Burnaby aims to educate young cyclists with new bike playground

By SOFIA MOHAMED

Burnaby might one day be producing skilled young cyclists as the city looks at building a bike playground to teach road safety.  

Coun. Alison Gu proposed the playground idea, with Burnaby council agreeing in January to study the proposal.  

Bike playgrounds mimic city streets with child-sized versions of roads, roundabouts and intersections. Their purpose is to provide a safe environment for children to navigate riding a bike to ease the transition to city streets. They are known by many names: traffic playground, traffic garden, safe city and safety village.  

“Recreation for kids and spaces for kids to play is a huge goal that we have at the City of Burnaby, that we haven’t necessarily done especially well in the last decade or so. We’re really trying to turn a leaf,” Gu said.  

She was inspired to bring bike playgrounds to Burnaby after a trip to Copenhagen funded by the Canadian Institutes of Health Research. A further $20,000 in funding has been secured for the playground from the federal agency, as a “follow-up” to the grant trip. 

ICBC reports that around 359 children are injured while riding their bikes each year, and cycling injuries were one of the most common cause of hospitalizations among children aged 14 years and under.  

While the playground is a first for Burnaby, it won’t be for the province. Penticton Safety Village has educated children on safe riding for over 40 years, serving 5,000 kids per year. Not only does it focus on bike safety, it also offers programming like fire, sun and water safety. 

Its manager Katie Weitz said that the village is a “safe environment” for children to learn the ways of the road. 

“Falling down when they’re really trying to just get their balance and their bearings is one piece of it,” Weitz said. “But then to instruct the kids on what are the types of signages they’re going to see …  the different types of scenarios that they may see, so that when they do come across it, they know what to expect.” 

Weitz said that the village also teaches children road safety from the “pedestrian point of view.” The village has recently included delayed pedestrian crossings and is looking to install pedestrian-activated traffic lights.

Weitz said she has personally witnessed the value of the bike safety programming. 

“[Kids are] coming in completely not understanding how to balance, and by the end of it are just going so fast and being comfortable on that bike,” Weitz said.  

She said that the children’s families also benefit from the village. 

“Especially in the last couple of years with so many immigrant families coming, to be able to understand Canadian laws … so you’re actually seeing the parents having the light bulbs go off as well because it’s so brand new for them.” 

The village collaborates with schools across B.C., which Kay Teschke, lead investigator of the Cycling in Cities research program at UBC, says is a great way for playgrounds to integrate educating children. The program investigates cycling route designs linked to increased injuries and factors that encourage cycling.  

“In the Netherlands, they start out on one of these bike playgrounds, they learn the rules of the road, they learn how to ride their bikes safely,” Teschke said. “Eventually at two different stages along the way, they have tests to make sure [they know how to ride]. When they pass one of the tests, they’re able to go and cycle on the roads. …. it would be nice to have the same thing worked into the curriculum in Burnaby.” 

Gu said she plans to include educational programs and collaborate with the school board to organize field trips.  

“What’s important is to make sure that the playground isn’t just infrastructure that kind of gets forgotten or left behind,” Gu said. “Being able to operate it as a place you can squeeze a lot of juice out of.”  

Gu said she hopes the playground can act as a pilot project for the Lower Mainland to use. 

 “To me, I think that’s a way to be able to make sure that its future is sustainable,” Gu said.