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So my understanding is that it'll take 25 years to get bike routes? And only downtown, where people don't live?
Bike routes need to complete a full circuit to be useful. It needs to branch out into nearby residential communities.
This also doesn't mention if they'll be "add some paint and call it a day" bike lanes or actual, dedicated, separated bike lanes like in Montreal.
Long-term projects do tend to be...long-term, yeah.
I'm not a cyclist, but it seems to me that downtown is the most glaring problem for cycling in this city - the residential communities you mention are relatively well-served (though I don't doubt there's a lot of room for improvement).
And the presentation most definitely does say the preferred options are protected bike lanes.
Thank you, I missed the part about protected bike lanes.
I lived in North Kildonan for a bit and the bike path (or lack thereof) left to be desired. Other areas may be different.
Henderson Hwy, which goes downtown, is a massive six-lane street with a large side walk on each side, going 60 km/h with no protection for cyclists and minimal protection for pedestrians in case of a crash. This could easily be reduced to 4 lanes, 50km/h with a unidirectional, protected bike lane on both sides.
One issue is that active transportation routes in the city tend to deviate from the main roads, instead following old rail lines and the rivers. I'd imagine that adds a lot of time to commutes, but at least they exist?
In the case of the Kildonan area, I guess they expect people to use the Chief Peguis/Gateway corridors, but that's pretty out of the way for certain destinations.