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Looks like St. Catharines is about to lose a set of bike lanes because the lanes are being blamed for causing heavy traffic jams. The message here? It is ok if cyclists and others going car-free are inconvenienced, let’s just not upset those in cars.
Sigh…
[Update: the weekend paper had more on this issue.]
As residents of St. Catharines know, a fire struck Liberty! Bicycles this past summer. The word is starting to spread that they will reopen in a new location downtown. This is excellent news — I’m going to start saving up for a new Electra bike to celebrate the occasion!
From the Liberty! Bicycles website: ” To carry us into the future, Liberty! Bicycles has purchased a 15000 sq ft facility in Downtown St. Catharines. Being true to our roots, we decided on a Downtown location although there was substantial pressure to move the business into either Megaland, or Boxville. Unfortunately, those non-Downtown options offered nothing in the way of style. For us, the decision was obvious. So, over the course of the next few months we will start the transformation of an old urban warehouse into what we hope will be the coolest bike shop this side of NYC. We will implement our plans phase by phase creating what we hope will become the centre of bike culture in Niagara. As we move forward, we will provide updates right here. Wish us luck! In the meantime, drop by our temp-shop if you need your bike repaired. We have 2010 catalogues and information about Cannondale, Specialized, Kona and Electra bicycles on hand.”
The recent announcement that there will be new sidewalks put in various locations around the city is surely good news for anyone concerned with car-free issues in the region. A big thank to the City of St. Catharines for this!
Another “trouble spot” that always worries me is along St. David’s road leading up to the Brock campus. I frequently see students walking along the shoulder of the highway, going back and forth from Thorold (where a lot of students live) to the campus. There have been many people expressing their concerns about this over the years, and I’ve heard various rumblings that this location might be a candidate for bike lanes and/or sidewalks. I do hope these rumours prove to be true before an unthinkable tragedy happens!
As we celebrate car-free day I can’t help being saddened by this news coming out of Niagara-on-the-Lake. Another cyclist killed in a car-bicycle accident, and this is especially tragic since the Niagara Regional Police have not yet been able to identify this man.
Cycle safely my friends.
The idea of getting a regional transit for Niagara up and running is in the news again. I sincerely hope that this can be achieved. I’m heartened by the Mayor of Port Colborne’s assertion that transit is “a No.1 priority.”
The paper today also had this piece on “Sharrows” — love it! This reminder to share the road is especially timely as it falls on the heels of this awful story of yet another car-cyclist collision. This one has left me feeling especially rattled, since it is in my neck of the woods and it was on a route I often ride.
The good folks over at GCAST (The Garden City Alliance for Sustainable Transportation) are urging Niagara Residents to participate in “Car Free Day” on Sept. 22nd.
For more details, see this article from the St. Catharines Standard.
The Great Car-Free Experiment continues and I’m happy to report that things are going well. Of course it is easier because I am attempting to get around in pleasant summer weather and I am on a summer timetable. I have, however, decided to take this experiment into September. I’ve been walking, biking, busing and car-pooling my way through August, and I want to see how long I can keep it up. I just cancelled my fall parking permit, so I guess that means I’m committed to this project.
The City of St. Catharines just announced another set of bike lanes, so this is certainly good news on the car-free front. The biggest challenge I’ve had with cycling around this region, however, is the lack of bike racks. I’ve been really surprised to discover just how hard it is to find a bike rack at retail centres. So far this has been the single biggest deterrent to getting around by bicycle. Today, for instance, I had to go to the grocery store — I could have easily biked, but I opted for the bus because I wasn’t sure if I’d find a place to lock up my bike in front of the grocery store. I thought I’d encounter more difficulties with the traffic, but that hasn’t been an issue as the drivers in this neighbourhood have been quite courteous. But bike racks? I didn’t anticipate this to be a problem. Come on people — there are all sorts of bike rack options out there, let’s work to make this region a little more bike-friendly!
Oh, and while I’m at it — how about making this dream of a regional transit a reality? I was chatting with a friend about going to see some plays this fall and I realized that it is easier for me to get to downtown Toronto (a distance of about 107km) to take in some theatre than it is for me to get into the Shaw Festival in Niagara on the Lake (a distance of about 20km). What the heck?!
From the St. Catharines Standard this week:
GO on Track: Exceeds Expectations in Niagara
[Update: there is also this good news about the GO Bus service starting in a few weeks.]
It is day #3 of the Great Car-Free Experiment, and things are going rather well so far. Yesterday was quite uneventful on the transportation front. I worked from home most of the day, but did ride my bike over to my local fruit stand for some peaches, corn and blueberries. I also stopped in at the Avondale for a litre of milk. It was a short, straight-forward ride (literally! There is only one turn I have to make!) and it was a nice day for a bike ride. If all days were like this it would be easy to go car-free.
