Last fall, with little in the way of fanfare or controversy, the City of Calgary unveiled a $42-million infrastructure project — the 96th Avenue extension, a 1.2-kilometre strip of six-lane roadway and four bridges connecting 96th Avenue N.E. to Deerfoot Trail.

As if to underscore the everyday nature of the project, the only contentious issue at its opening was the one per cent of the budget the city was obligated to spend on art — in this case, an enormous blue sculptural ring called Travelling Light.

This week, Calgary’s transportation committee considered another, much smaller line item on the transportation infrastructure budget: a new cycle track network for the inner city that would cost $9.3 million for a one-year trial, $11.5 million if it’s later removed, and about $14.5 million if it’s made permanent. The proposal is already a wildly controversial, headline-making story. It’s the target of vitriol from some councillors and pundits who call it a trivial waste of money and a sure source of traffic headaches. But it receives at least as much exultant praise from other councillors, planners and cycling advocates, who believe it is an essential piece of sustainable transport infrastructure.

Everyone, it seems, has an opinion about the downtown cycle tracks. And why is that? Why is spending $42 million to build barely a kilometre of road on a route that was being driven by just 5,000 vehicles per day no issue at all, while between $9.3 million and $14.5 million spent on 7.6 kilometres of cycle track for a downtown that already sees 12,000 bicycle trips daily — up 35 per cent just since 2006 — has become a source of scrutiny and ferocious debate?

The reason is that after half a century of building and planning Calgary almost exclusively to the specifications of motor vehicles, the 96th Avenue extension is seen as essential, while the bike lanes are assumed to be an optional fad. It’s understood that an extra kilometre of road will inevitably draw more than its share of new users, and assumed that eight kilometres of cycle track might fail to do so.

This is an analysis that needs to be stood on its head. The sustainable cities that will thrive in the 21st century are the ones that recognize the vital need to diversify transport options and create real opportunity for citizens to choose between many modes of commuting. And in a city where off ramps and six-lane motor vehicle arteries are already plentiful, there are nowhere near enough cycling options on offer.

This is not simply a matter of personal preference. Calgary is a fast-growing city, stampeding toward traffic problems that won’t be fixed by more roads. Indeed, if more roads solved these problems, Calgary wouldn’t have any, because this has been the default solution for decades. What’s more, Calgarians are already choosing to leave their cars at home. Since 1996, the automobile’s share of downtown-bound trips has dropped from 60 per cent to less than 40 per cent. The CTrains are jam-packed at rush hour. The existing options are maxed out.

Active transportation — walking and cycling — must form a larger share of the city’s commuting future. And in city after city across North America, only one tool has been proven to get lots more people riding bicycles quickly: safe, physically separated cycle tracks. Aside from a hardcore contingent of Lycra-clad cycling obsessives, few people will choose biking amid heavy commuter traffic. It’s unsafe and unpleasant. But from Manhattan to Vancouver, cycle tracks are drawing out commuter cyclists in droves. Here in Calgary, the city’s first physically separated cycle track on 7th Street S.W. inspired a 430 per cent increase in traffic within two months of opening last summer, even though it doesn’t connect to a larger network of safe bike lanes at its southern end. Not yet, anyway.