Login / RegisterPark-board vice chair Aaron Jasper aims to reduce Stanley Park seawall "conflicts"
Having worked for 15 years as a Gray Line tour guide, Vision Vancouver park-board vice chair Aaron Jasper knows how harrowing the Stanley Park seawall can be during the busy season.
“That was always one of the things,” Jasper told the Straight by phone, referring to the tour stop at the totem poles. “ ‘Okay, folks, there’s the washrooms, and here’s where you get your coffee, and that’s where you get postcards. But if you walk over there, please, please look both ways and be careful, because all I have is a little first-aid kit and a few bandages. So please, please be careful.’ ”
Jasper said he recently took his wife and young daughter for a Mother’s Day brunch at the Boathouse on Kits Beach, where he also noticed what he called “near misses and accidents waiting to happen” on the busy walkway outside the restaurant.
The two-term commissioner and West End resident has put forward a motion to “minimize conflicts” between cyclists, pedestrians, and other nonmotorized users of the 26-kilometre stretch of seawall and pathway that winds around Stanley Park and False Creek. It is up for debate at the May 28 park board meeting on Beach Avenue. In the motion, Jasper is asking that the board direct staff to work with city engineers to “minimize conflict in high volume pedestrian and cyclist interface areas along the seawall”.
Jasper claimed that the motion leads off from an as-yet-unreleased park-board cycling plan commissioned last year, following work by the city bicycle advisory committee.
Non-Partisan Association park commissioner Melissa De Genova told the Straight she found it odd that Jasper was highlighting this area now, especially after he voted in March 2010 in favour of the Cactus Club Cafe replacing the old food concession at English Bay.
“I just think that public consultation is paramount to any decisions that we make,” De Genova said by phone. “And if we are revisiting this, this is something that should have been planned beforehand, before the Cactus Club went in. I think that, unfortunately, the Vision Vancouver park board is doing things backwards.”
I enjoy running and walking on the pedestrian side of the Stanley Park Seawall. Or rather, did.
It is a rare Sunday now where I don't seem to have to yell at arrogant or uninformed cyclists who decide to aggressively bike in that pedestrian lane. Some sheepishly comply with my request to please move to the cycle lane.
Most don't, though, and tell me in no uncertain terms to mind my own business, usually accompanied with a string of colourful expletives.
I am not a 250 pound male, so being sworn at (and almost run over) by the usual collection of half-witted, tattooed, knuckle dragging cretins doesn't install warm, fuzzy feelings about my park experience.
Worse, these asshats wend their way around seniors, little kids and families as theyapparently find the tourists in the designated bike lane too slow for their liking. They own the place, you see.
Many of them also seem to belong to the group of stoned denizens who like to spark up some stink weed at their little haven at 3rd Beach. They too, don't seem to think that "no smoking" rules in the park apply to them and are theirs to break. I, however, register the right to complain about their second hand smoke ruining my experience.
Last summer, when I called 311 to complain, I was put through to the Park Ranger's manager. He expressed his frustration with the lack of enforcement bodies available to patrol around the Seawall--which in my experience, is especially bad from 3rd Beach to the exit from the Vancouver Aquarium, which is basically the north and east sides of the park.
Several rangers should be stationed on that side of the park, from Siwash Rock, around the "off bike" area under the Lion's Gate and east at the kiddy water park. That way, they could actually respond to complaints fairly quickly. Right now---forget it.
Whatever the Park Board decides to do, it is a long time coming. Proper enforcement of "rules of the rode" on the seawall, kicking the dopers and their topless gal pals (listen, honey, they're not THAT pretty) off 3rd Beach would help in returning sanity and civility to the seawall walk.
And civility, in this town, seems to be at a premium.
Or they could put it some kind of speedbumps to get cyclists to slow down. Or maybe they just need to do regular campaigns handing out tickets to cyclists going over 30k.
Or they could just ban bikes on the seawall. They can still use the road and all the other trails, so what's the big deal?
I now realize what the problem is and let me tell you, it is not dangerous bikers. It's the passive aggressive, holier than thou whiners which living in Vancouver has allowed me to grow so accustomed to. People who are terrified of bending any rules and have a jealous resentment to those who are not. People who take comfort in the fact that they can finally speak up to someone, because they've already started their getaway. I noticed that this article didn't give any statistics regarding seawall injuries, only "conflicts". I suspect that the number of injuries is not unlike that of any other town. The number of conflicts however, makes perfect sense to me. If you're between 35 and 50, have lived in Vancouver for 10 years or more and are mindful on a daily basis of your carbon footprint, here's some free advice: keep your trap shut and try to have a good time for once.
We're about to lose the only nice walk in our neighbourhood, the walking path around Langara Golf Course. It used to be a no cycling path but there's a plan to put a cycle route along the south edge of the golf course and only a half block away from an already designated bike route on 57th Avenue.