[Mikemike]

^Not brilliant.

As a year-round cyclist in Edmonton who has taken almost the exact same route as the author logged, and for a work meeting too, I feel like I have the right to comment.

Whether recreational paths are well used or well maintained or not has next to no bearing on whether bike lanes are needed. There are lots of people who would never consider making a transportation trip on a ravine path that requires conquering 200' of elevation gain at the end who would use a bike lane on level ground if it were protected from cars.

Bike lanes are not useful when they are half-assed. Most of the few lanes we have are stubs, or obstructed or poorly maintained. Possible our best route is too narrow, shared with (hordes of) pedestrians, and now even worse with the addition of a poorly fence. Whether people are willing to use those routes isn't strongly correlated with whether people would be willing to use a properly designed, protected and maintained network.

And bike lanes aren't for him or for me. My normal pace is 30km/hr and I'll boot along a 4-lane arterial in the lane at 40 if I have to, at least for a little while until repeated accelerations from lights wear me out. We need bike lanes for everyone else who doesn't bike. the people for whom the bike isn't the favoured mode if only because it fails to offer protection from idiot drivers.