St. Albert city council heard a presentation last week from a resident asking council and administration to pay special attention to bike infrastructure as a new $1 million “Mobility Choices Strategy” is developed over the next year, but council said they were wary about the “political climate” around planning, for example, bike lanes.
“While St. Albert has amazing cycle pathways for recreational cycling, the infrastructure is less supportive and safe for commuting by bicycle,” St. Albert resident Shayna Campbell told council on Tuesday, adding that her and her family, while they still own a vehicle, commute and travel mainly by bike.
“My family has embraced cycling as our primary and preferred mode of transportation,” Campbell said. “We ride a long-tail cargo bike, called an Xtracycle, and my twin boys and I use it to cycle to daycare, getting groceries, and to explore our city.”
“In one year alone, we cycled 1,100 kilometres together, and with most of these trips being short — one to three kilometres — we've had lots of chances to see the strengths and challenges of cycle commuting in St. Albert.”
The Gazette was unable to reach Campbell following her presentation, but she said her primary concerns, which she hopes will be addressed by the city's new Mobility Choices Strategy, include safety. She said many of St. Albert's sidewalks are too narrow to safely pass pedestrians when biking, network connections to public transit centres could be improved, and getting to the Nakî Transit Centre specifically requires crossing Anthony Henday off ramps.
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“I would love for my boys to cycle to school one day, but current infrastructure and culture doesn't provide the safety or encouragement needed to make that decision confidently,” Campbell said.
“I feel a connected, protected network of cycling lanes would transform St. Albert into a child- and movement-friendly city.”
Immediately following Campbell's presentation, Mayor Cathy Heron said the conversation around bike infrastructure is something “many” elected officials at the municipal level shy away from because of the backlash Edmonton city council received following its 2022 commitment to spend $100 million to build 100 kilometres of bike lanes before 2027.
“Sometimes it surprises me what people are divided about,” Heron told the Gazette. “Electric cars used to be a positive thing, now all of a sudden everybody hates them, [and maybe] someday it'll be cute puppies.”
“The political climate, especially the attitude towards bike lanes, it's been around for a long time," she said. "But I would say after Edmonton did their budget in 2022, I noticed it everywhere, like everybody was talking about it.”
Heron told Campbell she has avoided pushing for infrastructure like bike lanes in St. Albert since bike riders are permitted to ride on city sidewalks, but said Campbell did a good job summarizing why riding on sidewalks isn't always the safest option.
“Our new standards for sidewalks are much wider, so in newer areas, to allow for the pedestrian and the bike traffic, but it's a conversation that is sometimes a little fearful,” Heron said.
Back in 2018 city council approved “Complete Street Guidelines” that laid out how St. Albert's road network, including adjacent sidewalks along roadways, could be better designed to accommodate other modes of transportation, such as biking.
Those guidelines include wider sidewalks and more efficient roadway connections to support travel via all modes of transportation.
Following Campbell's presentation, city transportation manager Dean Schick, told council these guidelines have been used in the development of new parts of St. Albert since 2018, such as Jensen Lakes, Riverside, Erin Ridge North, and Cherot, but using the guidelines to retrofit existing parts of the city is a bit more complicated. It has only been done on a project-by-project basis, rather than all at once.
For example, planning for complete streets was undertaken and completed as part of the redevelopment of St. Albert Trail north over the past couple of years, which is evident by the wider-than-normal trail that runs adjacent, but separated from the roadway, compared to the standard-size crosswalk that exists in almost all residential neighbourhoods.
Coun. Mike Killick told the Gazette that while the implementation of complete streets designs in existing areas feels slow, he thinks the city is making good progress considering there isn't an overarching and ongoing capital project to retrofit all of St. Albert's roadways to have more complete streets.
“There certainly are some gaps that will take time to fill, but I do think we're actually making more improvements than were visible or shown during that discussion,” he said. “I think we're actually making pretty good progress without an overall standalone plan to do that.”
Schick also told council on July 16 that in 2014 and 2015, when the city last completed a major public engagement effort relating to transportation, the feedback received by administration at the time was that “bike lanes were not a priority.”
“The feedback that we had received from our community is that, for the most part, bike lanes were not a priority and that the focus was around recreational use, which our trails seem to offer residents a viable and safe and kind of appreciated accommodation,” Schick said.
Coun. Ken MacKay said he was glad Campbell came forward to tell council there is a need for more bike-accommodating infrastructure in St. Albert.
“I think what we need is more people like her to come forward and let us know that there are people in our communities that are using bikes for regular transportation,” MacKay said. He hopes the Mobility Choices Strategy addresses some of the gaps in the road network pointed out by Campbell that make it harder to commute via bike in St. Albert, such as going north or south parallel to St. Albert Trail.
“Like she said, we've got a great east-west network primarily because of our trail system, but north-south is a problem,” he said. “It's something that we can clearly look at.”
Killick said he thinks St. Albert could achieve a happy medium when it comes to bike lanes, if the lanes themselves didn't impede on or take away space from vehicle traffic.
“We already have major bottlenecks or challenges with traffic; every resident in St. Albert that travels on St. Albert Trail knows its congested, busy, have to wait for five traffic lights, whatever,” Killick said. “I think we could address some of those concerns … if you could build a bike lane or bike-friendly pathway that didn't impede on and take away something from traffic movement.”
“I think we could look for a solution that didn't mess with the traffic situation.”
