More Than 1 in 10 People Cycle in Some Vancouver Neighborhoods

http://www.francesbula.com/?p=1117

Life is pretty good here.

It's not Utopianly perfect, but Vancouverite cyclists
have many blessings to count.

I think one advantage coastal cities have over their
inland counterparts is that they don't always have
freeways running through them, thereby creating
barriers to the local citizens.

The big disadvantage of coastal cities is that one
only has three cardinal directions in which to ride.
The fourth cardinal direction leads into an ocean,
which isn't very good for bottom brackets.

At any rate, one never rides alone in Vancouver.


cheers,
Tom

--
Nothing is safe from me.
I'm really at:
tkeats curlicue vcn dot bc dot ca

On Feb 14, 11:50*pm, (Tom Keats) wrote:
* * * *http://www.francesbula.com/?p=1117

Life is pretty good here.

It's not Utopianly perfect, but Vancouverite cyclists
have many blessings to count.

I think one advantage coastal cities have over their
inland counterparts is that they don't always have
freeways running through them, thereby creating
barriers to the local citizens.

The big disadvantage of coastal cities is that one
only has three cardinal directions in which to ride.
The fourth cardinal direction leads into an ocean,
which isn't very good for bottom brackets.

At any rate, one never rides alone in Vancouver.

My Toronto neighborhood has a similar ratio of bike:car trips,
apparently. And we're coastal too, thanks to Lake Ontario. We do have
Hwy 401 cutting through the middle of the 'big' Toronto, but I live in
the original city, not Etobicoke/North York/Scarborough. And we don't
have the bridges that Vancouver has, just fairly small ones like the
Queen Street one that you barely notice, or the Bloor viaduct.

Sadly, I tried to go cross town on the College Street bike lane today,
but it was filled with parked cars, without a Green Hornet parking
person in sight.

What's Toronto liBrian Huntley wrote:
On Feb 14, 11:50 pm, (Tom Keats) wrote:
http://www.francesbula.com/?p=1117

Life is pretty good here.

It's not Utopianly perfect, but Vancouverite cyclists
have many blessings to count.

I think one advantage coastal cities have over their
inland counterparts is that they don't always have
freeways running through them, thereby creating
barriers to the local citizens.

The big disadvantage of coastal cities is that one
only has three cardinal directions in which to ride.
The fourth cardinal direction leads into an ocean,
which isn't very good for bottom brackets.

At any rate, one never rides alone in Vancouver.

My Toronto neighborhood has a similar ratio of bike:car trips,
apparently. And we're coastal too, thanks to Lake Ontario. We do have
Hwy 401 cutting through the middle of the 'big' Toronto, but I live in
the original city, not Etobicoke/North York/Scarborough. And we don't
have the bridges that Vancouver has, just fairly small ones like the
Queen Street one that you barely notice, or the Bloor viaduct.

Sadly, I tried to go cross town on the College Street bike lane today,
but it was filled with parked cars, without a Green Hornet parking
person in sight.

What's Toronto like for commuting by bike? Do they do a good job of
clearing the streets during the winter? I may wind up moving there due
to work (from Winnipeg). I don't really want to move, but given the
current economy, a job is a job.

In article ,
Brian Huntley writes:
On Feb 14, 11:50*pm, (Tom Keats) wrote:
* * * *http://www.francesbula.com/?p=1117

Life is pretty good here.

It's not Utopianly perfect, but Vancouverite cyclists
have many blessings to count.

I think one advantage coastal cities have over their
inland counterparts is that they don't always have
freeways running through them, thereby creating
barriers to the local citizens.

The big disadvantage of coastal cities is that one
only has three cardinal directions in which to ride.
The fourth cardinal direction leads into an ocean,
which isn't very good for bottom brackets.

At any rate, one never rides alone in Vancouver.
My Toronto neighborhood has a similar ratio of bike:car trips,
apparently. And we're coastal too, thanks to Lake Ontario. We do have
Hwy 401 cutting through the middle of the 'big' Toronto, but I live in
the original city, not Etobicoke/North York/Scarborough. And we don't
have the bridges that Vancouver has, just fairly small ones like the
Queen Street one that you barely notice, or the Bloor viaduct.
Sadly, I tried to go cross town on the College Street bike lane today,
but it was filled with parked cars, without a Green Hornet parking
person in sight.

