On Labour Day, I rode my bike along the Central Valley Greenway, one of the premier regional bike routes.
Also a good place to park.
Its not like the driver couldn’t see the diamond or the bike symbol. What made them think this was a parking spot?
Possibly because it used to be a parking spot. It has been part of the CVG since the bike route opened more than three years ago to much fanfare. However, up until a few months ago the very spot this car is parked looked like this:
Yes. That is an operating parking meter. There were about a half dozen of them along the bike lane on Sapperton. In defence of the City’s Transportation guys, once this was brought to their attention, they took the meters out pretty quick (there are meter-stumps there now). So I guess Mr. Civic Driver figured it was now free parking. Bonus!
I am just confused that the fact there were parking meters on a bike lane had to be brought to the attention of the Transportation Staff three years after the bike lane opened. I mean, did the guys painting the lanes not notice the meters? Did the Meter Collector not notice the lane paintings? Did no-one working for the City put two and two together?
Thousands of cyclists must have ridden by parked cars in the bike lanes over those three years… and silently lamented the cars parked in the travelling lane. That is how unremarkable the first photo is to cyclists, even on the region’s premier bike routes.
When the CVG was first opened the bike lane was outside the parking space. It was a narrow, substandard lane, but it was not on the parking space.
The creative mind to put the bike lane on top of the parking spaces, and thereby providing drivers a wider lane to comfortably exceed the posted 30km/h speed limit was done later. Perhaps they thought it was an effective use of space?
But the current solution of eliminating the parking and providing an adequate width for a cycle lane is probably the best solution.