Bikes rule, cars drool

Posted on September 10, 2008 at 9:09 am by Shawn Smith

cyclists2

What gets a person to ride a bike?

This is the $6000 dollar question (the average annual cost of owning a car). Some people need some mentoring and encouragement from a cycling enthusiast to get them started.  Others need to have bike lanes or be fed information about best routes. Others, still, are so set in their ways that getting on a bicycle seems like a far-fetched notion. There are many motivations to ride: saving money, saving the world, saving one’s waistline, or simply enjoying the pleasures a bicycle offers. Conversely, there are many barriers that discourage people from choosing two wheels over four. Safety, weather, distance, health, and facilities are but a few. I aim to explore these motives in this and future postings.

I started riding to work three years ago. Let me provide some context and back up to 1994. When I was in high school, my bike was stolen from my parent’s garage. At the time I didn’t really think it was cool or safe to ride anyways, so for a period of 10 years I didn’t bother to replace it. In university, I was oblivious to the precious minutes of extra sleep I could have had if I cycled to class, in breezy style I might add, instead of making the 15-minute trek by foot. Worse, I drove a navy 1988 Cadillac DeVille around town, an eight-cylinder boat of a car that downed 15L of black gold for every 100 km travelled.

In 2003, serendipity took its course. I accepted a six-month work assignment in Thunder Bay. With a population of just over 100,000, Thunder Bay is a nice size for someone learning to bike in an urban environment. I bought a used Raleigh hybrid bicycle for $100, and was immediately captivated by this new-found freedom. Most of my 20-minute commute was along a glorious path that crossed through town. I spent my weekends exploring by bike. I even cycled to the Thunder Bay airport to catch a flight!

The cycling experience I gained in Thunder Bay allowed me to tackle my current 16-km commute (one way) from Vaughan to Toronto. Although the traffic on Keele Street still seemed daunting, I wanted to see what biking to work would be like. I found that once I started, it was very hard to go back to using a car.

We need a daily hit of athletic-induced endorphins to lift your spirits, improve your outlook, and give you power to make better decisions.” –Susan Stewart

I find that commuting by bike sets me up for a productive day. My daily ride to and from work gives me closer exposure to the worlds around me and enables me to experience the changes of the seasons. Cycling is a great stress buster, and gives me time to reflect on such things like life, love, and other mysteries.

Sometimes, I go a little bit out of my way and take the Bartley-Smith Greenway from Dufferin and Steeles to Keele and Langstaff. It’s a pathway that follows the upper West Don River through Vaughan, passing under Hwy 407 and Hwy 7. It is natural spaces like this gem that I draw inspiration from.


Source: Flickr photo by Pörrö

The mixing of cars and bicycles leads to conflicts, but good planning and design with bicycles in mind can reduce them significantly. And there’s no question that better cycling infrastructure such as more bike lanes encourages more cyclists. As of June 2007, Toronto had 69km of bike lanes out of the 467km that the City’s completed bike network will supposedly have [1].  There’s still much work to be done.

A 1998 Environics poll found that 70 per cent of Canadians would bike to work for distances that took less than 30 minutes if they had a dedicated bike lane. And where bike lanes have been created in Toronto, the number of cyclists increased by up to 42 per cent, presumably because of the huge untapped potential of Toronto‘s 950,000 adults who ride a bike. -Albert Koehl

cyclists involved in collisions

Source: Toronto Star

I think this excerpt from Outside Magazine sums up my sentiments nicely:

Just try it. Some frosty morning, wheel to work. Like you did as a child, take the quiet path, the scenic route. Pedal the back roads, slip through the neighbourhoods. Suck in the sharp air. Smell the trees. Feel the breeze against your face and the blood in your legs and imagine a North America teeming with bicycles. [2]

Tags: , , , , , , ,

11 Comments

  1. It’s more convenient, that’s what it boils down to with me and likely other.

    GravatarComment by John Leschinski — September 10, 2008 @ 10:01 am

  2. For every potential cyclist there are different reasons to try; or not to try.

    However, I think there are a few that are fairly common to most potential/recreational riders.

    1)Bike Storage: It all starts at home, or in Toronto, more likely, an apartment or condo. The nuisance factor of having to drag a bike up through an elevator, through an apartment door, over living room furniture and out to a balcony is a well known routine in Toronto. Its also a serious obstacle to bike ownership, never mind daily use. A very important move is to encourage (if not require, where practical) all apartment/condo owners or managers to provide secure, indoor, ground floor (or underground via ramp) bike storage.

