Quote:
Originally Posted by EvoFire
I would like to put a huge asterisk on that though. When he built the bike lanes, ebikes wasn't a thing yet. There's been a huge biking boom the last few years because of covid and the general availability of ebikes. The progress of ebikes have been HUGE since 2018 until now.
We got some groupons in 2018 for ebike rentals for shits and giggles. We started around Olympic Village and went around Stanley Park and back, and the ebikes were completely out of juice. Nowadays you can easily get 60-100km depending on how much you spent and significant number of people are using them as their choice for commuting.
I've rode many years and let's be real, Vancouver with it's hills is terrible for people with bikes. I still stubbornly ride my mountain bike around the city, carrying my kid because I'm a masochist, same reason why I insist on driving a manual. I see a lot of people using ebikes doing drop offs and pick ups at school now because it is now realistic. Without those ebikes you can probably easily take at least 30% of bike traffic off the road.
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Yes and no - in 2019 (basically pre-ebike) bikes were 9% of all trips in Vancouver and it was the pandemic that sank the numbers and only in the past year did bike traffic surpass 2019 numbers. e-bikes certainly have helped the numbers go up but the numbers were already there before COVID. (
https://vancouver.ca/files/cov/2023-...n-snapshot.pdf)
The difference between Vancouver numbers and other cities is also huge - Translink's data (different data set) shows that over 5% of Vancouverites commute by bike which is MILES ahead of flat cities like Richmond (~1.2%) and Surrey (~.5%). It's also miles ahead of next door neighbour Burnaby (~1%) (Page 19 :
https://www.translink.ca/-/media/tra...ouver-2024.pdf)
Granted, it's likely a lot of Vancouverites live close enough to their jobs to bike but the difference is staggering but also not surprising considering the quality of the bike network.
FWIW, Translinks report says that cycling peaked in 2016 and we've been recovering since COVID - again, e-bikes are helping but the numbers were there before e-bikes.
There's also a bunch of data in the Translink doc showing how much better the perception of safety is with bike lanes in Vancouver versus other cities - 49% of people surveyed felt Vancouver was safe for bikes while Burnaby/NW clocks in at 36%, Surrey/Langley at 39%, and Richmond/Delta at 44%.