Corey Burger Rotating Header Image

May 12th, 2009:

Biki launches and Akerley charged

Montreal’s pioneer bike sharing program, the first in Canada, has just launched with 3,000 bikes spread across 300 stations. This is only a small part of a very ambitious plan of stations across Montreal. Just take a look at the map of stations to get an idea. Like it’s inspiration Velib,the first 30 minutes are free, the rest of the day is $5 and frequent users can get monthly or yearly rates. They both also share cute contractions for names, bike + taxi in the case of Montreal and velo + liberte for Paris. Lastly, Velib is also not “dying”, so ignore all the hysteria.

In other good yet tragic news, Daniel Marc Akerley has been sentenced to just over a year and half of jail time for his hit-and-run of Byron Harris in Port Alberni. Sadly he only got convicted of one count of criminal negligence causing bodily harm. Sorry, but this was attempted murder or at a very least, assault with a deadly weapon. Why, when they charged him with attempted murder, did they let him plead guilty to such a minor offence? And more importantly, will this guy ever be let back behind the wheel? I am not exactly holding my breath for that. But I have beat this drum in the past.

Pictures from the morning UVic station

Another shot of the food and coffee table

The food and coffee tent

On this, the second day of Bike to Work Week 2009, I dragged myself out of bed at a very early hour of 6 am to attend the morning celebration station at UVic’s main fountain. As UVic is the single largest destination for bicyclists in the CRD, this has been a well attended station in the past and it was certainly no different today. The good weather this morning undoubtedly helped, although most of the people today looked like long-time commuter bikers.


Long shot of celebration station

Long shot of celebration station

Beyond just having fun early in the morning, I was also there to find out where people are biking in Oak Bay. So armed with a clipboard, lots of maps and highlighters, I managed convince almost 20 people to colour on the lines. After the week is done, I get the unenviable task of collating all that data and posting a map of popular biking routes.






Parked bikes

Parked bikes

Oak Bay Bikes fixes a bike

Oak Bay Bikes fixing a bike

For more pictures of yesterday’s station in Sidney and will be adding more as the week goes on from other stations in my Bike to Work Week 2009 flickr set.

See you all tomorrow morning on the lawn of the Oak Bay Municipal Hall.