Danish research (20,000 kids) has shown that kids who cycle or walk to school (rather than by car or public transportation) perform measurably better on tasks demanding concentration and this effect lasts for up to four hours (stronger effect than making sure they eat breakfast!). Other research around active school transport has shown better way-finding skills, superior school grades, and kids who are more physically active among the groups who wheel and walk to school.

Inspired by this research, along with our own biking traffic study (ongoing), we surveyed parents in Cochrane (N=269 in May/June 2021), and came back with pretty rich data around what the barriers are to actively transporting kids to school. This survey was sent out from almost all of the schools in their weekly newsletters, along with posts to social media, and a notice in the newspaper as well.

A summary of our findings is shown below.

Bike Cochrane’s Bike to School Survey 2021 Findings

While the slope of our pathways is a challenge (we’ve measured as high as 26% in both Sunset and Gleneagles), there isn’t a pathway spec in Cochrane. So not surprisingly, our developers build pathways as cheaply as they can, and these are steep. We would like to see the Town write a pathway specification to keep our pathways less than 8% (as Canmore and Calgary and Vancouver and many others have), but let’s leave that topic for now.

Further to the basic findings that 91% of parents WANT their kids to be able to wheel and walk to school, we dove quite a bit deeper into the safety barriers that parents cited. Having ‘open text’ survey questions meant that we got very rich data into where parents felt unsafe with their kids on bikes, scooters, or by foot. These types of responses are harder to classify, but Bike Cochrane’s active transportation committee tried a few different ways of pulling this data into actionable pieces. See an attempt below at classifying the safety concerns of parents:

Summary of Specific Issues in Cochrane that make parents feel unsafe about wheeling and walking

Another way to try to illustrate these challenges is with a word cloud as shown below, capturing the raw text from or survey respondents around ‘safety issues’.

Word Cloud of ‘Safety Issues’ for Cochrane parents around ‘Wheeling and Walking’ to school

Trying to take a deeper look into the infrastructure-related issues in Cochrane helps us to better prioritize future active transportation investments. Taking every comment from the survey along with understanding the school (destination) and the neighbourhood (origin) of the respondent allowed us to place their comments on a map of Cochrane, and then work back a set of ‘clusters of concern’ within the Town. The top 5 of those concerns are listed below, along with the painstaking work to place the red/orange pins accurately along the map.

Clusters of concern for active transportation in Cochrane per Bike to School Survey 2021

The first item here is being worked on through the recent 1A construction (thank you to our Town for driving this work!). The second item (Highway 22 at Quigley/Glenbow) has been raised with Alberta Transportation since Hwy 22 (and Hwy 1A) are provincial highways. Intersection safety is very important though and Bike Cochrane will continue to work with the Town to advocate for improvements to this corridor sooner than later. At the very least, painting proper zebra stripes annually needs to be done at this intersection. Bike Cochrane placed a bike counter for June and showed almost 6000 bikes on the SIDEWALK of Quigley Drive and it correlated strongly with school hour commuting, so that’s a LOT of kids crossing this intersection. While (thankfully) there haven’t been many actual collisions, there have been a LOT of near misses, mostly from left/right turns across the crosswalk.

The 3rd item (a proper pathway through the Ranche) has been called out by the many plans that have looked at the Town’s infrastructure (Bike Network Plan 2012, Connecting Cochrane 2017), but it simply hasn’t been done yet. With the amount of discussions about pathways and sidewalks and non-vehicular transportation this recent election, we’re hopeful that our new Town Council will make this a priority sooner than later and address the active transportation deficit in Cochrane.

The 4th item (Heritage/Heartland can’t directly get to downtown) will be addressed in the 1A/22 intersection plans with a pathway on the south side of the 1A. See those plans (from April 2021) HERE although the Town will need to connect into this new pathway underpass.

The last item (Quigley Drive being unsafe for kids presently) is coming up for a redesign/rework in 2023’s capital budget, and Bike Cochrane looks forward to working with the Town on better solutions than simply painting bike lanes on roads. While a dorky spandex-clad road biker (like me) is fine with this, I’m only ~2% of cyclists, and neither my wife, my kids, nor my Mom feel safe on bike lanes with traffic zipping by me.

