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!

Hi there! As the weather is heating up, every possible type of bicycle is being prepared for an amazing year of cycling!

In the Active Transportation world, we are getting ready for the roll-out of Cochrane’s first ‘Walk and Bike to School’ program. We’re really excited about bringing bike safety, safer connectivity for kids and adults, and just fun on bikes to the schools of Cochrane. Watch this space for more on this program, and if you’re interested in volunteering, our Active Transportation Committee can always use more help - email to paul@bikecochrane.com.

Thanks to all of you who responded to our ‘Wheeling and Walking’ survey in December and January. With a strong response (N=120), we had almost half the respondents for a typical ‘Let’s Talk Cochrane’ survey, so we were pleased to see the diversity and thoughtfulness in responses.

General conclusions from the survey are:

• People feel safe riding their bikes on protected, separated pathways

• People generally don’t feel safe riding on roads/highways.

• 62% of respondents felt that Bike Cochrane’s #1 priority should be advocating for improved connectivity/pathways in our town.

  Almost half (48%) of respondents LEAVE Cochrane at least once a week for riding. These are missed tourism dollars for Cochrane!

Specifically, both Sunset and Fireside were called out as communities that aren’t well-connected. While the upcoming Ranche House Master Plan should help connecting Sunset into the pathway system, Fireside is a bit more of a challenge. From our Active Transportation priorities work last year, we investigated an overpass for Highway 22 at James Walker Trail, but it’s definitely not a cheap option (~$1.8M) so it’ll take a bit more work to find better options here.

See below chart showing some of the barriers that stop people from biking for transportation:

Question 2 from Bike Cochrane’s Wheeling and Walking Survey Dec 2020-Jan 2021

In addition to our completed survey, we have also completed an agreement with the Town of Cochrane to partner on gathering better data. Through the generosity of Metrocount, we have a loaner bike counter that we’ll be deploying around Cochrane’s pathways this spring, summer, and fall to validate some of our data around usage, but also to get richer data sets around use in a number of pathways that will help us advocate more intelligently for better connectivity in Cochrane. We trialed it this winter and learned the ropes of analyzing these datasets so it’s ready for our busy biking season! If you see this sign on your pathways, know that you’re being counted and Bike Cochrane and the Town are working to make your town better!

If you are passionate about cycling and active transportation and have a few hours to volunteer, please email Paul at paul@bikecochrane.com. We’ll see you out there on your bike!

Hi there,

Welcome back to a new year of wheeling and walking around Cochrane. As Bike Cochrane prepares for our presentation to the Town of Cochrane, the Active Transportation Committee felt that it would be useful to share some of the context around our research with our membership.

As discussed in my last post, we’ve been analyzing Strava Metro’s data of cyclists, runners, and walking users in Cochrane to get a better sense of where people are using our spaces. We’ve also been researching our town’s Capital planning documents to get a sense of where they’ll be investing taxpayers’ money in the coming years. In addition, we’ve also been digging deeper into the Cochrane Bicycling Network Plan 2012 to see where our user needs and our town’s infrastructure needs align.

This has resulted in a summary of projects or ‘top 10’ as David Letterman used to present. The Active Transportation Committee took the top 10 projects outlined within the bicycle network plan, and began to scope out the construction costs of some of the projects using some of the Town’s budgetary numbers from Capital Budgets along with numbers from construction projects we could get our hands on.  Then we took a swag at the number of people helped by a given project.  For some regional pathway connections like in Heritage, this would be pulled from the latest published Census figures from 2019 for that neighbourhood.  For some projects like on the Bow River Pathway, this benefits the whole town, and so the entire population shows up in the people helped column. 

While this isn’t a perfect metric as we don’t have a good sense of how MANY people are actually using an existing trail network, it’s a pretty good starting look at how these projects would stack up.  The larger projects like underpasses and overpasses would wind up towards the bottom, not because they’re not important, but because they’re expensive.  One project near the bottom is a proposed underpass under the new highway 22 interchange that would allow cycle and pedestrian traffic access from the largest community in Sunset to what will be our largest outdoor space once the Horse Creek Park is complete.  What’s nice about this methodology though is that it helps to put some structure around WHY a given project would get pushed towards the top of the Capital Projects Budget.  A new proposed project could be given a similar metric and see where it falls so that we can discuss why it may be more or less important than others.

While the result is a bit of an eye chart, looking at the top 4 projects here, we see a project to make the Bow River Pathway safer, one to allow the newly repaired Railway Street to operate as a safer corridor for cyclists, a new multi-use pathway along Griffin Road, and completing the paving project of Glenbow Park, something that the Town’s Parks department has proposed previously.

Now this metric is just using population data.  What if we could actually count how many people use a pathway or an area?

In my next post, I’ll review our thinking on the Bow River Pathway space and some of our community’s comments on that space. Then, I’ll touch on what Strava Metro data brings to this discussion.

As always, if you want to help, or have comments, please email me at paul@bikecochrane.com.