The city that went Dutch…

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Roy has authored three books on bicycle planning and design and regularly blogs about his trips to experience different types of bicycle infrastructure. More information can be found on his website at www.rollinginthecity.ca

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0:00 This is Nanaimo
0:54 Lessons from the Dutch
1:14 ISL Engineering & Land Services
1:49 Continuous Sidewalks and Bike lanes
2:41 Netherlands vs. Canada
3:04 Metral drive before and after
3:25 A new experience
4:24 Polarizing bike paths
6:29 Infrastructure and Laws
6:53 Engineering Standards
7:43 E&N Railway trail
8:35 Bowen Road
9:35 Local street raised pedestrian crossing
9:53 Raised intersection
10:27 Modal filter and shared spaces
11:16 Freedom for children
12:18 Protected intersection
12:36 Nanaimo modal share
13:05 Dutch suburb?
13:42 Shared streets
14:10 Nanaimo bike infrastructure evolution
15:45 Queuing streets
16:27 Downtown Nanaimo, Front street
17:27 If Nanaimo can do it, so can your city

This video is sponsored by ISL. This is Nanaimo, 
the second largest city on Vancouver Island. It is known for the typical pickup truck culture, an 
iconic dessert, and for being to many Vancouver yuppies, simply the place you land before driving 
to Tofino. But it’s a city that grew out of the coal industry in the 1800s, building up around 
a rail line and later around the highway that followed. The result is a long linear sprawl 
with a population density about a fifth that of Vancouver. But you shouldn’t judge a book by 
its cover because here they have been quietly implementing the kind of cycling infrastructure 
that every city across the continent should be laying down on their streets. Here it’s Dutch 
influence that is changing the urban landscape. And it’s not just the street names like Amsterdam 
Crescent, Arnhem Terrace or Tulip Place. Just a short ride from there intersecting Bergen-Op-Zoom 
Drive is what may be the best example of Dutch style bike lanes in North America. When I was in 
Eindhoven last summer, I had the chance to meet up with Roy Symons where we explored the city 
in search of some of the lessons we in North America could learn from Dutch street design. We 
got to talking about the best examples adapted on this side of the world. And Roy was keen for me to 
visit Nanaimo to see what is still one of the best examples of continuous sidewalks and bike lanes 
on the continent. So, I met up with Mike Elliot, ISL’s mid island lead, and again by Roy, a 
sustainable transportation specialist. ISL is a multi-disciplinary engineering firm in Western 
Canada and a leader in the planning and design of active transportation infrastructure. They’ve been 
working with the city of Nanaimo for many years, including supporting the city through 
the development of their award-winning engineering standards and the application of 
those standards on Metral Drive. There was, of course, much more to see, and Jamie Rose, the 
manager of transportation for the city of Nanaimo, was kind enough to take us on a tour of recent 
projects and provide some insights into the city’s transportation infrastructure. Without 
further adieu, let’s start the tour beginning here along Metral Drive. So, this is Metral Drive. 
This is kind of our flagship project stemming from the standards update. By classification, it’s 
a urban collector. So, kind of a mix of uses, but generally low density. We’ve got the separated 
pedestrian cycling realm, clearly defined travel lane. This is by all accounts the best example of 
Dutch style continuous sidewalks and bike lanes in all of the US and Canada. The brilliance of this 
design lives in its simplicity by flipping the traditional priorities in the streets on its head. 
Instead of people walking or cycling down into driver space at intersections, drivers have to 
come up and over the pedestrian and cycling space. The design signals to drivers to slow down and be 
aware, which is aided by the vertical deflection, effectively turning the whole sidewalk and bike 
path into a speed bump. I have to admit, when I first saw photos of Metro, I wasn’t blown away. 
But after taking off my orange tinted glasses, I saw just how fantastic it was. I mean, if you put 
down some red asphalt, you might be hard pressed to spot the difference. But what really blew me 
away was taking one good look on Google Street View because Metro used to look like this. Very 
rural ditched road, probably 8 to 9 m Cars just kind of did this down it and uh they just sort of 
weaved left and right and they had this massive territory that they could own. The experience 
before the change would have been pretty uninspiring to say the least. Not even a sidewalk 
to trundle along. But now you will only find a traditional return to the road where major streets 
intersect leading to a rather strange experience on a bike because as you roll along it’s likely 
you won’t even notice the intersections at local streets and driveways as it’s all so seamless. I 
think the difference I mean when you’re walking along here before like half the time you didn’t 
even have sidewalks. So that’s obviously a huge upgrade. But imagine if it did have sidewalk and 
regular curb returns. You know every intersection you’re down up you’re kind of conscious you 
got to look for cars. Whereas you walk or ride along this section and you barely notice these 
intersections. And again for the cars, they’re now crossing the bike realm, the pedestrian realm. 
