Take The Lane

Tech conference adds urban ride to agenda

Those who are attending the annual Fluxible conference in Waterloo, and any other interested parties, are welcome to register for a guided bicycle ride through some of the area's cycling infrastructure on Monday, Sept. 16, at 5:30 p.m.

The 12K ride, with several stops to talk about cycling infrastructure, will be led by Darren Kropf, Active Transportation Planning Project Manager for the City of Kitchener.

Interested riders can register here.

Fluxible is the top conference in Canada for those in the tech industry tasked with UX (User Experience) design and implementation. It attracts participants from across the country, partly due to the week-long "festival" nature of the programming, with good food, good music and, this year, some good cycling. Fluxible runs Sept. 16 to 22 at a number of venues in Kitchener and Waterloo.

Are women cyclists more at risk than men from passing vehicles?

Are women on bicycles more likely than men to experience close calls from passing vehicles?

That was one of the questions considered by University of Minnesota research summarized in The Gender Policy Report last week.

Researchers at the university used handlebar-mounted radars to measure the passing distances of vehicles in roughly 3,000 instances, in a variety of cycling infrastructure situations. Anything closer than the 36 inches (0.9 metres) of separation required by Minnesota law between passing motorists and cyclists was termed an "encroachment." In Ontario, the one-metre passing law makes that separation slightly larger, at 39 inches.

Not surprisingly, there were few encroachments in segregated bicycle lanes or clearly marked cycling infrastructure, which provides more data for those planners and cycling advocates pressing for more segregated cycling infrastructure. Passing distances ranged from roughly 60-90 inches (1.5 metres to 2.3 metres). 

Researchers were interested to find that the average passing distance for men was 71 inches (1.8 metres) while for women, it was 68 inches (1.7 metres). That gender difference in the average might seem somewhat slight, but when the instances of actual encroachments were examined — so those are instances when cars passed cyclists with less than a 36-inch separation — 24 of the 33 instances involved female cyclists.

Women are almost four times likely to have a close encounter of the worst kind, than are men.

And you wonder why there seem to be more men on bicycles than women?

 

 

Come have a beer and fries, and talk about cycling

CycleWR is inviting those interested in talking about safe cycling, and those interested in doing something about it, to Arabella Park in Kitchener's Belmont Village on Thursday evening, from 6 p.m. to 9 p.m.

There will be talk about CycleWR's need for volunteers — to do such things as riding with elected officials, creating engaging cycle-centric graphics or flying the CycleWR flag at public events — from 6 p.m. to 7:30 p.m, and then there's social time for general cycling talk from 7:30 to 9 p.m.

CycleWR is a volunteer-run organization, and every hour or so that you can commit will help move forward CycleWR's agenda for safer cycling in Waterloo Region.

And they have good french fries at Arabella Park. Just saying....

Safer cycling infrastructure means more cyclists

A CBC post notes that the supporters of bicycle infrastructure are using the 10th anniversary of the Burrard Street Bridge bicycle lane in Vancouver, to gently call out those who criticized the project back when it was announced.

I recall Dora's late Aunt Ina, who lived just a few blocks over from the bridge at the time, saying what nonsense a dedicated bicycle lane would be. In her view, the lane would benefit "just a bunch of cyclists" and hinder motorists.

Today, Vancouver officials say the Burrard bike lane is the busiest in North America, with some one million uses every year.

It is worth noting to those who want cycling infrastructure that data, whether gained from observation or from traffic counters, is a very useful tool in arguing for the bicycle-friendly urban adjustments.

One of the quotes in the CBC piece is from Charles Gauthier, President and CEO of the Downtown Business Association, who said, "None of us had a crystal ball back then. . .  We couldn't have predicted how popular cycling would become if you made it safer for people."

Let's see, that was 2009, right? If I remember correctly, cycling advocates and planners from around the world were saying that more people would cycle if they felt safer doing it. Nothing as magical as a crystal ball was needed then, and it's not needed now.