Cycling communities in cities across Canada each have their
local support organizations (I hesitate to utter the word:
"advocacy.") But they all seem to me to be rather parochial
in nature.

I wonder if some sort of consortium or cooperation among all
these organizations could attain some clout in establishing
a federal bicycling policy toward the betterment of riding,
all across the country. Some open lines of communication
between riders in diverse parts of Canada could be advantageous:
sharing concerns, and how local solutions in one part of the
country might help another bailliwick enduring similar problems.

I'd luv to see riders in Winnipeg cooperating & working with
riders in Toronto, riders in Victoria cooperating & working
with riders in Halifax, riders in Regina cooperating & working
with riders in Red Deer, etc.

But I dunno if a federal cycling policy is such a good idea.
A federal bureaucracy can royally mess up a pretty big area
with a thoughtless stroke of a pen. And then there are the
one-note Johnnies who go on & on about bike lanes as the answer
to everything, but have nothing to say about chip-seal pavement,
or artlessly installed rumble strips, or multi-modal transporation.

Anyways, maybe riders across Canada are too separated
from ourselves. Maybe it's time we got it together
for our mutual good, and became ... not so much a "political,"
but an identifiably national, cultural force. Maybe even a Wave.

One attribute I appreciate about Critical Mass is that it
filters the riff-raff who have much to say about cycling,
but don't actually ride and thereby possess a first-hand
understanding of the concerns of cyclists. Another attribute
I appreciate about Critical Mass is that particpants in
various cities communicate with each other. Riders who aren't
so demonstrative but still care about their fellows could
take a page from that book.

Boy, am I ever Sagittarianly optimistic ;-)

Cyclists of Canada, unite!


cheers,
Tom

--
Nothing is safe from me.
I'm really at:
tkeats curlicue vcn dot bc dot ca

On Feb 15, 5:10*pm, Jeff wrote:
What's *Toronto liBrian Huntley wrote:



On Feb 14, 11:50 pm, (Tom Keats) wrote:
* * * *http://www.francesbula.com/?p=1117

Life is pretty good here.

It's not Utopianly perfect, but Vancouverite cyclists
have many blessings to count.

I think one advantage coastal cities have over their
inland counterparts is that they don't always have
freeways running through them, thereby creating
barriers to the local citizens.

The big disadvantage of coastal cities is that one
only has three cardinal directions in which to ride.
The fourth cardinal direction leads into an ocean,
which isn't very good for bottom brackets.

At any rate, one never rides alone in Vancouver.

My Toronto neighborhood has a similar ratio of bike:car trips,
apparently. And we're coastal too, thanks to Lake Ontario. We do have
Hwy 401 cutting through the middle of the 'big' Toronto, but I live in
the original city, not Etobicoke/North York/Scarborough. And we don't
have the bridges that Vancouver has, just fairly small ones like the
Queen Street one that you barely notice, or the Bloor viaduct.

Sadly, I tried to go cross town on the College Street bike lane today,
but it was filled with parked cars, without a Green Hornet parking
person in sight.

What's Toronto like for commuting by bike? *Do they do a good job of
clearing the streets during the winter? *I may wind up moving there due
to work (from Winnipeg). *I don't really want to move, but given the
current economy, a job is a job.

They clear the streets extremely well, but not the bike lanes. This
year, as an experiment, they did plow part of the waterfront trail,
however. You do have to be careful of streetcar tracks downtown, but
it a mostly flat city, rising up slowly from the lake of course, with
a bit of a ridge in mid-town. It can rain all spring some years, but
we rarely get a real prairie-style downpour.

Drivers are as crazy as ever but the city's finally sticking to most
of its proposed biking improvements, which is raising awareness quite
a bit. There are a fair number of year-round commuters.

On Feb 15, 8:02*pm, (Tom Keats) wrote:
In article ,
* * * * Brian Huntley writes:



On Feb 14, 11:50*pm, (Tom Keats) wrote:
* * * *http://www.francesbula.com/?p=1117

Life is pretty good here.

It's not Utopianly perfect, but Vancouverite cyclists
have many blessings to count.

I think one advantage coastal cities have over their
inland counterparts is that they don't always have
freeways running through them, thereby creating
barriers to the local citizens.

