BIKES - Nicola Street Bike Route and Invisible Bike Routes

 After years of advocacy, I have pushed back against many outspoken bike advocates in Kamloops who get mad at "crosswalks" or the elimination of a right turn lane, or complain about jaywalking, or protest the narrowing of a road, or the introduction of a stop sign. But those Traffic Calming measures once deployed far enough, have more to do with the solution than expensive protected bike lanes (assuming we can learn to design good ones).

Complaints about crosswalks, and eliminating turn lanes are actually complaints of motorists, but once on bikes, these things are actually solutions. Narrowing roads and adding stop signs create roads that motorists avoid. Vancouver and Victoria's 'Quiet Streets' bike infrastructure are built on exactly this premise. And a read of Larry Beasley's 'Vancouverism' or Vancouver to Amsterdam transplants the Bruntletts (Building the Cycling City) will quickly inform you that these cities learned from the gold standard in Bike Infrastructure -  the Netherlands with their 'Ontvlechten', the Invisible Bike Lanes.

The Coles Notes on Ontvlechten is that the best bike routes run through parks, quiet residential streets, cemeteries, back lanes - and they remove nearly ALL interaction with high speed traffic. And in the context of Kamloops, they will also help to remove the political and financial barriers. An example of applying this logic to Kamloops would be to look at the "Bike Route" which goes from Valleyview to Lower Sahali on Nicola and then St Paul. This route has wide, fast car streets, and the STOP signs face the bike rider at nearly all intersections. Stopping every 150m does not a friendly bike route make, Simply rotating the stop signs so that the bike route has the right of way changes everything for the cyclist - and would be far more impactful than the 6th ave bike lane at a fraction the cost.

The reason the City does not do this, is the theory that car drivers will just use this as a fast way through downtown now. The easy answer to that, deployed all over the world, and in Vancouver since the 90s, is 'filtered permeability'. Just use some nice planters or bollards, and make it so only bikes and walkers can go straight through at the intersections. Cheap, effective, can be moved easily. Warren Street in London below:

The City of Kamloops also already owns a few dozen watered planters that I think are poorly used 'Nature Bandaids' on streets around town. Mobile, heavy, visible. They would work perfectly for trying out some traffic calming and filtered permeability around town.