Hard to ride a bike in Halifax because drivers think they own the road

By GAIL LETHBRIDGE

Chronicle Herald

Why is “bike” a four-letter word in Halifax?

I’m not just talking about Halifax regional council saying no to a bike lane on Herring Cove Road.

I was thinking this way long before our Little City Council that Couldn’t provided yet more ammunition for my theory that bike is a four-letter word in Halifax.

I bought a bike a few years ago, with the idea of using it to get around town.

The arguments in favour seemed obvious: A bike costs less than a second car and is cheaper to run. It’s healthy and doesn’t contribute to traffic congestion or greenhouse gases.

It had been years since I had ridden a bike, so I read the safety booklet to familiarize myself with rules and signals. Then I put my helmet on and went for a Sunday morning spin.

It’s true what they say about bicycles: you never forget how to ride them. But what I had forgotten was how much fun they are.

I’ve been in places where bikes are mainstream transportation. In parts of Europe, you see men in business suits with briefcases cycling into work.

In Britain, ladies in pleated skirts nip off to the shops on rickety bicycles with wicker baskets on the front. And in Amsterdam, moms cycle around with small children in safety seats attached to the front and back of their bikes.

Halifax could be one of those bike-friendly cities, I thought as I cycled around that lovely Sunday morning. But when I headed out into weekday traffic, I discovered that Halifax is decidedly not one of those cities.

And I’m not talking about the hills or the shortage of bike lanes. It’s the drivers.

On one outing, I had a car swoop in so close I could feel the rush of air as it passed. There was plenty of room, but the driver didn’t like my bike on his road, so I got the drive-by nastiness.

Another time, a motorist was swearing because I was stopped at a stop sign — imagine! — waiting for pedestrians who were in the crosswalk. It was the bike he was swearing at, not the pedestrians.

And a man once told me to “go home” after he opened his parked car door, almost hitting me. Imagine the damage to his car door if I had crashed into it.

I’m a good rule-abiding cyclist with no desire to be on the wrong end of a car-bike altercation. But I don’t like riding my bike in Halifax. The streets feel dangerous and mean.

And the problem is this: drivers here believe that they own the road and they resent sharing it with cyclists. In Halifax, cyclists are viewed as irritants, like mosquitoes that should be swatted away, rather than accommodated and respected.

It doesn’t have to be this way. Cyclists and motorists can and do coexist elsewhere, and there is a litany of reasons why they should here, too: traffic congestion, parking shortages, pollution, road maintenance costs, and the high rates of obesity, heart disease and other weight-related ailments in this province.

Bicycles are part of the solution, not the problem, and yet last week our myopic civic leadership voted against bike lanes.

It’s time the Little City Council that Couldn’t looked beyond the end of its own nose and saw that its job is to educate motorists and cyclists on how to share the roads to make this city a better place to live and work.