It’s flipping the prior priorities on their head, I would say. But it’s also designing it 
exactly to reflect the model hierarchy, right? Pedestrians should have priority. Bikes 
should have priority over cars. This design is the most clear way of doing that. These weren’t 
the only improvements along the corridor. Islands were installed for safer pedestrian crossings. And 
here where Turner Road meets Metral, you’ll find a Dutch style protected intersection. And while all 
of this was welcomed as incredible improvements to many, it wasn’t an immediate hit with everyone. 
This corridor is very polarizing. The people who love it love it. And all of the information we can 
kind of pull from it, the stats, the usage, all of those things are wildly positive. But we still 
have sort of this train change management. And I mean, even last week, I was talking to somebody 
who I would generally kind of say is switched on. They’re like, “No, I don’t like metral.” The 
words that I got out were complicated. I don’t understand it. And I and I kind of I couldn’t 
quite piece all those together cuz as you come in, it looks like a driveway. Yeah. And so maybe 
if you’re looking for a road, it’s not like, “Oh, there was the road I was looking for cuz 
you’re looking for this traditional curb return where you can just wheel around it.” But at all 
of our local roads, we’ve used this raised local treatment to give pedestrian priority, but also 
to give feedback to the drivers. You are entering a fundamentally a slow zone. Like you are in a 
residential neighborhood now. So you’re the guest. You’re not the the the dominant, you know, user. 
This is very much something drivers will become accustomed to over time. And it’s actually a 
flip that came sooner than expected. Pre and during construction were just absolutely 100% 
this is ridiculous. What are you doing? I can’t do this. It’s changed. And I on and on and on and 
just negative, negative, negative, negative. And there were a handful that actually followed up and 
went, you know what? You were right. Like hang on. Sorry. You want to repeat that for me? Cuz uh we 
don’t typically get that kind of a response. Like we’ll get the support. We’ll get the, “Hey, that’s 
great. We love it. Thanks for doing it.” Or we’ll get the resistance. What are you doing? This 
doesn’t make sense. I don’t like it. But having the acknowledgement that the change actually had 
the intended outcome is very uncommon from what I’ve seen. This can’t be understated as it speaks 
to how great of a design it is. That being said, building such modern infrastructure comes 
with extra challenges. Despite vast benefits, communities are still trying to work around 
a motor vehicle act that was written based on cyclists sharing the roadway with vehicles. 
As we build more protected infrastructure to aid mode shift, environmental, affordability, and 
health objectives, people cycling and rolling are no longer operating on the roadway with vehicles 
and may have to be recognized differently by law when the MVA is updated. Before moving along 
from Metro, there is one last thing that has to be mentioned because this isn’t just a one-off. 
Continuous bike paths and sidewalks are now part of the engineering standards in Nanaimo. It has a 
lot of standard stuff in there like protected bike lanes, protected intersections that were already 
becoming I would say common place definitely in Vancouver and other places in North America, but 
nobody really except for maybe Canmore had done a continuous sidewalk and bike path. So I think the 
city being the first to put it in their standards was a pretty cool thing so that anytime they come 
to upgrade a street it it gets this treatment. This means that even the uninitiated engineers and 
planners will be given the tools and direction to include human- centered design in the community. 
More of which we will see because from Metro we are headed downtown via Vancouver Island 
University to explore connections made and yet to be completed along the way. Starting with 
an old rails to rails corridor. This is the old E&N railway or the the Esquimalt and Nanaimo 
railway. So this used to run from Victoria up to it actually goes all the way to Courtney 
and then out to Port Alberni. In the ’90s, the city actually created this multi-use path 
going from basically central Nanaimo up to um Mostar Road uh which ties into the metro 
corridor and then we’re now working to go south and go through downtown and then connect into uh 
the Southgate neighborhood. And this has kind of been like the flagship I guess for a long time for 
active transportation. So, it’s nice. It’s on like a 2% grade for most of it. This is such a good 
like backbone of your like at network. Yeah. No, I you got to applaud the the folks who who had the 
commitment and uh conviction to push it through 30 years ago. At Bowen Road, we were met with a prime 
example of making the best with what you’re given. This was one of the pilot projects. Yeah. So, 
this is I think if you look at the provincial uh guidelines, this is falls into the constrained 
or very constrained categories. Typically, there would be a desire to have more separation between 
the modes. We just don’t have the space here. And so, this is really shoehorning in everything that 
we could possibly want to make it better. Oh, compared to a painted lane or or just an extra 
wide curb lane, it’s light years ahead. Um, and you know, I mean, a lot of folks will probably 
see the intersections and go, “Well, you know, there could be this or there could be that.” 
