Karly Coleman Says YES
Cyclist, cycling educator and Edmonton’s only bike traffic reporter
I started cycling in 1992, when bike lanes were but a gleam in a transportation engineer’s eye. I’ve taken and taught Cycling Canada courses on bike safety. I’ve been on cycling and active-transportation boards, advocating for cycling space on roads—any underutilized space, anywhere. I’ve cycled across Canada and written a memoir about that journey. So I have a lot of skin in the vehicular cycling game. But I was slow to appreciate bike lanes. As they’ve become more popular in North America, I’ve come to appreciate the freedom and protection they give people who ride.
Mostly I love how bike lanes show where cyclists are on the road. To be clear, we are allowed on most roads in Alberta (and are not allowed on most sidewalks), but we’re not always so visible. Given the small (but slowly growing) number of cyclists in many cities—e.g., around 19 per cent of Calgarians say they ride weekly; about 6 per cent ride daily—we’re hard to see and easy for vehicle drivers to fly by, to our potential peril. Collisions cost drivers too, so bike lanes protect everyone.
Moreover, vehicles themselves are getting bigger. Some 63 per cent of new vehicles now registered in Canada are classified as “multi-purpose” (which excludes cars and includes SUVs), compared to 42 per cent in 2017. These vehicles, which get bulkier with each iteration, make it much harder to see other users of our roads. Research published in 2024 in the journal Economics of Transportation shows that with every additional 10 cm of front-end height on a vehicle, the risk of death for pedestrians increases by 22 per cent.
Another reason we’re not always visible is that too few drivers are watching for us. They’re quelling their children’s fights, thinking about what to eat for supper, wondering if their favourite restaurant is still open—all while navigating a 4,500-pound machine on streets full of signs, signals, construction, other vehicles and pedestrians. And sometimes we cyclists are those drivers. We too know how easy it is to miss the neon jacket or flashing headlight on a cyclist’s body or bike.
Bike lanes are a game-changer especially for cyclists who belong to vulnerable populations, including women, children, seniors and differently abled people. With bike lanes, we don’t have to worry nearly as much about being unseen; there are literally concrete barriers between the oversized carapaces being driven through the streets and us.
With lower upkeep costs than roads, and year-round usability, bike lanes offer practical mobility for anyone who wants to get around—not just for those lucky enough to own a car. And bike lanes save us all money. As urban historian Lewis Mumford warned, adding highway lanes to deal with congestion is like “loosening your belt to cure obesity.” Edmonton’s Anthony Henday Drive has proved him right. Widening began on that road less than a decade after it opened. Meanwhile, former mayor Don Iveson famously referred to bike lanes as “budget dust.” He too was right. The annual maintenance and repair of Edmonton’s pathways, including bike lanes, costs about $178/km. To maintain the same length of road—and Edmonton has way more roads than bike lanes—costs $1,285/km.
Kayode Southwood Says NO
Senior policy analyst, Canadian Federation of Independent Business
Alberta’s municipalities should pause the expansion of bike lanes. While cycling infrastructure is important, the way bike lanes are being implemented today ignores the unique needs of the streets and communities they traverse. A one-size-fits-all approach is not only ineffective, it’s harmful. It disrupts local economies, hurts small businesses and alienates residents.
Proponents often claim that opposition to bike lanes is simply a culture war between cyclists and drivers. But that framing misses the point. Bike lanes have unfortunately become one of the most polarizing infrastructure issues in our cities not because people oppose cycling, but because cities are implementing these projects poorly. The real issue isn’t bikes vs. cars; it’s a failure to plan, consult and integrate bike lanes in ways that respect local communities and businesses.
In Calgary and Edmonton, for example, small businesses have reported significant losses due to new bike lanes installed in front of their stores that eliminate customer parking. Recent data from the Canadian Federation of Independent Business (CFIB) shows one-quarter of Alberta’s small businesses rank traffic management infrastructure, including bike lanes, as the most harmful municipal issue they face.
This isn’t to say bike lanes are inherently bad. Protected infrastructure for cyclists is essential for safety and mobility. But when cities pursue aggressive expansion plans—installing intersecting bike lanes across nearly every downtown street—the result is confusion and underutilization.
Consider Calgary’s 15th Avenue SW bike lane. It runs west–east just one block south of an existing east–west lane, and is flanked by dual-direction lanes on both 12th Avenue SW and 11th Street SW. The latter sees an average of just 128 cyclists on weekdays according to the City’s data—a mere 0.005 per cent of the Beltline’s population of 25,880. More broadly, only 2 per cent of downtown trips in Calgary in 2024 were made by bike, half the target set in the City’s 2020 cycling strategy. Edmonton’s downtown bike lane data shows similarly low usage and unclear goals. Clearly, current bike lane investments aren’t yielding the expected modal shift, and further expansion would be wasteful.
