An Edmonton cycling group\u00a0is sounding the alarm over the relocation of a downtown bike lane to allow for the Valley Line LRT construction.<\/p>\n
The Edmonton Bike Coalition says the detour is \u201cpoorly signed, poorly connected and dangerous.\u201d<\/p>\n
As the Valley Line LRT construction continues on 102 Avenue downtown Edmonton, a section between 107 and 102 Streets will be closed start next week forcing of bicyclists to ride on shared use path on the street.<\/p>\n
Mike Sacha, a volunteer with Edmonton Bike Coalition, relies on bicycles to navigate downtown, said the shared use path is unsafe for pedestrians and cyclists.<\/p>\n
\u201cAs we get into the playoff and summer seasons, there\u2019s going to be a lot more people using all sorts of different modes, such as scooters, folks with strollers, folks with wheelchairs, folks walking, folks on bikes, folks on e-bikes, a lot of people with a lot of different equipment in a small amount of space, there\u2019s bound to be trouble,\u201d Sacha said. \u00a0\u201cThere\u2019s bound to be trouble.\u201d<\/p>\n
The bike coalition, instead, suggests expanding the 103 Avenue relocation from 110 Street to Churchill Square.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cIt meets all the requirements, the city\u2019s own guidelines, and it doesn\u2019t have these safety issues that we discussed,\u201d says Aaron Budnick, another volunteer with the biking group.<\/p>\n
The City of Edmonton, however, says traffic volume and pedestrian safety at the intersection is a concern.<\/p>\n
A temporary bike lane on 103 Avenue connects to the existing bike network, but to use that, cyclists need to dismount their bikes, something Councillor Anne Stevnson says is disruptive.<\/p>\n
\u201cAs a cyclist myself, I know from hearing from others that it\u2019s very disruptive,\u201d Stevenson said. \u201cIt really takes away from the ease of connectivity, and again, I think it\u2019s not something we would ever ask of other modes of transportation.\u201d<\/p>\n
The City adds that the closure is needed to finish the construction efficiently.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"An Edmonton cycling group\u00a0is sounding the alarm over the relocation of a downtown bike lane to allow for…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":530756,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[194294],"tags":[49,48,23752],"class_list":{"0":"post-530755","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-edmonton","8":"tag-ca","9":"tag-canada","10":"tag-edmonton"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/530755","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=530755"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/530755\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/530756"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=530755"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=530755"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=530755"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}