ViTAL ARTICLES
The following is a collection of insightful and inspiring articles about sustainable transportation projects around the world.

Make Space for Cyclists
The tragic death of a bike courier in Toronto forces us to consider how we can accommodate travel propelled by the fragile human body.

By Laura Robinson, Citizen Special

September 4, 2009

How do we share the road? It's a question we must seriously address in the wake of an incident in Toronto this week that left cyclist Darcy Allan Sheppard dead and former Ontario attorney general Michael Bryant charged with criminal negligence causing death and dangerous operation of a motor vehicle causing death.

If there is enough evidence that a crime has occurred, the Ministry of the Attorney General is involved, which is why this story is emblematic for cyclists of the long road we still must ride. If the person who was until recently responsible for the protection of cyclists' rights to a safe environment under the Ontario Highway Safety Act can end up in this situation, what does it say about how cycling is understood at the top of the decision-making food chain?

We mourn the needless death of Darcy Allan Sheppard, who died of severe head injuries after witnesses say he was slammed into a mailbox and run over. We know Sheppard had been drinking and was so belligerent at his girlfriend's home that the police were called. She says she wanted the police to drive him home, but they sent him on his bike. Bryant has stated he is innocent of all charges.

The Ontario Highway Traffic Act clearly states that bicycles are vehicles, and cyclists have the same rights and responsibilities as automobile drivers, except on superhighways, where we do not ride. It is up to the justice system to find guilt or innocence.

But the essential dialogue and debate around why roads and public space must be shared, and how we design our environment in ways that embrace other forms of transportation beyond those propelled by the combustion engine, is in its infancy.

The car is just over 100 years old, yet we design cities as if it is fundamental to human existence, and of far greater importance than the human body. If there is anything to be gained by this tragedy, it will be the impetus for real legislative changes, not just in transportation law, but in municipal planning.

In 1992 I wrote virtually these exact words after London cyclist and renowned artist Greg Curnoe was killed and others seriously injured when a pickup truck drove through a pack of cyclists on a clear November day on an empty road. Greg and I were around the same speed and I spent my years at the University of Western Ontario vying with him for a faster time. But nothing happened after Greg's death, except that London became a far more dangerous place to ride a bike as suburban sprawl replaced its once civilized landscape.

I wish North America was ready for real discussions on what is essentially the right of human beings to be able to move through time and public space propelled without metal, glass and an engine surrounding us, but with a deep and sensual understanding of the beautiful ways in which bodies can move with strength and speed.

The automobile has long been a vehicle in which male egos play out their assumed worth. Cars are the perfect substitute for all a man, and to a lesser extent a woman, imagines he or she is lacking; this manufactured insecurity is why cars sell so well. And anyone who has observed countless men on bicycles will know that this insecurity has simply been transferred onto a bike for many two-wheeled devotees.

As more information is gleaned about the circumstances of this tragedy, it appears to have started -- not surprisingly -- as a heated argument between cyclist and driver, both of whom seemed to see the road, not as a public space where safety is essential, but as a stage on which they could demonstrate just how much of a man they are.

Like others who ride their bikes daily, I am amazed that I am still alive given how many times a motorized vehicle has had me in its crosshairs. So far I have been able to think fast and somehow avoid being a fatality, but like a cat, I wonder when my lives will be used up.

On the other hand, with several-decades experience as a cyclist in Toronto, I can't count the times a male cyclist, whom I have just passed, felt the need to run a red light, or commit some other dangerous act just so he can pretend he wasn't passed by "a girl."

The upcoming Bicycle Summit in Waterloo, Ont., will bring together those of us who care deeply about the quality of our lives as human beings who transport our bodies by pedal power, with politicians and decision-makers. The latter must understand that we need to provide opportunities to everyone -- but particularly children -- to be very physically active. Choosing to ride a 40-kilometre commute daily should be fun, not impossible. That way we create new cyclists, not new car drivers. And we need huge changes to municipal planning legislation so communities allow bodies to connect with bicycles, and be safe while doing it.

Laura Robinson is a former member of the national cycling team, and coach of the Anishinaabe Racers. Her children's book, Cyclist BikeList: A Book For Every Rider, will be published this spring.

© Copyright (c) The Ottawa Citizen

Das Bike
When parents pick up their children at the Vauban kindergarten near Freiburg, Germany, the traditional minivan is nowhere to be seen. These moms and dads are riding bicycles and towing trailers because the Vauban housing development - Germany's biggest experiment in "auto-free living" - drastically restricts the use of cars. The project is not a pocket of isolated auto-haters: Amsterdam finished Europe's first big auto-free development with 600 apartments in 1998. The first Viennese moved into a similar project in the Austrian capital in December, and another should be completed in Edinburgh, Scotland, this summer. J.H. Crawford, an American author based in Amsterdam and publisher of the Car-Free Times Internet newsletter, told The Associated Press: "People here are pretty well convinced that we've kind of reached the limits of automobile traffic - and gone beyond perhaps - and would really like to have less of it than more."

Eat It? No, Beat It
A tale making the rounds of the Internet describes a cyclist's unhappy interaction with a Wendy's restaurant in Eugene, Oregon. According to Paul Nicholson, owner of the Bicycle Way of Life shop, cyclist Bruce Mullican was arrested after trying to buy a late-night hamburger at a Wendy's drive-up window. The story goes like this: cyclist orders burger; cyclist replies that he is on a bike, not on foot; manager is consulted; cyclist is asked to leave. In the end, Mullican was cited for criminal trespass, convicted, sentenced to two days on the road crew, and fined $400. Nicholson calls the incident an example of class bias in the judiciary and evidence of "our cultural penchant for discriminating against minorities, even ones as apparently benign as people who choose to ride a bike instead of driving a car." If you agree, drop Wendy's Customer Service a line c/o Wendy's International Inc., 4288 W. Dublin-Granville Rd., Dublin, OH 43017, or phone (614) 764-3100. We bet Dave Thomas would have sold the guy a burger. From Bicycle Retailer, April 1, 2002.

