Downes Road Bicycle Lane
In recent years, the City of Abbotsford has been giving the creation of bicycle lanes a little more consideration, making progress by creating a Bicycle Master Plan, participating in Bike to Work Week, and most importantly creating bike lanes on a few of the major east-west running streets.
One of those east-west running streets is Downes Road, a major thoroughfare that lies outside Abbotsford’s urban core and is marked by a long succession of hills, one after the other. I happen to live on Downes Road, so have seen firsthand the efforts to make it bicycle friendly.
At this point, the City has finished most of the job of widening the road, painting the lines, and installing signs alerting drivers to the presence of the bike lane. They have yet to paint bicycle symbols on the lane though. The bicycle lane is well positioned to connect to the bike lane on Clayburn Road, though between the two lies a hill that is intimidating to drive up, let alone bicycle. The new lane also connects to the bicycle lane on Mt. Lehman Road, but that bike lane is plagued by the presence of a lot of gravel, while also being intermittent and limited in scope.
So when the bicycle lane on Downes is finished and connects to these other two bike lanes, what Abbotsford will have is something of horseshoe shape of bike lanes on its northern perimeter. These lanes also happen to be located on some of Abbotsford’s hilliest roads with the exception of the urban growth on Sumas Mountain.
So make no mistake about it. These new bike lanes will never accomplish the task of making Abbotsford a bike friendly city. At best they will make it more pleasant for people who already cycle to do so. They are little more than glorified shoulders in their current state, and the cynical will argue that the construction of bike lanes is a nice way to add money to the road-building budget, and use it to upgrade poor shoulders.
Though the new bike lanes on Downes are by no means unwelcome, they aren’t particularly helpful either. What is needed is bike lanes on the major roads of Abbotsford that come close to the urban core – on South Fraser Way, Sumas Way, Hillcrest, George Ferguson, Clearbrook – and other such roads, to send a message loud and clear that Abbotsford intends to become a bike friendly city as soon as possible.
Though these new bicycle lanes will do very little to boost the popularity of cycling, I can understand the thought process used by planners. Since Abbotsford had virtually no bike lanes prior to the construction of the ones on Bevan and Peardonville, they probably felt that bike lanes on Downes and Clayburn would be a good way to introduce Abbotsford’s drivers to the concept, bridging the way to make Abbotsford’s core bike friendly. If this is the thought behind these bike lanes, I can understand it – on the assumption that making the rest of the city bike friendly happens sooner rather than later.