Today I had to go a little further afield. I had to make my way from my neighbourhood to the vet’s office to pick up a refill of Jenny-cat’s medicine. There is a bus that goes from the end of my block to a stop directly in front of the vet clinic and I’ve taken it several times. However, since the Great Car-Free Experiment is, well, an experiment, I thought I’d try something new. It is another lovely day in Niagara, so I decided to hop on my trusty bike and see how rideable this route is.
Rideability Report
Route: Port Dalhousie to 4th Avenue Shopping District (Ridley Heights Plaza) via Martindale Road
Distance: 5.8km one way
The Good: Several parts of this route have bike lanes and/or wide shoulders. In general, drivers were courteous and it was a pleasant ride. Several pedestrians and other cyclists waved, smiled and said hello. I even found a service station with an air pump en route so that I could top up the air levels in my bike tires.
The Bad: While I didn’t appreciate nearly being sideswiped by a water delivery truck (grrr!), the bigger source of aggravation was the fact that there are no bike racks at the Ridley Heights Plaza. Not only that, but I couldn’t find anything suitable to lock my bike to!! It turned out to be no big deal as I just wheeled my bike right into the vet clinic, but it seems to me that putting a few small bike racks in retail centres should just be a no-brainer. [Update: see this great piece from Slate Magazine on bike parking]
The Bizarre: At the very end of my ride, when I was back on residential streets in my own neighbourhood, a sports car going in the opposite direction slowed down and the young man driving the car pointed at me through his open window and then yelled something that sounded like “pockets on a squirrel.” I’m sure that wasn’t it and I’m equally sure that he and his friends thought that whatever he yelled was hilarious as they cracked up and sped off down the road. Weird.
So my old car isn’t feeling so good these days — there is a funny clunking sound coming from underneath the car and the dashboard lights come on at random intervals. I have no idea if these are simple fixes and regular maintenance issues for an old car or if they signify a more serious “beginning of the end.”
I’ve been wanting to go car-free for a while now. I’ve been car-free for many years of my life and have previously blogged about how I’m not entirely comfortable having a car. I think I would have given up my car ages ago if my neighbourhood was a little more conducive to alternate forms of transportation. My long-term goal is to move to a more walkable neighourhood, but that isn’t something that will be happening immediately.
Now that my car is feeling a little under the weather I’ve decided to do a little experiment. I want to see how possible it is to go car-free in this part of Niagara. I’m not ruling out getting my car fixed nor am I rushing off to the mechanic’s shop. Rather, I thought that this would be a good opportunity to test the feasibility of going car-free and have decided to leave the sickly little beast parked on the driveway for the rest of the month as I make up my mind.
I really don’t know what I’ll do in the long term, but I think that this little experiment will go a long way toward helping me decide. Just for fun I looked at the cost of getting a newer used model of the same car I currently have (a Honda Accord). The prices I saw were in the ballpark of $16,000 for cars that were about 4-5 years old. $16,000?!?! I could probably take taxis for the rest of my life for that much money! I think this hits at the heart of my dilemma — spending oodles of money on a car just doesn’t fit with the rest of my values and the way I try to live my life.
All of this is well and good in theory, but how will it play out on a day-to-day basis? I’m up against some pretty real challenges. There is semi-regular transit service around here during weekdays, but in the evenings and on weekends things get a bit more challenging. There are some bike lanes, but there are also a number of very busy roads that have no bike lanes at all. Many of the streets around me don’t even have sidewalks. The flip side of this is that I can work from home many days and I often do. Further, when I weigh the cost of occasionally taking a taxi or renting a car against the money I spend on gas, insurance, repairs and my monthly parking pass I think that going car-free is still more economical.
So, as of noon today I’ve parked the car and will do my best to go car-free for the rest of August. I’ll be blogging about my car-free experiment as I attempt figure this out.
Today was the first day of the experiment and, as with all new projects, there were a few rocky moments. I had to go to campus today and taking the bus in was fairly uneventful. I have to take 2 different buses to get from my house to my office, and in the past the connections between the two routes have not been that smooth. Today, however, things went well and going in to work by bus took about 40 minutes, which is twice as long as it normally takes me to drive in. On the way home, however, I ended up waiting a long, long time for the bus leaving Brock. I am not sure what happened, but my best guess is that I misread the schedule. Another small wrinkle was that I had to dash over to my former doctor’s office (outside of town) to pick up a file this afternoon, and I quickly realized that this is not an easy destination to get to by transit. I was a bit mortified to have to ask a friend for a ride on day #1 of the great car-free challenge. The good news is that since I no longer go to this doctor I will not have to be going to this location on a regular basis.
So, over the next few weeks I’ll be doing my best to bike, walk and ride instead of drive. I know that going car-free means being a bit more organized and that I’ll have to plan my shopping and other errands so that my excursions out are as efficient as possible. I also want to think about ways to productively use that extra commuting time I have to spend on the bus — I get a little queasy when I read in a moving vehicle, but maybe I can use that time to brainstorm about my research or listen to podcasts/audiobooks. I’d be interested to hear other ideas that people have re: making a commute more productive.
[Update: seems I'm not the only one putting off car repairs these days.]
