How city officials and cycling advocates are addressing Nanaimo’s patchwork of bike paths
Nanaimo’s ‘bike lane Barbie’ says the city is working to make cycling more accessible for everyone.
A few years ago, when the Front Street bike lanes were being built, a man went on a local Facebook group and called Nanaimo Coun. Erin Hemmens a “bike lane Barbie.”
In another instance, Hemmens said she was at the Wellington Pub when someone came up to her and called her the same name. She mentioned the story to Robin Dutton, owner of Coal City Cycles, when she was dropping off her bike there recently.
“He howled,” Hemmens recalled. “He thought it was hilarious. He helped me reframe it, saying ‘this is actually funny’ and surprised me by making stickers.”
Hemmens proudly put the sticker on her bike and posted about it on her Facebook page earlier this month. Now, she estimates that at least 15 cyclists, including Coun. Hilary Eastmure, have taken up the slogan and slapped the stickers on their rides.
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Nanaimo City Council adopted a Transportation Master Plan in 2014 to support sustainable growth and make walking, cycling and taking transit more comfortable options for residents to get around. Hemmens said that plan is now coming to fruition.
“What we’re actually doing is just realizing that plan,” Hemmens said. “This has been in the works for some time.”
The Discourse spoke with Hemmens and local cycling advocates about what’s being done to make cycling an easier — and safer — transportation option in the city.
A patchwork of bike lanes
Nanaimo’s cycling infrastructure is a mash-up of bike lanes, cycle tracks, multi-use pathways, neighbourhood bikeways and trails that are captured on a digital map, but the way they are developed is often through piecemeal requirements when there is a new development or the city is doing other work.
This results in bike lanes that start, run for a few blocks, and then abruptly end.
Photo: Charlotte Cavalié, NACC director rides the E&N Trail. Photo by Mick Sweetman / The Discourse.
Charlotte Cavalié, a director of the Nanaimo Area Cycling Coalition, told The Discourse that the lack of connectivity is a problem.
“When you look at the map, you see that there’s a lot of pieces that are there, but they are not necessarily connected and this is something that needs to be improved,” she said.
Hemmens said part of the reason for this is that the improved bike lanes are built when the city is upgrading other infrastructure, such as underground watermains.
“The city has a policy of putting things back together better than how we found them,” Hemmens said, adding that the city is estimated to grow by 40,000 people in the next 20 years.
As part of development proposals, developers typically have to include upgrades to sidewalks and roadways in front of their projects. Hemmens would like the province to allow municipalities to pool money from developers and use them on centralized projects, such as sidewalks for the overall area.
“We want the power to be able to say ‘you don’t need to put it in front of your lot, because it’s going to create this sense of patchwork. We want to pull it in the centre and use it strategically.’”
New cycling coalition looking at advocacy and education
Charlotte Cavalié from the Nanaimo Area Cycling Coalition says the existing cycling infrastructure in Nanaimo, such as the multiuse E&N trail that runs through the city, needs to be better connected.
Even where there are bike lanes painted on the roads, there is no guarantee that people will feel safe riding in them alongside fast-moving traffic.
Once, while biking down Bruce Avenue, a large pick-up truck passed very close to Cavalié despite the law that says drivers have to leave three metres of space for cyclists.
“It came so close,” she said. “I got so scared.”
Cavalié said the Nanaimo Area Cycling coalition, which reformed with a new board of directors in June and currently has over 50 members, is still in the process of identifying its vision of cycling in Nanaimo and what improvements it would like to see.
But on a personal level, she would like to see bike lanes or cycling paths built on streets that aren’t already busy roadways.
One project the group is looking at taking on is providing bike valet services at large events so people can park their bikes securely when there is a public market or an event in a park and don’t have to drive a car there.
“We want to have a service like this to make sure people can come with their bike to avoid creating more traffic than we need to and making sure that these bikes are watched properly with a service that is free and run by volunteers,” she said.
The coalition is not limited to cyclists and Cavalié said she wants to hear what pedestrians, skateboarders, and people who use scooters need to make active transportation better in the city. The organization also hopes to develop educational programming and collaborate with GoByBike and local school districts.
In 2024, city council voted to spend $75,000 a year for three years for secure bike parking through the Climate Action Reserve Fund. The plan was to provide secure bike parking stalls with charging stations along Commercial Street in the first year, covered bike parking such as lockers or sheltered bike racks near the Port Theatre in 2025 and covered bike parking at the future downtown transit exchange on Terminal Avenue in 2026.
