Take the Lane

Lower speed limits are in our future

Way back in 2010, while at Velo-city Global 2010 in Copenhagen, I posted on a presentation from John Whitelegg, a prof in transportation studies from John Moores University in Liverpool.

The post was titled "Are lower urban speed limits in our future?", based on his research showing that 95 per cent of peds and cyclists will survive being hit by objects travelling at a speed of 32 km/h or less, while fully 55 per cent won't survive being struck at 48 km/h or faster.

So, of course, it was with interest that I read the reportage on the recent Ontario coroner's report on pedestrian deaths in Ontario. While the coroner's Report on Cycling Deaths (released in June, go here for both reports) made virtually no mention of speed limits, the attention on the Pedestrian Death Review seemed to be entirely about the speed limits.

In fact, that was one recommendation of many. Here's the recommendation: "The MTO should amend the Highway Traffic Act to allow local municipalities to lower the unsigned default speed limit to 40 kilometres an hour on residential streets from the current limit of 50 kilometres an hour." (It was later elaborated to indicate that speed limits on residential streets should be reduced to 30 km/h while all other municipal streets should be 40 km/h.)

There were lots of other recommendations: that Ontario communities should adopt a "complete streets" approach to planning and redevelopment (a recommendation that also was the first item in the cycling deaths review); that the province should develop a walking strategy; that side guards be manadatory on transport trucks (also in the cycling deaths review); that the Driver's Handbook be updated to reflect the new realities (also in the cycling review); and that there be publlic education and police education and enforcement (also in the cycling review).

You could view both reports as convergent (the exceptions being the speed limits, mentioned only in the pedestrian review, and the three-foot passing law and mandatory helmets, mentioned only in the cycling review).

I think you can read a few things from both reviews:

One is that complete streets is the way of the future for municipal planning. No surprise since it is already happening at the grassroots level. Eventually, the provincial funding agencies will respond.

Another is that truck side guards are going to happen. They are already happening ... you can see examples on the major highways every day.

And another is lower speed limits. Not one of the "convergent" items, but cyclist and pedestrian advocates have been talking about lower limits for years. It fits with the complete streets planning model and is the logical way to reduce insurance costs, health funding, and energy consumption. Every roadway innovation of recent years -- traffic calming, roundabouts, community safety zones -- has been intended to reduce speed limits in the urban/suburban setting.

Lower speed limits are in our future and that can only be good news for cyclists.

Are 30 km/h residential roads in our cycling future?

Are 30 km/h residential streets in our future?

I asked that question back in 2010 after listening to a British prof at Velo-City Global 2010 in Copenhagen.

At that time, I noted that more North American urban planners are turning to traffic calming to bring speeds down: chicanes, speed bumps, lowered speed limits in designated neighbourhoods.

Now have a look at this article by Ceri Woolsgrove in the recent issue of the European Cyclists' Federation newsletter on the growing interest in 30 km/h limits in Europe.

The benefits are obvious in suburban or densely urban settings: slower speeds mean a more diverse roadway metric. Cyclists, pedestrians, skateboarders and others will mix with motorists. And lower speeds mean accidents, when they do occur, are less likely fatal for pedestrians and cyclists, and are of lower cost to the insurance industry when involving motor vehicles.

One of the big arguments in favour of the Block Line Road/Homer Watson Boulevard roundabout in Waterloo Region is that traffic would slow down (from 70 km/h to 50 km/h, or slower in the roundabout) such that, even if the number of accidents in the roundabout rose from the average in the previous signalized intersection, the overall injury rate would be lower and the overall cost (to the insurance industry) would be lower because the fender benders would come in below most motorists' deductible.

The point of the planners was that motorists like to keep moving, and will even accept speed limits much lower than what would be normally expected, as long as they could keep moving.

Check out the slalom course on Kingswood Drive in Kitchener, where chicanes and speed bumps make the street a moguls course. It doesn't seem to have reduced traffic, but it does seem to have slowed it down.

