On a scale of poor to excellent, Guelph rates about a “good” when it comes to being a bike-friendly community, says diehard cyclist Wilfred Ferwerda. There’s room for improvement. A city official said the city is working on it.
Ferwerda is among a growing number of Guelphites that have come to rely more on bicycles to get around – not just for recreationally bombing around, but for general transportation. He is an organizer of the 3rd annual Love Your Bike, a community cycling festival happening on Saturday, June 18.
In recent years, the City of Guelph has added to its inventory of bike lanes, Ferwerda said. And that is a good thing. However, that development tends to happen when there is concurrent roadwork, and so it has been a spotty and fairly gradual process.
And, he said, there are a number of areas where bike lanes merge into vehicular lanes or transition into gravel without warning, posing safety hazards.
“The bike as a mode of transport kind of captures people’s imagination,” said Ferwerda. “It’s a very simple machine that becomes an extension of the body. And there are the broader social and environmental aspects of cycling in an urban area that just make a lot of sense to people. Bikes are kind of a harmless thing, and they are a great reason to bring people together.”
On June 18, people who love their bikes, and love cycling will come together on the front lawn of St. Andrew’s Presbyterian Church, 161 Norfolk Street (at Suffolk Street) for a morning celebration of bike love.
Love Your Bike is sponsored by The Woolwich Arrow and Steam Whistle Brewing, and hosted by the St. Andrews and Two Rivers Church. Running from 9:30 a.m. to noon, the celebration will bring four of the city’s bike shops together – Backpeddling, Bits, Bikes and Boards, Paramount Sports, and Speed River Bicycle – each offering complimentary mechanical inspections.
There’ll be a friendly flat-fixing competition, just for bragging rights, and Clayton Foxall, owner of Backpeddling, will put part of his vintage bike collection on display.
The event benefits Chalmers Community Services Centre, and Welcome In Drop-In Centre, which both serve the city’s marginalized citizens. There will be a barbecue at The Wooly to bring the event to a close.
“I’m one of those diehards,” Ferwerda said, explaining that he’s not intimidated by the idea of getting into the flow with motorized traffic. “But I do realize that some find it intimidating.”
He said Guelph rates a “good” on the bikeability scale, and it is improving a little bit at a time.
“What they need to do is fill in some areas,” he said. “What they’re doing is, they put a bike lane in when it can be piggy-backed on construction projects.”
The result, he indicated, is a kind of patchwork system, where a rider may be riding smoothly down a paved lane that suddenly turns to gravel, or ends abruptly.
“And sometimes it happens at the bottom of a hill, and you go, whoa, that’s not safe for a cyclist,” he said. “And you wonder why didn’t they continue. There’s a missing part. Slowly it is going to build up.”
Ferwerda said there are plans next year to blend cycling events like Love Your Bike, Tour de Guelph and others, in conjunction with the city as it ramps up its promotion of Guelph as a cycling destination.
Justin Hall is Guelph’s transportation demand management coordinator. He said the momentum is moving in the direction of making Guelph more bike-friendly.
“We are building a city where cycling is easier, safer and more accessible, yet, there’s still work to be done,” he said in an email response. “We are continuing to improve priority corridors, including lengthening the Woodlawn Road multi-use pathway from Silvercreek Parkway to Imperial Road, and when possible, during road construction, we take the opportunity to create new bike lanes.”
He said that new for 2016, the city has started a cycling-specific traffic count program to better understand cyclist volumes on major corridors.
“This will improve our ability to monitor the infrastructure we are implementing so we can continue to improve conditions for cyclists,” he wrote.
