WINNIPEG — A few weeks after barricades came down along Sunday bike routes, the city says they could go back up.
This year city staff stopped putting orange barricades up on four streets considered bike routes: Wellington Crescent, Lyndale Drive, Scotia Street and Wolseley Avenue.
Drivers are only allowed to drive one block on those stretches between 8 am and 8 pm Sunday. People face a fine for breaking that law.
Police are tasked with the enforcement but their chief say the barricades would make everyone’s lives easier.
“As a citizen I can understand by seeing a physical barrier would certainly be far more obvious than a sign, I get that, but at the same time we now have a job to do,” Devon Clunis, Winnipeg’s police chief said. “Would the barricades actually make our jobs as a police service easier, absolutely it would.”
Clunis said he would want to make sure there is no legal reason preventing the barricades from returning.
The city administration says that is not the case.
Luis Escobar, the city’s transportation manager, said city councillors approved a report on improving Sunday bike routes. He said that report included the removal of the barricades.
“We provided our recommendations to the proper committee of council and indicated barricades would not be reinstated as part of this process,” Escobar said. “However we follow the direction of the proper committees of council so if that is the direction then we will be moving in that way and reinstate the barricades.”
John Orlikow, the councillor for River Heights, plans to present a motion next week to a city committee to bring the barricades back.
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