 

Take the City of Waterloo streetscape survey — Do it!

The headline says it all. The deadline for taking the City of Waterloo's streetscape survey is Friday, Nov. 30. 

You have a little more than a week to take the survey. So do it, do it, do it!

 

Some good thoughts on wearing bicycle helmets

This National Post video and Ottawa Citizen story make some good points about why one might want to wear a bicycle helmet.

 

Too-funny public service announcement for cycling safety

Trust the Transport For London authority to have fun with a PSA for cycling safety.

 

Park your car in the road, not in the bike lane

I am totally impressed with the management of Newport Towers at 550 Strasburg Road in Kitchener, whom (I believe) we are to thank for the three signs advising motorists not to park in the street's bicycle lane, presumably while the rehabilitation of the building's parking lot is ongoing.

I've been by this site off and on over the past week, and haven't seen any violators.

I wish it was this easy to get the point across to the average urban core motorist. I was walking along the new segregated bicycle lanes in Uptown Waterloo today and walked by a van, parked in the bicycle lane, as its operator queried the adjacent store owner about the wisdom of parking there. 

"Oh," said the store owner,  "you'll be all right, unless someone puts you up on social media." 

Not my conversation, but I butted in anyway, with a cheery, "I happen to have my camera right here." (Although I didn't.)

To the store-owner's grunted comment about "cyclists", I replied, "Well, it is their space, after all."

And it occurred to me later, the obvious solution to a motorist wanting to stop to discharge a passenger or pick up a parcel, is to simply park in the street.

But that will block traffic, you might say. No problem, I reply, the traffic will just go around you. If cyclists can go around cars parked in bike lanes, surely motorists can steer around cars parked on the road.

They'll only be parked on the road for a moment. How could that inconvenience anyone?

Unless someone posts it on social media.

 

The Swiss REALLY take cycling seriously

The Swiss have decided to do something that might sound almost astonishing to a North American audience: they've voted to enshrine cycling in their constitution.

(Just imagine the National Rifle Association and the League of American Bicyclists sharing time making their points with Congresspersons and Senators...)

In a Sunday referendum, nearly 75 per cent of the voters approved a resolution that makes Swiss federal authorities responsible of the promotion and support of Switzerland's cycling infrastructure, most notably, cycling paths. Something similar was done in 1979, when the responsibility for the support and development of footpaths was added to the constitution. Both decisions are a part of a larger initiative to promote multi-modal transportation, and reduce both congestion and auto-created pollution in the country.

The eight million Swiss own an estimated four million bicycles, so not surprising that there is strong support for cycling infrastructure improvements. And also not surprising, there is a growth in the sale of e-bikes, according to the European urban mobility website, Eltis.

 

 

Cycling infrastructure vs. riding on roads

It's not often that The Waterloo Region Record devotes this much space to cycling.

In Saturday's paper and on the website are a front page photo and story opening, turning inside to almost three full pages of main story, photos, sidebar articles and graphics about our network of bicycle infrastructure, that, according to Record reporter Catherine Thompson, "looks more like a spilled bowl of noodles than a comprehensive transportation system."

The thrust of the piece was that people will ride their bicycles if they are not afraid of becoming a roadway casualty, and that the way to prevent roadway injury is to improve the bicycle infrastructure.

A missed opportunity in the package was the option offered by CAN-BIKE: that hesitant riders can become competent and confident riders through bicycle training (Full disclosure: I am a CAN-BIKE instructor).

CAN-BIKE is the recreational cycling training program offered through Cycling Canada.

Trainers like me help non-riders learn to ride, and help hesitant riders learn to ride in traffic. Why spend millions on bicycle lanes when you can spend thousands training people to use the roadway infrastructure that now exists?

And as Thompson noted in her article, every bike lane ends somewhere. A cyclist must use a roadway, likely more than one, to complete a journey. Best to learn now how to use those roadways effectively.

Watch the City of Waterloo website for details on the next CAN-BIKE courses, or contact me.