Like many cities in Canada and the United States, Mission asks residents for their opinion on the quality of services they receive from the municipality. Mission's office of  Civic Engagement and Corporate Initiatives makes available a  "citizen satisfaction  survey" for residents to complete prior to budget deliberations, in the summer. This link to the 2017 survey results provides an example of the range of questions, and responses, that are obtained. The bulk of the survey asks respondents to rate a list of 25 "service areas", including "cycle routes", with regard to their 1 )importance, 2) perceived quality and 3) opinion on whether the level of service should be increased, maintained or reduced. Mission's satisfaction survey therefore provides an opportunity to gauge support of bicycle route infrastructure.

An important caveat, however, is that the survey is voluntary and therefore not necessarily representative of the population as a whole. Statistically valid surveys are based on population sampling such that every resident or household has an equal probability of being included in the survey. Voluntary surveys are unscientific simply because they represent the opinion of only those who decide to opt in, not the population as a whole. How different is the opinion expressed in a voluntary survey from a scientific survey? This is the question I gave to my quantitative methods class at UFV in the fall semester, 2019. I've taught a version of this course in the Geography Department since 1995 and am always on the lookout for term assignments that have local application. The assignment was prepared in collaboration with Mission's Director of Civic Engagement at the time, Michael Boronowski. In summer 2019, using municipal address data, a random sample of 2000 households was selected and mailed an invitation to complete the satisfaction survey. At the same time, residents were able to voluntarily complete the same survey through the municipality's website.

The District received approximately 250 completed surveys. The response rate was disappointing (12.5%) and we didn't have the resources to follow up with the sample to encourage more completions. However it is important to keep in mind that the absolute number of responses does not have to be large in order to be representative of the wider population. Opinion polls for Canada as a whole are typically based on fewer than 2,000 responses. Also, the 250 respondents in the Mission survey was similar to the number of volunteers who answered online.  If nothing else, this provides a bit of a balance in the two data files.

To help with analysis, the class created a scorecard for each of the three categories of assessment. These are shown in the figures, below. The scorecard shows the 'average' score for each service that was obtained from each of the two groups of respondents, 1) voluntary and 2) sampled. With this type of data, known as ordinal, the calculation of an average value is determine by the value of the median. To calculate the median, numbers are assigned to the possible answers (eg, very important=1, important=2, etc)and all of the responses are arranged in descending order. The median is the answer which is located in the middle of this list. A related measure is the mode; this is the answer chosen by the largest number of respondents. A visualization of these measures is shown in Figure 2. This figure shows how the two groups rated the importance of cycle routes. Surveyed respondents tended to rate cycling routes as an "important" service and over 40% (the modal category) chose "very important". In contrast, the graph for voluntary respondents was loaded up on the other side of the ledger: "not important" and "not at all important". However, the average was on the fence: "neither important or unimportant", which was also the modal category.
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This difference in opinion on the importance of cycling routes in Mission is notable partly because it was otherwise rare for the two groups to differ on the rating of anything. In fact, opinions were identical for 87% of the ratings, as reflected in the large number of check marks in the three scorecards. Besides cycling lanes, there were also differences in opinion on three environmental services. However,  here it was with the level of importance: "important" vs. "very important". A few differences are also visible in scorecards 2 and 3. With cycling lanes though, both groups tended to select "neutral" on quality and to "maintain" their service level. 

To summarize:

• voluntary surveys are, by their nature, not statistically representative of the wider population from which they are taken because they are not random samples.
• in a class assignment, I had my second-year Geography students compare the results of an opinion survey from a random sample of Mission residents with a volunteer sample.
• the results from the two groups were very similar: there was an 87% overlap.
• opinion on bicycle routes was one of the few topics that produced a difference in opinion: the sampled group rated them to be important whereas the volunteer group were undecided:  they rated them to be neither important nor unimportant.

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The 2018 municipal election resulted in major changes to the composition of  Mission council. Pam Alexis, a former councilor,  replaced Randy Hawes as mayor. Only two councilors were returned: Carol Hamilton and Danny Plecas.  Four councilors were newly elected: Cal Crawford, Mark Davies, Ken Herar and Jag Gill.  The transition period between councils carried through the winter of 2019. The next municipal election occurs on 22 October 2022.

In spring 2019, M3C hosted Mission's GoByBike week festivities. The week, 26 May - 02 June, kicked off with a community ride on Sunday followed by a  pancake breakfast on Monday. The week ended with a bike rodeo at Heritage Park. However the most visible component for the week was a pop-up/temporary bike lane  on the full length of 7th Avenue. The lane was set up by the municipality's Engineering Department using  delineators spaced approximately every 15 feet (see photo above). The bi-directional lane was located on the north side of 7th and was about a metre wide. The location of the lane meant the temporary loss of parking on the north side for the period that the lane was operational: 7 am - 7 pm daily.
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 M3C played a supportive role with set up and operation of the bike lane, including daily sweeps to replace delineators that had been moved and/or signs that had come down. Michelle Fernie, Transportation Engineering Technologist, led the operation on behalf of Mission's Engineering and Public Works. Fernie's review of the project was presented in October 2019 to Mission's Traffic and Transit Committee and is available in their minutes, pages 6 and 7.

What was the impact of the pop-up bike lane? Perhaps most importantly, it demonstrated that removing a small strip of roadway for bicyclists did not produce transportation chaos. Quite the opposite.  A traffic-calming effect was noticed by many, including Engineering. However, negative opinion was expressed especially by those who lost the ability to park in front of their residence.  For many of these, parking is accessed by a back-yard lane. This opposition found an outlet on social media sites, especially in a community-based Facebook page: 'Mission BC and  Neighbours'.  High school students also lost the ability to park in front of Mission Secondary School, which also generated a degree of hostility. Anecdotal evidence is that drivers found alternative parking on streets adjacent to 7th. In any case, opponents were typically incensed over the disruption caused by the bike lane, which, they argued, saw very little bike traffic. On this point, bike counts by Engineering provide some insight. The report by Michelle Fernie, linked above, shows peak cyclist counts for three days (May 28, 30 and 31) during GoByBike week, at three points along the route. The numbers, which cover a three hour period, range from a low of 13 to a high of 22 cyclists. One of the counts, at the intersection on Horne and 7th, can be compared with a "before" value. The comparable measure in September 2017 was 21 whereas it had doubled, with the bike lane, to 40.

Finally, two observations:.
1) We noted that some cyclists on 7th avoided riding in the bike lane. These were usually cyclists travelling east who chose to  ride on the south side of 7th, meaning they were cycling in the same direction as vehicular traffic. Travelling east in the bike lane required cyclists to face oncoming traffic. Although we didn't survey cyclists, our impression was that this could have discouraged use of the outside cycle lane.

2) With the exception of those who lived on the route and therefore received letters from the District advising them about the loss of parking, Mission residents had little or no advance notice that they were about to receive a temporary bike lane. In my view, this lack of advance publicity could  have promoted the feeling of a top-down technocratic approach to the event. I have included reference to an article, below, which argues that without real community engagement, the construction of bike lanes have often invoked a vociferous negative response, which the authors refer to as 'bikelash'. It's debatable whether more publicity would have blunted the bikelash that appeared in Mission social media. What's clear however is the need for the public to understand the rationale for bike lanes, even temporary ones. 

Wild, K., Woodward, A., Field, A., & Macmillan, A. (2018). Beyond ‘bikelash’: engaging with community opposition to cycle lanes. Mobilities, 13(4), 505–519. https://doi.org/10.1080/17450101.2017.1408950