If you’re still reading, then you clearly want to see our complete ‘Bike to School 2021’ survey results HERE.

WORKSHOP!

Armed with our excellent survey results, along with a presentation from Subha from Share The Road, and an AMAZING guest speaker in Andy from the Town of Canmore (note that Canmore recently received a silver award from Bike Friendly Communities), on Oct 5th, Bike Cochrane hosted our first annual ‘Bike to School’ Workshop. We had excellent representation from the Town, along with Urban Systems, and worked through various routes on Town maps that fictitious students would take from their homes to a specific school. See our attendees working on routing/safe maps below:

Angie and Simon from the Town’s Parks and Open Spaces Team

We followed their routes using e-bikes and got a chance to see on the ground some of the barriers that schoolchildren in Cochrane face every day as they try to wheel and walk to school. See our team on e-bikes crossing highway 1A at the crosswalk heading up to the Tri-schools area

Bike Cochrane’s ‘Bike to School’ Workshop crossing Highway 1A on their bikes

The feedback from the workshop was very positive and the actions and outcomes will be measured over the course of the incoming Council and our ability to get these projects into capital budget planning cycles.

Bike Cochrane and our workshop attendees will be advocating for improvements to our active transportation network. The goal is that any child in any community in Cochrane should be able to safely wheel and walk to any school. Bike-Friendly Communities encouraged our workshop team to start a Task Force towards applying for Cochrane to become a ‘Bike Friendly Community’, and this and other actions will come out of this workshop.

If you’re passionate about active transportation and want to see Cochrane ‘grow up’ as a community, please reach out to Bike Cochrane to join our active transportation committee. Email Paul at paul@bikecochrane.com and let’s help Cochrane get better at connecting our communities along with helping our kids have a better future!

Since our 2021 municipal election comes fast on the heels of our federal election, many members have asked us “I haven’t had time to research the NINETEEN candidates for council? How should I vote?”. While it’s not our goal for Bike Cochrane to become a pressure or political society, it is our goal to advocate on behalf of cyclists to have meaningful change in our community for better active transportation.

As such, we reached out (and followed up) with all of the council candidates asking them to answer a few questions about their position and platforms around funding active transportation. In order to help our members make an educated decision, we are publishing their answers (slightly edited to fit for space) and our questions here. I will say that I’m pleased that 17 of 19 of our candidates responded to our questions and many reached out for more information and to chat about Bike Cochrane. I’m also pleased that almost all of the candidates indicated a desire to begin investing in Cochrane as a ‘Complete Community’ rather than simply putting more money into highways/roads/vehicle investments! This is already a win in our eyes!

If you have any follow-up questions, please email Paul (chair of active transportation committee) at paul@bikecochrane.com. The most important obligation you have as a citizen is to engage during an election cycle, research your options and VOTE! Early voting starts Oct 12 with our election on Oct 18th.

Message to candidates:

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Bike Cochrane (www.bikecochrane.com) is Cochrane’s non-profit cycling advocacy society committed to making our Town more bike friendly.  In the last 12 months, we have collectively volunteered over 1,500 hours of our time to making Cochrane a more bike-friendly community!  With a fast-growing paid membership of over 350 members, we represent cyclists and advocate for our Town and province to improve our pathways and trail network in the spirit of making it better for all to enjoy themselves on bikes and by foot, since every dollar put into pathways and trails helps cyclists, but also helps walkers, parents with strollers, people in wheelchairs and mobility scooters, along with people recreating with pets. 

We have fundraised (~$100K), built, and actively maintain the Launchpad Bike Park (at 30 Bow St if you haven’t visited it).  We actively maintain, build, and repair trails in town (see recent boardwalk built near the Grandfather Tree).  We have a data-sharing agreement with the Town and actively count cyclists and analyze traffic on our pathways today, as we jointly write grants with the Town to increase the funding available to improve our pathways and bike paths in Cochrane.  We look forward to working with you to improve cycling in Cochrane if you are successful in your bid to join (or be re-elected to) Cochrane’s Town Council.

