B.C. Supreme Court tosses restaurants’ legal challenge of Stanley Park bike lane

The B.C. Supreme Court docket has thrown out a problem of the controversial Stanley Park bike lane introduced ahead by two companies working within the park.

Furguson Level Eating places, which owns the Teahouse in Stanley Park and Stanley Park Operations, which owns the Stanley Park Pavilion and Prospect Level Bar and Grill launched the swimsuit within the spring, after the Vancouver Park Board voted to dedicate a lane of auto visitors to bicycles for a second consecutive summer time.

The companies sought to have the board’s choice overturned on the premise that it was unreasonable.

In reasons for judgment posted Wednesday, Justice Sheila Tucker rejected that argument, stating, “A choice needn’t be flawless with a purpose to be affordable.”

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Stanley Park bike lane rally

The companies had argued that the March 10 decision to go forward with the bike lane was based totally on “the unsupported assumption that the 2021 bike land would cut back carbon emissions,” and on the outcomes of a “flawed or insufficient” public survey, in keeping with the ruling.

Diminished automobile entry to the park might really improve emissions because of idling autos or folks driving additional to different parks, whereas the survey was not consultant of the pubic and didn’t contemplate doable adverse impacts of the lane on households, folks with mobility points or companies, they argued.

Tucker dominated that neither of these components had been a “central or important” foundation for the park board’s choice.

Park commissioners, she dominated, engaged in “a vigorous, multi-faceted debate of the type typically related to legislative decision-making.”

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Vancouver Park Board set to debate Stanley Park bike lane

In doing so, they heard quite a lot of arguments each for and in opposition to the bike lane, together with potential adversarial results of the bike lane, and made particular person judgment calls primarily based on quite a lot of components, Tucker dominated.

Tucker awarded court docket prices to the park board.

The Stanley Park bike lane, which entails the conversion of one in all Stanley Park Drive’s two lanes for bicycle use solely, was first carried out within the spring of 2020 in an effort to scale back crowding on the ocean wall amid COVID-19.

Opponents have decried what they name a scarcity of session on the venture and decreased park entry for folks with mobility challenges, whereas the park board says it obtained greater than 11,000 responses to its public survey, and that the lane has confirmed to be successful with households and fewer assured cyclists.

The lane is slated to stay in place till about Oct. 31, 2021. Nonetheless, the board continues to overview automobile entry to the park as part of a longer-term mobility examine.