bicycles

These Cities Promote Ice Cycles

- Adam Clare 1 Comment

Bicycle

Since it’s summer you might not be thinking of winter bicycling. Why not though? If you’re like most people, you’ll be out on a bicycle a few times during the nice weather this summer and you’ll feel how nice it is to ride. Remember that feeling! In the winter you really should be out riding your bike too, it’s still safe and it keeps you warm. Presently, some cities around the world encourage winter cycling but we should see even more winter cyclists every year as riding gains popularity.

Most assumptions about winter cycling are based on the same myths no matter where you are from. Those -30C days do happen in Winnipeg, but they are pretty uncommon; yet we allow the deep freeze days to characterise an entire winter. We also conveniently forget that cycling keeps you warm – comfortably so. In an urban environment, the risk of being harmed by the weather while cycling is reduced to nil with a basic scarf and jacket. We assume that winter cycling is dangerous but somehow we forget that vehicle speeds are the real issue, and that they drop in the winter. It shouldn’t be surprising when a study shows that cycling in the winter months with steady conditions is relatively safe compared to cycling in June.

When we wonder out loud “why anyone would ever want to spend more than a few minutes outside in a place like this”, we forget about its beauty. Winter is a glorious spectacle of glittering fractals complete with a soundscape and atmosphere entirely its own. Some of us have forgotten the bright side of winter: the simplicity, the efficiency, the pragmatism. In transportation terms, winter is all smooth, clean lines and quiet sounds. Bikes fit right in. Perhaps sitting in cars has dulled our senses.

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How Pressure from Pedestrians and Cyclists Make Better Cities

- Adam Clare

Depending on where you live you may think streets are for people or for cars. The correct answer is that streets are for moving people and not built for the need of inanimate objects. In an interesting series of videos the Toronto Star’s Christopher Hume examines the different urban design decisions between suburban and urban neighbourhoods. The urban areas that promote cycling and walking are understandably the most vibrant, interesting, and productive (economically and culturally). The impact non-car uses can have on streets is evident and something that every city can benefit from.

Unsurprisingly, Toronto’s most vibrant streets — Queen, College, Bloor — are generally narrow car-slowing thoroughfares lined with unspectacular buildings between two and six storeys tall — hardly the stuff of vehicular convenience. The major interruptions in these mostly intact streetscapes are largely the result of clumsy modern interventions beginning in the 1950s and ’60s. Decades later in what’s now Vertical City, we still have difficulty making buildings work at street level. Architects are slowly learning, but have yet to master the skills of contextualism. They prefer the silence of the vacuum and ignore the public realm whenever possible.

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In New York, Bikes Have Totally Victory Over the Car

- Adam Clare

NYC Streets Metamorphosis from STREETFILMS on Vimeo.

New York City might be famous for its cabs, but in the future it might be famous for its bikes. The city has seen a big push for sustainable and fast transit in the last decade and everyone agrees: bike lanes are the solution. The city’s commitment to supporting bikes through infrastructure as made the streets faster, cleaner, safer, and more productive.

With luck, the cultural influence of New York will impact cities like Toronto (where ignoramuses claim all we need is more space for drivers) and other places where more bike lanes are needed.

We succeeded in building as many bike lanes after the bikelash as before it. The number of riders doubled from 2007 to 2013, representing a fourfold increase measured over a decade. We launched Citi Bike in the final months of our time in office. The system is in the process of doubling in size and has surpassed 25 million rides in less than three years, part of a quadrupling in bike ridership citywide since 2000. New York now has more than 1,000 miles of bike lanes, and Bicycling magazine named us the nation’s best biking city for the first time ever.

None of the bike-lane opponents’ predictions has come to pass. City streets have never been safer, more economically thriving, or offered more transportation options than they do today. My successor as Transportation commissioner is greatly expanding the network of bike paths and doubling the size of the city’s bike-share system.

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Bike Lanes Improve Cities Aesthetically and Economically

- Adam Clare

There is a strong and powerful myth in North America that car drivers spend more and will always require parking. That is a myth. It turns out that nearly every study done on bike lanes as proven that cyclists are the transportation class cities should cater to because drivers don’t need all those useless parking spaces and drivers aren’t richer than others. (They have to waste all their money on gas and repairs anyway.)

Transportation Alternatives

A neighborhood survey of 420 people on First and Second avenues in Manhattan’s East Village, home to protected bike lanes, found that aggregate spending by non-drivers accounted for 95 percent of all retail spending in the area. That’s not too surprising in New York, given the great transit infrastructure, but the figures remain impressive. Cyclists spent about $163 per week on average, compared to $143 among drivers.

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Wear Lycra, Live Longer (And Ride a Bike)

- Adam Clare 1 Comment

Here are things that have proven time and time again:

  • Bicycles are a great way to get around.
  • Exercise helps your health.
  • Bicycles are a good source of exercise.
  • Exercise can make you happier.
  • Bicycles are a sustainable transportation solution.
  • Exercise reduces mental strain.
  • Bicycles + exercise can slow the aging process:

Scientists who analysed the physiological functions of more than 120 regular cyclists aged between 55 and 79 failed to find any of the obvious signs of ageing that they would normally observe among people of the same age.

The volunteers – 84 men and 41 women – had to be able to cycle 100 km (62 miles) in six and half hours for men and 60km in less than 5.5 hours for women. Smokers, heavy drinkers and those with high blood pressure and other health conditions were automatically excluded.

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