SaskatoonWorkers have begun removing the dedicated bike lanes along 23rd Street in downtown Saskatoon, carrying out a June city council decision.Installed 10 years ago, the 23rd Street bike lanes were meant to be temporaryLori Coolican · CBC News · Posted: Sep 03, 2025 6:13 PM EDT | Last Updated: 1 hour agoThe demonstration bike lanes installed by the City of Saskatoon in 2015 along 23rd Street in the downtown area were unpopular with many drivers. City council voted in June 2025 to have them removed, saving $50,000 a year that can be diverted to other active transportation projects. (City of Saskatoon)Workers have begun removing the dedicated cycling lanes that have drawn complaints from drivers along 23rd Street in Saskatoon’s downtown for a decade.Installed in 2015 as a demonstration project and intended to last only two years, they failed to earn much popularity with cyclists, either.When city council voted back in June to cancel the lanes, transportation director Jay Magus said it’s been several years since the city took a tally of how many cyclists were using the corridor. He said removing the lanes will save $50,000 a year in maintenance costs that can be spent on active transportation projects elsewhere.Gord Holtslander, board chair of Saskatoon Cycles, told CBC’s Scott Larson the 23rd Street corridor was more popular with downtown cyclists than the Fourth Avenue one that was removed years ago, because it connected the Meewasin Trail to Idylwyld Drive and beyond, “so it actually had a purpose.”However, the corridor was interrupted by the downtown bus mall, “which, to be fair to the city, they have been trying to move for the same decade that this bike path has been here,” he said. ” And if that had happened, the bike path would have been much more of a truly functional product.”Lessons learnedThe plastic bollards installed to separate the bike lanes from traffic were “a little bit of performance art,” Holtslander said. “I mean, it indicates the separateness, but it’s not a protected bike lane, because … those bollards were pretty regularly laying on their sides because they’d been run over by someone on purpose or by accident. And so they were not protective in any kind of realistic way.”The lanes were also impassable for about half the year, even if the city kept up with snow clearing, because people would shovel snow from the sidewalk into the bike lane, he said.Overall, the effort was “a little bit doomed from the get-go,” but it was worthwhile, he said.He thinks the city learned valuable lessons from this demonstration project, and the future plans for active transportation are “definitely moving in the right direction,” he said. “There’s things you can do relatively simply, relatively low-cost … you know, signage and traffic-calming measures and whatnot; then they’re much better to cycle on. They’re not the ultimate, but they are a huge step up from nothing.”Obviously we would like it to go faster and we would like there to be more, but the city is not doing nothing. Props. The city is doing quite a lot and … there’s lots of things that have gone on and are going on now, and we commend them for that.”A news release from the city said removing the 23rd Street lanes is expected to take about a week. Sidewalks will remain open, but the curb lane, parking lane and bike lane will be closed.The 23rd Street bike lanes on the west side of Idylwyld Drive, away from the downtown, will remain in place.”Future planning for the 23rd Street protected bike lanes will occur as part of the 23rd Street Greenway, a component of the City Centre and District Plan,” the release said.ABOUT THE AUTHORLori Coolican has been a reporter and editor in Western Canada since 1996.With files from Scott Larson
Saskatoon removes portion of unpopular downtown bike lanes
