I've got to take my hat off to the Vancouver Courier for their April Fools Day joke. I read the headline of the proposed bike tunnel - The Funnel linking False Creek to Downtown and promptly said to myself 'that's just mad.'
It's not an AFD joke - you are fuddin kicking me. A tunnel for bikes - if Gregor wants out of office this will do it. How on earth is a tunnel for bikes a good idea. We are not talking the Dartford Tunnel - the London tunnel that stretches beneath one of the widest parts of the River Thames.
The new barricaded routes don't sit well with all cyclists. Although vehicle traffic is behind a concrete foot high wall - great on the bridges but not so appealing in the downtown core. I know I for one prefer the option of taking a right turn or a left turn or a left turn and another left turn and another left turn just because I feel like it. Yes I like the freedom of cycling. The freedom of popping into a coffee shop or a store. The barricaded routes are meant to keep you moving; not nice.
A tunnel for bikes then would be for me a nightmare. Once you enter you are stuck - no turning and almost certainly no turning back. In addition riding a bike through a tunnel is against the rationale of cycling - there are no views. There's nothing constructive to say about this proposed idea. It is definitely not green. Cyclists don't want tunnels - they want views. They don't need shortcuts beneath water, they need shortcuts over water - a bridge.
It was a great April Fools Day joke - perhaps the best that Vancouver has ever known.
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The reason it was a great April Fool's Day joke is that it has an air of credibility lent to it by this City Council's fanatical obsession with all things bicycle.
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