Always appreciate reader response. Like this:
I saw your post on bike riding in Burnaby. It reminded me of my own, albeit rather cynical piece I wrote in 2009. I salute Burnaby today for many things it has done, but they really need to step up on bike route signage, etc.
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Mike Klassen
UPDATE: And another critique of the BC Parkway bike path, this time in New Westminster. Not to mention this story about bike parking in the West End.
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From the Sightline Institute:
Check out our latest on bike sharing: Apparently Vancouver city folks are planning to mimic the Melbourne model, which failed because of mandatory helmet laws, just like BC.
(We) argue that we should extend the exemption currently given to pedicabs to bike shares:
The crux of the matter is this: the Pacific Northwest can reap the huge benefits of bike sharing without compromising safety. It just needs to tweak its helmet laws. Here are two ways to do it:
- Make riding helmetless a secondary offense. Adjusting the law so cyclists cannot be cited unless they do something else illegal would allow people to take safety decisions into their own hands. Helmets are often compared to seatbelts, so why not give them the same legal status?
- Make an exemption for bike-share users. Pedicabs (three-wheeled rickshaws for hire) are excluded from helmet laws, both for drivers and passengers, and their safety records are stellar. Vancouver’s bike share feasibility study (.pdf, see page 56) found that in the twelve years since the pedicab helmet exemption took effect there has not been one reported head injury. There are also exemptions for people with religious objections (it’s hard to put a helmet over a turban), children on tricycles, and even people with big heads. Why not public bikes?
And they have a great map showing all the bike-share programs around the world:
On the subject of reader mail and cycling, here’s a link that has likely already been sent your way, but would be worth circulating. The City of Vancouver, enforcing minimum vehicle parking requirements in the West End, of all places, at the expense of a secure bicycle enclosure!
http://www.vancouversun.com/business/City+Vancouver+orders+peddle+bike+parking/5270980/story.html
The City wants people to talk green to them, but when push comes to shove and the talk turns legal, here they are on the side of motordom, in the West End!
And another interesting article about cycling in New Westminster:
http://www.bclocalnews.com/greater_vancouver/newwestminsternewsleader/news/128019423.html
Nice piece from Sightline, which also ties in well with Mr van der Eerden’s recent publicity. I’m really looking forward to seeing how Vancouver’s public servants manage the PBS, as it will reflect strongly on the city’s real desire to be the ‘greenest’.
The hopeful scenario goes like this. Vancouver bike share brings hundreds of well-designed, practical, comfortable, sit-up bikes to Vancouver’s streets, allowing normal people to just grab and go. With more casual cyclists on the streets, drivers become more attentive, and the inadequacies in bike signage, intersection design and path provision are made even more obvious, giving the city a mandate finally to complete the streets. VPD ignores the mass “civil disobedience” in wearing headphones and not wearing helmets (which are somehow cleanly, safely and frictionlessly provided with every bike – this is the hopeful version, remember) because people realize that riding sit-up bikes on quiet streets is as safe as walking.
The less hopeful version goes like this. As in Melbourne and Vancouver currently, VPD continues to arbitrarily ticket perfectly safe hat-less riders on quiet streets or separated bike lanes. Word gets around, and no-one bothers to use the bikes. The City of Vancouver, having been forced to underwrite the scheme because, frankly, the operator saw this coming, ends up on the hook for another olympic-village sized debt.
G-Rob is voted out, the Vancouver Sun declares his hippy sustainable-city ideas a pipe dream, and the next mayor completes the Chinatown-razing freeway job of the 70s.
>Adjusting the law so cyclists cannot be cited unless they do something else illegal would allow people to take safety decisions into their own hands. Helmets are often compared to seatbelts, so why not give them the same legal status?
In BC, unlike some US states, Seat Belt violations are a primary, not a secondary offence… meaning you can be ticketed without doing anything else illegal..
I have just returned from Montreal where my husband and I made daily use of the BIXI bike-share program to tour all over the island (and interviewed by CBC radio about the experience). It frustrates me to hear that, because of our helmet law, a bike-share program is unlikely to be established in Vancouver any time soon.
No one will argue that wearing a helmet while riding is a bad thing, but like all safety considerations, an assessment of true risk is fundamental.
Neither of us wore a helmet while riding as tourists in Montreal, instead choosing to stay within separated bike lanes & along designated paths (of which there are 00’s of kms)
But would I make such a choice in Vancouver? As a tourist? As a resident?
– Yes, I would on the Seawall.
– Yes, I would along trails in Stanley Park, Kits /Jerico and Pacific Spirit Parks.
– Possibly, I would within the Hornby & Dunsmuir separated bike lanes.
– No, certainly not along any of the city’s non-separated bike routes!
Since tourists generally opt for recreational destinations, perhaps a “helmet-free-zone” BIXI type program might serve that market – although probably not enough to make it profitable. But provide Vancouver’s green-conscious, health-conscious residents the choice to tote a light bike helmet along with their reusable water bottles & coffee mugs each day, and you’d likely have a winning business. Year round.
Certainly for me and I suspect thousands of other car-less downtown apartment dwellers with unsecured bike storage, the opportunity to “Go BIXI” would definitely influence our need to rent a Co-op /Zip /Car2Go motor vehicle (or flag a cab) when having to get from point A to B more directly or more comfortably than by transit.