Suburban Bike Infrastructure

Photo by Mark Green / The Urban Country 

The photo above highlights some new cycling infrastructure that was recently installed in a suburb of Shanghai, China. Our China correspondent Mark Green spotted this segregated bike lane in the Boa Shan District (宝山区) – about 13KM north of Shanghai’s People’s Square (City Centre).

It seems that Shanghai has installed this new infrastructure not necessarily out of demand for cycling, but more likely to encourage people to ride their bicycle in a city that is being choked by automobile traffic.

While visiting China in 2007 I observed the widest bike lanes I had ever seen in my life – more than 1 car lane in width on each side of the road in Beijing.

However, segregated infrastructure isn’t as common, so it’s a beautiful sight to see these segregated lanes in the suburbs – where space is more abundant.

Since peaking in the 1980’s, cycling has been declining as the automobile has strangled the great Chinese cities. But the popularity of the automobile has also been detrimental to the lifestyle that the Chinese enjoyed under the rule of the bicycle. The pollution is disturbing, and the gridlock painful.

But utility cycling might be making a comeback in China, as discussed in this BBC article from earlier this month. Electric bikes are also extremely popular in China right now - Mark observed more e-bikes than regular bicycles in this suburb of Shanghai.

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Motorists Love Squirrels

Photo courtesy of Libby Telford

A BMW driver cruises along a scenic boulevard with his top down while enjoying the beaming sun on a warm beautiful summer afternoon.

Out of nowhere, an unrelenting squirrel dashes across the road only metres in front of the shiny black automobile. The driver puts his entire body mass into the brake pedal of his car - skidding to a halt mere inches from the terrified, frozen squirrel.

His heart pounding, he wipes the sweat from his forehead before proceeding on his way – relieved to know that the squirrel will live to see another day.

Minutes later, while the 3 lanes of eastbound traffic build up, the driver becomes anxious about reaching his destination. While driving along the right lane, the driver encounters a slow-moving cyclist.

Furious that the cyclist has the nerve to slow him down, he passes the cyclist while accelerating his car – brushing the side of the cyclist – before quickly slowing to a halt at the line-up of cars only 30 metres ahead.

“How dare he get in my way”, the driver ponders to himself, as the cyclist proceeds past the now stopped motorist – shaking his head in disappointment at the red faced driver of the BMW.

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Why is it that our automobile society puts more value in the life of a squirrel than a human being?

They say in North America that running down a cyclist is the only legal form of murder, and in some ways this is true.

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United States Moving Forward After Decades of Neglect

Photo by James D. Schwartz / The Urban Country

In an important announcement last week, the United States Department of Transportation (DOT) has said “the establishment of well-connected walking and bicycling networks” will be part of all federal-aid transportation projects.

The announcement came out in the form of a Policy Statement that was signed on March 11th and officially announced on March 15th at the National Bike Summit by Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood.

The announcement quickly spread to the mainstream through the Wired article “Feds Deem Pedestrians, Cyclists and Motorists Equals”.

What does this mean for American cities?

It means anytime the Department of Transportation provides federal funding for infrastructure, they will assess whether the new infrastructure accommodates cyclists and pedestrians - as well as motorists – a drastic change from history where motorist needs were the primary consideration and pedestrians and cyclists were merely an afterthought.

What has resulted from decades of ignoring pedestrians and cyclists? People are forced to drive everywhere.

In 2003, the average commute to work in the United States was 24.3 minutes each way over an average distance of 16 miles (25.6KM) (this has no doubt increased in the last 7 years).

Even as a cycling advocate, I wouldn’t expect the average person to ride a bike 25KM each way to work. Thus, it doesn’t necessarily surprise me that most people rely on their car to commute to work every day.

What does surprise (and sadden) me is the fact that people in sprawled neighbourhoods are forced to drive their car to the corner store, or to a restaurant, or to see a movie, or to visit a friend.

Why does this sadden me? Because 49% of all trips in the United States are shorter than 3 miles (4.8KM), 40% are shorter than 2 miles (3.2KM), and 28% are shorter than one mile (1.6KM).

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Biking the Big Apple

Photo by James D. Schwartz / The Urban Country 

New York City has taken great strides in improving its cycling infrastructure, but it still has its work cut out to change its culture as a pedestrian, subway and car city to becoming a more bike friendly city - and a role model for North America.

In only three years, New York’s Department of Transportation has installed 320KM of new bike lanes in the city - resulting in a grand total of 672KM of on-street bike lanes throughout the city. I saw bike infrastructure from Brooklyn all the way up to the heart of the Bronx – and everything in between.

This is a great accomplishment - and the city is on track to meet its long-term goal of adding 2,880KM of new on-street bike lanes by 2030.

Here in Toronto, we have installed merely 112KM of on-street bike lanes in about 10 years – less than 1/4 of the 495KM our 2001 bike plan called for. In fact, according to the City of Toronto, only 0.7KM of bike lanes were installed in 2009 even though more than 15KM were approved.

I visited New York last weekend with some of my good friends to celebrate my recent marriage. I rented a bike on a sunny Sunday afternoon to experience the new bikeway network to see if it was as amazing as it seemed from a distance.

Video by James D. Schwartz / The Urban Country

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Bike Lanes Become Election Issue

Photo by James D. Schwartz / The Urban Country 

It’s refreshing to see the amount of media attention bike lanes have been receiving in this year’s mayoral race in Toronto. Less refreshing however is the deplorable use of the “war on the car” rhetoric.

There is no such thing as a war on the car. Every mode of transport in our city deserves its rights to the road, and bikes – as well as cars – should be considered in urban traffic planning.

Bikes are just trying to catch up since they were neglected for so many decades.

Having bike lanes as an election issue indicates people are thinking about bike lanes – for better or for worse.

The bike lane issue was catapulted to front and centre of the election race on January 21st when candidate Rocco Rossi pledged to ban bike lanes on arterial roads in the city - and he has since proclaimed the process to create bike lanes on Jarvis Street is “undemocratic” (Despite the fact that a democratically elected city council voted in favour of these bike lanes)

Rossi is obviously pandering for votes and reaching out to suburbanites who rely on their automobile to commute downtown – some of whom would be content to see all downtown streets become expressways.

It perplexes me to understand why people who lives outside the city should be deciding what we do with our downtown streets.

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