There could be, but when this is just sort of a a retrofit uh project. Yeah. Um I think I think 
you know I think we’re pretty proud of it and as I say it’s sort of a version 1.0 and every project 
we learn and find a way to do stuff better. So we continued onward to a neighborhood that hosted a 
bunch of new design elements that will be a common site in Nanaimo. So this is you’ll see more of 
these um further up, but this is uh an example of our raised local intersection treatment, 
but this is sort of where we sort of use this uh treatment to heighten awareness and increase 
prioritization for pedestrians to cross. So this is a new subdivision that ties into our new major 
capital project. We can see it all in kind of a ring. So uh the other thing we did was made this 
raised intersection in the middle of it just to further kind of add speed management features. 
I think it works. It’s not really operating yet. There’s nothing built in here yet, but it is open. 
But from a walking, biking perspective, it’s, you know, it shows that sort of prioritization. Yeah. 
This treatment is so common in the Netherlands, you might not even notice it when riding around. 
Much like how continuous sidewalks and bike lanes slow drivers, this does the same, turning the 
whole intersection into one big speed bump. These are safer for everyone, not just people 
outside of cars. This whole corridor here in the early versions is actually the fourth leg of 
the roundabout to bring cars in here. and this is where we said like this probably isn’t the best 
idea because you’re just going to end up with people short cutting through the neighborhood. So 
the cars go out and around. It’s maybe a 15-second detour for a car, but peds and pedestrians and 
cyclists can just come right through here and they’re onto the onto the trails. And this is 
it’s it’s not a bike facility. It’s a facility for everybody and everybody can kind of use it. 
And so, you know, this is sort of, you know, when you sort of talk about like how things are done in 
the Netherlands and how things are done in Sweden and how things are done in Japan, how do people 
interact in each of these facilities? You know, when I was in Japan, I found it really interesting 
because pedestrians and cyclists and scooters and everybody can all coexist in a in a space and 
there’s not this tension and friction and and I don’t know, just conflict. Honestly, I think 
this this area is going to be a pretty desirable neighborhood and families are going to want to 
be here. just convenience of the grocery store, school, not too far from the highway. So, you 
want to go anywhere, off you go, right? So, my chiropractor’s down there and his kids, they’re 
maybe 14, 13, something like that. He never used to let them walk to Beban Park by themselves, 
right? And now product of age, but also he’s like that intersection, they can get across with with 
no concerns, right? So, and they can go to Tim Hortons. They’ve been pretty pumped about getting 
the Tim Hortons and like but so just that freedom that you’re now you’re not driving your kids to 
the park. You’re not driving your kids to the Tim Hortons. They can just walk or bike or do whatever 
they’re and you have no no real concerns about it. So yeah. Yeah. It’s it’s it’s helping set kids 
up for like learning these life skills and in a supportive environment. Like this is something 
we’ve kind of we’re continually talking through with the school district. Like walking to school 
is a life skill. Being able to navigate outside of a car is a life skill. One block over from 
the roundabout was this protected intersection with improved crossings and has even implemented 
no right on red dedicated bike signals and tactile surface warning indicators. Onwards, we came 
across a continuous multi-use path, an industrial area that had a repurposed parking lane. And I 
took the chance to ask Jamie about the modal share in the city. Our statistics really haven’t changed 
from the ’90s. However, the volume of projects we’ve done in the last 7 or 8 years has been 
remarkable, and I think that this next census is going to be very different. The most recent census 
in 2021 puts bicycle use at 1.4% or 3.1% of trips that include a bicycle. It’ll be interesting to 
see how much that changes at the next census. So, this actually isn’t a city road. This is a private 
strata road. It’s interesting when I ride through here, it kind of reminds me of some of the areas, 
not the greening and stuff, but the the sort of spatial relation a little bit around uh Houten. 
