Edmonton Bicycle Commuters Society

Enjoying the unseasonably warm temperatures?  The normals for this time of year are a high of -3°C and a low of -14°C.  So I’m afraid to report that we’re actually pretty seasonable right now.  -3°C with sun and clear roads is fine weather for cycling!  If you’ve never tried biking in the winter before, you might give it a try this weekend.  There are a lot of days like today throughout an Edmonton winter.

But we understand if you’d rather wait for the roads to be swept and the May flowers to bloom.  There’s a joy to rolling your bike out of its long, dark winter hibernation and into spring that you just can’t achieve in February.  So to the 265-day cyclists, we’ll see you in a few weeks, and to the year-round cyclists, happy riding!

Edmonton will be getting its first non-contraflow bike lanes this year.  You’ll like them!  But please don’t use them for parking: doing so puts cyclists in a dangerous position, and interrupts both auto and bike traffic flow.  It’s also illegal.  (VANOC could stand to reiterate this to its own drivers, apparently.)

Sorry for the website troubles.  One minute I’m working on a new point-of-sales system, the next minute the entire website is shut down with a very severe-looking “Forbidden” error, and I find myself lacking the power (permissions, for UNIX geeks) to fix it. I did a bit of folder juggling, though, so here we are, back again.

Now then, on the subject of snow:  the east side of the High Level Bridge is much easier riding than the west side.  Yes, it’s narrower, and the railing is shorter. But you can see pavement!

Maybe it’s all too much for you to worry about which side of the bridge is best to ride on, and you just want to park the bike for a while. Maybe you need to pick someone up from the airport, do a big grocery run for a holiday party, or pick up that new Stockholm chesterfield from the city of IKEA. Perhaps you’d be interested in the Carsharing Co-operative of Edmonton: http://www.carshareedmonton.ca

Carsharing. Because practicality is one of the reasons you ride a bike.

So, the Dawson Bridge closed to traffic, pedestrians and cyclists on Monday.

Your best alternatives are the Low Level Bridge and the Cloverdale Pedestrian Bridge (which connects to Riverdale). If you need to head towards Capilano, then you can take the multiuse trail from Cloverdale up to 100 Ave (or follow it all the way to Rowland Road/106 Ave).  We’ve had conflicting reports about whether or not this path is being cleared of snow: if you know its status this winter, please .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address), and we’ll post an update here for everyone.

I’m thinking of starting up a city-wide trail condition reporting service.  Would you use this/participate? .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address).

Now, you’re always welcome to send us e-mails with your complaints, and we’ll pass them on to the City or whoever’s appropriate.  But if you’re in the mood for some musical complaints, then I’ve got a video for you!  This is from a few years ago. Where was I back then? I don’t know.  Out enjoying the warm summer, likely.

Enjoy! Or, don’t, and leave a comment with your complaint.

http://www.complaintschoir.org/

CBC’s As It Happens organized Canada’s own complaints choir, if you’d like to hear about numb fingers, cell phone fees, and expensive cars that have no signal lights.

The Edmonton Bicycle Commuters Society would like to wish everyone a safe and warm holiday season!
Many many thanks to all who have helped contribute to Edmonton’s cycling community in the last year and here is hoping that it continues to grow in 2010.

As well if you find yourself reflecting on things over your holidays and have some input for what you want Cycling in Edmonton to look like please remember to send us an email:

What is your vision for cycling in Edmonton?

Answer in whatever form you feel reflects your vision; essays, point-form dialogues, essay, pictures—all are valuable to us as we begin crafting this document.

To spark your imagination, here is the URL to a couple of cycling websites I find valuable:
http://www.copenhagenize.com and Bicycle Victoria (Australia not BC, and this is probably the complete canon on cycling) http://www.bv.com.au/

Please send your submissions to .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) with “Vision for cycling” in the subject line.

Stay Warm & Happy Cycling!

Recently the city made the decision to combine their two proposed plans for improving cycling and walkability together into one plan titled “Active Transportation”. This would combine both sidewalk improvements, lanes for bikes, sharrows, Bus stop retrofits and much more into one fund. On their own, cycling was supposed to receive $10M over 10 years for a $100M plan to go exclusively to cycling initiatives and the walkability plan was going to receive $186M.

The plans were combined, but the funding was not. http://ereg2.edmonton.ca/sirepub/cache/2/0tdddp2qbsyr3×45myv31a45/1325711122009114753247.PDF

The proposed budget has now came back to the Transportation and Public Works (TPW) committee and it has a much smaller amount than we were expecting. The new proposed amount is approximately $22M over 3 years to pay for both the walkability and bikeability improvements do not include the necessary bike lanes and infrastructure improvements that will make cycling safer and more accessible in our city.

