Safety fears keep cyclists off roads, poll finds

More than half of Ottawa residents say they would be more willing to commute by bicycle if they felt safer on the roads, according to a new poll conducted for the Citizen.

When asked what would prompt them to start biking to work or school, 30 per cent of respondents who don’t normally cycle chose dedicated bike lanes from a list of possibilities, while another 25 per cent cited “regular roads that are safer for cyclists to share.”

“When I look at those two reasons, they pretty much net together in my mind,” said

Ipsos Reid pollster Mike Colledge. “There’s a real emphasis on safety.”

The poll did not differentiate between dedicated bike lanes, which are usually demarcated by painted lines on the road, and segregated ones, which are separated from vehicular traffic by some sort of physical barrier. There’s even some dispute among experts about whether separate bicycle lanes actually reduce accidents and injuries.

The survey also did not expand on exactly what would make roads safer.

“People aren’t necessarily experts in how to design a cycling system,” said Colledge. “They’re basically saying, ‘If it were just safer, if it were clearer and I thought there was more protection, I’d bike more. Or at least I’d give it a try.’ ”

It’s not at all clear that it’s actually unsafe to cycle on the streets of Ottawa. In fact, Colledge said that, at least intuitively, he doesn’t think that’s the case, but that a few high-profile accidents have been responsible for creating that impression.

“When something horrific happens, it gets a lot of (news) coverage and sticks in people’s minds for a long time,” he said.

It’s no wonder, then, that in the west part of the city, 31 per cent of respondents said they’d be more likely to bike to work or school if roads were made safer for cyclists. It’s barely been a year since the hit-and-run collision on March Road injured five cyclists, two of them critically. Only 24 per cent of respondents shared that view in other areas of the city.

According to the Ipsos Reid survey, which was conducted by telephone from June 22 to 24 with 500 adults, 29 per cent of respondents said they commute to school or work by bicycle.

In fact, according to 2001 Statistics Canada Census data, a mere two per cent of employed people in Ottawa bike to work.

Colledge said that the question did not ask survey-takers whether they commuted daily. So anyone who’s biked to the office even once in the last year could have responded “yes.”

But the results still show that “there’s absolutely a willingness to cycle to work,” said the pollster.

He added that in another part of the poll, 82 per cent of people agreed with the statement that the city should do all it can to reduce the reliance on cars in the city. While not a question specifically about cycling, Colledge believes that respondents consider bike use as part of any car-reduction strategy.

“It really looks like there’s a desire on a greater emphasis on biking in the city,” he said.

And yet, 23 per cent of respondents said nothing could prompt them to start commuting on two wheels, “no matter what.”

Another seven per cent said they’d consider cycling more if it were easier to take bikes on public transit, while another five per cent wanted more secure places to lock up their bikes.

There was a big difference between the sexes, the poll found.

When asked whether they cycled to work or school, 39 per cent of men said yes, as opposed to only 19 per cent of women.

“I think there are a lot of reasons why that might be the case,” said Colledge. “They may have more child-care responsibilities, maybe they have more running around, maybe it’s the clothes thing.”

Indeed, said Colledge, although not asked in the poll, lifestyle considerations — such as dragging extra clothes and toiletries along — may play into people’s decisions about whether on not to cycle.

“In my own building in the Market, there are no shower facilities,” he said. “So you’ve biked in, you’re soaked in sweat and you think, ‘How do I go about my day?’ ”

Some of the findings weren’t too shocking, according to Colledge.

For example, of the people who said they commute by bicycle, the largest portion — or 37 per cent — live in central Ottawa. Their commute is shorter as they live nearer to downtown offices.