The Great Race

Rush hour. My car versus his bike. Guess who wins

By Marcie Good

Bill Miller is decked out in black tights, blue zip-up shirt and shoes that click like a tap dancer when I arrive at his office at G.F. Strong Rehabilitation Centre. His research focusses on the rehabilitation of stroke patients and people with spinal cord injuries, but today’s experiment involves his own very advanced mobility. Miller, 46, cycles here, 26th and Laurel, almost every day from his home near the Coquitlam Centre. He adds variety by taking his motorcycle to his UBC office once a week in winter; when the weather improves, he cycles there too. “I do it for a lot of reasons,” he says, of his 30-to 40-kilometre commute. Of course it saves the expense of driving and the irritation of finding a parking spot. Of course he’s an “activity nut,” who wants to set an example for his three daughters. Of course biking is friendly to the environment. But his main reason for ultra-commuting is more selfish: “I like to eat.”

Good reasons all, but who’d consider riding their bike halfway across the Lower Mainland? “The bicycle is often excluded in transportation thinking or in the public’s mind because it doesn’t do everything for everyone all the time,” says Gordon Price, director of SFU’s City program and himself a (more restrained) bicycle commuter. “But if everybody does everything all the time in the same mode, the system fails. That’s what’s happened with the car.”

Studies show that a 2.6-kilometre trip by bike in the city is faster than driving. Here’s my question. What if Miller could cycle 31 kilometres faster than I can drive? What would that say about our transportation system? He accepted my proposal, being a competitive triathlete and road racer, but asked for a few weeks to prepare. The “parameters,” as he puts it, are these: he takes his usual bike route, and I take the route he’d ordinarily drive. Today, now that we’ve chatted for half an hour, he anxiously notes that we’ve passed the 4:30 peak traffic time. Advantage: car.

His bike, parked outside, is a hybrid, with mountain-bike handlebars and slick tires. The roadie in him points out the parts that add weight: reliable disc brakes, cushy seat, light and bell. “I was actually at first ashamed of the bell,” he admits. He clicks into his pedals, gives me his cell number (“in case you crash,”) and heads for his bike route, along 33rd Avenue. He’ll take Slocan to 29th, then turn north on Rupert Street to Lougheed Highway.

In case I crash?

Miller is a good example of what Jack Becker, director of the Vancouver Area Cycling Coalition, calls a “first-wave cyclist,” the hard-cores, the Tour de France-style packs, the students carrying helmets. This group would choose bikes no matter what. The “second wave,” he posits, choose cycling for transportation given the current road design approach: largely, designated bike routes on city streets. The “third wave” is what advocates like him covet: the people now driving who, given a great path separated from traffic, could be seduced from their cars.

In Vancouver, something like four percent of people bike to work. It’s not bad among big North American cities, but pales in comparison to places like Amsterdam (28) and Copenhagen (36). The Danish capital is instructive, because its population and area are roughly the same as Vancouver’s (although its topography is flatter). In 1978 the city laid out a network of pedal-only routes that has resulted in a dominant bike culture. There are so many bikes that on one major road, intersections are timed so that those traveling at 20 kilometres per hour get the green light.

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