{"id":873346,"date":"2026-08-27T13:06:41","date_gmt":"2026-08-27T13:06:41","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/873346\/"},"modified":"2026-08-27T13:06:41","modified_gmt":"2026-08-27T13:06:41","slug":"edmonton-bike-lane-expansion-to-continue-as-planned","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/873346\/","title":{"rendered":"Edmonton bike lane expansion to continue as planned"},"content":{"rendered":"

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Bike lane advocates outnumbered opponents at Edmonton City Hall on Wednesday as councillors considered but ultimately rejected a proposal to drop more than a dozen planned routes from a bike lane network expansion plan.<\/p>\n

Dozens of cyclists made their case to councillors at an infrastructure committee meeting to keep building the planned routes.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe need to push on. We need to expand the network. We need to do more, not less,\u201d said Everett Horner, a Ward O-day\u2019min resident. <\/p>\n

Everett said he hasn\u2019t owned a car since 2024 and bikes to and from almost everywhere, even Costco.<\/p>\n

City council approved a $100-million bike network expansion plan in December 2022. But in a report prepared for Wednesday’s meeting, city staff suggested modifying the plan by dropping 14 routes<\/a> amid more public pushback and incoming bike-lane-related legislation from the province.<\/p>\n

After hearing from speakers and spending most of the afternoon discussing the issue, councillors on the committee decided not to pursue the city’s recommendation.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Many of the bike lane advocates told councillors separated lanes are much safer for cyclists.<\/p>\n

Alex Brooker, who lives on 79th Street in Idylwylde, told the committee he\u2019s excited about the plan for a bidirectional bike lane on that road.<\/p>\n

\u201cEvery day I see kids and people of all ages biking up and down 79th Street and I just think to myself, \u2018I hope they don’t get hit by a car and I hope the city provides them a safe place to ride on the road,\u2019\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

Brooker said he hopes his son can use the lanes to bike to school once he\u2019s old enough.<\/p>\n

WATCH | How many people use bike lanes in Edmonton?:\"\"<\/p>\n

Edmonton\u2019s bike lanes by the numbers<\/p>\n

Edmonton\u2019s bike network has put the municipality on the map as a leading cycling city in Canada. But not everyone is on board. The CBC\u2019s Emily Williams took a look at bike counters across the city to break the issue down by the numbers.<\/p>\n

Alex Bisbee, 13, told the committee he would like to see bike lanes on 79th Street and on 50th Street so he can make the 45-minute ride alone to see his grandmother in Fulton Place.<\/p>\n

\u201cShe’s probably one of my favourite people in the world and I want to be able to go see her without having to get my parents to drive me,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

Bisbee told councillors taking public transit would take nearly two hours and require three transfers.<\/p>\n

Bike lane advocates told councillors they don\u2019t think the province\u2019s plans for bike lane legislation should deter the city from building out the network.<\/p>\n

\u201cEdmonton voted for the council that is in right now and it voted for the previous council, who made the active transportation network promises that they did, and I think that should be honoured,\u201d said Emily Stremel, who proceeded to read a paragraph about not obeying in advance from On Tyranny: Twenty Lessons from the Twentieth Century by Timothy Snyder.<\/p>\n

The infrastructure committee also heard from some speakers opposing bike lanes, in particular the lane planned for 79th Street.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Forest Heights resident Kristen Constable said she believes the planned bike lane has turned off potential buyers of her home and that the city did not communicate enough with residents about it.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe would like you to pause and review,\u201d she said.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Cindy Westerhout also urged the committee to approve administration\u2019s recommendation, saying the Holyrood community is already managing traffic friction, LRT signal delays and rapid infill density squeezing street parking.<\/p>\n

Coun. Ashley Salvador brought forward a motion reaffirming implementation of the plan, advancing procurement for tender-ready routes and completing design work before the 2027 construction season but it was defeated.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Councillors heard that some of the proposed routes that were scheduled to be built have little chance of being done due to weather delays and other factors.\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Listen to this article Estimated 4 minutes The audio version of this article is generated by AI-based technology.…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":873347,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[194294],"tags":[49,48,23752],"class_list":["post-873346","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-edmonton","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-edmonton"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/873346","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=873346"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/873346\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/873347"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=873346"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=873346"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=873346"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}