Halifax councillors spent more than two hours talking about bike lanes on Tuesday afternoon, amid a ballooning price tag for the municipality’s bike network.
A staff report identified three projects that could adjust to find some savings, while still keeping the all ages and abilities (AAA) standard for the overall bike lane network. If council decided to move forward with the cheaper options, it would mean a savings of around $4.5 million on the overall price tag of the network, which staff say is expected to be around $85 million.
Councillors voted in favour of initiating functional design planning for staff’s cheaper designs for Novalea Drive and Welsford Street on the peninsula but chose to stick with the original design for the Highfield Park Drive area.
The skyrocketing cost of the AAA bike network — originally expected to cost around $25 million back in 2017 — was a point of debate at the council table.
“It would only be responsible for us to examine options that fall outside or below that AAA standard,” said Mayor Andy Fillmore.
The all ages and abilities bike network is a standard that requires protected lanes, multi-use pathways or lanes on local streets with lower traffic density, in an effort to support cyclists who may not be comfortable in mixed traffic.
Other councillors suggested the rising cost should not dissuade council from moving forward with the AAA network, saying the protected bike lanes see more use because they are safer, and give people an option to stop using their vehicles.
“It is more expensive, but so is everything we do,” said Councillor Sam Austin. “And yet, we don’t put the road budget to the same scrutiny.”
Austin says, looking at four years’ worth of data from counters, which are devices placed under the ground that register when a bicycle passes over, showed the protected bike lane on South Park Street saw a 263 per cent increase in cycling usage from when it launched. While the “painted line” bike lane on Windsor Street only saw a 12 per cent increase in usage.
Council also voted in favour of directing the CAO to pursue federal and provincial funding for council-approved bike lane projects whenever calls for applications are announced.
