Vancouver mayor has close encounter with bus

As Vancouver’s mayor prepares to have another controversial bike lane constructed downtown, he would do well to brush up on traffic laws. Note to Mayor Gregor Robertson: a red light means you have to stop before turning right. Another note to Mayor Robertson: when the biggest obstacle to public support for your cycling infrastructure is motorists upset by scofflaw bicyclists, it makes good sense to obey the laws yourself.

On Thursday, Coast Mountain bus driver Michele MacDonald pulled out into Dunsmuir Street and was angling for the stop on the right side of Richards Street when a well-dressed cyclist rode out of the Dunsmuir bike lane and into the path of her No. 5 bus.

“He came around and didn’t even stop,” says MacDonald, 47, of Surrey. “He did not stop or look.

“When he looked up and said he was sorry, I looked out my doors and thought, ‘Oh my god, it’s Mister Gregor Robertson.’”

MacDonald, who has been driving buses for 15 years and also trains transit drivers, says only her training and quick stomp on the brake saved Robertson from broken bones or worse.

When the mayor and the bus driver pulled up alongside each other at Georgia Street, MacDonald told him, “Thanks for giving me a heart attack. You of all people should look left before you make a right turn on a right,” she says. “He said, ‘I’m really sorry about that.’”

The last she saw of the man she now calls “red-light Robertston” was his two-wheeled figure — clad in dress pants and a white dress shirt with a colourful tie flapping over his left shoulder — turning left onto Nelson Street, heading in the direction of City Hall.

She gives the mayor a full 10 on a one-to-10 scale of dumb things cyclists do, but she’s hoping that he’s been “scared straight,” as he appeared shaken by the near miss. “He looked like he was going to come out of his skin,” she says.

Robertson on Monday appeared reluctant to admit wrongdoing. He acknowledged that the bike-specific stoplight on Dunsmuir at Richards was red, but said, “I wasn’t going against a red light. There was a red light to go straight on Dunsmuir. I turned right in the crosswalk.”

It was when he left the crosswalk and tried to get across the curbside bus lane and into the bike lane on Richards that the conflict with the bus occurred, Robertson says.

This “I-was-turning-into-the-crosswalk-not-the-roadway” excuse sounded a little weak to me, so I took a walk over to the intersection. When the light is red for bikes on Dunsmuir, traffic on Richards is coming from the left. It is quite clear that when the light is red, bikes must stop at the white stop line painted in the bike lane, whether they’re going straight or turning right, just as at any red light.

In my short visit to the spot, I asked two cyclists whether they thought the red light meant they had to stop if they were turning right. Both said yes without hesitating.

Robertson says he’s going to have city staff look into the safety of the intersection. I agree with him that the setup there is unusual, with a two-way dedicated cycling lane crossing the intersection of two one-way streets. But as a cyclist, I don’t see anything unusually dangerous in the arrangement, as long as riders in the bike lane stop before turning right on a red.

Unfortunately, Robertson’s error of judgment will provide ammunition for many car commuters who will become very irate when they learn that another dedicated bike lane is coming to downtown, running north/south to connect the Burrard Bridge bike lane with the Dunsmuir lane. Hornby, Burrard, and Thurlow streets are under consideration, Robertson says. “Hornby is the odds-on favourite right now,” he says, adding that the goal is to have a trial underway in October.

ebaron@theprovince.com