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Cycling and Active Transportation in Edmonton

Trailforks is great for finding fun trails in the River Valley, it’s missing a lot the bike paths etc you’d need to commute, but it’s great for fun detours!

I’ve only commuted by bike casually, ‘commute’ meaning going to or from work, as a opposed to a more casual appointment or time commitment (tbh I used to bike to work when the bus was liable to make me late lol)

That being said, this summer covid has given me the free time to really explore the city by bike. From home in Westmount, I’ve managed to cross the Henday in each corner of the city (NE, NW, SE, SW) and do a lot of exploring within the ring road, from central neighbouroods with bike lanes, to midcentury areas where bike infrastructure is an afterthought, to our (surprisingly very bikeable!) new suburbs. In terms of trying to navigate the entire breadth of the city, ie visiting any destination, not just central urban areas, I have a few observations:

We have an insanely convoluted Bike network: As shown in the image I shared from Global News, the city has a few different categories of bikeable network, with several types of bike lane, and the omnipresent Mixed Use Paths (MUP). The MUPs are the most prevalent by far, especially in suburbs, and in newer areas are decently practical in terms of connecting destinations. The bike lanes are a complete gongshow. Edmonton has tried to follow the latest, safest practices when building lanes. That means every couple years the typical ‘section’ or layout of an on-street bike lane changes. As a cyclist, you gotta learn how to navigate each type, how to handle all the bizarre intersections (downtown bike boxes, pedestrian-only arterial crossings connecting MUPs, etc) and tbh be comfortable riding on the road for a block (or walking on the sidewalk, riding on the sidewalk is a no-no in most cases) to make connections.

MUPs are great, but inconsistent in design: MUPs are everywhere, and if you can work on into your route, they’re awesome. Shared between pedestrians and bikes (anything but cars really) these are the 8’-10’ asphalt paths in new neighbourhoods and the river valley. Bikes can and do use these, even to commute. (people use River Valley Road to commute to the West End year round, it’s wild!) these paths nominally make up almost 1200km of our bike network, but those 1200km are inconsistent. Some older areas (ie NW Mill Woods, a lot of our 1960s-1970s neighbourhoods) have MUPs that are just 7’ sidewalks with MUP signs on them, or worse the little blue bike signs the city used in the 70’s. These paths are pinch points, too narrow to pass a pedestrian politely, but often comprise the links between modern bike lanes and MUPs further out in the suburbs. If you plan on bike commuting to DT from an outer suburb, you’ll run into these awkward paths. Sometimes it’s better to ride on the street. I personally like the idea of MUPs, especially in low-traffic areas. The wide pavement allows for negotiation between users, and they are a great pedestrian facility too. But that being said, figuring out how to use one that is consistent all the way to your destination is tricky.

We have strange maps: CoE is constantly building new lanes/paths, and constantly updating maps as a result. This makes keeping track of the system, and trying to use a wayfinding service like Google Maps Directions tricky at the best of times. CoE also makes the dumb choice of splitting maps of the (completely contiguous) central bike lane network into three. With the DT, WC, and Strath areas considered separate, making wayfinding difficult. This compounded with inconsistent signage on the ground makes it awkward to plan trips to new places, and to actually make the journey.
The new CoE living Map shows the whole network, but is super slow to load, lacks a 'Directions' function, and shows the paths by type, meaning MUPs and every type of bike lane is a different colour, making it hard to discern contiguous routes and plan a trip. it is also a bit buried, harder to find on the CoE website than the pdf maps mentioned above.

Google Can’t keep up: adding to the above point, our bike lane/MUP system is really complex, and poorly presented. Something I’ve run into in my adventures is that Google, in all it’s aggregator glory, can’t make sense of bike routes, and will often route people along roads (riding with cars) rather than on MUPs. I’m not technical enough to know what in the computer world drives all this, but I’ve found you have to turn on satellite view on google maps to double-check the route and find the bike paths to use. An Example: It is possible to ride on MUPs from Mill Woods TC to the Hotel Mac (it takes an hour, not a bad ride actually!) Google offers it’s usual 3 routes, all of which involve a lot of street-riding. Using the 28 ave MUP to 91 ave MUP to the Argyll Velodrome an in down Mill Creek (avoiding street riding entirely) is not presented as an option, despite being shorter than some of the street-riding options. I have tried inputting this and a few other routes into google manually, and it doesn’t recognize a lot of the paths and routes properly. For example, in the above example, Google sends riders through the neighbourhood for several blocks, street riding without so much as a sharrow. The route is parallel and slightly longer than simply using the MUP directly across 63rd Ave from 91st street. I’m not a computer person, but it seems to me that google can’t read our bike route maps properly. This is an issue, because people go to google for directions, and often will not check a normal map and find a route themselves. CoE doesn’t have it’s own bike wayfinding service either.

