Category: Transportation

Bike Delivery Business on the Rise

Red Riding Goods is one of a few companies in Toronto that deliver goods via bicycles. In other cities from Mumbai to San Francisco bike-based delivery is nothing new and not all that newsworthy. Here in Toronto, where a crack-smoking mayor who thinks cyclists deserve to die advocates the destruction of sustainable transit solutions, seeing new business built around bicycles is great!

“My original idea for the business was to replace vehicle trips with bike trips. There’s a huge amount of money to be saved there, but to do that you have to change policy and behavior. It’s a lot harder than shipping coffee by bike.”
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Featherstone is an independent franchise and one of the most well known faces of Toronto’s cargo bike scene. Abbiss likens her to the mailman. She bikes more than 600 km a week in bike deliveries alone using a beat up mountain bike and an old trailer, equipment she hopes to replace with a soon-to-be-launched IndieGoGo campaign.

Read more here.

Moscow and New York City Both Launch Bike Sharing Services

Mayor Bloomberg in New York City has been clear that streets are meant to move people around and not just cars. The efforts the city has made to open up streets to people are working and the most recent push comes from their new bike sharing program.

“I expect to use it most days when it’s not raining,” McGlinn said after his journey, during which passersby flashed him thumbs-ups. “I expect to save money, although that’s not the primary reason why I’m doing it — it’s just nicer.”
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New York’s version opened yesterday for people who purchased annual memberships, as most businesses were closed for the Memorial Day holiday. The first of 6,000 Citigroup Inc (C).- sponsored bicycles available from 330 solar-powered docking depots in Manhattan south of 59th Street and in sections of Brooklyn will open to the riding public next week.

Read more at Bloomberg.

In Moscow, they also launched a bike sharing program this past week. Unlike New York, Moscow has not spent the past couple years improving transportation networks so upon announcing the new bicycle program, officials proclaimed their intent to expand infrastructure for safe riding.

Moscow city hall has announced that it will develop a total of 131 kilometres (81 miles) of cycle paths by the end of this year, a small figure compared with other large cities around the world.

“Cycling will develop and in two years maybe it will find a compromise with cars, and drivers will understand that cyclists are also a part of the city,” said rider Vitaly as he sat on a bench next to his newly-rented bike.

The city has promised to widen the network to 120 locations and expand outside the centre by the end of July. The system will close at the end of October ahead of winter.

Read more at Yahoo.

Chicago Wants to be a World Class Bicycle City

Chicago politicians understand that people in their city commute sustainably via bicycles and that this is a great component to their transit planning. What’s more is that by building proper infrastructure for cyclists they can draw people to the city and show the world what the future looks like – again. Over at Roads Were Not Built For Cars they provide a very interesting historical perspective on the bicycle in Chicago and how it relates to cities today.

“Bicycling is an integral part of Chicago’s transportation system. Every day, thousands of people bike on our streets, whether it is to ride to work, to the store, or for recreation…My vision is to make Chicago the most bike-friendly city in the United States…Over the next few years, we will build more protected bike lanes than any other city in the country, redesign intersections to ensure they are safer for bicyclists, and improve hundreds of miles of residential streets for bicyclists, pedestrians, and the people that live on them.”

Read the full article.

Cameras Capture How Safely Cyclists Cruise

It’s clear that car drivers don’t comprehend cyclists, and often I hear drivers complain that bicyclists aren’t safe and tend to be “dangerous” on the road. It turns out that cyclists are safer than cars, cause way fewer collisions, and are amazingly great at avoiding a collision.

To reach this conclusion that bicyclists are safe riders researchers used cameras mounted on bicycles (and riders) accompanied by other observations.

In total, 127 hours and 38 minutes of usable footage was obtained. 54 ‘events’ were captured on film – two collisions, six near-collisions (where rapid evasive action by the cyclist was needed) and 46 other incidents (where some collision avoidance was required).

The cameras also recorded the road position and behaviour of the cyclists – including head checks, reactions and manoeuvres. The aim was to identify risk factors for both cyclists and motorists.

In 88.9% of cases, the cyclist had been travelling in a safe/legal manner prior to the collision/near miss.

Read more at BikeRadar.

So car drivers please remember to share the road and be conscious of what’s around you.

A Proposal to Label Gas Nozzles

warning
The overwhelming majority of personal cars use planet-killing, people-damaging, production-intesnive engines that consume a product that literally kills us. Most everyone understands this at some level, but it seems they don’t connect their fuel consumption with world hunger, polar bears dying, or even smog. A new organization in Toronto wants to change that.

Our Horizon wants to label gas nozzles at gas stations the same way that cigarette packages are labelled to warn users of potential harm.

“Imagine if we see these labels every time, how long will it be before we demand more from government institutions,” said Shirkey.
Canada led the world when it placed health warnings accompanied by images on cigarette packages, and Shirkey said that he hopes Canada can once again be a pioneer.
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“If you’re concerned with helping people but not the environment, it’s like putting a bandage on someone sitting in a boat that has a giant hole in the bottom,” Neville said. “We’re all dependent and addicted to fossil fuels.”

Read more.