Promoting active transport: YORK REGION IMPROVES CYCLING FACILITIES

NRU
April 8, 2015
Leah Wong

York Region has changed gears in its approach to active transportation and is now looking to meet the needs of all of its cyclists, not just commuters.

“Until recently we have taken the position that we wanted to have all of our cycling facilities on the road,” York Region infrastructure management manager Stephen Collins told NRU. “We’re moving away from that and now are taking a look at different cycling solutions.”

This shift in approach is reflected in the installation of innovation cycling infrastructure over the last year. A year ago York became the first North American municipality to install in-boulevard left turn bike boxes, which allow cyclists to make a two-stage left turn instead of crossing lanes of traffic.

Collins said when the region first recognized its role in cycling infrastructure between 2007 and 2009 it was focused more on providing service to utilitarian cyclists who wanted to use their bikes to commute to and from work. In recent years there has been an attitude shift to focus on a broader range of users instead.

“It’s difficult to provide a cycling facility that meets utilitarian [and recreational] needs,” said Collins. “There isn’t enough space and there isn’t enough capacity within our system to do that.”

Cycling has become part of the region’s overall transportation strategy. Ensuring there is safe infrastructure for cycling will encourage people who commute by bike, as well as people running errands. One of the benefits of cycling is that it gets people out of their cars and reduces traffic on the roads.

Last month the region’s Committee of the Whole received the 2014 report on the implementation of its Pedestrian and Cycling Master Plan (2008), which outlined the investments in infrastructure made in the last year. In 2014 York Region added more than 27 km of cycling infrastructure to regional roads, including bike lanes on Highway 7 and a multi-use path on Highway 27.

In addition to the investments made in cycling infrastructure on regional roads, the region also contributes funding to local municipalities. Through its pedestrian and cycling municipal partnership program, which contributes up to 50 per cent of construction costs, the region has approved 29 projects and allocated $4.5-million in funding.

The pedestrian and cycling master plan will be updated as part of the region’s Transportation Master Plan update that is currently underway. Now on stage 2 of the update, staff is looking to present the final report and recommendations to council in the first quarter of 2016. In stage 1 of the update staff worked on understanding what its communities want from the region’s transportation system and what problems need to be addressed through the update.

This stage, which wrapped up earlier this year, included consultation with the public, lower-tier municipalities and key stakeholders. Stage 2 deals with what capacity improvements and road projects will be needed for the transportation network to accommodate future population growth.

The transportation update is being done in tandem with the region’s official plan review and an infrastructure servicing master plan update.

“There is a significant level of planning underway,” said Collins. “The good thing about it all being done together is that [the various plans are] going to be coordinated.”

As the official plan review is set to be finished before the transportation and infrastructure updates, there will be up to date land use forecasts available to inform ideas about what infrastructure is needed to accommodate growth.

One issue that is going to be addressed in the future is the jurisdictional challenges related to regional roadways and pedestrian infrastructure.

“What isn’t widely known is that even within our regional corridors, the ownership and responsibility for sidewalks continues to rest with our local municipalities,” said Collins.

This poses a challenge because residents don’t care who owns the sidewalk they’re using, they just want a space that is comfortable and safe to walk on. As part of the review the region is considering whether it should propose changes to deal with this jurisdictional split.

One cross-jurisdictional project that will wrap up this year is the Greenbelt Route, which is a 460-km provincial cycling route that passes through the Greenbelt from Northumberland County to Niagara Region. The route passes through King, Aurora, Newmarket and Whitchurch-Stouffville in York Region on a combination of local and regional roads.

Created in partnership by the Waterfront Regeneration Trust, Friends of the Greenbelt Foundation and Transportation Options the signed route will officially launch in August 2015.

The project team worked with local municipalities to determine the route, with local municipalities selecting which of their roads the route would run along. The Waterfront Regeneration Trust’s involvement ensured that the route would be fully connected as it crossed municipal boundaries.

“We left it up to the local municipalities to select the actual roads. The criteria used were safety first,” Friends of the Green-belt Foundation program director Shelley Petrie told NRU. This involved looking at traffic volumes, whether the roads were aggregate haul routes and the number of trucks that would be on the road. In York Region the route is entirely on-road.

Within each of the seven regions the Greenbelt Route crosses there is also a separate cycling tourism loop, which highlights nearby local destinations. York’s Village Roundabout is a 59-km loop from Schomberg to Kleinburg, with highlights such as the Cold Creek Conservation Area and the McMichael Canadian Art Collection along the way.

“Most of what we heard from municipalities is, ‘this is going to be great for our residents and this is going to be great for tourism,’” said Petrie.