The most important things your city can do to make it better for winter cycling

by Tom BabinCitiesPosted on Comments are Disabled

We often think of winter cycling as a personal thing, but there’s a lot a city can do to encourage more people to ride a bike year-round. Here are three things that a city can do to make bike commuting and transportation cycling easier in winter. Please subscribe to my YouTube channel. Follow Tom Babin on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram or Medium. …

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These civic improvements are taking only baby-steps toward bike friendliness

by Tom BabinCitiesPosted on Comments are Disabled

Call it baby-steps bike infrastructure: the kind of urban design that takes a step toward bike friendliness, but doesn’t quite take the full leap. Twice in recent months, new infrastructure has been built near me that falls into that incremental category, and it’s something being seen in many North American cities. It’s a mashup of …

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New data shows just how lopsided the ‘war on cars’ really is — and it’s not the bikes that are winning

by Tom BabinCitiesPosted on 4 Comments

Remember the war on cars? The hyperbolic and mostly mythical idea that cyclists, a “special interest group,” were successfully ramming such horrors as bike lanes down the throats of unsupportive legions of car drivers? Since the peak “war on cars” battles of four or five years ago, the hot war has cooled a bit because …

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Is Vancouver really as bike friendly as it thinks it is?

by Tom BabinCitiesPosted on Comments are Disabled

I’ve always been a bit annoyed with the bike-friendly reputation of Vancouver. Yes, it has always had a lot of people on bikes, but for a long time, that came without the installation of much high-quality bike infrastructure. All that has changed in recent years, so I took a trip recently to see if it …

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Most of the time I ride a bike, I wear a helmet. But not always. Here’s why.

by Tom BabinBikes, CitiesPosted on 47 Comments

On my most memorable ride this year, a 70 km highway ride up the highest paved mountain pass in Canada, I wore a helmet. On my recent mountain bike trip into the Rockies of southern B.C. , I wore a helmet.  But in my last video, in which I rolled through the streets of Calgary’s …

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This British writer just wrote a totally convincing argument in favour of urban cycling

by Tom BabinCitiesPosted on 2 Comments

In the past decade, Peter Walker has seen a fundamental change in London, the city in which he lives. In that time, Walker, a writer for The Guardian who has for years penned the paper’s popular bike blog, says people on bikes have gone from a marginal place on the city’s streets (he says he …

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The future of transportation is already here, but everybody is missing it

by Tom BabinCitiesPosted on 8 Comments

Maybe it was the news that Tesla is now the largest U.S. carmaker by market cap, or maybe it has been the uncertainty around the price of oil, but there has been a flurry of futurism lately centred around looming changes to our transportation systems, specifically around autonomous electric cars. Autonomous, electric vehicles are about …

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Increasing number of dead pedestrians are a reminder that bike lanes matter

by Tom BabinPeoplePosted on 2 Comments

A reader recently asked a question recently that got me thinking: If conditions are ripe for cycling, why bother adding bike infrastructure? The question came out of my recent post from Yellowknife in which I mused about the city’s potential as a great bike town thanks to its wide streets, slow traffic and hearty residents. …

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