A decade ago, riding a bicycle in Toronto and Vancouver was, in some ways, a similar experience. Two of Canada’s biggest cities, both had dense and walkable urban cores, but little in the way of bike-specific infrastructure, so riding through the city could be a harrowing experience. Both cities had thousands of cyclists who were …
You’ve been there, even if you haven’t consciously been there: Riding your bike down a typical city street feeling squeezed from all sides, unable to see past the next intersection, worried about being doored and generally unwelcome on what should be public space. Why do you feel that way? Because the street looks like this: …
Read more “Here’s what happens to your bike ride when thousands of more cars are added to roads”
Several years ago, Zak Pashak was in the market for a new bike. Not an expensive carbon-fibre race machine, or a $10,000 status symbol. He just wanted a simple, practical bike that wouldn’t require a lot of maintenance, time or money. But he was quickly turned off by the athletic focus of the bike shops …
Read more “Are our irrational consumer tastes holding us back from more bike-friendly lives?”
Some things about driving a car are difficult. Doing a 180-degree e-brake slide into a parking space, for example. Or that famous kickflip in the James Bond movie The Man With the Golden Gun, which was so difficult nobody even attempted to replicate it for 40 years. Another thing that’s difficult, apparently, is passing a …
Read more “How to pass a bike in a car without killing anyone (or being a dick)”
The biggest argument in urban cycling of the last 20 years is pretty much settled. So why are we still arguing about it? After last week’s post about the ways Montreal managed to become one of the continent’s most bike-friendly cities, that old saw fired up again. Much of the commentary focused on the perceived shortfalls and benefits of vehicular …
Read more “Vehicular cycling is dead, just don’t bury the body yet”
In the 1970s, an American named John Forester came up with an idea for keeping cyclists safe while riding on busy roads. The idea was that bicycles should be piloted, and be treated, like motor vehicles — riding alongside moving cars, using hand signals and crossing traffic for left-hand turns. The idea, which he called …
Read more “Here’s what happened when one city rejected vehicular cycling”
Streetfight: Handbook for an Urban Revolution, the new book by Janette Sadik-Khan, offers insight into how the former traffic commissioner of New York City overcame decades of planning inertia to put the city on a path to a more human-centred transportation network by improving walking, cycling and public transit. While some of her experiences are …
Read more “Four ways New York’s bike renaissance can help fix your city”
The bag of chips, inhumanely large, groaned under the strain when I heard the passerby say it: “Now that,” she said, “is the kind of bike you need for Costco.” Mercifully, the bag didn’t explode and send a thousand kilograms of quinoa- and chia-infused tortilla skyward, but instead settled nicely into the saddle bags of …
Read more “Can a cargo bike pass the ultimate test of suburban life: A trip to Costco?”
Spinlister is a cool little app that just feels right. It brings the so-called sharing economy to the world of bikes in a no-brainer, intuitive way. But the company is aiming higher than its modest Airbnb-type success so far, and betting on an even bigger idea, if only it can get it off the ground: …
Read more “The sharing economy comes to bikes, but can it replace the government?”
For all the work that goes into making streets safer and more welcoming for cyclists, consider perhaps the greatest and most under-appreciated tool of this transition: The ubiquitous camera. Street photography is nothing new, of course. From Henri Cartier-Bresson to Robert Frank, impromptu moments from city life have always been at the forefront of photographic …
Read more “Behold: the ultimate tool for transforming our cities, the humble camera”