David Hay, Q.C., Richards Buell Sutton

Even in the nineties cycling looked completely different than it looks now. It was different then. There were no bike lanes, there were no designated bike paths. There were no segregated routes, no infrastructure at all really.

When they started painting lines on the roadway, they were good from an awareness perspective. They were good from the perspective of trying to recognize that cyclists are unique and need something, in terms of some space in the roadway that they can call their own. I think that was good. 

I never thought they were particularly effective in reducing accidents. In fact, I guess the sad irony I think is that when bike lanes were created, and this may be coincidental, I felt like the volume of my work increased somehow. 

I think there was a sense of complacency that cyclists felt, that when they were in a bike lane they couldn't be harmed. And I think that motorists didn't understand necessarily the nature and purpose of bike lanes. 

There was some hostility, which led to some road rage in certain cases. I had a lot of road rage cases. So the intermingling wasn't necessarily too good for cyclists. Cyclists just had to try to assimilate and find themselves in pretty unhappy situations. 

Colin, former Director of VACC/HUB Cycling, current Director of BC Cycling Coalition

People don't understand what sharing the road is. Some people still see sharing the road as "cyclists get out of my way." They look at that sign showing the car and the cyclists side by side, and they say yeah, the cyclists should allow me to squeeze by.

Kino Roy, HUB Cycling Maple Ridge - Pitt Meadows committee volunteer and City of Maple Ridge Active Transportation Advisory Committee member

There's those people with their giant trucks and they cuss at you. It definitely can rattle you, scare you. 

People who don't have a thick skin, that's going to really affect them, that's going to make them not want to bike. 

For me, I've dealt with traffic a lot and so you kind of get used to it. People who don't have that thick skin, they're just not going to bike, which is sad.