CELPIP Reading Part 4 Practice Test: Bike Lanes on Front Street in Kelsey Harbour Debate

Front Street has long been Kelsey Harbour’s commercial heart: a narrow two-lane road lined with shops, cafés and angled parking. The transportation committee’s recommendation to eliminate about forty spaces in favour of protected bike lanes along the downtown strip, largely funded by a provincial grant, has become the most acrimonious issue at town hall in years.

Councillor Dana Whitcombe, the committee’s chair, calls the lanes an overdue safety investment. Two cyclists have suffered serious injuries on Front Street in three years, each after colliding with a suddenly opened car door. “This isn’t about punishing drivers,” she says. “My yardstick is whether a twelve-year-old could ride to the library without parental anxiety.” The grant covers eighty percent of construction but must be spent by next year’s close, failing which it passes to another municipality.

Merchants display considerably less enthusiasm. Luis Ferreira, proprietor of a Front Street hardware store for twenty-two years, serves older residents and contractors who could hardly transport lumber or soil by bicycle. “Every space we lose is a customer who drives out to the big-box store on the highway instead,” he contends. Professing no hostility toward cycling, he advocates Mill Road, a quieter parallel street one block north, where considerably less parking would disappear.

Amira Boateng of the local cycling club finds that compromise inadequate, since cyclists frequent Front Street for the same reason as everyone else: the shops. “Sending us to Mill Road is like building the sidewalk behind the stores,” she remarks. She also disputes the assumption that parking generates sales, citing a count by university students last summer: nearly half of Front Street’s shoppers had arrived on foot or by bicycle, substantially exceeding merchants’ own estimates.

Graham Osei, the planning consultant retained to review the recommendation, accepts that the street endangers cyclists and that protected lanes generally benefit local commerce eventually. The first year, however, frequently proves difficult for shopkeepers while drivers adjust. He therefore recommends short-term parking on two side streets and a one-year trial using temporary barriers before permanent concrete. “The loudest initial complainers often become the staunchest supporters,” he adds drily.

My two children ride along Front Street to school, so I read this article with mounting alarm. Both accidents it describes came down to 6. Choose…cyclists going too fasta careless driver’s doorcontractors unloading lumbercars backing out of angled spaces, and the same could befall any cyclist there today.

I understand Mr. Ferreira’s worry, but sending cyclists 7. Choose…toward the highwayto the libraryone block overonto the sidewalk misses the point. Like everyone else, we go downtown to shop. And merchants’ fears about parking may be 8. Choose…understatedwell foundedexaggeratedoutdated, judging by last summer’s numbers.

I was slow to warm to the consultant, but 9. Choose…a trial runa shift to Mill Roadanother count of shoppersa larger provincial grant would at least keep the lanes on Front Street.

What council must not do is dither. Put this off a year and the 10. Choose…shoppersconsultantyoung cyclistsprovincial money will simply go to some other town.

Helen Arsenault, Kelsey Harbour