After finding 43 nails and screws lying in newly constructed bike lanes on both sides of Superior Street, a James Bay resident is concerned they were deliberately placed.
Sarah Pullman said she rides the route daily and first noticed what looked like piles of construction debris in the lanes last week.
On Monday, she alerted the City of Victoria via Twitter about the debris and it was cleaned up.
On Thursday, when she rode on Superior Street between Montreal and Menzies streets, she saw “glints of metal.” She slowed down and realized there were nails and screws in the middle of the bike lane.
Initially she thought they were probably just left over from construction, but after picking up 43 nails and screws in the bike lanes on both sides of the street, she became suspicious.
“My concern is that someone who was mad about the Superior Street bike lanes left them there maliciously,” Pullman said.
She rides a heavy cargo bike with her child and a punctured tire would be “very inconvenient and potentially dangerous,” she said.
“I wish bike lanes weren’t such a controversial subject,” she said.
The bike lanes on Superior Street are not technically open yet and stretches remain active construction sites, said Colleen Mycroft, manager of intergovernmental and media relations for Victoria.
There is still work to be done pouring concrete and installing signs, she said.
Mycroft said the city was made aware of the nails in an email from a resident. The city contacted the construction company working on the lanes and the company swept them up, Mycroft said.
It’s not clear where the nails and screws came from, she said.
Pullman said the section of the lanes between Montreal and Menzies streets appears complete and barriers blocking off the lanes were removed a couple of weeks ago.
The section between Menzies and Government street still appears closed, she said.
In 2016, Seattle bike shops near a newly opened cycle route were pulling multiple tacks out of cyclists’ punctured tires in a day, the Seattle Times reported.
While it wasn’t clear how the tacks got there, some cyclists were suspicious they were deliberately placed.
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