commuting

Come see what all this BIXI Toronto talk has been about!!

July 28 · 7:00pm - 10:00pm
Gladstone Hotel @ 1214 Queen St. West (near Dufferin)
Complimentary food and entertainment!

• Be one of the first to subscribe to BIXI Toronto and help make public bikes a reality in our City!
• Take a BIXI bike for a test spin and feel what a great ride they are.

Public Bikes have been dramatically improving cities around the world in recent years - and now it's our turn in Toronto!! But we need your participation to help make this happen.

Help us insure that this amazing program gets the support we need to roll out 1000 public bikes across downtown in Spring 2011 - without 1000 subscriptions sold by November, we lose the public bikes program altogether...

More information and a Q&A doc can be found here - http://bikeunion.to/bixi-toronto

• Community Facebook group I Will BIXI Toronto
• Official Facebook page BIXI Toronto
• Official Facebook event page BIXI Bash!

For more information about the event, and to indicate your interest in subscribing for year-round access to BIXI Toronto's public bikes, email bixitoronto@toronto.ca

If you cannot attend the event you may also subscribe online after the July 28th website launch at: www.toronto.bixi.com

This video shows the wide variety of conditions for cyclists in the West End of Toronto, everything from major streets (Keele) with no bicycle lanes to really major high-speed roads (Queensway) with bicycle lanes.

Join a group of cyclists for a fun, friendly, and casual ride from traditional car-centric suburbia (Don Mills Centre) to Downtown City Hall.

Date: Monday May 31st 2010
Departure Time: 7am (be there before 7am for a brief intro and speeches)
Meeting Location: Don Mills Road and Lawrence Avenue East Southwest Corner

City of Toronto Councillor and Budget Chief Shelley Carroll has confirmed her attendance, and has been warming up for the ride recently. So get ready for a beautiful cycling week in the sun!

Toronto Annual Group Commute from Don Mills

Live on the east side of the Don Valley near Lawrence Avenue? Riding across the Lawrence Avenue bridge can be challenging for some. There will be a pre-ride westbound across the Lawrence Avenue bridge departing from Lawrence Avenue East and Underhill (Northeast corner) at 6:30am.

College and Manning 8:30 a.m. April 23, 2010. 'Mr. Green' sends his message.

The following video shows a ride downtown from the point of view of my helmet camera. A useful tool for rides, the helmet camera both lets me take videos of what a ride feels like, and has a wonderfully civilizing effect on drivers en route.

This is my simple bike. A Peugeot Sport with 27 inch wheels, fenders and a coaster brake.

Nothing fancy. An old used Brooks saddle maybe for comfort. It's not a silent ride, there are squeaks here and there. But my hands are free and it's easy to maintain.

Where can you build yourself a bike like this? Try the Bike Pirates if you are into DIY which is super fun. Other places to try are CBN (Community Bicycle Network) and the Bike Joint.

A highly recommended ride.

West Toronto Rail Path last night. Somehow I thought it might be free of ice or snow.

Wrong.

Well, it was a lot fun to ride. Kinda like mountain biking on sandy soil.

Nice to see other cyclists as well using the trail on such a nice winter's night.

The map geeks at the Toronto star have outdone themselves with this google map of Commuter cyclists by census tract (a small area as defined by Statistics Canada's census). It shows the breakdown of how people commute who live in that area. The census tracts with red boundaries are over 10%.

Politicians need to stop treating cyclists as if they are marginal. If you lived in an area with cycling at 13% and showed this data to your councillor maybe a lightbulb would go off in their head. It's still a minority but not one they can always safely ignore.

It doesn't address who commutes through the area. For instance, the area southwest of Dundas West and Dufferin has 11.5% of commutes by bicycle, yet there may be many people driving through from the suburbs which will water down that percentage on the road.

The highest percentage is on the Toronto Islands at 29%. This is unsurprising, since no cars are allowed. It's odd to think that 18% of them still drive to work - they must be parking cars downtown.

The second highest is in Parkdale at 14%! This area bounded by Dundas, Queen, Sorauren and Lansdowne has an above the Toronto average household income and is mostly detached houses with a few condos.

The core of the highest rates of bike commuting is in the Annex - bounded by Bloor, Dovercourt, Spadina and Dundas. Leslieville and East York aren't too far behind.