Nobody Bikes in Winter: Edmonton Edition
In the first week of March I was in Edmonton to share some ‘Lessons from the Dutch’ with the audience at the Consulting Engineers of Alberta Transportation Connects Conference, but I found a bit of time to wander around the city and take some photos of people getting around in the cold, maybe not as cold as prior weeks, but still minus temperatures…
Lessons from the Dutch shares some of the findings from my fietspad book with a few updated photos and ideas from subsequent trips. I presented with my colleague Scott MacDonald, who shared some of the Dutch elements being applied on our ISL Engineering projects in Western Canada, while I finished up with some Dutch design elements not being widely used, but with much potential in Canada… This photo below is in Edmonton, not the Netherlands, by the way… A little takeaway book(let) on Lessons from the Dutch…
Edmonton has a lot of LRT, which is great to see. I still haven’t actually ridden it, and feel like I need to spend a few hours touring around the city on the various routes to get a better feel for it and the City…
Adjacent to the LRT is a one-way vehicle lane, bi-directional protected bike lane, and of course sidewalks on both sides, a truly multi-modal space… The bike lane is kept clear in winter too…
The first morning I went out to find some coffee around 7.30am and temperature was around -6 degrees but people were still getting around downtown by bike… Planters in this plaza space making a useful foot rest…
Edmonton has some pretty progressive design elements here and there, from one-way streets for bicycles to continuous sidewalks and bike paths, which I don’t have photos of in this post... But this woonerf, while not a true residential woonerf, at least includes a nice chicane to keep drivers rolling slowly… parking spots between the street trees, and looking online, it’s been like that since before 2009. The posted speed is 20 km/h, which is great to see. In fact, Edmonton has had a blanket 40 km/h posted speed since 2021 on downtown and residential streets…
Leading lines and the LRT station…
Nobody rides in winter… We hear that in Vancouver, and for sure in Edmonton… Maybe numbers do drop, but hey, volumes of traffic aren’t consistent either, we have peak hours, seasonal volumes on many of our roadways… Bikes lanes are needed in any growing city to accommodate more trips within constrained streets… They’re need for many other reasons too… But the claim that nobody rides in the winter just isn’t true…
The sand and grit used to deal with snow and ice instead of salt might seem odd if you’re not familiar… I’ve been to Edmonton a lot when it’s like this but never actually looked into the reasoning until know where I feel I should explain why it looks so dirty. As I understand it, salt is only effective at melting snow within a certain temperature range, and with the very cold temperatures Edmonton gets, it’s more practical to use the sand to add texture and grip to the snow covered streets…
A bike route sign in front of the Art Gallery of Alberta… for no reason other than it’s an interesting building and need something transportation related in front of it…
I love the wall art scattered around the city… It would make a pretty good stand alone blog post just to capture all of it…
Multi-modal streets, two-way for trams, two way for people walking and biking, but one way for cars with the space left over… And multi-level walkways between buildings have some value in the cold but can remove a bit of life on the street… Bike and bus integration present…
I love this shot… I just got up to look out the hotel window as the bus was poking its nose out of the shadows and the sun was lighting up the walkway so grabbed the camera… This is a great example where crushing the shadows can create an very interesting image… In my opinion at least…
I shared that winter priority sign before, but here’s a closer view of Edmonton’s quick build bike lanes and a bit of snow storage space too… Can’t recall if there was also on-street parking here, so possibly doing double duty as a door zone buffer… Interestingly there are no left turns across the bike lane at this laneway… Just the signal…
Not just bikes… Skating lanes too…
Random laneway mural brightening up what would otherwise be a dingy space… We need more of this…
There were definitely some sketchy sections of the pathway network along the river valley left over from the deep freeze…
This guy just ran over this ice like it wasn’t there… Meanwhile I was treading very carefully… Share the trail…
Edmonton is a pretty flat place, unless your trying to get from the river valley up to the city… The funicular makes access easier for people and while you might think it’s a bit extravagant, to some degree it is a bit of a showcase, a demonstration of a commitment to people walking and rolling… No different than say the Hovenring in Eindhoven…
There wasn’t much snow to clear today, but City staff still checking bike lanes…
The three headed walk/don’t walk signal… A sure sign that this intersection has a scramble crosswalk… Combined with no right turn on red, all conflict between people walking and driving is removed…
This is an interesting one, the green sign suggesting you take the lane to make a left turn. Think i’d prefer to turn from the bike lane further up…
Some detail shots… How do you make curved TWSIs? Cut lots of little triangular sections… And this is only the second time i’ve seen these catch basins that match the mountable curb… I am curious how much water makes it in on the slope… Maybe useful when ice builds up…
This is quite a common configuration in Edmonton… A one way street, often with parking on one side, and a bi-directional bike lane on the other… Obviously it wasn’t always like this and likely was a local street with parking both sides and two directions of traffic, but not every street needs to prioritize vehicle movement and parking over other modes… It’s one or two streets out of many…
An all-way stop where one of the approaches is the bike path with a mini-stop sign…
Edmonton police on bikes… That’s cool to see…
Making my way toward the high level bridge… where protected bike lanes connect to a shared use pathway along the rail corridor…
The high level bridge is a really nice option to cross the river valley when walking or rolling without having to negotiate much of a grade change… It features a road with railway tracks above, and the shared pathway on the side… I think there are still historic streetcars running across as a tourist attract today rather than a true transit service, but not while I was there…
The view along the pathway, and to my next bridge destination to the east…
But before that, this low level LRT bridge adjacent I guess offers transit service across the river at this spot and features another shared pathway suspended underneath it this time…
The Walterdale Bridge (an ISL project) with someone taking the pathway underneath to avoid the road crossing, and the river still mostly ice in early March…
Wayfinding when consistently applied, provides reassurance that there is a continuous route to your destination and saves you from stopping to pull out your phone every five minutes to check you’re still on the right route. Edmonton seems to be working on it… The red signs are for the more recreational river pathways, albeit these pathways still serve as perfectly good transportation routes if they go where you need to go… The blue signs feature a pedestrian symbol at the top and are located along urban routes, albeit I haven’t seen to many of these. I like how they show people how easily they can walk to nearby destinations, showing times rather than distances. I’d only add that it might be good to show both walking and cycling times… Maybe with cycling times to destinations further afield…
Couldn’t finish without one last cargo bike as I made it back to the hotel… When cargo bikes start appearing… It’s a good sign that your bike network is getting there…