Windsor, Ont. road to receive bike-friendly facelift

Windsor, Ont. has announced a new municipal initiative to improve Cabana Road, the CBC reports, investing $46 million in the project over eight years. It’s a road whose traffic has only gotten worse over the last ten years, residents say. For cyclists, no doubt, the effect of that dense, crowded commuting environment is particularly acute.

For that reason, local cyclists will find a lot to love in Windsor’s plan for Cabana.

In addition to sidewalks and a widening of the asphalt to accommodate four lanes, the stretch of Cabana from Huron Church Road to Provincial Road will also receive dedicated bike lanes. Councillor for Windsor’s ward 1, Fred Francis, told the CBC that the traffic improvements are long overdue, and that the bike lanes are intended to benefit future cyclists as much as current ones. In its present form, the plan is an improvement over earlier, smaller-scale initiatives. What the city is moving ahead with, Francis told reporters, is the correcting of problems that have existed on Cabana all along.

“And not just to deal with what we passed a few months ago,” he said, “but to deal with it for generations to come. I don’t think it made sense to too many people to put in about $5-6 million in bike lanes and then rip them out again in 10 years.” That the city’s updated, more ambitious initiative has the concerns of cyclists at its heart, advocates say, is an encouragingly progressive step forward.

“We know that cycle commuters and recreational cyclists are put there,” said Lori Newton of Bike-Friendly Windsor Essex, “and the recreational cyclists very often are the ones who often keep their bicycles in their garage because they’re afraid to go out on the roads.”

“Providing an opportunity for local cyclists to gout and access the streets and be able to ride their bikes is really important,” Newton added.

Construction on the multi-modal, bike friendly road improvements will begin in 2016, rolling out in several phases.