Vancouver’s New Public Bike Pumps Spark Outrage

Public Bike Pump at Science WorldSome elements of Vancouver’s media stirred the pot last week over, of all things, two public bike pumps. The pumps were recently installed at Hawks Ave. and Union St. (on the Adanac bike route) and at Science World, near the convergence of the Seaside, Adanac, Ontario, and Central Valley Greenway bike routes. The pumps fit both Schrader and Presta valve types, and have been builIt to resist the elements. It’s been reported that the two pumps cost a total of $6,000.

CBC first reported on these pumps in early March. You can listen to Margaret Gallagher’s High Velocity report here.

However, it wasn’t until last week when Scout Magazine and then the Vancouver Courier ran a story that things started heating up. Both The Province’s editorial board and CTV went trolling, and Yahoo! Canada News piled on for good measure. The Province ran an anonymous editorial that was nothing short of an anti-cycling diatribe and then CTV devoted 3 minutes at the top of their 5pm newscast to outrage over this expenditure (with article and comments here). They also ran a web poll:

BC CTV web poll 2013-03-15

Side note: The Province requires Facebook login to comment on their editorials, CTV allows anonymous comments. Comparing and contrasting the difference and level of civility in the comments is left as an exercise to the reader, but let me say that people are much less likely to run their mouths when they actually have to put their name to it.

Twitter was pretty much agog at the level of outrage these two media outlets were trying to drum up. View the story “Vancouver Public Bike Pumps” on Storify

First, Jordan Bateman of the Canadian Taxpayer’s Federation pointed out The Province’s 155-word tirade against the pumps.

Then CTV picked up on the story, highlighted the “European” pump angle, and ran the web-poll.

Response on Twitter was swift:

On Sunday, however, The Vancouver Sun wrote a much-less negative story about the pumps.

The outrage is, of course, ridiculous.

The $6,000 cost is nothing compared to … well, pretty much anything associated with road or park improvements. The total budget of improving the Strathcona Linear Park was reported to be $200,000. $3,000 for purchasing and installing a bike pump amounts to 1.5% of the budget. Where’s the outrage over the remaining 98.5% of the budget? What do you think the “public” response would be over the gardening budget or the paving budget of that project? I suspect that, in general, “the public” has no idea how expensive public works are.

Does CTV report the installation costs of water fountains in parks? What about drinking fountains for dogs?

How much do you think that cost?

These facts are known: increasing cycling in a city positively affects public health and reduces traffic congestion. This in turn results in positive contributions to the local economy. The City of Vancouver has recognized this for years; both the former NPA council and the current Vision council have made statements indicating that it’s a priority for the city to increase cycling in Vancouver. Increasing cycling amenities, like putting in public bike pumps, repair stations, better bike parking facilities, better bicycle access on transit, etc., increases the amount of cycling in the city.

The outrage should be that it’s taken until 2013 for two public bike pumps to be installed in the city.

Public bike amenities, like public washrooms, and yes, even drinking water fountains for dogs, are part of what make a city liveable and sustainable. They contribute to the greater good of the city. It’s a shame that so many people cannot see beyond themselves.

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