Living Car Free - Impressive cycling statistics

Des Moines has a long way to go to catch up with Vancouver. However, it's nice to know there are city like Vancouver and Amsterdam... where things are happening bicycle-wise.

http://vancouver.ca/engsvcs/transport/cycling/stats.htm



Did you know?

Cycling is the fastest growing method of travel in Vancouver.
There are currently more than 400 lane-kilometres of bike routes in the city. (A lane kilometre includes one-way and two-way measurements for bike paths and lanes.)
Approximately 60,000 trips are made on a bike every day in the City of Vancouver.
More than 3,500 cyclists commute to work downtown every morning, which is the equivalent to 65-75 full transit buses.
About four percent of commuting trips in Vancouver are made by bike, in some neighbourhoods, over 10 percent of commuting trips are made by bike (2006 Statistics Canada Census).
In some neighbourhoods such as Kitsilano and Grandview-Woodlands, more than 10 percent of work trips are made by bicycle (2006 Statistics Canada Census).
15.9 percent of residents in Vancouver cycle or walk to work (2006 Statistics Canada Census).
41.4 percent in the Downtown and West End cycle or walk to work (2006 Statistics Canada Census).
Almost half of all Vancouver residents commute less than five km to work and more than 80 percent commute less than 10 km - these relatively short distances are ideal for cycling.
60,000 City of Vancouver bike maps were printed and distributed in 2009.
The City has more than 300 traffic signals with cyclist push buttons.

Impressive stats, Americans are to lazy and many would do without then walk or cycle . Here in Toledo , people only walk or cycle when gas prices get to high. This area has an automotive manufacturing history so alternative methods is looked down on.

I'm not surprised at those statistics. British Columbia is the fittest province in Canada and probably the greenest as well. Cycling is very well accepted here, even by the non-cyclists.

I'm in the Okanagan Valley, north of Penticton. Motorists here are used to seeing cyclists on the roads, partly because there are a lot of people who train for the Ironman in August. And in my small town, a lot of people get around on foot or on bike for short trips.

I remember reading years ago about Vancouver's efforts to rein in sprawl with strict land use policies. Does anybody know if these efforts have been successful? If so, could that account for some of the popularity of cycling?

Roody, there are a couple of factors to consider with Vancouver's development.

The area is geographically limited and confined to one valley. There are several communities which make up the greater Vancouver area, many of them linked by the Trans-Canada Highway. Someone who lives in Surrey and works in downtown Vancouver has a one-hour drive to get to work during the morning rush and another one-hour drive to get home again. The roads are quite congested during rush hours. The city has set up lanes for buses, motorcycles and carpool vehicles. Using those lanes can shave a lot of time off that commute.

Development everywhere in British Columbia gets a little strange because of the Agricultural Land Reserve, which was set up around 1972 to ensure we would have adequate land for farming. If land is within the land reserve, then getting it removed for development involves going to a special commission and an application process. I watch this process often and it's quite involved. The ALR overrides city land use policies. If a piece of land, fully within city boundaries, is also within the land reserve, it must be removed from the reserve before any non-farm development is permitted. As a result, land prices throughout the province are affected and sprawl becomes an issue, particularly in smaller communities. Where I live, there are some parcels of land within the land reserve a five-minute walk from downtown. They are not being farmed but they cannot be used for any other purposes, so they lie vacant.

The greater Vancouver area, partly because of its geography and partly because of its mild climate, is a desirable place to live and as a result, it has some of the highest housing costs in Canada.

From the 1960s until the 1980s, small houses known as Vancouver Specials were designed and developed for small lots. (You can run an Internet search to see how these houses look.) After the mid-1980s, a number of the communities in Vancouver set up zoning regulations to keep those houses out of their areas. That's roughly the time the huge houses started going up.