Bike routes love to detour straight up giant hills. This is usually to avoid having to go along major roads. There is a fun one of the BC Parkway in Vancouver:
But I think I found the prize for most ridiculous detour ever. It is in New Westminister, a city that isn’t exactly flat. But take a look at this:
That’s right – this is a one block detour that goes basically straight up a hill. It looks like this:
Which meant that I (and the other two bikers coming the other way) – rode the narrow sidewalk for one block. I hate riding the sidewalk – but sorry, I am not riding up that hill just to go down it again. And biking on-road wasn’t going to happen either, not with 60 km/h+ traffic speeding by on E Columbia Ave.
And all this along what is supposed to be the family bike friendly Central Valley Greenway. If we want biking to be normally, we badly need to build continuous routes, ones that follow sensible, flat routes.