Is the street now safer for cyclists and pedestrians? Woolsgrove would argue that cyclists and peds are still seen as impedimetal by motorists. He suggests that getting speed limits lowered to encourage more variety of road users will have to be a top-down, rather than bottom-up, decision.

Short timeline to commit to presenting at Velo-city Global 2012

Velo-city Global 2012 Vancouver has finally issued its call for presentations, and you'd better not take much time to think about it: the deadline is Nov. 15.

Velo-city Global 2012, to be held June 26-29 in Vancouver, will be the world's largest bicycle advocacy conference. The child of the European Cycling Federation, the 2012 event is one of the few to be scheduled outside of Europe. It will attract cycling advocates, planners, bicycle innovators and infrastructure suppliers from around the world.

Products are secondary to ideas. This is a clearinghouse for thinking, processes, imagination, experience. The call for presentations is the invitation for planners, researchers, developers, advocates and others to be part of the roundtables, workshops, research presentations and symposia that will be running concurrently through the four days. You can read about the various formats for presentation here. Of particular interest will be the PechaKucha events, sort of speed-dating for idea-sharing, where presenters of similar themes will be given 20 minutes and 20 slides to make their point and host a discussion.

For someone like me, this is a cycle advocacy candy store. In the course of my time at Velo-city Global 2010 Copenhagen, I acquired a bicycle buzz that buzzes still.

The call for presentations was to have been posted in September, but the Velo-city team has apparently been on the move and it wasn't updated until just recently. I got an email notice letting me know about it on Tuesday. I was told last month that the online registration would be open in November, and the website says that registration will open in November, but it hasn't opened yet.

Soon, grasshopper, soon.

Stronger voice for regional bike sharing

The University of Waterloo Bike Share Initiative (which I posted about back in March) has changed its name and expanded its focus.

Now the ROW (Region of Waterloo) Bike Share, it is intended to convince regional council to support a community bike-sharing initiative. The big gear behind the website, Joshua Joseph, is spending some of his summer interning in Copenhagen, getting the opportunity to live with better bicycle infrastructure, and hopes that experience will inform his arguments for council.

He also plans/hopes to post videos of cycling infrastructure from Copenhagen, and videos that you produce of cycling successes and shortcomings here in the region. I spent some timeon a bike last year at the Velo-city Global 2010 cycling conference in the Danish capital, and had a chance to experience cycling infrastructure that works. Very uplifting. I look forward to see what Joseph's fresh eyes will see.

Check out his site if you want to know more.

 

Save the date for the Ontario Bike Summit

The Ontario Bike Summit is coming up surprisingly soon. The summit, usually held in the fall, has been switched to early summer due to the fall provincial election.

If you want to hear from the likes of Ontario Transportation Minister Kathleen Wynne, Cycling England's former chair Phillip Darnton or Dutch ambassador to Canada (and cycling enthusiast) Wim Geerts, you'll have to find some time to travel to Ottawa on Monday, June 27 and Tuesday, June 28.

Details of the Bike Summit are here, on the Share the Road Cycling Coalition website.

Ottawa is a hotbed for cycling. There were more politicians and cycling-associated representatives at the Velo-city Global 2010 in Copenhagen than from any other region of Canada. The Euro experience resulted in a visit to Ottawa by bicycle infrastructure advocate, the Danish architect Jan Gehl, and this year, the announcement of a bike-sharing program for the capital.

It's good to see that Phillip Darnton hasn't given up banging the drum, even after the British government slit his agency's throat this year as a part of broad cost-cutting effort. Here's Darnton's upbeat farewell message on the now-moribund Cycling England website. Darnton is also a keynote speaker at the Asia-Pacific Cycle Congress in Melbourne in September.

His message, about investment in our health and communities, is such a basic one, that I don't understand why it is so hard to sell.