Despite this, city officials continue to push forward without adequately consulting the people most affected. For example, Calgary’s engagement process for the 15th Avenue SW bike lane included virtual sessions attended by only two businesses. That’s not meaningful consultation. In both Calgary and Edmonton, municipal officials charge ahead with bike lanes that reduce accessibility, ignoring opposition.
Before adding still more bike lanes, municipalities must first commit to thorough monitoring and meaningful stakeholder engagement. Cities need to provide tangible support to businesses affected by construction—who see a 40 per cent drop in sales on average—and set clear, measurable goals for ridership with a willingness to adjust targets if they aren’t met.
Right now, bike lane strategies in Alberta feel like a race instead of a methodical plan. It’s time to slow down, listen up and build infrastructure that works for everyone.
karly coleman responds to kayode southwood
Kayode Southwood’s argument seems to be that while bike lanes aren’t “inherently bad,” cities haven’t asked people for permission to build them, and their implementation has been botched. Success would only be possible if bespoke lanes were created in place of the current one-size-fits-all approach. So, overall, we shouldn’t invest in bike lanes.
But bike lanes in Alberta aren’t a problem. Our cities are finally rising to the challenge of providing safer mobility infrastructure, including bike lanes. These provide more transportation choices and stronger economic resilience, not less. If anything is a problem, it’s a long-standing municipal planning system that sees automobiles as the major means of transportation. This bias has shaped our lives, guiding the placement and proliferation of streets, buildings and parking lots. For many of us, it’s the only life we know. We can see this in Southwood’s arguments. He ignores how our auto-dominant system might evolve to better serve everyone and how neighbourhood revitalization can positively impact even businesses. To hang the decline in fortunes for small businesses on bike lanes is a polarizing framework without hard evidence to back it up.
In 2025 we’ve seen what happens when provincial governments jump onto the populist anti-bike-lane bandwagon. Ontario attempted to rip out bike lanes with its Bill 212: Reducing Gridlock, Saving You Time Act. Ontario’s Superior Court found that removing protected bike lanes violated cyclists’ Charter rights by increasing risks to life and security of the people without any lawful justification. The province relied on “weak anecdotal evidence and expert opinion… unsupported, unpersuasive and contrary to the consensus view of experts,” without data showing that bike lanes caused the congestion or harm that politicians claimed.
Bike lanes deserve the same patience and evidence-based thinking as any other transportation infrastructure.
Southwood points to CFIB survey results that bundle bike lanes together with every other “traffic management” irritant and then treats that as proof that, ipso facto, cycling infrastructure is “harmful”—precisely the kind of conflation rejected by the Ontario court: anecdote and hearsay. Every credible study on safety, mode shift, economic vitality and corridor performance points the other way.
Southwood claims municipal planners have “failed” citizens by not consulting and integrating bike lanes into communities respectfully. As proof he states the City of Calgary held virtual engagement sessions in which only two businesses participated. It’s unclear how this constitutes a lack of engagement. Regardless, people weigh their participation in municipal processes against everyday routines, such as childcare, work issues and elder care. Sometimes the engagement session loses out, despite municipal entreaties. Demanding full attendance as a precondition for change simply hands a veto to whoever has the most time to show up.
Since parking is another of Southwood’s issues, let’s look at it. According to the late professor Donald Shoup, North America has seven parking spots for every car. Research shows vehicles are parked for an average of 23 hours a day—functioning more like bollards than transportation devices. And while automobiles can carry several people at once, they seldom do. Statistics Canada reports that over 80.9 per cent of automobile trips in 2025 were taken by single-occupant drivers. One driver stops at a store on the way home, parks, goes in, shops and leaves: one stall, one customer.
Now imagine the same stall designated for 12 bikes. One spot, 12 customers, same timeframe, vastly more commercial activity. Even in winter cities, research bears this out. Nonetheless, culturally, we cyclists aren’t seen as economic drivers. Southwood reinforces this blind spot by treating the loss of car parking as a crisis while ignoring the far greater economic potential of alternatives.
He also claims bike lanes are underutilized. If only it were so simple. Until we provide continuous, better-connected routes, the number of cyclists will increase only incrementally. But this doesn’t mean we shouldn’t install bike lanes. It means that as people see others like them riding, they’ll be encouraged to ride too. But only if they feel physically, emotionally and socially safe enough. And if they can park outside the store.
