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Free Parking? At What Cost? 1

Free Parking? At What Cost?
Car parking lot – Photo courtesy of Zachary Korb In most suburban areas, and some urban areas, big box stores are surrounded by expansive parking lots where motorists can park their cars for free. But the significant costs to buy the land and pay to build and maintain these parking lots are built into the ...

How Bicycles Can Boost Commerce 5

How Bicycles Can Boost Commerce
Photo from Shopping by bike YouTube film by Mike Rubbo – Footage by Violeta Braña-Lafourcade My filmmaker friend Mike Rubbo over in Australia has put together a nice film about shopping by bike. In his film, Rubbo uncovers the opportunities that bicycles present to small businesses. Rubbo talks to shoppers and merchants about shopping by ...

Giant Responds to GM Ad 22

Giant Responds to GM Ad
Giant’s response to GM ad – photo found on reddit.com – view full size Giant Bicycles has responded to GM’s anti-cycling advertisement by coming up with an ad of their own. It reads: “Reality DOES Suck. Luckily bicycles don’t… In fact it’s the best thing you can do to save hundreds… even thousands of dollars ...

Motorists Prime Beneficiaries of Socialism 116

Motorists Prime Beneficiaries of Socialism
The freedom of driving (or not) – a Toronto traffic jam by wyliepoon Whether they like it or not, most motorists are socialists. The American media tends to generally associate the term socialism with social assistance such as welfare, but socialism comes in different forms. That same media is also littered with driver self-pity over ...

Once Upon a Car Ownership: 8 Months Later 59

Once Upon a Car Ownership: 8 Months Later
Infinity MPG t-shirt by Noisebot (don’t worry, I’m not getting any kickbacks if you buy this t-shirt) I had owned a car for most of my adult life – ever since I acquired my driver’s permit in 1996. After moving to Toronto in 2002, my car mostly sat in the garage collecting dust, but conveniently ...

Americans Work 3.84 Minutes Each Day To Pay For Their Bicycles 59

Americans Work 3.84 Minutes Each Day To Pay For Their Bicycles
Photo of Heather Normandale by Adam Thompson / RateMyVelo.com After revealing that the average American works about 2 hours a day to pay for the cost of automobile ownership earlier this month, I was asked to participate in a radio interview for the Edmonton’s CJSR 88.5FM on Full English Breakfast with Peter Chapman to talk ...

We Are Addicted To Automobiles 18

We Are Addicted To Automobiles
Photo of a traffic jam by buzrael / Flickr In the Twelve Steps to recovery from alcoholism – first published in 1939 in Alcoholics Anonymous: The Story of How More Than One Hundred Men Have Recovered From Alcoholism – the first step is defined as: “We admitted we were powerless over alcohol – that our ...

Americans Work 2 Hours Each Day To Pay For Their Cars 46

Americans Work 2 Hours Each Day To Pay For Their Cars
Cars & cycle path in Montreal, Quebec – April 2011 – James Schwartz / The Urban Country Imagine you could work 500 hours less every year. That works out to be an extra 12.5 weeks of vacation. Alternatively, imagine you got paid for an extra 500 hours of work each year, without having to work ...

Bicycle Infrastructure Is Good For Business 13

Bicycle Infrastructure Is Good For Business
Montreal bike infrastructure – by James D. Schwartz / The Urban Country A common misconception in North America is that businesses will suffer if we remove on-street surface parking and replace it with widened sidewalks or bicycle infrastructure. Car-addicted societies have a tendency to believe that people in cars spend more money than people who ...

Operation Imani – Ideas for Sustainable African Development

Between 2005 and 2007, Greg John had a life changing experience. He lived in Tanzania while working on a CIDA internship to help the impoverished African country develop its infrastructure. Coming from a cushy life in Canada, living in one of the top 10 poorest countries in the world was an eye opener for the ...