Each year, the BC Ministry of Transportation gives an active transportation award to the best walking or cycling facility on a provincial highway.
This year, the winner was a tunnel beneath Highway 1 in Chase, a village near Kamloops. According to the Ministry, the project represents an “innovative approach” to “[encourage] sustainable travel options in a rural environment”. The award was accompanied by a video showing ministry staff walking and cycling through the tunnel.
Eagle-eyed viewers might have noticed something else: at the end of the path leading into the tunnel is a ‘cyclists dismount’ sign, which the cyclist bikes past without stopping.
In other words, the Ministry’s own video promoting its best cycling improvement of the year shows its staff biking past an unnecessary ‘cyclists dismount’ sign.
One can hardly blame them.
Across the province, ‘cyclists dismount’ signs have metastasized as cautious engineers rush to absolve themselves of liability for the sub-standard cycling facilities they design. While these signs may please lawyers, they ignore a fundamental reality: everyone ignores them.
This non-compliance is well known to engineers. Provincial guidance warns that ‘cyclists dismount’ signs should only be considered if the reason is “immediately apparent” to cyclists.
“Otherwise, many cyclists may ignore this instruction,” it cautions.
In any other circumstance, traffic engineers would be the first to tell you not to put up signs with such a low compliance rate. Indeed, even though pedestrians legally have right of way at most intersections, engineers routinely resist painting crosswalks due to feared low compliance by drivers—with predictably tragic consequences.
Worse, the excessive deployment of ‘cyclists dismount’ signs likely contributes to alarm fatigue, a well-known psychological phenomenon where the overuse of warnings for trivial reasons leads people to tune them out entirely—defeating the entire alarm system.
A famous example of alarm fatigue in action is California’s Proposition 65, a 1986 law that requires manufacturers to place warnings on any product that may contain dangerous chemicals. Because the law imposes large fines for non-compliance but no penalties for unnecessary use, companies have placed Proposition 65 warnings everywhere, making it completely worthless as a heads-up to consumers.
Alarm fatigue exists in all aspects of our lives, contributing to medical mishaps in our hospitals, crashes in our transportation systems, and even the Three Mile Island nuclear meltdown.
The same holds for useless signs. Indeed, the provincial highway manual even reminds engineers that it is “most important to recognize” that the “excessive use of signs leads to disrespect and non-compliance”.
Some officials are finally starting to take notice: in Esquimalt, the advocacy group Capital Bike convinced the Ministry of Transportation to take down an unnecessary ‘cyclists dismount’ sign on the E&N Rail Trail and allow cyclists to ride through the crosswalk.
Yet, in far too many places across the province, engineers continue to rely on the same old ineffective tricks to paper over their own inadequate designs.
In honour of the ubiquitous ‘cyclists dismount’ sign, Better Columbia has compiled a gallery of some of the most baffling examples in the Lower Mainland.
Lions Gate Bridge (Vancouver)
Theorized reason: Low railing height? Uneven terrain? The presence of that pointless fence on the right side of the bike path? Honestly, no clue with this one
Compliance rate: Does anyone even see this sign?
Braid Street (Coquitlam)
Theorized reason: The multi-use path narrows slightly below what engineering guidelines call for—never mind that very few people are walking to a recycling plant and sawmill
Compliance rate: Somewhere between -1 and 1%
Murray Street (Port Moody)
Theorized reason: Someone didn’t feel like paving the bike path across the train tracks and decided to dump bikes onto the sidewalk for 20 feet, but then started fretting about the potential bike–pedestrian conflict
Compliance rate: Less than or equal to the Canucks’ playoff victory rate
Pacific Boulevard (Vancouver)
Theorized reason: A lawyer got scared that an eight-foot tall cyclist would hit their head on the overpass and sue the city for their ouchie
Compliance rate: LOL
Nordel Way (Delta)
Theorized reason: Someone forgot to paint an “elephant’s feet” crossing across the intersection and decided to double down by putting up a bunch of signs and fences to force cyclists to walk across
Compliance rate: You’re kidding right?
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