I saw these installed on the Arbutus Greenway today.
This doesn't look in any form wheelchair, stroller, one wheel, skate board or bike friendly to me at all.
Is there any practical reason to build those barriers to justify making life harder for above mentioned groups?
Yea I get wanting some users to slow down, but this must be annoying or impossible for wheelchair users and people with strollers. Bad implementation regardless
I'm sure they'll come back with "to slow down people on e-bikes and e-scooters", but those things are so anti-everyone else that they really shouldn't be there. EDIT: The speed bumps, not e-bikes and e-scooters!
If you don't get answers or the answer is silly, try to get in contact with the Accessibility Advisory Committee.
These speed bumps were installed on the section of the greenway between 7th and 8th Ave, by the Broadway Subway team. That section of the greenway is officially closed to people on bikes, although the signage communicating that has been quite poor. Apparently the Project received complaints about cycling on that stretch.
HUB reached out to the Project team when we were notified about the installation of the speedbumps for clarification. The clarifications were:
This section is indeed closed to people on bikes. People on bikes should detour to Yew or Cypress St
This section is not closed to pedestrians
Better signage will be installed
We pointed out how odd this was, as well as calling out the speedbumps as being problematic for ppl w/ mobility devices/challenges.
At any rate, this is a stretch of the greenway that goes nowhere because the greenway between 8th and B/Way is completely closed. 8th Ave itself is being used as a truck route for the project, so having fewer people around there in general (whether or on bike or not) makes sense from a construction safety perspective.
In the end, I think we'd prefer that the closure was better indicated (gated? fenced?) the detour better signed, and that any measures were equitable for all people.
The intention is for it to be inaccessible. The Broadway Project considers that stretch closed for construction purposes. I don't understand why they consider it closed for people on bikes but not pedestrians.
I do think that they hoped that people on bikes just wouldn't ride there because it goes nowhere, so they didn't put much effort into visible "closing" it. That seems to reflect a misunderstanding of human nature. /shrug
So in the end this is overall lazy thinking from the Subway Project team, pending a better resolution.
I used to live across from a school in Edmonton. It was a 30kph stretch for about 600m, and the road narrowed from ~14.5m to ~11m, with cars parked on both sides of the road. Do you think cars slowed down? Of course not. And any mention of it on Reddit was an instant swarm of down votes from entitled people.
Cyclists are no different, a few bad apples spoil the entire barrel.
Yeah. Cars and their infrastructure are wildly inefficient and dangerous, not only because they bring out the worst in people. At least bikes can't kill as easily and cyclists are more connected to their surroundings, but yeah there are dangerous people on bikes that ruin it for everyone else.
Blows my mind when I see cyclists flying past pedestrians. Like... even if they're a sociopath who doesn't care they're making people very uncomfortable, that kid makes a sudden move to the left as they pass and they'll spend years in prison for manslaughter.