Edmonton Bicycle Commuters Society

From the hallowed halls of MIT Labs, first unveiled on the streets of Copenhagen (where else), comes yet another innovation: a bicycle wheel that has a motor assist, regenerative braking, GPS, air quality sensors, and wireless connectivity, all built into a single unit.

You can read more at the Wiser is the Path blog, or directly at the MIT project page.

It seems that Canada wants to tax the Dutch for any bikes brought to the Vancouver 2010 Olympics. The taxman says they can bring the bikes into the country tax-free, so long as they take them away again. If the bicycles are donated to charity then they will have to pay taxes. The Dutch were hoping to promote cycling as a healthy lifestyle choice during the Olympics, sporting the banner, “Go Green, Go Dutch, Go Bike.”

You can read an article about the bikes from the Globe and Mail here.

And you can listen to a 2-minute report about the bike tax on tonight’s edition of CBC Radio’s As It Happens:

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!) 

That bastion of cycling-love, Copenhagen, has announced its vision to become the world’s best city for cyclists, with a target of getting 50% of commuters using bicycles to get around.

Portland doesn’t want to be left in the dust, either: their bicycle plan calls to triple the existing bike lanes and paths to 930 miles over the next 20 years, with a ridership goal of 25%.

Edmonton has been significantly cutting back funding on its 10-year bike plan, a plan which, if fully-implemented, would likely have very strongly beneficial effects on cycling in the city.  We’re currently sitting at around 1-2% of road share.

Write to your councillors: .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address).  Tell them that they need to start investing in our infrastructure. Copenhagen started in the 70s and 80s, and now they don’t have traffic jams.  They’ve probably saved a lot of money on overpasses and interchanges, too.

How’s that for planning?

The City of Copenhagen is currently planning to expand the existing, extensive network of bike lanes to extend farther out into the suburbs. A network of 13 high-class routes - ‘bicycle superhighways’ if you will - dedicated to bicycle commuters and aimed at encouraging more to cycle to work.

Currently 55% of the citizens in central Copenhagen ride a bicycle daily and the number is 37% for Greater Copenhagen. While in many other countries anybody who cycles to work is often considered a ‘bicycle commuter’, most of the 500,000 people who cycle to work or education in Copenhagen don’t fit into the Danish version of this statistical category.

[ read the full article ]

If you’re fearfully quivering at the prospect of having to vacate the sidewalks of Whyte Ave and move by way of the road proper, then you should do two things:

1) Enroll in our upcoming CANBIKE 2 course. This course teaches effective and safe cycling. You learn how to navigate turns, proper road position, communication with drivers, basic mechanics, and how to deal with exceptional situations, among many other things. It has a discussion portion as well as an on-bike portion. You’ll leave with the knowledge and confidence to ride down the road knowing that you’re riding in a way that’s legal, and, more importantly, safest for yourself and other road users.  You’ll also get where you want to go much much faster (for the same amount of work) if you’re not stuck on the sidewalk.

Click here to read more or to register.  It starts Thursday, so don’t put this off, or you’ll miss your chance!

2) Understand that while sidewalk cycling may feel safer, you’re greatly increasing your risk of being in an accident with cars as well as with pedestrians by riding on the sidewalk. Here’s a message from John, the instructor for the upcoming CANBIKE 2 course:

Safety and feeling safe are difficult things to define as the terms mean different things to different people. By and large, the general public is most concerned with being run over from behind while cycling. This is easily understandable as loud noises approaching rapidly from the “invisible” behind triggers the fight or flight response mechanism in inexperienced cyclists. As you and I know, this is a very uncommon type of bicycle/car collision and is most easily dealt with by riding out in the road a half to a full meter from the curb where the cyclist will be much more visible in relation to the surrounding vehicles. It is ironic that the common response of hugging the curb and riding close to parked cars actually increases the likelihood of being hit from behind and from other directions.

The number one type of accident experienced by cyclists are simple falls. These are due to inattention, lack of skill, surface defects, etc. and involve no other vehicle. The second-most common type of accident are collisions involving turning movements by other vehicles. A left-turning vehicle hitting a straight-through cyclist being the most common, but right-turning vehicles are well represented, too. This makes intersections the most common location for bike/vehicle collisions by a large margin. The best strategies to deal with intersection collisions are to place yourself where you are most visible, and to be aware of vehicles in front of you and ready to take action if things start to go awry.

