Month: May 2009

“Winning” at the expense of pedestrians

This week the biking community “won” a pair of battles to add bike infrastructure in a pair of cities. But what did they really win? First, let’s look at Toronto:

Photo Credit: Marc Lostracco/Torontoist
Jarvis Street - Photo Credit: Marc Lostracco/Torontoist

The 5-lane Jarvis Street is being redeveloped to make it more pedestrian and bicycle friendly. Sadly, rather than do the right thing and remove two car lanes to both expand the sidewalk and add bike lanes, the council decided to remove only one lane, which means they forgo widening the sidewalks in favour of bike lanes.

As if that wasn’t bad enough, the Vancouver City Council went far beyond that. They actually took away space from pedestrians to give it to bikes. They are closing the eastern (northbound) sidewalk to make it bike-only, while southbound cyclists will have use of a car lane. This means all pedestrians will now have to use the western (southbound) side of the bridge. This image below explains it better:

Source: City of Vancouver page - click on image to view

And in Portland, a recent crash and general pedestrian and bicycle congestion issues on the Hawthorne Bridge has created a suggestion to do that bridge what they are planning on the Burrard Street Bridge, save that they would dedicate one sidewalk to each mode.

Let me very clear: These are not wins for bicyclists, the larger community or of sustainable transportation in the longer term. All they will do is pit cyclists against pedestrians while drivers laugh all the way to their hit and run. Streets must be designed to protect the most vulnerable users first. This means that pedestrians trump bikes everytime (and bikes trump cars…). This is why we have crosswalks with lights and curb bulge outs. This is why we widen sidewalks and have ramps to allow wheelchairs and strollers to pass easily.

One last morning celebration station at RJH

Shot of the two tents
RJH celebration station tents
Today was the last 6 am morning for me this week and it was a cold one. The celebration station at the Royal Jubilee Hospital was shadowed by one of the buildings, which made standing around a little chilly. The good weather today certainly helped get people out, especially after yesterday. Seeing the near steady stream of riders come by wasn’t a huge surprise because the Vancouver Island Health Authority, that runs RJH, has over 600 cyclists registered, almost 10% of the total registrations.


Preparing to engrave bike
Preparing to engrave bike

Leona Gibbs came out again this morning, which was a great boon. She has done an amazing amount of work these past two mornings, getting up early and talking with dozens of people about Safer Cycling Oak Bay and Oak Bay Bicycle Master Plan. Between us we collected about another 20 maps of people’s bike routes, bringing the total to nearly 80.

I also had a great conversation with Ian Graeme of the Bowker Creek Initiative about a Bowker Creek Greenway (there is a map of the Richmond/Oak Bay Rec Centre section) crossing all three municipalities. A trail like this would be a great path for cyclists and walkers to travel north-west/south-east and would allow easier linkage in with the Lochside and Galloping Goose trails, a connection which is currently very difficult.

This afternoon is the last celebration station I will attending, at the UVic fountain again, which runs from 3:30 to 5:30pm. I also plan on attending the final BBQ at the north end of the Selkirk Trestle tomorrow, which starts at 3pm.

Tri-City News backs more bike infrastructure

The Tri-City News, covering Port Coquitlam, Coquitlam and Maple Ridge and part of the Black Press stable of regional newspapers that includes Oak Bay News, has published an editorial calling for governments and business to do more to support biking. They start:

Those road warriors who are taking to the streets in rain gear and helmets to take part in Bike to Work Week deserve congratulations. The roads are not yet safe, despite some efforts to install bike lanes and bike-friendly policies, and those folks who put their lives on the line to keep their greenhouse gas emissions down and heart rates up to get to work on two wheels deserve our respect.

The Tri-City News seems to be strongly in favour of many green initiatives, judging from their past editorials. Interestingly, the article they published on STV going down to defeat includes an image of a cyclist promoting STV on their bike. Guess somebody in the Tri-City News loves bikes…

Busy station at Oak Bay municipal hall this morning

Long shot of tents on the lawn
Tents on the lawn of the municipal hall

This morning’s celebration station on the front lawn was a busy time for me and my fellow Safer Cycling OB volunteers, Jane and Leona. We managed to get nearly everybody that came by to tell us where they bicycled by highlighting those roads on a map. Adding the 37 collected today, we have almost 60 responses already. Entering in all these data and then making sense of it is going to be a big job.

Tara Ney talk with Jane van Hoorn
Tara Ney talking with Jane van Hoorn

I was surprised and disappointed that the only member of council that came by today was Tara Ney, who dropped in and chatted with us for a good half an hour. She reiterated her support for what we are doing, which is always heartening, given the scale of the project.  Roy Thomassen, the Director of Planning, also made a quick appearance. He clarified that there is a slight change of plans with the covered bike shelter and it is being moved to right against the building.


