Hi Claude, welcome to my blog! Thanks for the thanks – I really appreciate it. I put a ton of work into this, at the end of a tiring day of working and commuting, and it’s really cool to know that some people read it and appreciate it.

I think I have to follow up on the Sea to River Route further – I really appreciated Stuart’s response, but I am still not happy about that closure. Every time I go through that closure (10 times a week) I get annoyed again about the blatant lack of respect for cyclists. Stuart said it is under the jurisdiction of Metro Vancouver, so I am going to contact them and ask why they are not following the City of Burnaby’s guidelines for such closures (as outlined by Stuart). I am going to cc as many people as I can in the Mayor’s office as well … I am a big fan of Vision Vancouver, and I cannot imagine that they want cyclists to be treated like this. And for months and months and months! There is no sign that it will ever be finished …

Thank you Stuart for your response.

Oh, good to know. I have waited patiently (and then impatiently) for ages at times, and then finally pushed my bike over to the side of the road and hit the pedestrian buttom.

Mmm, that’s an interesting visual. I’m usually so heavily laden with panniers, I don’t think I’d get my bike upright again … I’ll add it to my list of experiments though! I’d love to understand how these things work. Today at Stillcreek and Douglas I was checking it out, trying to figure out the mystery. There is something that looks like a tiny satellite dish, angled down towards the road – perhaps that’s the visual sensor?

If the light won’t change for your bike, then you can treat it as an inoperative signal. This means you behave as if it were a stop sign.

My understanding is that there is typically a coil under the street, and the magnetic field gets disrupted by the presences of enough metal. If the bike hits the right spot, the sensor at the other end “notices”. Sometimes it helps to lie the bike down on its side.

Yes, good point about the paint. Today at Still Creek, for the first time ever (in 2 years of using that route to get to work), the lights changed when there were no cars waiting. However, there were 2 bikes instead of just my one. I am pretty short, and I am thinking perhaps I am just too short to trigger the change, but the other cyclist was taller and therefore it went off? I am going to experiment on the weekend.

I appreciate the thoughtful insight that Stuart provides here. It is good to know that somebody at City Hall is in touch with these issues.

The final comment regarding the signal trigger at Still Creek @ Douglas reminds me of an issue that bothers me in general with the intersection sensors in Burnaby: I don’t know which ones are good with bikes, and which ones aren’t.

I have experimented with some of the signals in areas where I have to ride in the automobile lane and have found that most (but not all?) of them can be triggered by a bicycle if it’s located in the right spot. The problem is that–if you don’t hit the right spot–you don’t really know about it for a couple of minutes. This not only makes one late for meetings, but kind of makes cyclists look rather foolish.

Paint is cheap. For those of us who are relatively comfortable sitting in an automotive left turn lane, it would be extremely useful if there was a symbol of some sort painted on the road to show us the best place to stop.