The big disadvantage of coastal cities is that one
only has three cardinal directions in which to ride.
The fourth cardinal direction leads into an ocean,
which isn't very good for bottom brackets.

At any rate, one never rides alone in Vancouver.
My Toronto neighborhood has a similar ratio of bike:car trips,
apparently. And we're coastal too, thanks to Lake Ontario. We do have
Hwy 401 cutting through the middle of the 'big' Toronto, but I live in
the original city, not Etobicoke/North York/Scarborough. And we don't
have the bridges that Vancouver has, just fairly small ones like the
Queen Street one that you barely notice, or the Bloor viaduct.
Sadly, I tried to go cross town on the College Street bike lane today,
but it was filled with parked cars, without a Green Hornet parking
person in sight.

Cycling communities in cities across Canada each have their
local support organizations (I hesitate to utter the word:
"advocacy.") *But they all seem to me to be rather parochial
in nature.

I wonder if some sort of consortium or cooperation among all
these organizations could attain some clout in establishing
a federal bicycling policy toward the betterment of riding,
all across the country. *Some open lines of communication
between riders in diverse parts of Canada could be advantageous:
sharing concerns, and how local solutions in one part of the
country might help another bailliwick enduring similar problems.

I'd luv to see riders in Winnipeg cooperating & working with
riders in Toronto, riders in Victoria cooperating & working
with *riders in Halifax, riders in Regina cooperating & working
with riders in Red Deer, etc.

But I dunno if a federal cycling policy is such a good idea.
A federal bureaucracy can royally mess up a pretty big area
with a thoughtless stroke of a pen. *And then there are the
one-note Johnnies who go on & on about bike lanes as the answer
to everything, but have nothing to say about chip-seal pavement,
or artlessly installed rumble strips, or multi-modal transporation.

Anyways, maybe riders across Canada are too separated
from ourselves. *Maybe it's time we got it together
for our mutual good, and became ... not so much a "political,"
but an identifiably national, cultural force. *Maybe even a Wave.

One attribute I appreciate about Critical Mass is that it
filters the riff-raff who have much to say about cycling,
but don't actually ride and thereby possess a first-hand
understanding of the concerns of cyclists. *Another attribute
I appreciate about Critical Mass is that particpants in
various cities communicate with each other. *Riders who aren't
so demonstrative but still care about their fellows could
take a page from that book.

Boy, am I ever Sagittarianly optimistic *;-)

Cyclists of Canada, unite!

Things to worry about with a national organization:

What will your focus be? Will it be maintaining your rights to the
road, or will it be constructing a fairy-tale world where one can ride
a bike anywhere one likes without ever seeing an auto?

In the US, the League of American Wheelmen (later sort of renamed
League of American Bicyclists) started out as a "rights to the road"
organization, way back in 1880 or so. It was very influential in
those days, but as the auto took over the US, it gradually died. When
revived in the 1960s, it maintained the same "rights to the road"
focus, plus providing much member support like an education program,
hospitality house program for tourists, legislative help in states,
annual conventions, support for century rides, etc. Membership was
much smaller than in the "Daisy, Daisy" 1890s, but it did good work.

But now the LAB has been taken over by who believe we can achieve a
nirvana of few cars and bike trails everywhere. The LAB's board
changed the bylaws to reduce member involvement. The newly retitled
"president" lobbies for - or at least gives cities awards - for things
like door zone bike lanes. Board candidates have been rejected for
elections or battled down by antagonistic, on-the-fly election rule
decisions because they oppose current board (and president) policies.
Board members are chosen based on fund raising ability, not bicycling
knowledge.

The sad fact is, it's easier to get people like the bike industry, the
health care industry, and the "Let's green the world" industry
interested in bike paths than to get them interested in, say,
promoting and teaching riding in the real world. When a paint stripe
goes down to mark a bike lane, some politician gets his name etched
in it as an "accomplishment." (If it's in a door zone and kills
someone, it's just an accident.)

Think hard about what kind of organization you want - and about how
you'll prevent it from being taken over by those who disagree.

See www.labreform.org

- Frank Krygowski

In article ,
(Tom Keats) wrote:

In article
,
Brian Huntley writes:
On Feb 14, 11:50*pm, (Tom Keats) wrote:
* * * *http://www.francesbula.com/?p=1117

Life is pretty good here.

