Friday, March 29, 2024

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Bikes lanes being monitored on Cannon

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The Cannon Street bike lanes have been in place for a few weeks now. And the city of Hamilton is monitoring how many riders are using them — and how they’re impacting traffic.

Hamilton built a blueprint for cycling in 2009 and it’s been adding 10 to 25 kilometres to the network every year since to the tune of about a million dollars a year. The most recent addition was Cannon Street. It opened during Supercrawl a few weeks ago and it is already changing neighbourhoods.

Even though the Cannon Street bike lanes opened late in the season, city data shows they’re already causing more people to cycle. People like Khalid Haredo, who now rides to work every day: “And you didn’t before? No. Because there were so many cars on the street. They’re gonna’ hit you. Now it’s a safety place, I’m really happy with that.”

So is Dave Kuruc, who owns an art store at Cannon and James: “I’m riding daily to get into the shop. so for me as a cyclist I find these amenities amazing.”

He says this area is more neighbourhood than intersection now, and pedestrians are happier too, because of the buffer between them and the traffic: “Traffic was going way too fast before. We had a lot of truck traffic and a lot of speeding cars. What the bike lane has done is create a common environment for business.”

It cost the city more than $800,000 to build this 3 kilometre bike lane on Cannon Street. It will cost more than $200,000 a year to maintain it. But advocates say it’s money well spent.

Before, there was no easy route for cyclists travelling east and west across the city.

“Now when I go to the east end for anything I go along Cannon. After Sherman it’s two-way so it’s easier to ride on. I could ride to the stadium.”

But where cyclists now have more room, drivers have less.

Truck driver: “I hate them. I go to do a delivery, I block traffic to get in.”

“It’s slowing down everything. With traffic anyways.”

“I take this down to Mac every day and it sort of clogs it up. So, I’m a nay, to that.”

And there is still confusion about who is allowed in the bike lanes. The city says:

Daryl Bender, Hamilton Public Works: “A bicycle lane is for a bicycle. so it comes down to the definition of a bicycle. With regard to e-bikes, it can only have a certain weight to it and it must have a speed regulator to go no faster than 32km/hr.”

We saw lots of medical scooters using the bike lanes today too, that’s not allowed. Scooters should move carefully along the sidewalk instead.

Right now, Cannon Street is getting more than 300 trips a day, but the city expects the bike lanes will get more and more use as people become aware of them. And the plan is to continue the expansion. In some cases, that means new bike lanes, like extending the Cannon Street track past Tim Hortons Field and connecting it to Red Hill Valley. And the city also looks at how to fit bikes into any roads they have to reconstruct anyway like they’re doing now on Garth.

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