Except for the prospect of a hockey mom running a red light early in the morning, nothing makes me more nervous than encountering a cyclist threading the needle between my vehicle and a line of parked cars as we proceed west on Cornwall Avenue in rush hour.
I am not alone.
And that is a major reason why the city is planning to make significant changes to create what they are calling an "active transportation corridor" that runs from the south end of the Burrard Bridge all the way west along Cornwall and Point Grey Road to Alma. And just so you know, "active transportation" means cyclists, transit users and pedestrians.
While the public won't see the city's proposals until later this month, Point Grey Road resident and local activist Pamela McColl is one of a few dozen "stakeholders" who will get an advanced peek at what staff has in mind on May 15.
As we spoke on the phone this week, McColl interrupted our conversation to note "a guy wearing headphones" and no helmet speeding on his bike down the sidewalk past her house.
That cyclist feels forced to ride on the sidewalk because Point Grey Road is a "highway running through a neighbourhood." Then she went on to say: "The city can't control bikes or walkers or joggers. They can only control cars." And that is what McColl expects to happen.
In the city's 2040 Transportation Plan, this particular corridor is labelled a "priority." Incidentally, it has been on the city's radar for almost two decades ever since that stretch of congested geography was identified as a "gap" in pedestrian and cycling movement between the bridge and Jericho Beach in the city's 1995 Greenways Plan.
While the engineering folks have yet to reveal what options they will set out for public perusal, we can be sure of a few things. None will support the status quo. All will reduce the volume and speed of vehicle traffic. And all will annoy the car drivers of Dunbar (among others) who now regularly make their way along that route to and from downtown.
The folks on the north side of Point Grey Road, which is to say the waterfront side, have hired their own strategic communications planning consultant Nancy Spooner to watch their backs and help them wade through the process.
And what are they hoping will come of all of this? Well, says Spooner, they represent a "wide variety of points of view." But what they have in common is a desire to see that whatever plan prevails that all concerned are "safe" while still giving them access to their property.
But that may prove problematic if the city diverts traffic south on either Burrard or Macdonald at Point Grey.
McColl says her first choice was speed bumps as a traffic calmers but the city said that was a non-starter. Now she thinks there will be barricades or "traffic diverters" at Macdonald to force local car-driving residents to weave their way around a few blocks to get home.
McColl is also convinced that once the traffic is diverted, the city will extend a couple of the parks on the south side, like Tatlow Park, across Point Grey to hook up with small parks (in this case Volunteer Park) on the north side with only a bike path running through them.
But what to do with the commercial strip just west of the bridge on the north side of Cornwall? City staff has been tasked to "create a walking and cycling route that is safe, convenient and comfortable for people of all ages and abilities." When they use that language to describe cycle paths in the downtown peninsula, we end up with separated bike lanes like we see on Hornby Street.
A city survey determined that fully 80 per cent who visit those Cornwall shops arrive by foot, transit or bike, which presumably means that removing parking on one side of the street to make a dedicated lane for bikes may not be that disruptive to commerce.
Meanwhile, we shall see very soon just how this priority becomes a possibility. Staff intends to deliver a final report with recommendations to council for its approval by July.
