Pedal power: Cycling numbers rising in Hamilton

More and more people are turning to cycling as a viable way to get around in Hamilton, the city's latest numbers show.

Data collected from multiple sources shows that in the last several years, the number of cycle trips taken in Hamilton has shot up significantly.

Daryl Bender, the city's project manager for alternative transportation, attributes the growth to investment in the city's bikinginfrastructure, the launch of local bike share service SoBi, and shifting attitudes about cycling across North America.

"There's been a real positive trend toward realizing that cycling is a viable mode of transportation," Bender said.

Take, for instance, the Cannon Street bike lanes. In 2015, peak summer ridership was 580 cycle trips daily. Fast forward to 2017, and that number has almost doubled to 972 daily trips.

People want protected cycling infrastructure there's a desire here to become a more bike-friendly city where people can get around safely.-EliseDesjardins,Cycle Hamiltonproject manager

Winter ridership on Cannon has grown has well. What started in 2015 at 75 daily trips has grown to 396 a day in 2017.

A breakdown by ward from the Transportation Tomorrow Survey (TTS) a program created by local and provincial government agencies to collect information about urban travel in southern Ontario shows similar growth.

The TTS data is generated by survey respondents from across the city, who track what mode of transportation they use for their travel.

The data shows that from 2001 to 2016, the percentage of trips that people took on a bike rose in several wards. The effectwas most pronounced in wards one through four, as well as wards six, nine and 13.

In Ward 1, bike trips accounted for just under 4.5 per cent of all travel, while in wards two and three, it was just over 2.5 per cent.

Bender says that while the numbers represent a relatively small share of all trips, they are growing. Ideally, the city would like to see a 6 per cent to 10 per cent level of bike trips.

"We still have a long way to go, certainly, in some wards," he said.

Bike sharealso showing growth

SoBi's numbers are similarly going up. Peter Topolovic, the city's head of sustainable mobility programs, told CBC News that the bike share now has 21,000 active members.

In 2015 (the year the service launched) there were 220,000 trips taken on SoBi bikes throughout the city. In 2017, that number ballooned to 423,000 trips through Topolovic cautions that good weather that whole year may have boosted those results somewhat.

In some ways, SoBi bikes act as advertisements, he said.

"They are intrinsically telling people that Hamilton is a cycling city," he said.

While growth is looking promising, a major provincial funding source for cycling infrastructure has been cut. Last year, the city received $3.7 million from the Ontario Municipal Commuter Cycling program, which was funded by the province's former cap-and-trade program that was then scrapped by the Progressive Conservatives.

The city has plans to use that money to bolster cycling infrastructure, but after that, it will have to go back to the municipal coffers.

Filling in the gaps

Elise Desjardins, project manager with Cycle Hamilton, told CBC News it's "disheartening" that funding was scrapped.

"We need to invest much more than we currently do per year," she said. "We need sustainable funding moving forward that doesn't just come from a climate change funding pot."

In general, Hamilton is a city designed primarily for cars, Desjardins said but there's been a lot of change on that front in the last couple of years.

"We're making good improvements, but we still need to fill gaps to create a connected bike network," she said.

"People want protected cycling infrastructure there's a desire here to become a more bike-friendly city where people can get around safely."

adam.carter@cbc.ca