    2) Assuming we’ve got the home storage side addressed, we then have biking safety. While I’m very supportive of more recreational paths, and more side/small street bike routes these are not the most useful commuter options, and won’t likely get more people biking. We need bike lanes on major arterials (at the bare minimum the 1.5 m wide variety, I would personally prefer a landscaped buffer…or a rumble strip.) We also need more commuter-class off-road paths/trails. By that I mean the Finch Hydro Corridor, The Waterfront Trail, The Gatineau Corridor, etc. trails that are 4m wide, 2-way, off-road, with relatively few hills, that facilitate long-distance high-speed biking.

    3)Now if you want biking to work, showers at the other end wouldn’t hurt either, particularly for long-haul commuters.

    4)That whole bike theft thing; I’ve been fortunate not to lose one yet, but I’ve had 2 friends lose bikes in the last 2 years. We need to address the issue more aggressively, with both more secure parking, but also more police bike-baiting.

    AS for the final element getting people to try bikes at all; or to maybe gear up their physical conditioning to justify buying one…. I really like the Paris Velib idea. Its not just a tourist thing; its a way for someone not sure they can justify buying a bike to get into the habit of using a bike cheaply; and to build their conditioning to the point where ownership of a bike makes sense.

    GravatarComment by James — September 10, 2008 @ 10:01 am

  3. James has got it nailed. Your points 1 and 3 are the huge barriers that are keeping me from biking to work right now.

    GravatarComment by Adam — September 10, 2008 @ 10:31 am

  4. Right on, James, especially points 2 and 3, and especially the commuter-class off-road idea. I can think of nothing that would make a bigger difference bike-wise — to taking traffic off roads and subways, especially — than safe, off-road, region-wide paths whose existence and location is well-publicized. And yet I have yet to hear of any regional initiative in this direction.

    GravatarComment by Disparishun — September 10, 2008 @ 11:12 am

  5. Disparishun said “And I have yet to hear of any regional initiative in this direction”

    Actually, Peel Region is currently working on an Active Transportation Plan for Mississauga, Brampton and Caledon:

    http://www.peelregion.ca/council/decisions/2007/04_19_2007.htm#4

    I’m not sure how much of the project will be infrastructure planning, but I can see it developing into a regional bike plan.

    GravatarComment by Peter Kucirek — September 10, 2008 @ 11:48 am

  6. Yes. What I have yet to hear of is anyone saying that they will build commuter-oriented off-road regional bike paths that would make it safe and straightforward to commute to work. Would be great to hear that Peel is working on something like that (are they, Peter?).

    GravatarComment by Disparishun — September 10, 2008 @ 12:03 pm

  7. For me, it is definitely bike storage, and showers at the end of the ride.

    Riding from Toronto to Markham is possible, but I am not going to be coming in sweaty.

    GravatarComment by Justin Bernard — September 10, 2008 @ 3:11 pm

  8. I always find road biking more efficient than even the best off-road paved path. Perhaps roads are built to a higher standard? Paths degrade into bumpy roller coasters after less than a year.

    GravatarComment by Triceratops — September 10, 2008 @ 3:36 pm

  9. Metrolinx believes that walking and cycling need to play a larger role in our transportation system going forward. They are the most sustainable forms of transport. I recognize there are numerous issues holding people back from using their bikes. It will take a long time to address them because there are so many. But we just need to get going on a program and some regular funding.

    “How does a Mouse eat an elephant? One Bite at a time”

    GravatarComment by Rob MacIsaac — September 11, 2008 @ 9:32 am

  10. A big problem with biking in Toronto is that the bike lanes are planned for busy streets. In Vancouver and Montreal, the bike paths are more on the side streets and off street. (e.g. there is a lovely bike path in Montreal along De Maisonneuve between Green Ave and Westmount Park. This is much more attractive to cyclists than say – cycling along Sherbrooke.

    The other problem is that Toronto is completely useless at clearing snow off the bike paths.

    My biggest gripe is that for a good chunk of the winter, many sidewalks are impassable due to relying on residents to clear snow. This forces many residents into their cars whether they want to or not.

    Let’s not forget, Toronto doesn’t even have sidewalks in supposedly urban neighbourhoods such as Forest Hill. In Montreal, there are sidewalks all the way up to the very heights of Westmount. Montreal is better for walking downtown because of the one-way grid – which allows traffic lights at every intersection.

    GravatarComment by J Albert — September 11, 2008 @ 10:23 am

  11. Just curious – anyone have an idea when the Unwin Street bridge is going to reopen? How long has it been closed – 2 years now?

    In terms of biking to work – hmm – yes the shower and re-makeup thing is a problem.

    GravatarComment by N Clawson — September 11, 2008 @ 5:38 pm

RSS feed for comments on this post.

Sorry, the comment form is closed at this time.

"));