Quote:
Originally Posted by getbak
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ciclov%C3%ADa
The idea was started in Bogota, Colombia to help motivate people to go outside in a city that contained a lot of roadways and little park space. It's grown to a point where over 120km of roads are closed every Sunday in Bogota.
The problem with how it was decided to run it in Calgary was that they chose to hold it right beside one of the best cycle paths in the city, and it's so short, that there's really no reason for anyone who's using the pathways to leave the paths only to go back onto it a few blocks later.
If you look at a map of downtown Calgary, they chose to hold this at probably the worst location they could have. There is so much park space and extensive pathways in the immediate vicinity, that it's completely ridiculous to close a couple of blocks of Memorial for this event, which could easily be held on Prince's Island and the surrounding pathways.
It seems like someone saw a news story about the growing popularity of these Ciclovia events and thought, "we should do that in Calgary", without ever giving any thought as to why they're held in these other cities, if Calgary needs such a thing at all, and if we do, where the best place to hold it would be.
If it was decided that something like this would make sense in Calgary, they should have closed one or more of the north-south roads into downtown to make it easier for people to get to the very good pathways that already exist around Prince's Island, Eau Claire, and Kensington. A good road to choose would have been First St SW, close it from the area around the Talisman Centre and the Elbow River Pathway up to Riverfront Avenue, where it connects to the Bow River Pathway. They could have a Tai Chi demonstration in the park there by Chinatown, with other activities scattered around Prince's Island and Eau Claire. Calgary has the most extensive pathway systems in North America, with over 500km of paths and trails within the city limits. We don't need to close streets in order to create more paths, especially immediately beside better dedicated paths.
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Great post. Lots of well thought-out points that the event organizers would do well to give some thought to.
One thing to add though about the idea behind
a road closure (not necessarily the particular choice of Memorial Drive) for an event like this is that it could highlight the fact that roads are an important part of the cycling infrastructure. The pathway system is indeed awesome and growing (check out the Greenway project in Calgary if you get a chance), but is generally better suited for recreational cycling rather than commuter cycling. Bike lanes on roads, as well as dedicated paths suited more for commuting are important and is an area where Calgary is lacking, in spite of the current extensive pathway system. A road closure could also be used to promote a "share the road" message.
All that said however, in the interests of efficiency and fairness, I fail to see why any one particular road closure application should be politicized, which is what this boils down to. So long as the transportation department deems that lanes of a road can safely and reasonably be closed, based on black-and-white data like traffic counts, availability of alternate routes, length of detours, etc. then I am fine with that. That isn't to say that I sit there with a contented grin when I'm delayed a bit in traffic due to a road closure. It's good to know that whoever applied for that closure followed the same process as everyone else though, and wasn't just granted it because Joe Connelly thought it was good they weren't a latte-sipping communist.