The reasons sidewalk riding has a much higher rate of collisions are twofold. Firstly, you approach any intersection in a position that is not easily visible from vehicles on the street. They may scan for pedestrians but will always double check for other vehicles on the roadway before proceeding. The cyclist is usually moving quickly enough that they are not noticed approaching the intersection and appear in the intersection after the driver has scanned for pedestrians, rescanned for other vehicles and then executed their turn. This gives rise to the all-too-common, “I just didn’t see you!” They didn’t see you because you weren’t there when they looked, you were further back and hard to spot in amongst the other visual clutter on the sidewalk.

Secondly, sidewalk riding multiplies the number intersections you have to navigate. Every driveway, alley and parked car with opening passenger doors becomes yet another intersection. You also have to deal with all the shop doors that pop open as well!

Everyone rides on the sidewalk at one time or another. Being aware of the increased risk and proceeding slowly and cautiously will help a great deal. When riding with children always, always, always walk your bike through any crosswalk. Perhaps you are sharp enough to judge the risks properly but children do not have the mental ability to properly judge a complex traffic situation. The next time, with someone else or by themselves, they may make a fatal mistake.

Do you dream of a world without personal cars?  (Or heating bills?)

Here’s an article from the NY Times about a development in Germany where your dreams come true.

VAUBAN, Germany — Residents of this upscale community are suburban pioneers, going where few soccer moms or commuting executives have ever gone before: they have given up their cars.

—Full article

From CBC Vancouver comes this story on a cycling route planner developed at UBC that includes traffic, hill, and air pollution considerations.  Edmonton doesn’t have an automated route planner, but if you e-mail .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) with your start and destination, we’ll figure out and draw a route just for you!

Vancouver Cycling Route Planner from Peter Smith on Vimeo.

Ciclovía is such a nice word.  It’s the Spanish word for bike path, or a space temporarily closed to automobiles, and also describes the movement in cities across the world to close roads to traffic temporarily, and convert them into public recreation spaces, suitable for people.  Walking, running, dancing, skating, biking: it’s like a giant, mobile, family-friendly party.

Vancouver has just decided to embrace the initiative with car-free Sundays.  Other cities that are doing it include Cleveland, El Paso, Chicago, Portland, Miami, San Francisco, Bogotá, and a host of other cities in Colombia.  There are other cities in Canada that have similar programs: Calgary is trying out a single Sunday morning in August for a few hours, this year, after much debate in council.  Winnipeg closes some roads to local traffic only on Sundays.

Check out this short video about ciclovía:

BC litigation lawyer David Hay writes the “Legal Brief” column for the magazine Momentum.  In their October/November 2005 issue, he wrote the article What is an accident?. It’s relevant to all cyclists (and a number of drivers) in Canada. He writes:

A surprisingly common traffic phenomenon involving cyclists is the so-called “hit and run.” Cyclists involved in contact with automobiles are seldom in a position to chase the car after the contact. In my experience, drivers often conduct their own quick assessment of the damage to the bicycle and/or injury to the person, with a view to leaving the scene of the accident if satisfied the contact was relatively harmless.

In a previous article, I stressed the importance of doing everything one can to identify the driver and/or owner of the vehicle for purposes of an injury claim. But if there is no evidence of injury or property damage arising from a collision, how does the law respond when the driver leaves the scene of an accident?

You can read the full article here.  You might also want to take a look at David Hay’s Top Ten List Of Do’s And Don’ts Following A Traffic Accident.

Mikael Colville-Andersen, owner of the popular Copenhagen Cycle Chic blog, has put together this promotional music video for the City of Copenhagen, showing off the cycling in Copenhagen, where 36% of the population ride their bikes every day (that’s 500,000 people making at least one million trips a day).

We can be like that.  You just have to get on your bike and go to the market: that’s all they’re doing!

Well, it depends.

Doug Barrett sends us a link to an article called Cities Can Save the Earth, from the Foreign Policy In Focus think tank.

The teaser:

The climate crisis won’t be solved by changing light bulbs and inflating your tires more, planting a tree and driving a little less. It’s going to require a truly fundamental shift in how we build our cities and live in them.

Read the article here.