Hi Mike. Sure, use my Contact Me to send me a message – I often go over to Ballard to pick up some lunch. Some of the women I work with don’t like the forest part either. They see it as dangerous. So do I. Two things could happen to me there in winter: someone could just step out of the trees in front of me and knock me off the bike, mug me, and worst of all, steal my bike. Or I could slip on the ice, fall off, be hurt, and freeze to death before someone found me. If you read Burnaby’s response, it sounds like they are going to bypass that forest bit completely, with a short route from McKay directly down to Marine. Then I guess we are on Marine. For me it would just be a short distance on Marine, thankfully, because it’s like a race track. All the motorists who complain that cyclists never obey laws should check out the speeds there – almost every motorist is breaking the speed limit there, all the time (I believe the limit is 70, and I don’t think I’ve ever seen anyone going that slow)! I personally don’t like being besides speeding cars, even if there is a bike lane. Just takes one of them to lose control, or decide to send someone a text while doing 110, and I would be road kill.

You raise an interesting point about the sidewalks, Sid. There are none on my street either, although we are close to a skytrain. My kids walk in the street to the skytrain, and I often see moms with their strollers in the street. I guess when Burnaby was planned, the assumption was that everyone would drive everywhere. Still, as is apparent from the City of Burnaby’s response, they do now seem to be thinking in terms of a more planet-friendly, 21st century approach to planning.