Raise the Hammer

Cannon's bike lanes not nearly as unused as much anymore.

Yes, sometimes it is quiet. But so is car traffic on Cannon in the late evening too. A more useful is the bike:car ratio, and target ratio of 1:3 for the bike:car lanes ratio (1 lane vs 3 lanes), is a more useful metric, and the time-of-day.

Riding from James North to Sherman Ave, for the first-ever time I saw MORE TOTAL BIKES THAN CARS ON CANNON at 10:48pm on Tuesday July 14th for the whole length. I even passed 5 SoBi bikes! So the bike lanes carried more bike traffic then the entire width of Cannon in car traffic -- during that late evening ride! This was the first time I saw this happened.

Cannon's slowly getting more popular (east of downtown, at least). When you drive offpeak on Cannon east of downtown during a beautiful day, the bike:car ratio now fully justifies the Cannon bike lanes. The tumbleweeds don't roll on those lanes nearly as much! It may be quiet at some parts of the day, especially during peak, as many of us ride after work, or are students who don't ride with peak traffic flows, and others are early-morning or late-evening commuters to/from the GO stations (like me). Or evening riders.

Lately the Cannon bike:car ratio is starting to look generous after-sunset-but-not-too-late in the post-peak period when almost no cars drive on Cannon. Consider McMaster/Restaurant/Bar/Pub/Jackson Square/James Street/Downtown store employee timings, rather than typical Hamilton car commute timings, and Cannon bike usage correspond more towards that.

That said, I agree York Blvd bike lanes are very, very quiet in comparision to the improvement we see now on Cannon, let's see SoBi expand coverage to Burlington and Royal Botanical Gardens, and see how bike traffic improves, along with other fixes/optimizations we can do.

Comment edited by mdrejhon on 2015-07-28 13:10:21