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McGill’s Bicycle Ban & Pedestrian Fear 31

McGill’s Bicycle Ban & Pedestrian Fear
Photo “Message to McGill University cyclists” courtesy of Polly Peterson  Trying to make sense of the phenomenon of pedestrians’ fear of bicycles in North America. In May 2010, McGill University in downtown Montreal became a car-free pedestrian-only zone. The eradication of automobiles on the school campus was a great step forward, but like most progress ...

Tensions Escalating in New York City 7

Tensions Escalating in New York City
Photo by James D. Schwartz / The Urban Country The City of New York has had tremendous success in the last 4 years of building a network of bicycle infrastructure to improve safety and comfort for New Yorkers to use bicycles as transportation. These policies, spearheaded by NYC Department of Transportation Commissioner Janette Sadik-Khan and ...

Drive Fast 4

Drive Fast
Bolinas Ridge Rd. car commercial photo courtesy of Jim Collier It’s not very often I post other people’s content without adding my own perspective, but I really enjoyed this post entitled “Drive Fast” on Kent’s bike blog: “It’s not very often that I dispense automotive advice. Today, I am. It is Sunday and I’m going ...

NYC Snowstorm Aftermath, Deliveryman Hit-and-Run 4

NYC Snowstorm Aftermath, Deliveryman Hit-and-Run
All Photos by James D. Schwartz / The Urban Country This past weekend I took a trip down to New York City with a few friends. More than a foot of snow was dumped down on the city the day before our arrival. Given that we are now in the middle of a similar snowstorm ...

Amsterdamizing The World 8

Amsterdamizing The World
Photo by Marc van Woudenberg / Amsterdamize You have probably visited his website, and you’ve likely seen many of his photos. You may even subscribe to his RSS feed. He photographs ordinary people on ordinary bicycles, riding along anything but ordinary infrastructure in a country with an extraordinary bicycle culture. In his neck of the ...

Media’s Over-Glamorization of Automobiles 4

Media’s Over-Glamorization of Automobiles
Photo courtesy of  Doug on Flickr The mainstream media in North America has a tendency to over-glamorize automobiles. It’s no wonder, since a significant portion of their advertising revenue comes from automobile companies. As we pointed out last November, the mainstream media also has a tendency to under-glamorize bicycling, leading you to believe that you ...

Anatomy of a Dutch Bicycle 42

Anatomy of a Dutch Bicycle
Photo by Marc van Woudenberg / Amsterdamize North Americans are becoming increasingly aware of the bicycle culture that comes out of the best bicycling country in the world – the Netherlands – thanks largely to the photography and advocacy from our friends Amsterdamize and A View From the Cycle Path in the Netherlands, and Copenhagenize ...

Ghettoize Me, Please 11

Ghettoize Me, Please
All Photos by Marc van Woudenberg / Amsterdamize In an article in yesterday’s Ottawa Citizen entitled “We’re not all hard-core cyclists”, writer Kate Jaimet explains that a proposal to invest in physically separated bicycle infrastructure in Ottawa is at risk of being quashed by a group of vehicular “hard-core” cyclists. Vehicular cyclists are against bicycle ...

Shopping Cart Bicycle Trailers 12

Shopping Cart Bicycle Trailers
Photos by James D. Schwartz / The Urban Country I frequently pass by these homemade shopping cart bicycle trailers here in Toronto. What a great way to recycle old shopping carts, while increasing the load capacity on your bicycle at a very low cost. These particular bike trailers were spotted at Bathurst and Richmond – ...

Bicycle Infrastructure Ignorance 62

Bicycle Infrastructure Ignorance
Photo of Vancouver’s Hornby St Bike Lanes courtesy of Paul Krueger An article in the Toronto Star newspaper yesterday brought to light a plan to bring a modest segregated bicycle network in Toronto’s downtown core. This news would have been significant even with Toronto’s previous mayor, the “bike-friendly” David Miller. What makes this news drastically ...