I don’t know. Sort of gives me a sense of that, maybe a little bit. Yeah. And right around the 
corner from that neighborhood was an example of a planned connection that has yet to be completed 
and where you will currently end up. So, this is a 4.3 m wide travel lane where cars and bikes mix 
together. Thankfully, shared lanes like this are no longer standard, and we soon found something 
a bit more chill. So, through here, we’re basically into like a neighborhood bikeway kind 
of thing. Obviously, very low density residential, low volume, low speed. Everybody can just sort 
of mix and match together. These are great for filling out a cycling network, especially if 
budget is a concern. Even in the Netherlands, much of what you might call the cycling network 
is not made up of bike lanes. It is shared spaces. After passing what was the first bike lane in the 
city, we arrived at the university and began down towards the city center, which happened to be 
the perfect showcase of the evolution of cycling infrastructure in Nanaimo. Starting here with 
no separation, just a shared travel lane. This is Four Street. And once we cross that signal, 
you’re going to start to see the evolution of bike facilities over the last decade and a bit in 
Nanaimo. We start with the bike lane on one side and a shared shoulder on so sidewalk, bike lane 
on the right for us. and a shared shoulder on the left. So, this is the next evolution. So, we’ve 
got a bit of a buffer here. And then on that side, we’ve got a a mixed use area. This is again 
sort of the more current iteration of what we’d be doing. Much bigger buffer on that side 
because cyclists but not grade separated cuz cyclists are so much more capable of running 
with car speeds through there. Normally, we’d want a light slightly wider buffer between 
pedestrians, but because you’re going uphill, you’re obviously going so much 
slower. Unless you got an ebike, Mike. So, this is kind of our last stretch into the 
heart of downtown, and it’ll be kind of the inverse of what we saw there. It’ll be buff 
buffered bike lanes in both directions. At that point, we will then have an improved cycling 
facility from downtown to the university. And so that kind of gives us our golden triangle between 
downtown the university and the hospital country club. And that’s that’s sort of like the core of 
central Nanaimo. So this is kind of the beginning of our main bike connection to the south. 
And so this is just a local road. Obviously it’s got the local road treatment to sort of tame 
everything down up here. Um we’re doing something out of character for Nanaimo. We’re creating a 
queuing street. What I mean by a queuing street is allowing parking on both sides with one travel 
lane in the middle. And the idea is that between driveways and fire hydrants and at all of these 
bits and pieces, there’s scenarios where a car can pull over, let the the other one go by and sort of 
zigzag back and forth. Basically, self-regulating speed optimizes curb space for whatever you 
need, whether it’s just general parking or loading zone or accessible parking. These types of 
streets in Vancouver are often looked down upon, followed by calls for removing parking on one 
side of the street, but they serve a purpose, to slow traffic, and they do it pretty well. 
We eventually made it to the center of Nanaimo, a place they haven’t ignored when it comes to 
modernizing the streets. In the very core of the city along commercial, you will see the simple day 
lighting and traffic calming that helps create a more inviting space. And here along Front Street, 
half of the space that was once allocated to cars has been repurposed. Before we started, this was 
a four-lane road and we obviously looked at it and determined that it really doesn’t need four 
travel lanes and so we eliminated two of them, made one into parking and one into a protected 
bi-directional cycling facility and it feels a lot better. I haven’t seen trafficmagedon. 
The volume’s never justified the four lane cross-section. It’s balancing priorities 
and you know we hear a lot about, well, I never see bikes on the bike lane and around 
by the boat base. We’ve actually got a counter and this section is actually one of our highest 
used routes that we document. So between this and metro and the EN, this is still still 
the busiest. A giant thank you to Jamie, Mike, and Roy for giving me a tour. It 
was truly eye opening. But I have to say, Nanaimo isn’t Amsterdam. It’s not even Vancouver. 
There are still gaps in the network. But what we’re seeing are real working examples of Dutch 
style design right here in Canada putting Nanaimo on track to become a top cycling city. And 
that matters because it shows three things. A, these new projects aren’t just one-offs. They 
are part of the design standards planned in from the start. Two, these designs can 
work in a North American context. And D, if Nanaimo can do it, so can other cities. When 
I left the Netherlands on my last trip, I said, “We can do this in North America.” And now in 
Nanaimo of all places, they’ve gone and proved it.