Edmonton Bicycle Commuters Society

Dear friends and fellow cyclists,

Our election advocacy meeting is tonight at the Original Joe’s at 8404 109 St from 530-630PM on Thursday, August 26th.  If you’re not able to attend, do take a look at our lobby document here.  Give us your feedback about it.  What do you want to see happen with the city’s bicycle future?  Give your election candidates feedback about it.  They need to know Edmonton wants more and better cycling infrastructure and programs!  Find more info about EBC’s election lobbying here.

The EBC Advocacy Committee has been developing an election strategy to help make cycling a major issue the upcoming municipal election. With your help, a new council will be elected with many members who will invest in cycling infrastructure and programs.

EBC has been involved with the spoke by helping with volunteer mechanics as well as resources and expertise.  Alex, EBC’s BikeWorks Coordinator, has been working closely with Kris, the spoke coordinator, to develop the program, determine and acquire the necessary parts and tools, and facilitating the actual workshops.

The spoke fosters a sense of belonging and self worth for inner city youth by providing a positive and engaging community space and hands on work experience. Volunteer mechanics work with youth, providing mentorship and skill sharing. Youth are given the opportunity to build relationships with peers and volunteers in a safe and positive environment centered on the values of cooperation, mutual respect, and the love of bikes! 

EBC is offering a Canadian Cycling Association CAN-BIKE 2 Course in late July of this year. CAN-BIKE 2 is an 18 hour, on-road cycling course. The course covers the theory of on-road cycling and practical riding techniques starting on quiet roads and working up to more complex situations. The course is suitable to all cyclists who feel comfortable on their bicycles and want to learn more about cycling safely and efficiently in traffic. This course will improve your skill and confidence in riding in challenging traffic situations. CAN-BIKE 1 is not a pre-requisite for CAN-BIKE 2. This certificate course is quite often a requirement for jobs that involve cycling.

June is Bike Month in Edmonton!  Join in all the fun at countless events including bike movie nights, bike to work breakfasts, salons, rides and of course the Bikeology Festival on Saturday June 19th.  Visit http://www.bikeology.ca for all event listings.

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!)