Halifax's bike mayor reflects on end of 3-year term

Jillian Banfield is stepping down as bicycle mayor of Halifax after completing her three-year term.

The position is part of an initiative by a global organization based in Amsterdam that advocates for bicycle culture in cities around the world.

Nominations for a new bicycle mayor closed on Saturday.

Banfield met up with Carsten Knox of CBC Radio's Information Morning Nova Scotia in Halifax to talk about her experiences and the progress made toward making the city more bike friendly.

Their interview has been edited for clarity and length.

This is a really cool looking bike. Can you tell me about this bike?

This is an e-bike. I got it close to two years ago now and it's life-changing to have an e-bike, as I think a lot of people will tell you. It's got a little carrier here. I can put my dog in or just like a ton of groceries, whatever. 

I don't have a car, so this is it for me.

Tell me about being the bicycle mayor of Halifax. How did you get this exalted position?

I was on the board of the Halifax Cycling Coalition for a few years and after that I served on HRM's active transportation and accessibility advisory committees.

My term was coming to an end and I was looking about for something else to do, and this bicycle mayor thing was starting up at the time.

[The] executive director of the Health Cycling Coalition was looking for somebody to nominate for the role. So, it just kind of came together at that time that it was sort of the natural next step for me to look for another kind of volunteer opportunity in the active transportation space.

Can you talk about the organization that brings bicycle mayors to cities?

It's this cool social enterprise in Amsterdam and they're called BYCS. It doesn't stand for anything and they initiated this bicycle mayor network about five years ago.

Now I think there's maybe 120 or 140 bicycle mayors around the world —people like me working in their own cities to look at what are the important issues to try to talk about [and how] to get more people on bikes for transportation.

We just meet with the folks at BYCS whenever and they let us run and they just support us as much as we need.

Can you talk about your term as bike mayor? What's it been like for you?

I started my term really talking about disability and cycling because I have arthritis and my bikes are my mobility aid.

I really wanted to hear from other people because I knew I wasn't just the only one. So I did some data collection and got people's stories about riding bikes for mobility when they can't walk or they might not be able to drive.

Aside from that, most recently I've been really supporting efforts around Kidical Mass — the sort of bike rides that we do on weekends throughout the spring and summer to get kids on bikes, on the street, taking over the streets and saying that they want safe infrastructure.

We're meeting here on Vernon Street not far from Jubilee Road. You chose this spot because it's one of the places in the city where you feel the plans for making Halifax more bike friendly have really worked. Can you talk about why this is a special spot?

I personally do not love riding on Vernon Street as you can see. There's still a lot of parked cars.

What they've done is they've forced turns at Jubilee Road so people can't go straight from Quinpool Road all the way to Coburg Road, and that's reduced the volume of traffic.

What we've seen then is that people then use this as a sort of quieter street. 

There are a lot of connection points here. And what we're seeing from the data that are coming out ... is that a ton of people are using this street to cycle on.

We've seen it become a very important connection, especially over the summer where there was a bunch of construction on South Park Street. I think people are shifting their route over to this street and noticing that it is kind of a calmer, quieter place to ride.

I want to see more protected bike lanes, but I've seen the impact that this is having on people riding with their kids and just feeling like there's a bit more connection happening in the city.

Now you're stepping down from being bike mayor of  Halifax, what have you seen that has given you the most hope that we are changing our culture, we're getting more active and we're changing our ways of getting around town?

I've seen just a ton of community building stuff happening. I've talked about Kidical Mass, but I know of all kinds of other community groups.

There's a group for women, trans, non-binary folks who get together to ride and do other kinds of workshops together.

There's all these kinds of grassroots sort of things happening, that's what's really giving me hope.

We're really starting to see those changes and people really want to bike, and if we give them the safe places to do it, they'll do it.