The Uptown Business Association isn’t keen on the city’s plan to replace parking with a separated bike lane on a stretch of Sixth Street.
The City of New Westminster has been engaging with community members and businesses about uptown active transportation improvements, which includes plans to make upgrades to the Rotary Crosstown Greenway on Seventh Avenue and to create a new cycling connection to New Westminster Secondary School. Construction of the project, which aims to make it easier for people of all ages and abilities to cycle, wheel or walk comfortably and safely in the uptown, is expected to begin in the summer and fall.
The Uptown Business Association has voiced concern about the project’s plan to create a separate bike lane in the 700 block of Sixth Street.
“We are not opposed to bike infrastructure. In fact, we very much support investing in bicycle infrastructure. We just don’t believe that this is the right location to do it,” Bart Slotman, chair of the Uptown Business Association, recently told city council. “It has a very negative impact on the retailers. On balance, the impact on those retailers, in our opinion, far exceeds and outweighs the benefit of providing this link at this location.”
Slotman said the proposed separated bike lane in the 700 block of Sixth Street would eliminate parking on one side of the street. He said there are a number of small, local convenience businesses like an ice cream shop and a barber or hair shop in the area that rely on on-street parking.
“They are highly, highly dependent on that quick in and out for their customers to reach them,” he said. “Removing these parking stalls will negatively affect those retailers, and that’s at a time when everybody is struggling to regain their business in a post-COVID world, staying above the water line with regard to higher staffing costs and rental costs and taxation. This is not an easy time to be a retailer.”
Slotman said the Uptown Business Association is “very supportive” of the vision the city had developed for the uptown area, which focused on supporting a pedestrian-friendly retail district and urban realm improvements.
“The bike lanes, in our opinion, are in direct conflict with the city’s own vision for uptown,” he said. “The uptown vision includes wide sidewalks, retail stores, parklets, sidewalk cafes. Then there is a vision that the parking lane is re-utilized for a variety of uses, like some parking, some drop-off, some car-share, loading zones, handicapped parking, all of those things. But that vision does not include removing all parking and allocating 100% of the curb lane to bikes.”
Slotman said the Uptown Business Association believes there is a very limited demand for this particular bike infrastructure because it is “a stub” that connects the Rotary Crosstown Greenway to the high school.
“It doesn’t go beyond that. It really has a limited amount of users on it, and, of course, those users will only be on it during high school – first thing at the morning and at the end of the day, and that happens about 200 days a year, not 365 days like the retailers or business,” he said. “We question the actual demand for those parking lanes. Balance that with the actual demand for the parking stalls for these retailers.”
Speaking from his personal experience as a bike commuter, Slotman questioned why the city would place a cycling route on Sixth Street. He noted that Vancouver situates bike lanes on roads near major routes (such as Adanac Street instead of Hastings and 10th Avenue instead of Broadway).
“As a bicycle commuter, I am very selective about my routes, and I would not choose Sixth nor would I send my kids up Sixth Street – that’s obviously what we are trying to encourage here,” he said. “Sixth is narrow. It’s full of buses, cars, trucks. It conflicts with customer parking. It’s not a bike-friendly environment. Even after you build designated bike lanes, it’s not a route you would choose.”
Slotman said there is already a bike connection to the high school via Eighth Street, which could be improved if it’s not considered sufficient. Failing that, he encouraged the city to test out Sixth Street as a pilot project to see how it works rather than spending a lot of money on permanent cycling infrastructure.
Coun. Patrick Johnstone said the city’s plan is to install the bike lanes in a protected way, but in a temporary-measure format.
“It is being installed with the idea being we may be adjusting what we build there based on how it works,” he said. “We are not investing the full amount of money on the installation right now; we are doing a temporary install in order to provide a little more information on how it works.”
While the city has ways of measuring whether the transportation aspect of the plan works better or not, Johnstone said it will be important for businesses to provide feedback on how it works from their perspective. He said studies from across North America and the world have shown that the installation of bike lanes in retail areas doesn’t have negative impacts on local-serving retail areas, but it will be important for the city to have local data.
“I would love to continue that conversation with the Uptown BIA, and if the businesses along that area are able to share information with us, it would help us determine whether it’s detrimental or not. That would be really useful for us as we go through this interim measures process,” he said. “I think that’s an opportunity for us to actually work on making sure that it works. If it doesn’t work, there’s still room in order for us to make adjustments.”
Like Slotman, Coun. Chuck Puchmayr said he’s noticed how some bike lanes in Vancouver aren’t located on main streets but are placed on nearby roads.
“I am cognizant of the fact a lot of our small businesses have now become more destination. Since the big boxes and the Walmart’s of the worlds have moved in, the lone survivors or the few survivors are usually a type of a destination, where people come from other communities to go there,” he said. “I think all of that we have to look at. I appreciate your comments. We are certainly going to look to make sure that anything we do is mitigated, that we are not causing an adverse impact on small businesses.”
HUB Cycling representatives have been calling on the city to create safer and more comfortable cycling access to the new high school.
Theresa McManus on Twitter @TheresaMcManus
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