Walking the Talk: TransLink Top Management Rides Ridge Meadows Cycle Infrastructure
One highly successful marketing tagline – “I liked the shaver so much that I bought the company” – as famously claimed by the owner of a shaver company in one of its commercials, might very well have been more of an embellishment than a factual account of what actually transpired. However, what is not lost is the fact that the message implied the manufacturer’s pride in its own product, or at least someone in the company had used the product and attested to its utility.
A similar argument can be made when it comes to the decision-makers of a city’s or region’s infrastructure – transportation authorities, city council and engineering department – in terms of how the strategies, tradeoffs and implementation choices get manifested into physical realities. What better way to get direct feedback than actually use such facilities.
Such was the “walking the talk” mindset of the top management of TransLink when it comes to their regional infrastructure. At a local TransLink Roundtable organized by MLAs Lisa Beare and Bob D’Eith earlier in the year, Kevin Quinn, CEO of TransLink, mentioned that he had ridden some of the TransLink funded cycling infrastructure in PoCo, and that he would be interested in doing the same in Pitt Meadows and Maple Ridge. After all, what better way is there to find out how your funding turns into concrete infrastructure than actually “pounding those pavements”?
The invitation was gladly accepted by the HUB Cycling Maple Ridge – Pitt Meadows local committee. A route was planned and a date was set.
As the date drew near, a more accurate short term weather forecast became available. As luck would have it, there had been practically zero precipitation in the two months prior, but the forecast now called for 5 to 10 mm of rain on the day of the ride. In case a downpour might dampen the benefits of the fact-finding ride and make roadside discussions more challenging, an exchange was made with the CEO’s office as to whether an alternate date should be considered.
The response: “rain or shine”.
On event day Kevin and two of his deputies – Matt Craig and Rex Hodgson from the planning department – showed up for the ride. Four members of the HUB Cycling Maple Ridge – Pitt Meadows local committee participated, led by Erin O’Melinn, the executive director of HUB Cycling and a resident of Pitt Meadows.
The ride started from the rapid bus stop on Lougheed Highway at Harris Road in Pitt Meadows where the TransLink staff arrived. The need for way-finding through Harris Road Park to connect to the mini-cycle highway along Lougheed Highway to Meadowtown Mall, as well as the opportunity for on-demand bike lockers at the westbound bus stop connecting to the Skytrain in PoCo, were highlighted.
The team then visited the recently opened bike parkade at the Maple Meadows Station connecting to the West Coast Express, where awareness campaigns will hopefully result in increased usage of the new facility.
The ride continued along the industrial area of 113B Avenue which is identified as a segment of TransLink’s Major Bike Network connecting to the Golden Ears Bridge. Sandwiched between high volume large vehicle traffic on one side and parked cars on the other, the door-zone bike lane is very unsafe. A better design would put the bike lane on the passenger side of the parked cars, shielding people cycling from traffic and decreasing the chance of them being injured by opening car doors, or worse, being thrown in front of moving vehicles.
The ride continued eastward along the 117th Avenue neighbourhood street where a bi-directional multiuse path is being constructed on the south side of the street. It is a project that is cost-shared by the municipality and TransLink. The HUB Cycling Maple Ridge – Pitt Meadows local committee had stated its opposition to the multiuse path due to potentially unsafe situations as it intersects multiple side streets, as well as many driveways where drivers turning across the multiuse path or backing out their vehicles might not be looking for people cycling in both directions.
Further eastward, the group rode along the multiuse path along Lougheed Highway between Laity and 216th Street. The missing connecting piece from 216th Street to downtown Maple Ridge and Haney Bypass was highlighted by the forced detour at 216th to a circuitous route through the side streets toward downtown. This missing piece had resulted in many head-scratching, less informed members of the public ridiculing the multiuse path segment from Laity to 216th as a bike path “from nowhere to nowhere”. This issue led the group to a discussion about the case for dedicated funding to bridge such glaring gaps along TransLink’s Major Bike Network. The current approach of opportunistically building disjointed segments, while hoping to complete the network at some point in future, would continue to see stunted growth in cycling adoption in Metro Vancouver’s outlying municipalities. TransLink cost-share funding is allocated to fill the gap between 216th to 220 in the next couple of years.
The return trip from downtown Maple Ridge took the group along the 123 Bikeway and 203rd Street, where a segment of protected cycling infrastructure has been built but critical gaps remain to be filled to make this part of TransLink’s Major Bike Network complete.
At the end of the trip, the TransLink team mentioned that they had much more appreciation for what it is like to cycle along the infrastructure they partly funded. In addition, having a firsthand look at some of the jointly funded projects would help them better assess how to incentivize high quality and effective infrastructure to get more people cycling more often .
The TransLink CEO said he will continue to ride the infrastructure in other municipalities, and will invite members of the city councils to come along.
The HUB Cycling Maple Ridge – Pitt Meadows local committee very much appreciated the opportunity given by the TransLink team to guide them through the fact-finding trip. The committee has invited both Maple Ridge and Pitt Meadows Council and City staff in the past and will continue to do so to join them in riding the city’s infrastructure in order to gain an on-the-ground experience of what it is like to cycle the infrastructure they have built. The uptake has been few and far between up to now. A notable and memorable exception was when, as part of his retirement send-off, Ike de Boer, Director of Engineering of Pitt Meadows, joined the HUB team and rode the Pitt Meadows cycling infrastructure he helped build during his tenure.
(Photo: TransLink CEO Kevin Quinn (left), Matt Craig (right) and Rex Hodgson (2nd right) of Planning paused at the Maple Meadows Station during a ride with HUB members along some of the cycle infrastructure in Pitt Meadows and Maple Ridge that TransLink helped fund.)