We have a lot of rules for biking that no one knows: Our crazy Bike network present a plethora of weird traffic situations that reduce safety and create tension. A big one is the MUPs. Most people, especially in DT and where the paths are often busy, walk on the right, pass on the left, etc. but where paths are quieter and/or narrower, people treat them as sidewalks, and although signs say you can bike on them, it is still a confusing situation to navigate passing etc. Our bike lane network is also super varied (see comments about the ‘typical design/section’ changing every couple years) and gives bikes and cars different rules to follow. These setups can also change block-to-block along a corridor (105 Ave between 118 and 116 street, and the 107 street corridor, continuous from Saskatchewan Drive to the Whitemud, but going from shared sidewalk, to separated bike lanes, to painted lanes, to sharrows, both are handy but awkward to use) this situation makes it hard for casual riders and people new to an area to use the system properly, to the ire of pedestrians and cars. CoE has some very basic info on the website of how these setups work, but they do not address each case. Also, no one reads that crap. Living on a bike route, I see cars drive down the (physically separated!) bike lanes, and cyclists ignore things as basic as stop signs, which DO APPLY, AT THE VERY LEAST YEILD TO THE CAR THAT GOT THERE FIRST. Anyways, the rules are weird, poorly explained, and not followed.

Sorry this is so long, I hope it explains a couple things to look into. If you want to bike in the city, casually or commuting, start small and basic. Plot a route on google maps (with satellite on to make sure the path actually exists and google isn’t ignoring a bike path nearby that would be safer) and ride it a couple times. Get used to the path setups and how to navigate the intersections/connections. Branch out as you feel comfortable, and explore when you can. I’m amazed at how well things like the MUP by the NE LRT connect the suburbs with DT, and make travel times comparable to a car.

Lastly, you make a point about commuting in the River Valley. Yes, people do this, I see people doing it often, depending on where you want to go, it can actually be the fastest route. When I say take detours to find new paths, I highly suggest diving down a ravine either paved path from google or dirt from trailforks!) and seeing where it takes you. Ravines in the SW especially get you very close to West Ed Mall and Windermere.

Good luck! Don’t ask about winter. People do it. They’re absolute beasts.
 
That's great! Thanks for sharing! Yeah, I grew up in Riverbend and found the ravine trails were quite good at connecting to the west end and more central areas like the university. And the MUPs under all the powerlines are incredibly fast, smooth, and usually not too busy.

When I moved out downtown for a year, my wife and I biked a lot of 109th MUP and 102ave bike lanes and found those to be amazing. But she would get nervous on secrions where we had to jump onto the road or where busy MUPs made us seem like a nuisance to pedestrians.

I then lived on the west end for a year and used a lot of the collector side roads between 149th and 178th Street to bike 15mins to work. That worked really well also in the summer, but not possible in the winter cause those roads get lethal icy and have noregular care compared to downtown bike lanes.

Definitely feel like the recent additions DT are the right move. The seperated bike lanes are so much better than the shared lanes for my wife, casual riders, and children.

I spent a while in Vancouver before moving to Ontario last year and man, their stuff is great of course. But also seems simple to build, so not sure our hold up? The clearly marked biking and pedestrian paths that are split down the middle seem perfect for river valley road,
 
@cliffapotamus nailed much of it.

As a year-round bike commuter for the last three winters (though I have also been a fair-weather commuter for about 15 years), the biggest issue for me is the lack of "route" thinking, which leads not only to inconsistent and missing connections, but is especially noticeable in how they are handled in the winter. For example, my commute from SE Edmonton to downtown takes me through Cloverdale, which is fine most of the time as a nice quiet neighbourhood. But between Cloverdale Hill Road and the Muttart bridge that goes over 98 Avenue, there's no snow clearing done, exactly because it's a quiet neighbourhood. It only gets bladed once, maybe twice, late in the winter, so most of the time it's either hard, rutty pack, or "snirt" (snow+dirt combo that is literally impossible to gain traction in).

Even where trails do connect as part of a route, snow clearing sometimes simply ends at one part of the trail, while another is neglected. I often even come across windrows that literally put a wall in the middle of the path.

All that said, I can usually manage just fine most days of the winter, with studded tires on my aging mountain bike. When I'm downtown or around Whyte, the going is much much easier, and biking casually to the pub or to grab some groceries or what have you is actually really easy and even enjoyable on nice, flat, cleared cycletracks, paths, and roads.

If you want to meet some local bike commuters, come out to Ezio Faraone Park any Friday morning from around 7-9am for Coffee Outside. You can usually find me there (though I might miss the next couple of Fridays). It goes year-round, but may go indoors if the cold is a bit extreme. @coffee_outside is the group's official Twitter.
 
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rode in edmonton for the first time in three years recently, but could only do about half the routes I wanted to do due to closures/construction. navigating downtown was also a nightmare... lots of decent new infrastructure but the most surprising thing for me was that it was about 10% cyclists and 90% scooters. drivers seem more respectful though?
 
One of the biggest points in the development of the new bike plan is to standardize expectations by linking routes, streamlining the types of infrastructure (protected, shared, etc.) and clarifying traffic rules.

I agree with @cliffapotamus's review, but I have to say that I am a big supporter of the "Idaho stop" idea, where a stop sign is treated as a yield for cyclists.

