Downtown Ride with Mayor and Councillors

The mayor and several councillors of Maple Ridge gained personal and up close rubber-meets-the-road experience of their city’s cycling infrastructure, thanks to an invitation by HUB Cycling’s Maple Ridge-Pitt Meadows local committee for a ride around town.

Mayor Dan Ruimy and Councillors Jenny Tan and Sunny Schiller accepted the offer for the ride. The relatively short 10-km ride commenced from the Memorial Peace Park adjacent to City Hall. The primary objective of the ride was to provide the mayor and councillors with a firsthand experience of the key cycling routes in and around downtown Maple Ridge.

We rode along the Selkirk route, pointed out the many stop signs along the route and the difficulty of crossing at the 224 St. and 227 St. (at Valleyfair Mall) crossings. At a brief stop at the Valleyfair Mall Parking lot, we highlighted the fact that in order to cycle eastward (say, to Thomas Haney Secondary School), one would need to either ride through the parking lot and bike on the sidewalk between 228 St. and Burnett St., or bike on the Lougheed Highway sidewalk illegally, as most rational people would do to avoid biking on Lougheed Highway.

Cycling east from 227 St involves biking through Valleyfair Mall parking lot or Lougheed Highway sidewalk (on right) …

… and on the Lougheed Highway sidewalk from 228 St. to Burnett St.

The folks at City Hall also got to experience where a multi-use path (MUP) is appropriate and where one isn’t. 

At the 117th Ave. MUP between Burnett and 231 St., we pointed out the potential dangers of vehicles backing out of their driveways onto the MUP, obscured by bushes. 

117 St multi-use path on left

And they were shown the 232 St. MUP at 118 Ave. as an example of a better MUP without driveways, though the safety of crossings at side streets is still an issue.

Multi-use path on 232 St at 118 Ave.