Summer bike lane test set for Burrard Bridge

As many as two lanes of the Burrard Street Bridge will be closed to vehicle traffic this summer, Vancouver city council has confirmed, as it seeks to develop a long-term plan for the crowded bridge.

Councillor Heather Deal said the trial project on the heritage-listed structure, which connects the West Side of Vancouver across False Creek with the Downtown peninsula, will help make biking the bridge safer and more practical.

"We'll be starting our trial toward the end of June. It will go on for six months. That will catch the peak times of bike ridership, and should be able to give us some good data for making a decision on whether we continue or not," Deal said Wednesday.

Currently the bridge has three lanes of vehicle traffic in each direction, while cyclists and pedestrians share a narrow elevated sidewalk on either side.

The trial will see either one southbound vehicle lane or two existing curb lanes converted to bicycle lanes. Council will announce the details of the plan next Tuesday

Critics have long argued that the crowded sidewalks, which are not separated by vehicle traffic by any sort of barrier, are a danger to everyone.

This isn't the city's first experiment with bike lanes on the bridge. In 1996 one lane was closed to car traffic and made into a temporary bike lane.

That controversial test did result in a drop in car traffic and a large increase in bike traffic on the bridge, but the trial was abandoned just one week later after much public outcry over the traffic jams at the entrances to the bridge.

This time, Deal promised, the city is preparing an aggressive awareness campaign to keep the public in the loop.

Other proposals for the bridge have included putting barriers between the sidewalks and the traffic; adding cycling lanes on the outside or underneath the bridge; adding bike lanes on the main deck and traffic controls to the vehicle lanes to change the direction during rush.