Here’s why all the reasons for licensing bikes fail
Examining all the proposed reasons for bike licencing one by one.
A Gen Xer’s guide to riding a fixed-gear bicycle
By pounding over the hills of San Francisco in a 1968 Ford Mustang GT, a scowling Steve McQueen, in the unfortunately spelled action movie Bullitt, managed to define coolness for a generation of baby boomers, in spite of the corduroy blazer. But those days are long gone. These days, driving a muscle car in that …
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How one city went from scrubbing bike lanes to building an entire network in weeks
Less than three months ago, everyone sounded ready to give up on making the Canadian city of Edmonton more friendly to cyclists. Even the city’s bike loving mayor. In July, Don Iveson, who was elected in 2013 as a young, forward-thinking, bike-riding urbanite, gave an interview to the Globe and Mail in which he basically …
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Why it hurts so deeply when our bikes are stolen or vandalized
Unlike, say, a hammer or a microwave oven, bicycles work themselves into our consciousness more than most of our tools. Perhaps it’s our reliance on them that builds that connection.
Why are we so afraid of letting kids ride bikes when statistics prove their safety?
Is riding a bike too risky for kids? The question nags many parents beyond the typical helicopter-parent anxiety that permeates modern childhood. Cycling has gone from a bedrock part of childhood a few generations ago to something akin to BASE jumping in the eyes of some grownups. Sometimes, even those trying to promote public health …
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Here’s how little connections can make big improvements to bike friendliness
A few weeks ago, I criticized cities for failing to build sensible connections between existing bike lanes. Then I rolled over a relatively new piece of bike infrastructure in my city, and had a bit of a moment. “There,” I thought. “That wasn’t so hard, was it?” Here’s that new piece of infrastructure. https://www.instagram.com/p/BK2ClNDAamW/ (Just …
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Want to build better bike infrastructure? Listen to people riding bikes
Let’s play a little bicycle commuter game. There are two videos below, both of which I shot, very professionally, by holding up my phone while I rode my bicycle to work. These videos were shot on two roads that run parallel to each other one block apart. Here’s the challenge: Guess which road contains bike-specific …
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A handy guide for avoiding uninformed anti-bike rants
The rant was so out of touch as to be almost quaint. Earlier this month, Canadian Sen. Nicole Eaton, 71, went on a Twitter campaign against cycling in Toronto, criticizing the construction of bike lanes using the same old arguments that are often thrown around by uninformed reactionaries: Nobody rides a bike, cyclists don’t obey …
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The folly of paint: Is it time to give up on painted bike lanes completely?
A few weeks ago, I participated in a radio call-in show about urban cycling during which a caller expressed her fear that her adult son was going to be killed on the roads. He is a bicycle commuter who had already been struck by cars twice while riding inside a painted bike lane. I mumbled …
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Bike-lane gaps are holding back urban cycling, and they may be getting worse
As cities build bike lanes, they should pay attention to the gaps between them to ensure safe, connected routes.