Halifax cyclists push for more infrastructure to get from north end to downtown

Some Halifax cyclists say efforts by the city to improve the riding experience from the city's north end to the downtown are long overdue.

Over the next couple of months, the city is doing road upgrades on parts of some north-end streets, such as Isleville, Bloomfield, Creighton and Maynard.

At the same time, the city will be installing things like speed bumps and curb extensions to shorten the distance cyclists have to travel at crossing streets. This route will be called the North End Bikeway corridor.

Measures like this are what the city calls "interim bikeway improvements," which aim to make it easier and safer to cycle on quiet residential streets. The work takes place when road construction is happening to keep costs down for making the cycling changes.

Jillian Banfield, a north-end resident who is also a former bike mayor for the city, said these kinds of changes won't motivate new cyclists to get on the road. Rather, she'd like to see the city build more robust cycling infrastructure, such as protected bike lanes.

"People would generally prefer to be cycling, say on Agricola Street, as it's a much more direct connection north to south for folks and it easily connects through the Commons to Bell Road where there's other cycling infrastructure," said Banfield.

"With this sort of side street approach to things, it makes it much more indirect for people."

Talan Iscan, a board member with the Halifax Cycling Coalition, also wants the city to implement more ambitious projects.

"Our sort of aspiration is to make sure that there is a well-connected, protected bikeway system within the city that, we think, can be established fairly rapidly with ambitious goals and resource allocation within the municipality," he said.

"And it can be done, and it should be done in a much faster speed than the municipality has been doing up to this point."

David MacIsaac, the city's manager of active transportation, said the changes to the North End Bikeway corridor are only part of the city's efforts to improve cycling from the north end to the downtown.

"Even if it's not the final product, it should improve things for all road users from a safety perspective and especially people walking and biking," he said.

MacIsaac said interim bikeway improvements are a cost-effective way to make changes to improve the cycling experience.

He said over the next two to five years, the city will be implementing more robust cycling infrastructure for a north-to-south route in the city.

He said that while streets such as Gottingen and Robie have been ruled out because of heavy public transit use, Agricola Street is an option.

"It remains kind of a candidate route in the [active transportation] plan, so it could be something that we would come back to in the future," he said.

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