Mayor Gondek meets with province to discuss Calgary bike lane future

With the possibility of changes to Calgary bike lanes as the backdrop, the city’s mayor sat down with Alberta’s transportation minister on Wednesday.

A meeting at city hall between Jyoti Gondek and Alberta Transportation and Economic Corridors Minister Devin Dreeshen left the mayor sounding upbeat following what she called a productive discussion.

“I think when you’re planning for a city like ours that is growing more than 250 people a day, you need to be very open to understanding how people are moving about the city and how they will be,” said Gondek, who added that bike lanes currently account for less than one per cent of road surface in the city.

The mayor says the lanes dedicated to cyclists are not fixed in place and can be removed if issues arise with congestion or parking.

The province has said they favour expanding vehicle lanes to meet increasing demand, questioning the trend of converting driving lanes into bike lanes at the local level.

In April, Dreeshen called on Edmonton and Calgary to remove bike lanes from “major corridors,” as he said they clash with provincial goals and investments in expanding roadway networks for vehicles.

“I think it’s quite common sense that, and it’s not an ideological thing, where you would have a road network that is designed to accommodate a certain amount of people,” says Dreeshen. “When you cut that in half, or reduce it, you’re obviously going to increase car and traffic congestion.”

One focal point of the conversation is Calgary’s decade-old commitment to expanding its cycling infrastructure, with more than $50 million earmarked for bike lanes over the coming decades.

In 2015, Calgary introduced a pilot project of a downtown cycle track network along 12 Avenue and 5 Street SW. A year later, it was made permanent.

Dreeshen has said the province hasn’t ruled out stepping in to remove existing bike lanes, following Ontario in legislating that any new bike lane coming at the price of removing a vehicle lane would require provincial approval.

Weighing in the city’s favour is Wednesday’s Ontario court ruling that found Premier Doug Ford’s law to remove three Toronto bike lanes violates the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms.

The law, passed last year, also gave the Ford government the power to order municipalities to remove bike lanes and reinstall traffic lanes.

A Superior court justice ruled that any removal, or reconfiguration, that takes away the physical separation of the lanes violates the charter. The group leading the legal challenge, Cycle Toronto, argued the law that enabled the province to remove the lanes is arbitrary and puts lives at risk.

The Ford government says it will be appealing the decision.

For his part, Dreeshen says he is not yet ready to concede on the matter in Alberta.

“Going second as a province is helpful because you can look at pieces of legislation that have been introduced in the past, and what’s the good and bad of them,” he says.

Gondek says she is looking forward to more work with the province to help meet the transportation needs of everyone.

With files from The Canadian Press