Saskatoon council approves sprawling bike corridor along Avenue C

Saskatoon city councillors approved a project that will introduce a cycling and pedestrian corridor running from the river to Circle Drive.

The series of changes came with plenty of roadblocks at Wednesday's regular business meeting.

As part of the city's active transportation plan, a series of bike paths, traffic-calming measures and shared pathways are planned along Avenue C from Spadina Crescent all the way to 45th Street.

Business owners along the third phase of the Connecting Avenue C project — from Circle Drive to 45th Street — opposed what the project could do to the area as the city looks to widen the street with a sidewalk on one side and a wide shared-use path on the other.

The city would need to convert land used by businesses. More than 90 parking spots throughout the route would be lost to accommodate the new plans. The Travelodge Hotel would stand to lose 44 parking spots for the project.

"Travelodge simply can't accommodate losing the loss of this much land or this much parking," Glenn MacKay, a lawyer representing the hotel, said to council.

"It's certainly the Travelodge's position that we're prepared to exercise whatever legal avenues are available to us to make sure that we protect our interests."

For hours, the conversation centred around mixing bikes and pedestrians with large vehicles on a busy road near Circle Drive and Avenue C — one of the most dangerous intersections in the city.

"Why would you want to bring cyclists into this hornets nest," Keith Moen, executive director of the NSBA, said.

"In other words, if there were approximately 10,000 intersections in Saskatoon, there would 9,999 safer intersections in Saskatoon to incorporate a bike lane.”

The changes would add less than two metres to the width of the street and wouldn't affect traffic in any way, according to administration. Bikes would not be on the road. No sidewalks currently exist in the area. The east side would have a standard sidewalk added, and the west side would have a three-metre multi-use path added.

As speaker after speaker spoke about the dangers, Coun. Mairin Loewen figured this plan would help with that.

"The theme that I heard a number of times today and at the transportation committee was 'this area is too unsafe to add infrastructure,' which in my view, would actually make it more safe."

Many councillors weren't impressed with the lack of specifics included in the 275-page report from WSP outlining the functional design.

"We don't know the usage and we can't forecast it, and 'if you build it, they will come' is not a business plan," Coun. Randy Donauer said.

Hilary Gough had a quick reply for Donauer when thinking back on all the other projects council approved with less information available.

"We don't count people swimming across the river in order to understand the need for a bridge," she said.

Council ultimately approved the $8.79 million project. Construction won’t begin for up to 10 more years, and the city will look to other levels of government to help fund the project.