Bicycles and cars fight for road space in Manitoba capital

It's a fight that Scott Miller hears about daily from customers at his cycling shop on Portage Ave., the city's main drag.

"Every day, there's somebody that talks about 'You know, I had this car cut me off,' or 'They stopped and turned right in front of me'," Miller says.

"There's no place for us. Pedestrians have the sidewalk, motorists have the road. Where do cyclists go?"

By all accounts - even the mayor's - Winnipeg has a severe shortage of bike paths, leaving cyclists to ride next to cars in the curb lanes of busy streets. The city lacks the type of trail system found in Edmonton's sprawling river valley or along Montreal's Lachine canal, both of which let cyclists travel dozens of kilometres through car-free green space.

Several lanes in Winnipeg's core are dedicated to bicycles and buses, but most are set aside only during rush hour and do not connect with each other.

Cyclists must also contend with the fact that most curb lanes on city streets are no wider than other lanes, so bike riders get minimal room to deal with passing cars and trucks.

The fight for space leads to a lot of confrontation.

Charles Burchill says he often comes across "people feeling that I just shouldn't be there - and that happens probably once every month."

The university professor commutes downtown every day.

"It's not all the time that people roll down their windows and yell at you ... but it happens," he says.

Motorists have their own complaints. They have called radio talk shows to chastise cyclists who breeze through red lights, weave in and out of traffic and don't signal.

Burchill concedes there are plenty of cyclists out there who break the rules, including ones he calls "yahoos" who race down sidewalks and risk hitting pedestrians.

The most strident cycling advocates got together a few years ago and formed a local version of Critical Mass, a movement that started in San Francisco in 1992. On certain Fridays during the summer months, hundreds of them congregate and ride on downtown Winnipeg streets, sometimes blocking cars and trucks across all lanes to drive home their point that the city should be more bike-friendly.

Mayor Sam Katz is promising to defuse the battle by giving cyclists more road space to call their own.

"I agree the need is most definitely there and I think it's a shame that for, I guess, decades we never took that into consideration in our planning," Katz said in a recent interview.

"We're looking at options as they become available."

His administration has opened several bike paths in city parks, although critics say those paths are designed for families out for a Sunday ride, not commuters trying to get to or from work using pedal power.

The federal and provincial governments are pumping millions of dollars more into the city for a combination of road repairs, transit improvements and new bike paths. Exactly how that money will be divvied up remains to be seen.

The next major project on Katz's mind is a dedicated bike lane that will run alongside a planned rapid transit corridor from downtown to the south end. But because the various levels of government are still negotiating about funding, the lane won't be completed any time soon.

Still, in the end, Winnipeg could just get what Miller says is his dream for the city and for himself.

"A ride. A safe place to ride."