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North Vancouver City mayor's uplifting Norwegian visit catches media attention

Video surfaced online Wednesday of North Vancouver City Mayor Darrell Mussatto in a quaint Norwegian town testing out a bike lift that he hopes can be installed on some hilly streets back home.
Darelll Musatto

Video surfaced online Wednesday of North Vancouver City Mayor Darrell Mussatto in a quaint Norwegian town testing out a bike lift that he hopes can be installed on some hilly streets back home.

A local TV station filmed Mussatto in Trondheim giving the innovative bike lift a whirl, as children ran up the hill alongside him.

“Watch out, I might fall off,” Mussatto is heard telling them.

The CycloCable, brought to Trondheim, population 181,513, two decades ago, has introduced a whole new group of people to cycling and changed the dynamic of the city, said Mussatto, who was shown the bike lift by its inventor, Jarle Wanvik.

“It is really, really popular with many recreational and casual cyclists. It’s used every minute and sometimes it has lineups for people wanting to get on,” said Mussatto, via email from Trondheim.

The apparatus operates similar to a ski lift and is comprised of a wire rope with 11 footplates attached to it, along with an accelerator to get the cyclist going. One foot rests on the metal plate while the rider sits on the bike and is propelled up the slope.

Mussatto said he was “quite intrigued” by the CycloCable, at the last city council meeting in July, and paid for the Trondheim trip out of his own pocket. The mayor is hoping a bike lift can be installed perhaps on the West Keith Road hill between Bewicke and Jones avenues.

“It is quite a long hill and a great connection between the lower and central parts of our city,” said Mussatto.

Council, in July, supported having staff investigate the costs and viability associated with bringing in a bike lift system to the city, and report back to them in the fall.

Coun. Craig Keating, who made the motion, said he has heard from parents who want to introduce their kids to biking about how challenging it is to navigate North Vancouver’s hilly terrain.

Coun. Don Bell said it’s worth exploring the possibility of a bike lift, because electric bikes, another alternative, are expensive and more vulnerable to theft than conventional bikes.

This latest feasibility study is a followup to a preliminary study the city did in 2010 to look at bringing the CycloCable system to North Vancouver.

The Trondheim bike lift, the only one in the world, was around $300,000 to install and extends 130 metres. In 2010, the annual operating costs were $13,000, offset by $90,000 per year in revenue from the lift’s users.