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Vancouver’s Georgia Straight looks at what city cycling was like in 1999, and it’s nothing like 2015

With the way Vancouver looks in 2015, streaked with bike lanes, its roads bustling with record numbers of cyclists, one could be forgiven for thinking the city was always a Xanadu for bikes.

Sixteen years ago, the Georgia Straight reports, bike lanes like this one on Dunsmuir St. in Vancouver were nowhere to be found, and city cycling was much, much worse. (Photo Credit: Paul Krueger via Compfight cc )
Sixteen years ago, the Georgia Straight reports, bike lanes like this one on Dunsmuir St. in Vancouver were nowhere to be found, and city cycling was much, much worse. (Photo Credit: Paul Krueger via Compfight cc )

With the way Vancouver looks in 2015, streaked with bike lanes, its roads bustling with record numbers of cyclists, one could be forgiven for thinking the city was always a Xanadu for bikes. As a recent “Throwback Thursday” feature published in the city’s Georgia Straight magazine shows, though, that wasn’t always the case. Not even close.

In fact, the article recalls, one could go back to 1999, a relatively shallow depth into the past, to see a strikingly different city when it comes to how welcome cyclists once felt on its streets.

The answer, in short: not very welcome at all. The Straight feature, written by Amanda Siebert, looks at past articles published in the magazine, painting a picture of how Vancouver has changed over the years. Its most recent edition, of particular interest to riders who have ever called Vancouver home, looks at an article called “Battle for the City Bike,” written by Mitchell Scott and published in the magazine’s April 22-29, 1999 issue.

It’s a vivid portray of how much things have changed in 16 years.

In stark contrast with vibrant, living city for all things bike-related that the B.C. city has become in the 21st century, the 1999 article describes a “car-centric” metropolis, with drivers aggressively squeezing bikes out of the major arteries and on to sidewalks, denying space on the city’s busier thoroughfares to anything but vehicles with engines. The city itself, the article reported, wasn’t much better in an infrastructure sense, allocating only 100 total kilometres of bike routes and bikeways to cyclists. Further, of that number only 5.4 kilometres were actual, dedicated bike lanes. And none of them, the Straight reported, were downtown.

Routes like the Stanley Park Causeway — currently undergoing a major bike-friendly overhaul — were considered the most dangerous places in the city for cyclists, of whom only 2% biked to work at the time. The Lions Gate Bridge, notably, was another presumed death trap. That year, though, advocates from various organizations set to work to get the city to better enfranchise cycling, which finally came through in the form of its official bike plan. Jim Hall, a city engineer in 1999, told the Straight, “I think we might see more bike lanes on major streets and more cycling facilities in the downtown core.”

Today, as cyclists and Vancouverites in general are keenly aware, those words have proven to be rather prophetic.

Today, Vancouver, as a city, is essentially synonymous with a positive, inclusive bike culture. Between 2008 and 2011, an increase of 40% of reported bike trips were reported — a significant increase from 2%. A total of 400 kilometres of bikeways and bike lanes, both shared and dedicated, can be found on city streets. Even more can be found in the form of off-street paths. And, of course, there’s what the numbers indicate in 2015 alone, with a million riders clocked earlier this summer as having crossed the Burrard Street Bridge this year.

With similar cycling upticks in other Canadian cities having been reported this year, one wonders what the country will look like in another sixteen years, not just one municipality.