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Bike lanes are cheap. The fight against them isn't.

Photo by Jackie Alexander / Unsplash

Bike lanes are cheap. The fight against them isn't.

By Rainer Fehrenbacher
6 min read

Today is World Bicycle Day, and Langley voters are about to spend the next several months hearing a lot of nonsense about bike lanes.

With municipal elections approaching, "the war on cars" is going to get loud in our local Facebook groups, in candidate forums, and in the comment sections of various community pages.

Some of the people making that noise are honestly misinformed and have never looked at the actual numbers on what bike infrastructure costs, who uses it, or what it does to traffic.

Others know exactly what they're doing. They've watched American conservatives turn bike lanes into a culture-war wedge issue and figured out that the same playbook farms engagement here.

Either way, the people shouting loudest about "wasted" spending on bike lanes are, almost without exception, the people who have done the least homework on the subject.

When critics of bike infrastructure invite you to picture a cyclist, the image they want in your head is a 45-year-old man in lycra, riding three abreast on 16 Avenue, taking up the whole lane and slowing down your commute.

We've all met (or sometimes been) that guy. It's true that he is annoying to drivers.

He is also irrelevant to this debate, because he is going to ride whether or not we build him a lane. The MAMIL (middle-aged man in lycra) is a recreational athlete, not a commuter. He's training, not getting groceries. Killing bike lane projects won't make him go away.

The bike rider who actually needs protected infrastructure is a 10-year-old who wants to ride to Douglas Park Elementary (not to mention the parent who is then liberated from drop-off and pick-up duties).

She is a working mom who wants to bike to her office downtown so her family can cut costs by selling their second car.

He is a 17-year-old earning minimum wage at a coffee shop in Fort Langley who cannot afford a $10,000-per-year used car and gas.

They are the people who will not get on a bike if it means sharing a lane with a pickup truck doing 60 km/h.

They are also, by the way, the people most likely to vote for the candidate who builds them somewhere safe to ride.

So let's talk about the math.

The math on bike lanes is embarrassingly favourable

In Canada, a painted bike lane can be installed for as little as $20,000 per kilometre.

A fully protected, separated lane in BC typically runs between $300,000 and $1.2 million per kilometre, depending on width, drainage, and signal work.

Victoria's flagship AAA cycling network came in around $3.5 million per kilometre at its most expensive end, which is the high water mark for anything Langley would realistically build.

Compare that to a new urban road lane, where construction costs reach into the tens of millions per lane-kilometre once right-of-way, signals, and structures are included.

The City of Portland calculated that its entire 300-mile bike network would cost the same as one mile of urban freeway.

The jobs case is just as clear. Every $1 million spent on cycling infrastructure creates 11.4 local jobs. The same money spent on road-only projects creates 7.8 jobs. Bike lanes are not just cheaper. They are better stimulus, dollar for dollar.

The health case is better still. In British Columbia, physical inactivity costs the public healthcare system $335 million per year in direct expenditures. Obesity adds another $612 million.

Regular cycle commuting reduces all-cause mortality by 10 to 11 per cent. (I made that bold because it's truly a mind-blowing statistic.)

A UK study of 260,000 adults found cycle commuters cut their risk of cancer and heart disease nearly in half. A Scottish study of 378,253 people found cycle commuters had 15 per cent fewer prescriptions for antidepressants and anti-anxiety medications over five years.

HUB Cycling estimates that 2.3 million adults in BC say they would ride more if there were protected bike lanes available. That is latent demand sitting on the sidelines. They are not asking for racing infrastructure. They are asking for safe infrastructure.

The traffic argument fails on its own terms

The most common objection to bike lanes is that they cause congestion. This claim collapses under contact with the research.

Adding car lanes does not solve traffic. It causes traffic.

A 10 per cent increase in road capacity produces an immediate 4 per cent jump in vehicle volume, a phenomenon transportation engineers call induced demand.

The inverse is also true. A 2026 University of Cambridge study confirmed that building bike lanes, sidewalks, and transit infrastructure yields significantly higher numbers of people who choose to commute via bikes, on foot, or on transit, and fewer in cars.

Vancouver's separated bike lanes increased cycling trips by 40 per cent in three years without measurable impacts on car travel times.

Sidewalk cycling on Hornby Street dropped 80 per cent after the protected lane went in, which is itself a safety win for the pedestrians and store frontages drivers say they want to protect.

There is one more piece of the traffic story that almost nobody talks about: School drop-off lines account for roughly 20 per cent of morning commute traffic.

Only 47 per cent of Canadian students who live within a five-minute walk or ride of their school actually walk or ride. A pilot in Miami that paired a "bike bus" with a pop-up protected lane cut the school drop-off car line by 30 per cent.

Translation: if Langley kids could safely bike to school, the morning commute would meaningfully improve for the drivers who have to be in their cars.

Bike lanes do not punish drivers. They thin the traffic jam.

The American import nobody asked for

Anti-bike-lane politics in Canada have started to look indistinguishable from the American MAGA playbook.

Ontario Premier Doug Ford spent over $270,000 in outside legal fees fighting Toronto's protected lanes. An Ontario court struck down his removal law as unconstitutional, finding it would increase deaths and injuries.

The judge ruled, on the basis of expert evidence the Ford government itself commissioned, that removing bike lanes would not reduce congestion.

It was always a culture war, not a transportation policy.

Langley voters should recognize the imported script when they hear/read it.

Local businesses benefit when foot and bike traffic increases. Studies in New York found protected lane corridors boosted retail sales by up to 24 per cent, with one stretch jumping 49 per cent. People on bikes shop more often and spend more per month than people who drive, according to research from Portland, Vancouver, and across Europe.

This should not be a hard call. Bike lanes are among the cheapest, highest-impact public investments a municipality can make.

They cut healthcare costs. They cut traffic. They boost small business. They help kids get to school safely without a parent burning gas in an SUV drop-off line.

In the 2026 municipal election, listen carefully for who is repeating American outrage scripts and who is doing the actual math.

The first group is not fighting for your tax dollars. They're using disinformation to manipulate your outrage.

References and Further Reading

Construction costs and job creation

Health and mortality

BC and provincial demand

Induced demand and traffic

Schools and drop-off traffic

Ontario / culture war context

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Tagged in:

City, Community, Infrastructure, Township, Transportation, Safety

Last Update: June 03, 2026

About the Author

Rainer Fehrenbacher Langley, BC

Rainer and his family live in the Nicomekl area of Langley City. During his free time, he enjoys going for bike rides with his amazing partner and laughing with his 2 year old son.

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