Transit operator demoing how to load bike
Transit operator demoing how to load bike

Due to being busy, I didn’t get many pictures today, but there are lots more all the stations on biketowork’s photostream. This Friday is also Bike to Work Day and this is bringing lots of posts about how to making biking more
“normal” on Streetblog.net, an aggregator of blogs about livable streets.

Tomorrow morning Leona and I are off to the Royal Jubilee Hospital, which I learned today will be by the old entrance to the hospital on the south side (map).

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.

Pictures from Sidney’s celebration station today

long shot of celebration station from the north
Long shot of celebration station from the north

To celebrate the first day of this years Bike to Work Week, I made the trek up to the most northerly celebration station in south Sidney. Today’s big story ended up being the weather, with a little bit of rain, sun and just about everything in between.  We were right along the water near the Anacortes ferry terminal. This meant there was a very stiff breeze from the south, so much so that at several points the half dozen of us all had to hold down the tent to literally keep it from blowing away.

I ended up staying just over an hour and in that time we saw about a half dozen bicyclists. Amongst that group was a recumbent, who along with his partner, were on their way to Tijuana and a tandem heading south. I am not certain if it was the distance or the cold weather but every cyclist we had come was seriously equipped. Hopefully we get some better weather over the next few days to get those occasional riders out.

See you all tomorrow at the UVic fountain between 6:45 am and 8:45am.

Tent of the celebration station in Sidney
Tent of the celebration station in Sidney
Tandem riders leaving celebration station
Tandem riders leaving celebration station
Pumping up the tires on a recumbent
Pumping up the tires on a recumbent

Bike to Work Week starts today

Today marks the first day of the annual Bike to Work Week. This years is two weeks early, to coincide with events across North America. The kick off this morning at the south end of the Selkirk Trestle. That was only the first of a whole host of celebration stations across the city over the next week.

Safer Cycling Oak Bay plans to be at a few of them promoting the bike master plan and asking people what routes they commute by in Oak Bay:

Morning (6:45 am – 8:45 am)

Tuesday – UVic Fountain

Wednesday – Front lawn of the Oak Bay Municipal Hall

Thursday – Royal Jubilee Hospital (uncertain exact location)

Afternoon (3:30 pm – 5:30 pm)

Thursday – UVic Fountain

There are lots of other stations. Check out the complete schedule (PDF).

I will also be heading up to Sidney this afternoon to the celebration station in Tulista Park between 3:30 and 5:30:


View Larger Map

I am hoping to get to a few more, just to talk with people and get inspired. Happy Bike to Work Week everybody!

Quick note about the map: It is from the , a user-editable map of the world. Although the map is incomplete, the Canadian government with its Geobase project has released much of its data under a free license and this is now being imported into OSM.

Why is free data important? It allows different views of the map, such as the cycle-specific version embedded above, which shows bike routes, parking and lanes. Sadly Geobase lacks any of this bike-specific data butyou can help.

Random links from the provincial election

The internet is a wonderful thing. You can spend hours looking up all kinds of things about people, especially those who are involved in politics in any way. So without further ado, a random collection of interesting, odd and obscure links I stumbled across today while googling the Oak Bay-Gordon Head candidates.

Oh look! A windmill! Must dash…

Lastly, Wikipedia has a good overview for Oak Bay – Gordon Head, including the results from the last few elections. Unknown if the population count is accurate to the 2005 ridings or the 2009 ones.

Estevan Village Food Roots market has returned

Foot Roots market with sign
Estevan Village Food Roots pocket market

Yesterday marked the return of the Food Roots pocket market in Estevan Village. This means good, local produce is now available every Thursday from 3pm to 6pm. Of course, I had to go down buy some vegetables, take a few pictures and chat with people.

When I was there around 4pm, it was fairly busy, with at least one person at shopping at all times. Speaking with Larkin, the Food Roots employee running the stall, she said that this was amongst their busiest markets and that business on of the first day of this year has already been pretty good.

Larkin was kind enough to take some Bicycle Master Plan promotion cards. They can be seen by the till. The more people we can reach, the better the plan will be.

For those in other parts of the city, Food Roots operates a total of 11 number of markets around Greater Victoria, from Vic West where they started to right downtown in Centennial Square. If you don’t have a pocket market near your house, they offer a handy Pocket Market toolkit to help you get one going.

A few more shots of the market in action:

Bicyclist with haul of food
John Snively with his haul of vegetables
Food Roots market in Estevan Village
Larkin with customer