Bike bridge story:another language

[shootingstar]

Cycled over with group to opening of yet another new major cycling facility grand opening: Canada Line bike-pedestrian bridge...which gets you to the airport from downtown Vancouver in a less stressful manner as a cyclist. If it rains too hard, you can jump onto the public transit train.

Today surprisingly there were more pedestrians than we cyclists there expected. But they enjoyed the cake at the end too!

I might have gotten into 1 of the local newspapers but I won’t be able to understand the newspaper language: it’s in Chinese. I must have had the right “look” since reporter approached me directly. Took my photo even though I could not speak either dialect properly… but methinks better, that reporter gets newspaper include his shot of an (Asian) mom and her 2 girls in the bike trailer, is a better, more inclusive appeal to Chinese language readers.

It is good that the Chinese language news and tv media were there, as well as “mainstream” English media….because the bike-pedestrian 1 km. bridge under the light rapid train line runs into a municipality, Richmond which has a high population of Asians (Chinese, Japanese & others). So more people to rope into cycling passion.

I am in the high-vi lime green and grey jacket with red helmet in some photos.
Photo of guy by the cycling group table, biked with all pamphlets, maps plus the table (folded up)..and later bought the large Costco carrot cake to celebrate in blue bike storage trailer that you see opened up.

There was also a group of native Indian youth (Musqueam) cycling group from one of the in-town aborginal reserves. One young man told me that they do outreach bike rides with different local schools, while at the same time serve as ambassadors of native culture. They are in the 3rd photo, wearing light blue T-shirts with an aboriginal design logo.

[buddha_bellies]

Do you know how many people showed up for the ribbon cutting? I went on it around 3:30 PM today. The rain hold out so that was good.

And yes! I was surprised by how many more pedestrains there were. I hope there will be more signs at the Richmond part to show where the bike routes are. It goes to the middle of nowhere if you didn't know of Van Horne Way, linking to Garden City.

I managed to go to Ikea from there. Way better then taking Knight street bridge. It's so peaceful! Hurray for the new bridge!

[shootingstar]

Approx. 250 people max. After all, it was on a workday, Friday. I agree..they had better put some some signage at both ends of bike-pedestrian bridge across the river to guide people. Part of the difference, is Translink was responsible (with the private company that will run and maintain) just for the bike bridge deck itself but the bike route markings/paving path approaches on each end of the bridge, is the responsibility of each municipality. So there needs to be fine-tuning, completion of on road bike lane approaches by City of Vancouver (north end) and City of Richmond (south end).

Article: http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/...rticle1252784/
More pics, that give better visuals of relationship of train to bike bridge deck:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/thebuzz...40897294/show/

Map how to approach the bike bridge from north or south ends.
http://buzzer.translink.ca/wp-conten...geapproach.jpg

Next 4 months will be interesting to see how traffic patterns in all modes might change along certain streets/routes. But as anyone knows, real change to people's regular choices of transportation modes, happens over several years.

A handful of long-term cycling volunteer advocates did come from afar..Maple Ridge, Victoria (from Vancouver Island), etc. came to this event.