Bikes in the News – August 18, 2010

Bambrick is the director of communications and events for the Toronto Cyclists Union, which formed in 2008, and she’s become the go-to person for media seeking reaction from the cycling community. She was quoted widely during the fatal incident involving former Ontario attorney general Michael Bryant and bike courier Darcy Sheppard and has provided her input into the city’s bike lane initiatives.

Bicycle culture has grown rapidly in urban centres around the world, thanks to environmentally conscious groups who have tirelessly pushed the benefits of two-wheeled transportation.

But the bike movement has also infiltrated the style world.

An endless list of style blogs in cities around the world chronicle fashionable citizens and what they are wearing whilst putting foot to pedal. It’s street style on wheels.

Even thesartorialist.com has an entire section devoted to chic cyclists in Milan, Paris and New York.

The Bike Train network in Ontario is expanding, with three new weekend routes from Toronto added for this summer and fall.

Launched with Via Rail between Toronto and Niagara in 2007, the Bike Trains now take cyclists to recreational trails and road routes across the province.

Passengers ride a train to their destination, with their bicycles secured in a baggage car equipped with bike racks. Bike Train staff hand out cycling maps and provide information.

A month ago Syed Hasan didn’t know how to change a tire on his bike, but now the high school grad can repair an entire bicycle.

The U of T bound first-year student was hired to learn how to work on bicycles in a mentoring program sponsored by the Cabbage Town Youth Centre, the Toronto District School Board and Ontario’s Ministry of Education’s Focus on Youth work placement program.

BIXI Toronto got off to a quick start in its quest to get 1,000 annual memberships. Within just a few hours of launching, more than 100 subscriptions for the self-serve bike-sharing program were sold last week, putting the scheme well on its way to success.

Bixi, a neologism for “bike” plus “taxi.” That didn’t dawn on me until just last week.

But after I get a look at the Montreal-made bike-share cruisers set to pop up on city streets next spring, it makes total sense: these are brilliant bridge vehicles for those who like bikes and don’t like paying for taxis.

Also increasingly clear – they’re going to be huge here. A few hundred people turn out to pledge their support for the program at the Bixi Toronto Bash at the Gladstone Wednesday (July 28). On display outside are some of the 80 docking stations we’ll hopefully see a lot of by May 2011.

Toronto’s bicycle policy is no policy at all; it’s a series of half-measures that add up to little.

The latest example, the much loathed bike lanes on Jarvis St., finally came to pass this week after years of rancorous debate. The new lanes begin at Charles St. in the north and end, as abruptly as they begin, on Queen St. to the south.

If you’ve paid Montréal a visit lately, you’ve probably seen a Bixi bike. The bulky, vaguely European-looking public cruisers have been gracing the streets of La Belle Ville since last spring, when the program launched to the tune of twenty thousand subscriptions. Last night, hundreds of keen bike enthusiasts hit the Gladstone Hotel for the BIXI Toronto Bash to launch Toronto’s Bixi membership campaign. If one thousand people subscribe for memberships by November, Toronto will get a Bixi fleet to call its own.

BIXI bikes made their official Toronto debut last night at the public subscription launch party at the Gladstone Hotel. Hundreds of people came out in support of what could be the first large scale bicycle-sharing program in this city, should BIXI meet its subscription and sponsorship targets by the end of November. Many partygoers were avid cyclists and cycling advocates, others stopped by to take the bikes out for a test ride around the block, and some were like me: pedestrians with a renewed interest in cycling, lured by the accessibility and flexibility that BIXI can provide, with none of the ownership.

A Toronto bike share program that is due to roll out next year is kicking off a campaign to recruit subscribers.Under the Bixi (short for “bicycle taxi”) program, people will be able to pick up a bike at one of 85 stations in downtown Toronto, use it and park it at another station when they are done.

It hasn’t yet been determined where those stations will go, but they will be set no more than 300 metres apart from each other for convenience, said Dan Egan, the city’s manager of cycling infrastructure and programs.

“I think it could really change the face of Toronto,” he said.

As I set out on the bike lane on Shuter Street where it begins in the shadow of St. Michael’s Hospital at Victoria Street, I am already dreaming of Jarvis.

It has been an illusive dream. For all my decades as a fair-weather bike commuter in the city core, Jarvis Street has remained a no-bike zone.

