I don’t believe a dedicated cycling lane is cost-effective as part of the redesigned Main and King Streets as part of the construction of the Light Rail Transit B-Line.
The issue was brought up at the Cycling Committee last week and there is a good summary of the meeting posted to Raise The Hammer.
As proposed the B-Line LRT will require the full road allowance for two lanes of dedicated light rail track and one lane for each direction of traffic. In places, the LRT project will require expropriation to gain the road allowance required, and in many places, the LRT will require legal easement agreements for the allowance.
With expropriation and easements in mind, I need convincing that the Cannon Cycling Track with a combination of improvements to cycling infrastructure south of the LRT line will not be sufficient to provide safe time-effective cycling infrastructure.
Politics is the allocation of limited resources. I’ll leave it open to those advocating cycling lanes along the B-Line LRT to convince me that expropriation for cycling infrastructure is an investment with high enough a return to justify the cost.
On the surface, this doesn’t seem like a wise investment.