Calgary city council voted 10 to four to make the downtown cycle track permanent.
There will be one amendment which may affect the 12fth Avenue cycle track. Council has left it open whether the track will relocate to 10th Avenue until a decision is made to go either underground or above ground to build the Green Line LRT project.
The controversial cycle track has been in testing for the past 18 months and while critics say it slows traffic and cuts off access to valuable parking, those in favour say it makes it safer for cyclists to get around in the downtown core.
Mayor Nenshi was one of the original proponents of the project and says the pilot taught them a lot of worthwhile things.
He says that his office has gotten 850 emails from people who support the project and just 20 from people against it.
“More people are cycling, we have lowered the percentage of injury collisions throughout the core and we’ve had pretty minimal impact on automobile traffic, so I’m quite pleased with where council ended up today,” said the mayor. “We have to do some tweaks, we have to do a better job on 8th Avenue on the west side, we have to do a better job on 12fth Avenue around the jogs, I don't agree with the people who said the lane jogs and wiggles actually slow down traffic, I think they are just irritating so if we can fix that to put more through lanes of traffic, I think that's a good outcome."
Last week, the transportation committee sent the item onto council without a recommendation one way or the other, leaving it in their hands to make a decision.
Recently, the Manning Centre released a report in opposition to the idea, going so far as to accuse the city of changing targets to make them more attainable and inflating statistics.
The city denied the reports, saying it was upfront throughout the process.
