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Whether you hate traffic jams or crave city streets that are great for walking and cycling, Gil Penalosa is a person of interest. Penalosa wields influence in the world of transportation system design, including with Edmonton city councillors.

Penalosa, who leads the non-profit Toronto-based 8-80 Cities organization, earned my respect by being the first transportation expert to nail exactly why Edmonton’s wonky bike lane program went wrong, his argument being that most cyclists will never feel safe on lanes painted on roads, with no real separation from traffic.

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Penalosa was in Edmonton again on the weekend to help push forward Edmonton’s transportation plan, brought in by the group “Paths for People” to lead a seminar with Mayor Don Iveson and a handful of city councillors.

Here are 10 key ideas Penalosa pushes:

Massive infusion of money isn’t crucial to a good transportation program. “The infrastructure for walking and cycling is very inexpensive,” Penalosa says. “Compared to any infrastructure for cars, it’s nothing.” All that’s needed for a working bike line is a physical separation between cars and bikes, which can be done with plastic pylons or planters. A city like Buenos Aires, Argentina, is broke, Penalosa says, but in the past 30 months it built 130 km of protected bikeways. Only two things increase cycling: lowering speed limits in neighbourhoods to 30 km/h, so people are safe cycling on residential roads, and setting up a minimum grid of bikeways in protected lanes connecting all areas of the city. Lower limits have been accepted in other cities and can be in Edmonton, especially if people become aware of public health issues and their own biases, Penalosa says. “When you say, ‘Do you want the speed limit in front of your house to be 30 km/h?’ 90 per cent of people say, ‘Yes.’ When you say, ‘Do you want the speed in front of everybody’s home to be 30 km/h, they say, ‘Oh, no, no, no, not everybody’s home, just my home.’ “ Buses are the best system of mass transit, even if they’re not sexy. LRT can provide excellent movement of people, but Bus Rapid Transit, or BRT, is a much better investment, giving four times the coverage in a city for the same cost as LRT. The key, Penalosa says, is to provide dedicated lanes for BRT so the buses can move smoothly and rapidly. “What provides speed is not if the wheels are rubber or metal or whatever. What makes speed is if you have dedicated lanes or not.” Most people are, in fact, open to cycling, Penalosa says. Only 30 per cent of the population will never bike. One per cent are fearless cyclists, who will bike in traffic. Another five per cent are confident cyclists and will eventually bike if you only paint lines, as Edmonton tried. But the remaining 55 to 60 per cent will bike if segregated bike lanes are built. We need more walkable and bikeable neighbourhoods for our mental and physical health. Sixty per cent of us are obese or overweight. Walking and cycling every day are great for fitness, Penalosa says, and also great for your mood. To encourage slower driving in residential areas, new roads should be built narrower, with the old roads being given street diets, with such things as narrowed intersections to slow traffic. Seniors are three times more likely than anyone else to be hit by cars. To help seniors get across major streets, it’s good to have traffic islands in the middle so they can make the trip over two lights if necessary. Walking, cycling and public transit need to be in sync to work. To go one km, you walk, Penalosa says. To go three km, you bike. To go 10 km, you take public transit. “You can set up the best public transit system in the world, but it’s not going to pick you up in front of your house and drop you off at your destination. So if the city is not nice to walk or bike, public transit is not going to work.” With all three levels of government in favour of public transit, massive change could come quickly. “The stars are aligned in a few of the provinces, Alberta, Ontario. We have the three levels of the government. So at this moment you should commit as much as possible into public transit before the stars become unaligned again.”

Penalosa’s points won’t please everyone. Perhaps he’s got a few things entirely wrong. Overall, though, I can’t say I’ve come across a more thoughtful transportation expert with a superior program for change.

dstaples@postmedia.com

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