Why is it so difficult to get government to think of preventitive spending as investment? It is cheaper and more effective to keep sick people in their homes than to place them in hospital beds. It is cheaper and more effective to invest in education and support for the economically disadvantaged than to build prisons to house them if they become criminals. It is cheaper and more effective to encourage active transportation than it is to endlessly expand roads for more cars, and hospital wings to treat an increasingly obese and asthmatic population.

Are governments so caught up in building monoliths -- hospitals, jails -- that they have lost sight of the notion that we should be building a society?

Part of the messaging at the Bike Summit will be about the upcoming provincial election. Who to talk to. What to say. As at levery Bike Summit, there will be a panel of representatives from the provincial political parties. This year, you'll really want to hear what they have to say, and you'll really want them to hear what you have to say.

New York cyclists facing backlash

It seems like only yesterday that I was in Copenhagen at the Velo-city Global 2010, listening to everyone talk about New York's Transportation Commissioner Janette Sadik-Khan and what wonderful things she has championed for cycling in the Big Apple.

Well, there's been a nasty reaction to cycling successes, from businesses and motorists, as reported on the New York Times website on Monday and in its print edition today.

J. David Goodman writes that one painted bike lane has been removed in Staten Island, and one hearing was held this month for business owners to complain about a bicycle lane on Columbus Avenue. City Council is holding a hearing on Dec. 9 to discuss balancing the needs of cyclists with other road users, and police are cracking down on bicycle-related traffic violations.

As if the handful of cyclists who are finally getting a modicum of cycling security on the mean streets of New York have suddenly become a major threat to the everyday life of America's biggest city. I almost laughed (and almost cried) when I read the quote from the 45-year-old substitute teacher who said that bicycle lanes take "away my rights as a driver."

Take away her rights? How is it that any change is seen as a loss? Sadik-Khan points out that where bicycle lanes have been installed, injury rates, for all road users, have fallen. It's a gain to have bike lanes, not a loss. When roads go on a "diet," with narrower roadways, speed bumps, lower speed limits, more variety of road use, fender-benders become less severe, injury rates drop, fatality rates drop.

You know what the loss is? The loss is that some drivers (not you or your friends, of course) can't get to the next stop light in under 30 seconds.

But you already know this. It's those other guys who need to be told. Flip them the link to the NYT article.

 

Take your bicycle advocacy to a world stage

Want to take your bicycle advocacy to an international stage? Velo-city Sevilla 2011 in Seville, Spain has issued a call for papers.

Presenters are expected to address one or more of the conferences main themes: using bicycle transport to transform cities into healthier places; changing mobility habits to increase cycling; how public investment can increase sustainable mobility and quality of life; and social benefits of cycling.

Velo-city Sevilla 2011 plans three different formats for presenters: sub-plenary presentations, question workshops and round table discussions. Details are here.

I thought Velo-city Global 2010 in Copenhagen was a major event in my own understanding of global cycling issues and the future of cycling in the urban setting. I don't expect to be able to attend Velo-city Sevilla 2011 (I'm hoping to attend Velo-city Global 2012 in Vancouver), but would recommend the experience to anyone who sees him/herself as a bicycle advocate or cycling infrastructure specialist.

Deadline for the call for papers is Nov. 30.

Jan Gehl to tell Ottawa how to be cycling champion

That Jan Gehl, Danish urban consultancy icon and muse to wannabe bicycle-friendly cities worldwide, is coming to Ottawa next month finally gives me an excuse to use this image.

I had posted Aug. 5 on how important it is to get data to back up cyclist demands for better infrastructure, and had recounted how counting is a fundamental to Gehl Architects, so fundamental that there is a basket of counters and clickers by the front door, to remind staff of the importance of data to back up their arguments. I had seen this image in the Dutch Cyclists Union publication Cycling Cities, but was not able to obtain a copy until recently. (Thanks to Suzanne Brink of Fietsersbond who took the photo, and Michiel Slutter who forwarded it.)