I've recently returned from the Netherlands, which also used to be hugely car-centric before the country decided to improve transportation safety by building bike lanes EVERYWHERE. Bikes usually have the right of way, especially at roundabouts! Fellow Canadian NotJustBikes did a great video of what's possible recently about what it's like :)

Obviously, there are differences between the Netherlands and Edmonton, but their design language extends into the countryside throughout the entire country!

 
The Netherlands had dedicated bicycle highways and lanes and had an exceptionally high ratio of bikes to cars back in the 1960s when I lived in neighbouring Germany. Bikes have always been a "thing" in the Netherlands from a modern history perspective.
 
The Netherlands had dedicated bicycle highways and lanes and had an exceptionally high ratio of bikes to cars back in the 1960s when I lived in neighbouring Germany. Bikes have always been a "thing" in the Netherlands from a modern history perspective.

Perhaps more so than in other parts of the world, but bike-focused infrastructure has not been the norm until only around the 1970s when there was a focused effort to do so. Here's a BBC article with an overview of that progress:
Before World War II, journeys in the Netherlands were predominantly made by bike, but in the 1950s and 1960s, as car ownership rocketed, this changed. As in many countries in Europe, roads became increasingly congested and cyclists were squeezed to the kerb.

The jump in car numbers caused a huge rise in the number of deaths on the roads. In 1971 more than 3,000 people were killed by motor vehicles, 450 of them children.

In response a social movement demanding safer cycling conditions for children was formed. Called Stop de Kindermoord (Stop the Child Murder), it took its name from the headline of an article written by journalist Vic Langenhoff whose own child had been killed in a road accident.

The Dutch faith in the reliability and sustainability of the motor vehicle was also shaken by the Middle East oil crisis of 1973, when oil-producing countries stopped exports to the US and Western Europe.

These twin pressures helped to persuade the Dutch government to invest in improved cycling infrastructure and Dutch urban planners started to diverge from the car-centric road-building policies being pursued throughout the urbanising West.

There have been some really fun comparison photos lately of Amsterdam, Utrecht, and The Hague modernizing its car-focused infrastructure to be more bike-friendly. Here's an example of one I biked through quite often while I was there (going to the beach). Note how much more protected biking is in the second photo, and how cyclists have right of way (the little triangles are "shark teeth" yield signs).

1599751847261.png
(Source)
And here's another example of a street in Utrecht transforming to what are called a "woonerf", or "living street", where "Cars are guests".
1599752093938.png
(Source)

This is an article specifically about how in 1975, advocates for biking infrastructure convinced a Minister to create some demonstration bike paths in urban The Hague, one about restoring a ring road in Utrecht to a moat that started in the early 2000s, and here's the page with all of the "Before and After" comparisons on the BicycleDutch blog. More recently, all the cities there have started to build more bike parking, and both urban and rural bike highways.

Again, obviously they have a different environment and context than us here. Climate change has meant that snow barely falls and rarely stays more than a few hours anymore and the canals no longer freeze for the famous skating races. Still, they show that biking and pedestrian infrastructure do not simply emerge, but are deliberately planned.
 
@thommyjo Why not? The infrastructure matters more than the climate; the increase in year-round cycling coinciding with the expansion of our cycling infrastructure should be proof enough of that.
Ya, agreed. The bike lane network has been a great improvement. Would he nice to see a bit more infrastructure on the parking and changing side for commuting.

The colder temperature does add a challenge vs Europe i believe though. Our wind chills on the face require almost complete covering, whereas they can survive with toques and coats. Not balaclavas and ski goggles haha.
 
Ya, agreed. The bike lane network has been a great improvement. Would he nice to see a bit more infrastructure on the parking and changing side for commuting.

The colder temperature does add a challenge vs Europe i believe though. Our wind chills on the face require almost complete covering, whereas they can survive with toques and coats. Not balaclavas and ski goggles haha.

I biked all last winter and it is indeed much harder, infrastructure or not, to convince someone to bike in -20 or colder than -5 or -10, albeit we don't get -20 and colder days all winter, which is a plus. The biggest thing for me is having to deal with the freeze-thaw on snow-packed roads, that makes biking through them virtually impossible (the road consistency is like oatmeal).
 
I found this (although i'm sure it isn't news to a lot of people on here, but the rock i live under is kinda overbearing) so I thought i'd share it here. Rules in Edmonton's traffic bylaw regarding bikes, in case anyone like throwing the book at people ( i love rules, this made my evening)
https://bikeedmonton.ca/laws/bylaw-5590-traffic-bylaw
 
CoE just released the Bike Plan, pdf can be found here. just browsed it quickly, reads very much as a visioning document, with few new stats and not a lot of concrete plans. The big lack in my mind was concrete guidance on bike lane form, ie split directions on either side if the road (ew), bi-directional paths on one side ( a personal preference) or shared sidewalks (confusing af). the 1.85 gazillion different bike lane/SUP arrangements we have are maddening. anyways, it otherwise looks decent, there's interesting discussion about endpoint facilities (bike parking etc) and how to expand connectivity of the network across the city, so everyone has the option to bike, as opposed to the patchwork we have now. below is a screencap of the proposed bike network moving forward. dashed lines are suggested routes, none of which have concrete plans yet, if i read this correctly.
bike network.JPG
 
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