While the city has introduced a real-time road map for Calgarians to see which roads have been plowed, some cyclists are feeling left in the cold.
Earlier this month, the City of Calgary launched a website that shows plowing progress on Priority 1 and 2 routes. While bike paths are considered Priority 2, they are not yet part of the map.
“They don’t consider the pathway system to be part of the transportation infrastructure, and that’s a problem that winter bike commuters run into every day,” said Stewart Midwinter of Bike Calgary.
Midwinter said including bike routes on the real-time map could help with winter cycling.
Sean Somers of the city’s roads department said they would eventually like to include bike routes, but it won’t be for a while.
“Obviously we encourage many modes of transportation, including cyclists, but at the end of the day the vast majority of people still drive their car, so that’s where we focus our attention first,” said Somers, adding bike routes likely wouldn’t be added onto the map for at least a year.