Numbers, and the importance of compiling them, will likely be part of the message that Gehl brings to Ottawa on Oct. 6 when he speaks at a pubic meeting about transforming major world centres into bicycle-friendly and sustainable communities. He is the Jane Jacobs of bicycle culture, a steady and clear voice for walkable/bikeable communities since the early 1970s. His firm has been brought in to inspire the re-imagining of New York, Melbourne, and London. And now he is being brought to Ottawa by the Ottawa-area contingent that was exposed to the possibilities for a new cycle-culture this summer, partly on visits to the Netherlands and Germany, and partly as participants in Velo-city Global 2010 in Copenhagen.

Representatives from the City of Gatineau, the City of Ottawa and the National Capital Commission attended Velo-city, the largest Canadian "bloc" to attend, and the only group from Ontario featuring municipal politicians (the people who actually vote to spend money on cycling infrastructure).

Gehl's visit is just part of the Ottawa-area group's commitment to that area's cycling future. Two public meetings will be held in the Gatineau on Sept. 21 at 7 p..m in the Maison du Citoyen and Sept. 22 at 7 p.m. in Ottawa City Hall to share what the delegates learned. Gehl will be the featured speaker at the Oct. 6 public meeting, and will also lead a workshop with municipal officials to discuss bicycling as a part of downtown life in Ottawa and Gatineau. And finally, the three levels of municipal government, through a tripartite committee, have agreed to produce a regional cycling map which will show trails and cycle facilities.

The committee has also made cycling a permanent agenda item for the committee, and there are noises about colour-separated cycling lanes, improved bike share, attempts to increase cycle commuting and involvement with area bicycle advocacy groups.

And you'll be able to get some of the details of this metamorphosis next Monday in Burlington at the Ontario Bike Summit, when National Capital Commission CEO Marie Lemay, who was a member of the Velo-city delegation, will speak on the committee's plans for the nation's capital.

I had posted recently that Toronto is likely no longer a model for Canadian municipalities looking for examples of bicycle-friendly infrastructure. Perhaps Ottawa is where we should look.

Velo-city Global 2010 content now online

Many of the presentations from Velo-city Global 2010 in Copenhagen this year are now posted online. Just go to the website and click on the right side to go to the list of presentations.

As you know from my many previous posts, I was totally energized by this world cycling event, with the presentations on cycling infrastructure, innovation and initiative. If you have some time, just cruise through the plenary presentations or the Tracks sessions. You'll be able to view Power Point presentations on bicycle policy in Japan, urban retail cycling solutions, experiments in traffic calming and much more.

The downside in this material is that I have not yet found any video. A lot is lost when the presentation is limited to just the Power Point slides. As well, not all presenters opted to share their presentations online, so in some cases, all you will be able to read are abstracts. In many cases, there are contact email addresses or websites so you can make personal connections if you want to learn more.

I highly recommend this site.

On cycling and one's mid-life

It could be that Bruce Weir of the Calgary Herald is paid by the word, or it could be that I have become used to the saucy brevity of Facebook status updates: in the event, I did battle through to the end of his column-cum-feature on mid-life crises and cycling, and quite enjoyed it.

I, too, have seen the bicycle light coming from behind in my rear-view mirror. Older I am than Weir, and happy to report that I am usually able to accelerate sufficiently to maintain my relative position on the road vis-a-vis my pursuer. When the pursuit is broken off (because the rider turned off into the Tim Hortons or a side street), I imagine that it was just an excuse to avoid confronting the truth: that I was faster.

It must be the chemical factory that kicks in when you're riding a bike, that permits, even encourages, such  flights of fancy.

Partly, that is Weir's point. A bicycle is a flight of fancy, a rocket, an aeroplane, a sleek predator knifing through traffic, a way to let the world unroll before you, one pedal stroke at a time.

That he ventured off into electric-assist bicycles hardly matters.