Since more than 60% of our most recent 2020 Active Transportation survey in Cochrane told us that CONNECTIVITY is their biggest issue, Bike Cochrane would like you to take a few minutes to talk to our members and answer the following questions to be shared with our membership in our next newsletter and blog prior to the election.  While we are not a political group and won’t be endorsing candidates, consider this an easy opportunity to share your thoughts with 350+ physically active and community-minded voters in Cochrane.

1. While the last council listed as a strategic priority “focus on multi-modal transportation solutions”, the amount of actual funding that went into pathways and non-vehicular connectivity was relatively small. From a recent analysis that Bike Cochrane did of the Town of Cochrane’s budget relative to other similar-sized towns, this is how Cochrane fared (see below). How would you ensure that council’s priorities like active transportation and connectivity is actually funded?

Capital Budget Analysis for Cochrane 2021-23 and comparison to similar Towns

2. Do you ride a bike for pleasure or for transportation today? If so, where is your favourite place to ride a bike in the Cochrane area?

3. What do you think are the biggest barriers to increasing Cochrane’s proportion of trips taken by foot/bike/scooter (known as ‘mode share’ in active transportation circles and presently around 4% in Cochrane per the 2011 census)? This can have a HUGE effect in reducing vehicular traffic if it’s a well-designed piece of the transportation plan for Cochrane. Specifically, in the work Bike Cochrane has done with encouraging ‘wheeling and walking to school’, we’ve heard from many parents with 91% of the respondents in our 2021 survey (~300 parents) telling us they WANT to bike/walk to school. How would you reduce those barriers if you are successful in being elected to Council? To help your thoughts here, I’ve included a word cloud from our recent ‘Bike to School’ survey where parents answered questions about what makes them feel unsafe when biking/walking in Cochrane:

Word cloud of responses when parents answer “What makes them feel unsafe when Wheeling and Walking in Cochrane”

COUNCIL CANDIDATES ANSWERS HERE

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If you’re still reading here (I applaud you), but also, I’d offer one last thought. To those who think Cochrane is profligate or ‘spends way too much’, the active transportation committee found a striking example of how incredibly underfunded our Town is relative to the next 17 municipalities in Alberta (CFIB Municipal Spending 2021 report). This results in not having enough people at the Town to do things like write grants to bring in more money for projects (and why Bike Cochrane is doing that), or maintain our trails (which is why Bike Cochrane has been stepping in to fix trails). Our Town administration is an incredible example of people who care for the Town stepping up and ‘just trying to keep the lights on’. But, we need to give them the tools and the resources to complete the tasks of implementing plans like our recent Corridor Plan, Connecting Cochrane (2017), and our Bike Network Plan (2012). See a chart from here that shows how under-funded the Town is. It’s awkward for Bike Cochrane to say ‘we need to raise taxes’, but the data doesn’t lie here. You wouldn’t ask a plumber in your home to fix your leaking pipes and then not give him/her a pipe wrench. Our Town NEEDS the tools and staff to bring our Town into this century and start building Cochrane for the future of our kids.

CFIB report highlighting Cochrane’s incredible 'operating efficiency’ but highlighting a major gap in funding

With that, thanks for reading, VOTE on Oct 18th, and please consider volunteering with the Active Transportation Committee if you’re passionate about this topic. Reach out to paul@bikecochrane.com and attend our regular meetings to see how you can help!

Yours in cycling,

-Paul

Hello and welcome back to Paul’s active transportation blog. We’ve had a lot of questions from members and the public about ‘Hey, how’s the Calgary to Cochrane bike pathway coming along?’. The short answer is that it’s a pretty large project with many stakeholders, but I thought I’d outline the project and offer some further reading notes. In addition, there are highways to work around, the Canadian Pacific Railway mainline, and the Bow River, all contributing to make this pathway connection more challenging!