We wouldn’t rip out a bridge because traffic is light on opening day. Cycling infrastructure deserves the same patience and evidence-based thinking as any other transportation initiative. We don’t need a moratorium on bike lanes; we need the courage to keep building them—and the honesty to admit that the only thing truly threatened here is the primacy of the private car, not the public interest.
kayode southwood responds to karly coleman
Karly Coleman makes a heartfelt case for more bike lanes, highlighting the visibility and protection they offer cyclists. As someone who completed my first triathlon this year and logged thousands of kilometres on my bike, I agree that safe cycling matters. But accelerating bike-lane expansion along retail corridors without fixing how we plan, build and measure these projects is the wrong approach. In Alberta, bike lane implementation too often undercuts small-business viability. We need to pause blanket expansion and adopt a methodical business-first strategy that earns durable public support.
Across Canada, small firms have endured an average of 508 days of construction-related disruption over the past five years, according to the CFIB report “Hard Hats and Hard Times.” It found construction causes a 22 per cent revenue decline and roughly $10,000 in cleaning and repair costs. When lane removals, concrete medians and signal changes are layered onto multi-season construction, a mom-and-pop retailer or café operating on thin margins can’t simply “wait it out.” These aren’t soft costs—they translate into shorter hours, layoffs and closures, especially on streets where parking and loading are eliminated without alternatives. For many small businesses, curbside access isn’t a luxury; it’s the difference between survival and closure.
Affordability concerns add another layer. Edmontonians face a nearly 7 per cent property tax increase in 2026, so perhaps bike-lane expansions could have been scaled back to ease pressure on businesses and residents. Back in 2022, Edmonton city council approved $100-million to build out the city’s bike-lane network. Even a fraction of that could have been redirected to reduce tax burdens during a challenging economic climate. When cities are asking businesses to absorb higher taxes and rising costs, they need to demonstrate that every dollar spent delivers measurable value—not just political optics.
If this approach isn’t boosting ridership but is harming businesses, are cities meeting their goals?
Coleman argues bike lanes bring year-round usability. True—but they also bring year-round costs, even when ridership plummets in winter. Edmonton devotes nearly 45 per cent of its $67-million snow and ice budget to clearing bike lanes, multi-use paths, bus stops, stairs and pedestrian spaces. City officials acknowledge that clearing active pathways can be more expensive per kilometre than clearing roads. The standard—to clear priority bike lanes to bare pavement within 24 hours—is appropriate for safety, but it underscores why route selection must be value-driven in winter cities. When taxpayers and businesses are footing the bill for premium maintenance in corridors that see minimal winter use, it’s fair to ask whether priorities are aligned with reality.
Additionally, consultation with merchants on bike lanes is often superficial. Transit projects show the same pattern. In Edmonton’s Chinatown, for example, the City pushed ahead with a transit lane that removed all parking on 101st St NW. Area businesses voiced strong opposition and sent letters to council without response. When projects reconfigure parking, loading and delivery routes, cities must prioritize grassroots engagement—door-to-door outreach, roundtables and access audits—before finalizing designs. Online surveys and virtual sessions attended by only a handful of businesses don’t constitute meaningful consultation. If cities want buy-in, they need to meet business owners where they are—on the street, in their shops and at times that work for them.
Protected lanes do improve safety—when placed where they’re needed most. But building parallel lanes within blocks of each other without clear ridership targets or review commitments is poor stewardship of curb space. One of Calgary’s Cycling Strategy goals is to increase satisfaction with cycling. If the current approach isn’t boosting ridership and is harming businesses, is it meeting its objectives? Truly we don’t know. The City stopped publishing its annual Bicycle Program Yearbook in 2013 and hasn’t posted a cycling strategy update since 2018. Our cities should regularly review ridership data and public opinion to trigger course corrections. The lack of measurement is what prompted Alberta’s transportation minister in 2025 to call for bike-lane removals.
Cities don’t need an endless tug-of-war between cyclists and shopkeepers—they need a plan for coexistence. Bike lanes can deliver safety and sustainability, but only if paired with policies that keep storefronts accessible and main streets vibrant. That means treating small businesses as partners, not afterthoughts: maintaining parking, integrating curbside loading zones, offering construction relief, and measuring success by both ridership and retail health. If we get this right, we won’t just build bike lanes—we’ll build trust, strong local economies and streets where commerce and active transportation thrive together.
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