The City of Yorkton and the Yorkton Active Transportation Collaborative celebrated the official opening of the city's first bike lanes. The lanes, currently on Darlington St. and Gladstone Ave., are designed to promote cycling and to get people to use more active transportation alternatives.
The project, funded in part by a $30,000 grant from SGI, has the goal of increasing awareness of biking in the city and encouraging people to take a more active form of transportation.
Apart from the lanes themselves, it is hoped that signage encouraging biking will keep cycling in people's minds as they navigate the city.
The event was focused on the advantages bike lanes have for the residents of the city, with representatives from the Health Region emphasizing the health impact that bike lanes will have on people's lives in the city.
The plan is part of the Yorkton Active Transportation Collaborative's larger plan for increasing the city's activity level, which includes the Walk-A-Mile program and other initiatives. The implementation of the lanes is being watched carefully to see what is working and what is not.
"Bike lanes are a change, and we're going to develop and revise as necessary," says Mayor James Wilson.
While there has been some question about the safety of the lanes, especially around the high schools, Wilson believes that it's going to be easier to adapt to than people are giving it credit for.
"Everybody needs to give the student drivers the credit they deserve, since they seem to be functioning quite fine with it, and we have bike lanes in other cities and the seniors can deal with them in other cities," Wilson says.
The bike lane project is an experiment, however, and not all of the lanes have been successful. Specifically, the stretch of Gladstone between Smith and Broadway has been controversial, with many people being concerned about traffic flow problems during the school day and safety for both bikers and motorists. The city has received a high volume of complaints on the issue, with Councillor Larry Pearen saying that he has received more calls on this issue than the flooding.
Five options were presented to council in order to address the issue. Option one was to return Gladstone to how it was, with a shared use lane rather than a bike lane. Option two was to widen the sidewalks and provide a multi-use trail. The third option was removing some parking on Gladstone, and the fourth was to restrict parking to certain times of the day. The fifth alternative was a complete redesign of the intersection, including left hand turn lanes and extending merge and right hand lanes.
One of the main issues with the redesign proposal was motorist confusion, with some council members concerned that more large changes would make that section of roadway even more difficult to deal with.
"I think the last thing we want to do is to paint more lines there and make it more confusing than it is," notes Councillor Richard Okrainec.
There was also a desire to give the changes a bit more time. Councillor Chris Wyatt notes that the roundabout near the hospital was a success, something he voted against at the time it was implemented. He believes that as people become used to the changes many of the safety concerns will go away.
Council voted to take the first option, and return the portion of Gladstone between Broadway and Smith to what it was before, two traffic lanes with the second being shared use.