It's not Utopianly perfect, but Vancouverite cyclists
have many blessings to count.

I think one advantage coastal cities have over their
inland counterparts is that they don't always have
freeways running through them, thereby creating
barriers to the local citizens.

The big disadvantage of coastal cities is that one
only has three cardinal directions in which to ride.
The fourth cardinal direction leads into an ocean,
which isn't very good for bottom brackets.

At any rate, one never rides alone in Vancouver.
My Toronto neighborhood has a similar ratio of bike:car trips,
apparently. And we're coastal too, thanks to Lake Ontario. We do have
Hwy 401 cutting through the middle of the 'big' Toronto, but I live in
the original city, not Etobicoke/North York/Scarborough. And we don't
have the bridges that Vancouver has, just fairly small ones like the
Queen Street one that you barely notice, or the Bloor viaduct.
Sadly, I tried to go cross town on the College Street bike lane today,
but it was filled with parked cars, without a Green Hornet parking
person in sight.

Cycling communities in cities across Canada each have their
local support organizations (I hesitate to utter the word:
"advocacy.") But they all seem to me to be rather parochial
in nature.

I wonder if some sort of consortium or cooperation among all
these organizations could attain some clout in establishing
a federal bicycling policy toward the betterment of riding,
all across the country. Some open lines of communication
between riders in diverse parts of Canada could be advantageous:
sharing concerns, and how local solutions in one part of the
country might help another bailliwick enduring similar problems.

I'd luv to see riders in Winnipeg cooperating & working with
riders in Toronto, riders in Victoria cooperating & working
with riders in Halifax, riders in Regina cooperating & working
with riders in Red Deer, etc.

I think there's more of that among the commuting-oriented groups like
the VACC and their counterparts than you might think, in terms of
working out best practices on lobbying and engineering of facilities,
etc.

But I dunno if a federal cycling policy is such a good idea.
A federal bureaucracy can royally mess up a pretty big area
with a thoughtless stroke of a pen. And then there are the
one-note Johnnies who go on & on about bike lanes as the answer
to everything, but have nothing to say about chip-seal pavement,
or artlessly installed rumble strips, or multi-modal transporation.

I think a federal cycling policy is a fairly bad idea, for the simple
reason that to the extent that cycling needs policy at all, it's largely
at the urban/regional level.

Note that few people worry about rural cycling policy, partly because
it's not so much a matter of providing facilities as convincing the rare
lunatic not to deliberately endanger cyclists. There's already a law
against assault.

Anyways, maybe riders across Canada are too separated
from ourselves. Maybe it's time we got it together
for our mutual good, and became ... not so much a "political,"
but an identifiably national, cultural force. Maybe even a Wave.

Maybe. At the risk of emitting a truism, the best thing most riders can
do to encourage riding is to ride more, partly because greater numbers
of cyclists on the road turn out to increase both safety and ridership.

If the numbers rise, the rest will follow...

--
Ryan Cousineau http://www.wiredcola.com/
"In other newsgroups, they killfile trolls."
"In rec.bicycles.racing, we coach them."

But now the LAB has been taken over by who believe we can
achieve a nirvana of few cars and bike trails everywhere.

*** Insert Very Weary Sigh Here ***

=v= Since the League of American Bicyclists is a nationwide
organization, it is tasked with representing the desires and
concerns of a large and diverse citizenry. Not just those
whose thinking begins and ends with ideas that John Forester
wrote down in the 1970s.

The sad fact is, it's easier to get people like the bike
industry, the health care industry, and the "Let's green
the world" industry interested in bike paths than to get
them interested in, say, promoting and teaching riding in
the real world.

=v= The *actual* fact is while LAB does promote bike paths
in certain circumstances, it also promotes and teaches riding
in the real world. In fact it is the United States' *primary*
force promoting and teaching of riding in the real world.

=v= The problem is that anyone who expresses any inkling of
support for any facility goes onto the Ve-hic-u-lar Cycling
Enemies List for daring to venture beyond the ossified,
limited parameters of Forester's dogma. I would guess that
Tom reads _Momentum_, and may have seen this take place in
a spate of Usenet-quality ranting letters to the editor from
Forester and his band of flying monkeys, shortly after that
magazine expanded to California. "Fly, my pretties! Fly!"

