Reaction mixed to news of Windsor Street bike lane

HALIFAX – HRM city council is approving the creation of a dedicated bike lane along a main stretch of Windsor Street as part of the city’s push to be more bike friendly and create three North-South bicycle corridors. The new lane would go down Windsor, cut through Quingate Place and end up along Vernon Street, south of Quinpool.

“There’s certainly a lot of people who ride bikes already and more and more every year,” says Mark Beaver, owner of Cyclesmith at the corner of Vernon and Quinpool. “The more we can do to make facilities safe and convenient for cycling, the less traffic congestion there will be for car drivers too, so it’s a win-win situation.”

In fact, Beaver says since the city has had a bike-friendly mandate, he’s seen sales of leisure bikes and hybrid city bikes increase.

“I know a lot of people are intimidated by cycling in traffic. Bike lanes that have a physical divider or wider road will make it a lot easier for a lot of people to get back and forth to work or to get groceries or to go to the theatre,” he says.

But there is opposition to the changes. The creation of the bike lane will eliminate 76 on-street parking spots along Windsor. Businesses between Cunard and Lawrence Streets are concerned it will alter their customers’ habits and result in a decrease in business.

“I think the bike lane is a good idea, except we are a business and if they don’t provide, or give us alternate parking, it’s going to mess up, it’s going to put us in jeopardy,” says Wayne Greene, owner of The Last Word book shop on Windsor.

“I mean, people aren’t going to walk across town for a book. They certainly aren’t going to walk in from the country.”

A few store fronts down is the neighborhood corner store, owned for the past five years by Ratnam Mohan. When asked how she feels about the approval of the bike lane, her frustration is visible.

“I feel very upset about that,” she says.

“As it is, we don’t have parking here and I don’t know how they are really going to be working that. We do not have parking right now, and people, our customers are having difficulty in finding a spot maybe even a couple of blocks away or a block away, so it affects our business pretty bad,” she says.

However, cycling supporters suggest the increase in bike traffic will off-set any losses from vehicular traffic.

“I’m not very optimistic on that. We’ll have to just wait and see. But bike people, they just keep biking, that is what my feeling is,” says Mohan.

Further up Windsor, there is a hub of activity at the Good Food Emporium. The eatery opened its doors two years ago and is a hot spot for the cycling and walking community.

“We support bikers at our restaurant,” says owner Eric Gunnells. “We had the city install four bike racks. There were none here when we moved in two years ago. And we got a lot of requests from our customers to have bike racks.”

But he does have concerns. The intersection at Windsor and Chebucto is a difficult one to navigate even at the best of times because none of the streets lines up with the other and it’s often difficult for cars to see pedestrians. Gunnells says adding more bikes into the mix could make it worse without changes.

“This corner at Cunard and Windsor is a traffic problem,” he says. “Drivers are often confused by this corner. So drivers will turn and they don’t even realize there’s a cross walk when they get down in front of the restaurant. Something to signal to drivers that bikes are using the road-way would help.”

The city has plans to add at least another two bike dedicated corridors to the city in the next few years.