How to clean a bike lane

Bike lanes come with bike-lane-sized problems. 

One of those is cleaning them. Protected and delineated bike lanes can help keep cyclists from being hit by cars on crowded roads, but the barriers that keep cars out also mean that standard-sized street cleaning equipment can’t access them. 

Chilliwack has come up with a (nearly) bike-size solution. The city recently approved the purchase of a machine specifically designed to sweep its delineated bike lanes. The purchase follows Abbotsford, which already has three similar machines.

The Beast

Chilliwack’s new machine, a diesel-powered beast called the “Multihog,” hit the market last year. 

The Multihog is small enough to fit into Chilliwack’s various delineated bike lanes, which are separated from roadways by flexible bollards. Previously, these lanes had to be swept by hand.

Though Coun. Chris Kloot noted that Chilliwack doesn’t yet have any true protected bike lanes (which use larger permanent barriers to separate cyclists from vehicles), the sweeper should be able to clean those too, should the council ever “splurge” and make separated bike lanes. 

Although the sweeper is a small machine, it doesn’t exactly come with a small price tag. At $217,400, it’s about the price of a full-size tractor.

City staff said that they had been researching options for years and the purpose-built machine fills every function they hoped it would. 

“It performed well beyond staff’s expectations” during the test drives through parts of Chilliwack and is “an ideal machine for the task at hand,” the report to council said.

Cyclists have been frustrated with the maintenance of Chilliwack bike lanes in the past. Kloot said he hoped the cyclist community in the city took note of this move.

Elsewhere

Other cities in the Fraser Valley face similar challenges with cleaning their bike lanes. Abbotsford also has separated lanes for cyclist, several protected by bollards. The city has three machines, two dating to 2017 and one from 2021, that it uses to clear the kilometres of bike lanes throughout the city.

Mission has a large sweeper vaccuum machine that also clears bike lanes on key routes, but it’s unclear if it is able to clear bollarded or separated bike lanes. While the city has relatively few such lanes at the moment, it is in the process of building a new “greenway” along 7th Avenue. The Current asked the city but didn’t receive a reply by its press deadline.

The Plan

Buying the multihog is an investment in the future of bike lanes in the city, according to Chilliwack staff. 

“The city’s infrastructure is ever growing and, in accordance with the active transportation plan more bike lanes are added each year,” the report said. 

The city’s active transportation plan was passed last August. It doesn’t detail whether or when protected or delineated bike lanes are prioritized over shared roadways or unprotected lanes. The city’s earlier Bicycle Transport Plan, though, notes that the more-expensive delineated lanes are the top priority for a certain type of provincial funding.