This watered-down proposal will be voted on by the TPW Committee Tuesday November 17th at 130PM. We are organizing a couple of cyclists to come and speak to the nuances of the proposal and why it is so important to fund. If you can come and show your support this would be much appreciated! We don’t want to irritate or agitate the councillors but we want to make sure that they know that cyclists are paying attention and don’t want to be neglected by yet another city budget.

More and more Edmontonians are cycling. Maybe its the weather, maybe its the economy, but either way, more cyclists are on the roads and we need to make sure that they are safe. We have a gap between the existing safety measures and the amount of cyclists on the road and until we take measures like creating more designated bike lanes, especially going east-west in our city, lives will be at risk.

For more info please click “continue reading”

Edmonton’s poet laureate, Roland Pemberton (aka Cadence Weapon) conducted his first official reading to City Council last week.

You can read his poem, Critical Mass, here.  You can also view an audio slideshow of the presentation.

But, don’t stop there.  Cadence Weapon makes fantastic music (I’m selling real estate!), writes about hometown Edmonton (and, apparently, knows quite well what it can be like to bike here), and is a marvelously nice guy.  He’s in Halifax right now, performing for the Halifax Pop Explosion, but make sure you check him out when you get a chance.

The OttoCYCLE project is a joint project of the University of Winnipeg’s Centre for Sustainable Transportation and the City of Winnipeg. Over 900 cyclists tracked their routes between May and October, using GPS trackers that were provided to them, allowing the project to see where potential cycling infrastructure could be built in Winnipeg. Anyone who cycles more than once a week (in Winnipeg) is eligible to participate.

We’re looking at running a survey over the winter.  We won’t have any fancy GPS units to distribute, but if you’re interested in participating or helping to run the survey, .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address)!  (Could be good experience for your resume!) 

From the Edmonton Journal:

Edmonton councillor pushes quicker bike plan
Don Iveson says funding cuts put bicycle-friendly improvements decades away

“They’ve established funding recommendations that are too low to get the job done in the time frame I’d like to see,” said a disappointed Iveson, who interrupted his summer vacation to hear details of the proposal.

“I don’t think the resources are in place to make the sort of infrastructure investment that’s going to encourage more people to walk more and cycle more.”

Do you like the look of the above bike lanes?  The last one is in Montreal, a city that gets a lot more snow (and I mean a lot!) than Edmonton.

Would you like a bike lane some time before 2050?

Contact your city council. Write to your own councillors. Write or call up the ones that are outside your ward. Tell the Mayor what you think. The Bicycle Transportation Plan is designed and ready to roll out. The only thing between us and 500km of bike routes is the political will to finally put the money behind the plan.  The city has already been putting it off for decades.  Tell them that you don’t want to wait any longer:

• Mayor Mandel, 780) 496-8100, .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address)
• E-mail all councillors: .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address)
• Karen Leibovici - Ward 1, 780-496-8120
• Linda Sloan - Ward 1, 780-496-8122
• Ron Hayter - Ward 2, 780-496-8128
• Kim Krushell - Ward 2, 780-496-8136
• Ed Gibbons - Ward 3, 780-496-8138
• Tony Caterina - Ward 3, 780-496-8333
• Jane Batty- Ward 4, 780-496-8140
• Ben Henderson - Ward 4, 780-496-8146
• Bryan Anderson - Ward 5, 780-496-8130
• Don Iveson - Ward 5, 780-496-8130
• Amarjeet Sohi - Ward 6, 780-496-8148
• Dave Thiele - Ward 6, 780-496-8142

Something will surely appeal to you in Sarah Chan’s video short, “Two-Wheeled Adventures”.  Despite my excessive use of the exclamation points in the title, though, I’ll admit it’s mostly just Sarah biking around town.

If you vote for her video, you can get daily entries for a draw for a portable music player.  And I’m not talking about that 10 D-cell powered boombox that I saw at a garage sale last week.  It’s much better, since I’m not the one giving out the prizes!

The Edmonton Journal has published a couple articles about cycling (in Edmonton, of course) in style.  No lycra.  Promise.

• Cycling with style
• Heels, not hoodies: cycling goes high style

The Edmonton Journal reports that downtown City of Edmonton workers now have access to a bike sharing program.  City workers will have access to 25 bikes to move about downtown.  If you work for the city, you should round up a few friends at lunch and go for a bike ride to your favourite restaurant!

When you’re an eight-year-old boy, I suppose riding 80 blocks to the mall is just par for the mini-golf course.  <article>

Considering the typical quality of kids’ bikes (heavy steel behemoths, often just single-speed with coaster brakes), I think it’s worth putting money down that this kid will be in the Paris-Roubaix when he grows up.