Surrey Critical Mass

Surrey Critical Mass
We're not blocking traffic: we are traffic!

Thanks to all who rode!

Surrey's first Critical Mass happened Saturday, March 24th (2007). We met at 3:30pm in the square under Central City tower, within view of the Surrey Central SkyTrain Station, and left at 4pm in a light drizzle. Do we want to do more rides? Let's talk. Send us an email at surreycriticalmass@gmail.com (and send us photos for posting too!)

Friday, March 23, 2007

Some typical Surrey bicycle infrastructure

Here's a photo snapped a few weekends ago of the "bike lane" along 100th Ave, I believe near 140th Street, heading east out to Guildford that got blogged about a few posts back. It's not pretty.

You can barely see it, but there's a painted bicycle outline on the side of the road (near the front of the car). It's covered in grit.

There's also not too many cyclist-controlled traffic signals or "share the road" signs, or designated "off-corridor" bike routes (like 37th Ave, or 10th Ave. in Vancouver, for example)

Part of the problem though is the way the city is build. More and more scrub brush and forest and field are being torn up for warehouses, for single-family cul-de-sac "neighbourhoods" and there's no good walkable strips (think Main, Commercial, parts of Broadway, 4th Ave, Dunbar, Davie... the list goes on.) I don't know how or when that's going to change for Surrey; but it seems like they need to start cutting up the auto-centric mega-blocks and doing traffic calming to encourage people to get out and walk, and talk...and cycle. (This is a widely-held urban planning principle.) Right now, so much of Surrey is just so... impersonal.

Anyhow, email us if you've got your own Surrey-cycling story to share... or just a photo of either a working or a problematic "bike route."

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