A vision to connect Toronto’s waterfront, major rivers, some railways and hydro corridors through an off-road multi-use trail is getting closer to completion.

“Take. Ride. Return.” It’s the non-committal and seductive slogan for Bixi, a bike-sharing program set to make its Toronto debut next spring. First it will have to muster $600,000 in sponsorships and 1,000 subscribers by Nov. 30.

The installation of the Jarvis Street bike lanes was completed on Sunday. On Monday the sky did not fall. Nope, we were still here, the sun was still shining, and Rocco Rossi was still running a divisive mayoral campaign. And the media outlets ran story upon story about the “controversial” new lanes.

The city made the event open to the public in a bid to attract cyclists; officials need to collect 1,000 membership pledges of $95 before Nov. 30 to make the bike-sharing program a reality.“(City) council gave us the citizens a challenge: can we have 1,000 people subscribe by November?” said Sean Wheldrake, bicycle promotions coordinator at the City of Toronto.

Want a bike? Take a bike.  Done with it? Leave it.That’s the idea behind a public bike sharing program slated to launch across Toronto’s downtown core next May. But first, the city needs 1,000 people to commit to using the network by the end of November.

Jarvis bike lanes could end up making life more dangerous for cyclists when it reaches Mt. Pleasant

How many TreeHugger hot buttons can be pushed in one post? After Toronto cyclist Charles Prinsep was killed in 2007 while riding across the country, his friends set up Charlie’s FreeWheels. It takes kids at risk in Toronto’s roughish Regent Park and teaches them to fix bikes.

But Charlie had other passions besides bikes; he was off to the Sorbonne to study urban planning, and was seriously into tech, geo-tagging and blogging about his bike trip until the day he was killed. This Saturday, all of these passions come together with a high-tech historical bike tour of Toronto’s Regent Park.

Three years ago, for his 23rd birthday, Charlie Prinsep pigged out on Japanese food and swam in a British Columbia lake with all his cycling clothes on.

It was July 27, 2007. A week later, while cycling across the continent, the Toronto man would be fatally struck by a car — ending his life, but not his legacy.

On Saturday, three days before what would have been his 26th birthday, Prinsep inspired a cycling tour through Regent Park.

The ride was led by participants of Charlie’s FreeWheels, a program created in Prinsep’s honour that teaches Regent Park youths how to fix and build bicycles.

Approximately 300 cyclists have prepared to ride hundreds of kilometers to raise money for HIV/AIDS.

Scotiabank’s “The Friends for Life Bike Rally” will see people travel from Toronto to Montreal. The ride begins Sunday at 9 a.m. and cyclists are expected to arrive in Quebec July 30.

“The Bixi was an instant success,” said Manon Barbe, the city of Montreal executive committee member responsible for transportation. “There was the fact that it was developed here in Quebec, that the design was a Quebec design and that it used materials from here. That it created jobs here. … It is an extraordinary Quebec success story. And the people who made it a success are the cyclists themselves.”

On August 3rd he was killed after being struck from behind by a car on the shoulder of the Trans-Canada Highway near Brooks, Alta.Not long after, the idea for Charlie’s Freewheels, a program which teaches youth from Regent Park to build a bike from scratch, was born.

Colin Heilbut was a friend and classmate of Charlie’s. He’s also a co-founder of Charlie’s Freewheels.

If you’re leaving your bike at home for fear of a sore derriere, the solution may be to get a new seat. Here’s how to find the right style and make it work for you.

A difference of opinion about bike lanes is never far away on Jarvis Street.On Friday morning, it was separated by 140 metres — the distance between two parking pay-and-display machines that were removed from the five-lane thoroughfare to give permanent space to cyclists.

“Bye, bye parking meter,” Frank D’Onofrio said ruefully, drawn outside of his Kwik Kopy shop by the noise of a grinder machine. “I’m the beleaguered owner of this franchise who is going to be very pissed off when none of his customers can park here.”

Minutes later, and just down the street, Mohammad Wali, a cyclist and condo superintendent, nodded in approval at the dismantling of car infrastructure. He endorses bike lanes primarily for safety reasons, having survived many close calls with motorists. “Especially on Jarvis Street. Jarvis is like a highway, so it will be better for us to get around,” he said.