herb's blog

Last Thursday Community Bicycle Network supporters got together to discuss the future of the Network. CBN has been around since 1993 as a hub of various projects, ranging from working with youth on getting bike mechanics skills to bicycle recycling clubs to Bikeshare, a renowned bicycle lending program.

The feeling from the meeting was that there was renewed energy in a group of demoralized supporters. A lot of ideas were passed around that will then be put before the Annual General Meeting so the membership can decide the best actions. I had a few favorite ideas for what CBN is especially suited to take on - ideas I felt were strongly supported by the group at the gathering.

One is to explore more a model of (almost) self-sustainability through having income-generating projects that also support community access to affordable resources: cycling education, recycling, lending, and tool sharing. A focus on low-income groups would be done through this sustainable model.

Olivia Chow's Bike

I just got back from a short trip to Ottawa. My first impressions:

• Not very pedestrian friendly. People don't jaywalk because the motor traffic is quite fast downtown. (I see jaywalking as a sign of how pedestrian-friendly a city is.) There are lots of signs to prevent pedestrians from crossing on one side of intersections, which just wastes time. Very annoying for a downtown Torontonian.
• Lots of bike paths with not so many pedestrians which makes for fast, long-distance cycling.
• On-road bike network is not well-connected.
• Car traffic is fast and the highways dump the cars right into downtown.
• Lots and lots of car parking downtown, including their so-called 'funky' By Ward Market

Despite all the hurraying by Ottawa people of their great bikeway network, my overall impression of sustainable transportation in Ottawa is ho-hum. Their main advantage is that they are still a relatively small city and they had lots of space to throw in some bike paths and busways. If Ottawa was as big as Toronto it would be a horrible place to live.

To get to the point of my title: politicians and planners need to experience what it is like to be a cyclist or a pedestrian. And be active commuters at that, otherwise they don't get it.

A bunch of cycling bloggers got together on a cold 2007 winter over coffee to discuss how we could work together on a website. The I Bike TO website is a result of that inspiration.

We want it to be an avenue of celebrating cycling in Toronto as well as helping out cyclists to have an enjoyable and safe experience on our roads - no simple task. We will do this by being a hub of information, stories and discussion.

Update: Our launch is tomorrow, May 1st, 2007! Read up, contribute comments, discuss in the forum, and add rides. We'll keep on biking and blogging - bloking, bligging?

The following video is via Martino's Bikelane Diary, who is also a member of I Bike TO.

I second Martino's enthusiasm for this collection of Dutch bicycle promotion ads. They have a bit of humour. I don't think the Dutch are normally known for humour - tulips, pot, water, bikes and tolerance, perhaps - not so much humour. I was always told growing up that the Dutch are much more into slapstick than the dry wit style of the British. But not true: I love the ad with the mafiosa who laugh at the guy who rode his bike. At the end the two get into a Lincoln-style car and it explodes. It says: "Fietsers leven langer" (Cyclists live longer).

My Dutch is pretty lax so I don't know if I got the translation right for another ad:

Als we zo graag op de fiets zitten waarom staan we dan in de file?

Fietsen naar je werk. Een goede zaak.

(If we can so easily sit on the bike why do we then stand in line/traffic jam?

Bike to work. It's a good thing.

The bike swap celebrated its first anniversary successfully and it can get even better next time.

I think there is a lot of pent-up demand for bikes. We had a lot of people come around expecting to see a lot of bikes for sale, but we just didn't get enough sellers! I know they are out there, the items for sale on the Toronto craigslist is huge.

Yesterday was Earth Day and I spent a good 12 hours of it co-organizing the Bike Swap for the Community Bicycle Network along with Steve of the U of T BikeChain and a bunch of great volunteers - all interested in helping out with the small details of bikes and trading them. We also had our local Bike Pirates volunteer their time.

The swap is organized around exchanging money for bikes, not so much trading a bike for a bike. We take a 15% consignment fee for our troubles of connecting buyers and sellers.

The whole bike swap is great because it meets two essential missions of the cycling community, it raises some money to do cycling education and advocacy, and it helps connect people with new bikes. It's a win-win.

A mock interview of Herb vanden Dool, by Herb vanden Dool.

We hope to make these cyclist profiles a major feature of this website!

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Shanghai still has a very high level of commuting by bicycle even though car ownership is booming. There are just so many people there that even at the current rate of car purchases that in 20 years car usage will still be in the minority.

There has been a concerted effort on the part of politicians to get rid of all the bicycles from major roads in order to make room for cars. Recently the city has begun to reverse that decision at least in some ways. They've begun to build bike lanes while at the same as trying to make intersections more efficient for car flow. This may seem reasonable enough as a win-win solution, but from experience in the west you can't really encourage car driving in the city as well as cycling and walking. The current building of bike lanes seems to be a way to marginalize cyclists by shoving them from their current position across the roadway. This is quite the opposite use of bike lanes in western countries where a bike lane is welcomed as breather space by cyclists.