=v= LAB is far from perfect, but Canada could do worse than
to emulate it. Much worse.
_Jym_

On Feb 20, 1:05*pm, Jym Dyer wrote:
But now the LAB has been taken over by who believe we can
achieve a nirvana of few cars and bike trails everywhere.

* * * * * * * *** Insert Very Weary Sigh Here ***

=v= Since the League of American Bicyclists is a nationwide
organization, it is tasked with representing the desires and
concerns of a large and diverse citizenry. *Not just those
whose thinking begins and ends with ideas that John Forester
wrote down in the 1970s.

The sad fact is, it's easier to get people like the bike
industry, the health care industry, and the "Let's green
the world" industry interested in bike paths than to get
them interested in, say, promoting and teaching riding in
the real world.

=v= The *actual* fact is while LAB does promote bike paths
in certain circumstances, it also promotes and teaches riding
in the real world. *In fact it is the United States' *primary*
force promoting and teaching of riding in the real world.

=v= The problem is that anyone who expresses any inkling of
support for any facility goes onto the Ve-hic-u-lar Cycling
Enemies List for daring to venture beyond the ossified,
limited parameters of Forester's dogma. *I would guess that
Tom reads _Momentum_, and may have seen this take place in
a spate of Usenet-quality ranting letters to the editor from
Forester and his band of flying monkeys, shortly after that
magazine expanded to California. *"Fly, my pretties! *Fly!"

=v= LAB is far from perfect, but Canada could do worse than
to emulate it. *Much worse.

I'm sure it's possible to do worse. I'm also sure it's possible to do
better.

I believe I'd recommend emulating Britain's Cyclists' Touring Club as
an alternative to emulating LAB. From what I can tell, they serve
some of the same functions, but the CTC seems to maintain more member
programs, such as providing insurance to all members, maps online,
etc.

The impression I have is they have more concern with rights to the
road. They seem to share my caution, at least, about special cycling
facilities. It's interesting to contrast the CTC page at
http://www.ctc.org.uk/DesktopDefault.aspx?TabID=4519
with, say, the LAB's front page. LAB links to the paper by Pucher
(Mr. Paint & Path) touting all sorts of special, non-standard, bikes-
are-not-vehicles facilities. CTC mentions "rubbish bicycle lanes."

Along the same lines, LAB awards "bicycle friendly cities." But we
know that awards have gone to cities that have mandatory, door-zone
bike lanes. Awards have gone to at least one city that prohibits
bicyclists from riding certain main streets. Portland Oregon's gotten
lots of awards (despite some DZBLS), but it recently violated FHWA
regulations to install non-approved green "bike boxes," as a supposed
"experiment," then got a congressman to pressure for regulatory
approval after the fact. LAB hasn't mentioned that controversy. It's
simply cheered on the weird bike box concept, as it does any facility
that sounds good on paper.

Incidentally, it's not a matter of worshipping Forester. I don't agree
with everything Forester says. In fact, when he used to post here, I
was in some energetic debates against him. But I find his philosophy
greatly preferable to the crew that thinks every bike facility is a
good bike facility. And I think maintaining our rights to the road is
far more important than wringing hands and whining for more paint
stripes.

- Frank Krygowski

Frank Krygowski wrote:
Sipped for bandwidth conservation


I believe I'd recommend emulating Britain's Cyclists' Touring Club as
an alternative to emulating LAB. From what I can tell, they serve
some of the same functions, but the CTC seems to maintain more member
programs, such as providing insurance to all members, maps online,
etc.

The impression I have is they have more concern with rights to the
road. They seem to share my caution, at least, about special cycling
facilities. It's interesting to contrast the CTC page at
http://www.ctc.org.uk/DesktopDefault.aspx?TabID=4519
with, say, the LAB's front page. LAB links to the paper by Pucher
(Mr. Paint & Path) touting all sorts of special, non-standard, bikes-
are-not-vehicles facilities. CTC mentions "rubbish bicycle lanes."


- Frank Krygowski

Indeed, also worth a look at the quarterly Gazzette to see more of what the CTC do for 'us'

http://www.ctc.org.uk/DesktopDefault.aspx?TabID=4726


--
Colin N.

Lincolnshire is mostly flat ... But the wind is mostly in your face