrian bridge over McGill,
… but that’s another boondoggle story, for another day.

David Johnson is a Kamloops resident, community volunteer and self described maven of all things Canadian.