Bell: Smith UCP wants to rein in bike lanes, Calgary city hall not playing ball

With the Alberta government wanting the power to stop new bike lanes or rip out old ones, Calgary city hall is being a pain in the butt

Gimme the crystal ball. What do we see? A battle coming to a city near you, a battle over a brainwave foisted on citizens like a piece of ugly public art and growing with no end in sight.

Like weeds. Calgary Mayor Jeromy Farkas was saying nothing Wednesday. Calgary city hall paper shufflers.

How to describe them? A brick wall people bang their heads against. The UCP government wants simple information about all the individual bike lanes in Calgary and Edmonton.

After all, they are planning to roll out a long-awaited law this fall where they could step in and stop new bike lanes from being built and rip out bike lanes already built . Voices tell us Edmonton city hall is willing to sit down with the province to discuss the bike lane hot potato. Meanwhile, in Calgary, we hear little of value.

Back in April, the provincial government headed up by Premier Danielle Smith asked Calgary city hall paper shufflers to provide information on each bike lane in the city. The province had already sent letters going back to the bad old days of former mayor Jyoti Gondek and got nowhere. This time, Calgary city hall bigshots do what city hall bigshots do best.

They play games. They are like the kid who is told he has to do his homework and then hands in some piece of crap telling the teacher he’s done. Related Bell: Smith UCP gears up to stop or rip out bike lanes, now seeks your input Killarney business owner rails against city's bike lane project on 26th Avenue Devin Dreeshen, Smith’s main man on roads, wants numbers.

What are the impacts to traffic of existing bike lanes, how are the travel times for motorists before and after each bike lane was put in? How many cyclists use each bike lane, including the number of users for all four seasons? What has been the effect on businesses along bike lane routes?

What are the community’s views of each of the bike lanes, before and after they were installed? For bike lanes the city wants to install, Dreeshen asks for detailed evidence city hall has done its homework and can justify the bike lanes they propose. On June 1, Calgary city hall sent the province a response.

To say the info was incomplete is to be polite. They did not cough up what they were asked to provide. They did not hand over up-to-date information on individual bike lanes.

Without that information how does anyone know what bike lanes should stay and which bike lanes should go? Some people believe city hall may not even have that kind of information because they can do what they want with bike lanes since the politicians downtown feel bike lanes make you a cool city. Another explanation is bike lane supporters don’t care about how many people use the bike lanes or how they affect vehicles.

They just want the bike lanes to be there in case somebody wants to use them. How convenient because most of the time most of the bike lanes just sit there in silence and up until now the only community who stood up against them is Chinatown where streets are narrow and congestion is an issue. Since Farkas isn’t talking, your scribbler looked for his words.

A few months back on Reddit the mayor called bike lanes “a desperate channel changer from issues that really matter.” Farkas said he supports the bike lanes “where they make sense” but “does not support them where it’s a huge disruption.” We have no idea which bike lanes Farkas does not support by that definition and apparently Calgary city hall doesn’t have the information to make a decision.

A few months ago Farkas compared bike lanes to the province deciding clocks no longer have to be changed twice a year or “which books belong in libraries,” saying such matters showed a lack of focus on the part of the government and were a distraction. Governments can walk and chew gum at the same time. Dreeshen says it is necessary for the province to get involved because “municipalities have put in bike lanes with no regard for the people living in the communities.”

Thankfully, Calgarians and other Albertans can finally have a voice long denied by city hall. Now if you go to alberta.ca on your computer and type in the words “concerns about bike lanes” you will see a form where you can express your views to the provincial government. And one thing is clear.

The provincial government is not backing down from cleaning up the bike lane mess. A word to those cyclists setting their hair on fire reading this column. Stop whining, start cycling.

Get more people to actually use the bike lanes. Use them before you could lose them. rbell@postmedia.com