First, let’s start with a map (since we love maps in the Active Transportation Committee!):

Map showing present paved pathway connections between Cochrane and Calgary, along with planned, and not planned links (Bike Cochrane)

As can be seen in the map, the amazing folks at the Glenbow Ranch Park Foundation (and the many, many private donors) along with the Glenbow Ranch Provincial Park have successfully paved the pathway through their entire park. The two biggest ‘gaps’ in these connections are a significant bridge over the Bow River and a CP crossing (the Gleneagles connection is not feasible for an all-ages, all-abilities connection), along with the negotiation of land access with a private landowner abutting the Haskayne Park. In addition, completion of the pathway requires the Southbow Landing development in Cochrane and the Rockland Park development in Calgary to be completed enough to have pathways developed which could be years away.

Now, there are organizations who want to see this project completed including Bike Cochrane, Bike Calgary, the City of Calgary, AB Parks, Glenbow Ranch Foundation, and Rotary International (who sponsored the Rotary Mattamy Pathway in Calgary, one of the largest urban pathways in the world at 145 km). At this time, I can’t direct you to a funding body, or an over-arching group trying to get all of the stakeholders together. All I can say is that Bike Cochrane is also very keen on seeing this project happen, and will keep you informed as these pieces come together. Please email me at paul@bikecochrane.com if you’re interested in working on projects like this to support and advocate for more active transportation in Cochrane and thanks for reading!

Hello out there in cycling land, the recent spring weather is getting gravel-, road-, MTB-, strider-, and all other bikers out and excited! I wanted to share some recent advocacy work that Bike Cochrane has been doing, in order to get a better sense of how Bike Cochrane is assessing our infrastructure, and how we’re trying to improve it for all active transportation users.

With the recent town purchase (still in process) of the Horse Creek Sports Park land, and the ongoing Park master plan of that space, Bike Cochrane analyzed some of the changes in cycling and pedestrian patterns that this work will cause. With a future RVS high school coming onto this site (likely 6-8 years away according to our RVS trustee), there will a shift in kids biking to school that will mean you’ll see high school students from our largest neighbourhood (Sunset Ridge) needing to get across highway 22 at a higher elevation and a few km north of the main intersection. If this issue isn’t addressed, we see the potential for ‘kids playing Frogger’ across the highway. This is in addition to those students from Heartland/Heritage Hills who would be trying to get to St Tim’s Catholic High School.

So, the rough order of looking at active transportation for us at Bike Cochrane is to take a high-level view at the destinations and originations of travelers (in this case high school students in Cochrane). Then, look at the present plans that will change how our traffic infrastructure serves our population (in this case the upcoming Hwy 1A/22 intersection super project that will close access across the highway 22 to pedestrians and cyclists). Then, assess any other impacts from town planning (see present budget, 10 year and 3 year capital projects planning). Then, look at other affected constituencies (in this case, the potential for a recreation corridor between Horse Creek Sports Park and the north part of Cochrane, the potential to connect the Ag Society along with the Ranche House Park, the Horse Creek Park, and the communities on the north side of highway 1A). Finally, consider who the decision-makers and involved parties are for this piece of infrastructure. In this case this consists of AB Transportation who is doing the project, the town of Cochrane who is the biggest impacted party, Rocky View Schools since it’s their students, Cochrane’s Parks and Rec committee who is driving most of our parks planning, Town of Cochrane’s Infrastructure Department, and Cochrane’s Community Development and Planning Department.

The approach then is to research the issue, call out the concern (lack of ability to safely travel across highway 22 on the north side post hwy 1A/22 project), engage, meet with, speak to, convince, and advocate to the people who matter - AB Transportation, Town of Cochrane infrastructure, Town of Cochrane planning, our mayor and council, our Parks and Rec committee, our MLA, Rocky View Schools, and then move to a position where the issue is being addressed and worked on.

As you can see, it’s a lot of ‘behind the scenes’ work where Bike Cochrane is trying to make our community better connected for wheeling and walking (where 62% of you said this is your biggest issue for Bike Cochrane to work on). This is completely volunteer energy and time driving these initiatives, but it’s only through this work that our town gets better. In almost all cases of meeting with public officials and planners, NO ONE was aware of this potential challenge once the 1A/22 project is complete. If you’re interested in working on projects like this, please email me at paul@bikecochrane.com, and please continue to support Bike Cochrane through a membership and/or purchasing cool gear like our upcoming cycle kit and new hats!

See information about the 1A/22 proposed pedestrian underpass below. Thanks for reading!