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A cyclist who was issued a $167 ticket for not coming to a full stop at an intersection says the crackdown on two-wheeled traffic violations in Vancouver during Bike Month harks back to the days of “No Fun City”.

“We are trying to be a bike-friendly city,” Randi Gurholt-Seary told the Georgia Straight at an East Vancouver café. “Having said that, and as a bike commuter, I did not see the actions of the police law enforcement as being bike-friendly. My experience with them at that time was that they were out to punish the cyclists to make an example and to hit them hard.”

On June 16, Gurholt-Seary, a 52-year-old child-care worker, began her regular morning commute to the Britannia Community Services Centre. As usual, this took her west along Adanac Street, a major cycling route in the city. She says that as she approached Nanaimo Street, the signal switched to walk, with the cars stopped at the red lights northbound and southbound.

As she had done hundreds of times before, Gurholt-Seary rolled over the stop line and sailed through the intersection. A police officer stepped out of an alley on the other side of Nanaimo, asked her to pull over, and, after a brief exchange, issued her a ticket for violating Section 186 of B.C.’s Motor Vehicle Act. The section stipulates that all vehicles, including bicycles, must come to a stop before entering an intersection when a stop sign is present, which was the case at that intersection.

Gurholt-Seary is vowing to fight the ticket. And she may not be alone, as she claimed that, in the 45 minutes after she was ticketed, she watched the same police officer catch several other cyclists.

Rob Wynen, vice chair of the city’s bicycle advisory committee, told the Straight that Gurholt-Seary’s experience was not an isolated incident. He said he received several e-mails in the middle of the month from cyclists who had been ticketed at the intersection of Main Street and East 10th Avenue and other locations.



Cyclist Randi Gurholt-Seary describes the events leading up to her getting a $167 ticket.

Vision Vancouver councillor and avid cyclist Geoff Meggs told the Straight, “I was, to be honest, unaware that cyclists couldn’t cross with a walk sign.”

On June 22, Meggs said via cellphone that he had introduced a motion for debate at the council meeting that same day, asking that the city approach the province through the Union of B.C. Municipalities to “do a whole bunch of things”. He noted that the motion, which passed unanimously, calls for a review of the Motor Vehicle Act.

“Cyclists have opinions on aspects of it,” Meggs said. “Some cyclists feel that it should be okay for cyclists to roll through stop signs. I really want to hear more about that before I take a position on individual pieces.”

Meggs said he heard about the crackdown through e-mail. He added he has teamed up with bicycle advisory committee chair Kari Hewett to set up a meeting of senior Vancouver Police Department officials, committee members, and others next week “to talk about enforcement generally”.

In an interview at the Straight office, Hewett said she has been liaising with the Vancouver police on cycling issues for the past five years.

“When I heard about the latest ticketing campaign, given our real, genuine attempts to maintain an open line of communication and work together on this, I was disheartened,” Hewett said.

The Straight left several messages for the VPD’s media-relations department, but no one was made available by deadline to discuss the crackdown.

Cyclist and sustainability consultant Dave Olsen told the Straight he encourages Gurholt-Seary to announce the date she will contest her ticket in court.

“That way, she can pack the courtroom with cyclists,” Olsen said by phone. “It makes a difference.”