Fencing Match
A British cyclist has turned his parking problems into bad luck for a fence-owning landlord. According to a July 5 report in Wired News, a Londoner calling himself the "Fencemaster" has taken to locking a potpourri of items to the fence - including a stuffed tiger, an ironing board, and a green refrigerator door - after being told he could not secure his bicycle there. Each item locked to the fence is photographed and the picture posted on his website, whatshouldIputonthefence.com I want the insensitive actions of this ridiculously wealthy landowner (and my peaceful protest) to help bring cycling into the public eye", the anonymous Fencemaster said. The trouble began when he arrived at the fence to which he normally locked his bike to find that the management of the Howard De Walden Estates had posted the following notice: "Bicycles found parked against or chained to these railings will be removed without further notice." The notice, however, made no mention of stuffed tigers, refrigerator doors, or ironing boards - or, for that matter, frying pans, kettles, copper lions, or cutlery, all of which have been attached to the fence. And the Fencemaster is considering a suggestion from a reader in Scotland, who proposed attaching a notice stating that any fences parked or chained to the notice will be removed. Reprinted from "Bicycle Retailer & Industry News"
www.whatshouldiputonthefence.com

Professor Bicycle's Top Ten Social Impacts of the Bicycle
10. The concept of the AAA, American Automobile Association, including political lobbying and the rating of both routes and accommodations started with a single “A” surrounded by an “L” and “W.” The LAW, League of American Wheelmen, was a potent lobbying force over 100 years ago which also evaluated routes and inns and even placed hazard signs on dangerous roads.

9. Bicyclists not only started the “Good Roads Movement” which led to prison chain gangs, but also originated the use of roadway hazard signs. Today, roadway signs for bicyclists typically say “Bike Lane” which is as informative as a sign saying “road!”

8. Bicycles became the first police patrol cars and their use led to speed traps, unmarked vehicles, “plain-clothed” officers, and the practice of offering bribes for minor traffic violations. There is no truth to the rumor that bicycle tires inspired the invention of the doughnut. 7. The bicycle was the first consumer durable product to be mass marketed with image advertising targeted to different market segments and the promotion of specious yearly model changes.

6. Bicycle racing is the only sport, other than professional wrestling, where you are supposed to cooperate with your opponent to make the contest exciting. Although virtually no one cooperated with him, the first black athlete to join an integrated professional sports team and be declared both U.S. and World Champion was cycle racing superstar, Major Taylor.

5. The bicycle taught bicycle mechanics and makers, Wilbur and Orville Wright, the importance of balancing on wind currents in the operation of the airplane. The use of light weight steel bicycle tubing and other bicycle materials allowed their first airplane to actually get off the ground!

4. Automobile pioneer, Henry Ford, who was a bicycle mechanic like most other automobile pioneers, developed mass production using sophisticated automatic machine tools, electric welding, metal stamping and moving assembly lines all from bicycle factories. Early cars used bicycle tubing, tires, wheels, gears, transmissions, steering, and brakes. Even the electric starter was developed from the coaster brake! Despite the dominance of the automobile in developed countries, more bicycle trips are taken each day in China than car trips throughout the globe. Three times as many bicycles than cars are produced annually in the world today.

3. Through cycling, doctors discover exercise is healthful, even for women! The bicycle caused the death of the corset and “straight laced” women, leaving only “loose” women, if you could catch them! Women’s Suffrage Movement leader, Susan B. Anthony, stated that the bicycle “has done more to emancipate women that anything else in the world.”

2. The bicycle is a mechanical marvel, being one of the few structures that can support more than ten times its own weight. It works as an almost automatic extension of the human body to make cyclists thermodynamically more efficient than any other animal or machine and with wind fairings, capable of exceeding the speed of the fastest land animal, the cheetah. Cyclists get the equivalent of 1100 miles to the gallon! “Bionics” was television fantasy, but “Bianics” –the symbiotic merging of rider (biology) and machine (mechanics) has existed for over 100 years. No wonder Steve Jobs described his invention, the personal computer, as a “bicycle for the mind.”

1. The bicycle allowed residents of isolated rural communities to avoid marrying their cousins by pedaling to the next town to find a mate. Geneticist, Steve Jones says “there is little doubt that the most important event in recent human evolution was the invention of the bicycle.”

Where There’s Smoke
Now we’re banning smoking in restaurants, shouldn’t we outlaw cars too?
By Derek Chadbourne

Consider the cigarette smoker. Once portrayed as the sex symbol on the silver screen, the smoker in modern society has become a shaky, frail addict, forced to perform his or her foul deed behind the woodshed or on the windswept sidewalk of an office building. Now movies and television show the smoker as an evil monkey intent on the destruction of the world, or as some poor fool about to be cured of his nasty habit by some a chain-saw-wielding maniac. How quickly things change when a well-developed campaign is used to shape a public opinion and direct political will.

The main arguments for banning tobacco, first in hospitals and then everywhere else were the staggering death toll and then the mounting cost to the taxpayer. But if this is the true reasoning behind the changes in attitudes to smoking, then perhaps we should ban the use of another product that kills and injures more people than tobacco; a product that puts more of a burden on our vanishing tax dollar. To point out only that the automobile has killed as many people as the cigarette is a horrible injustice to all who have been crushed, punctured and mutilated by this number one killer of people under 21 in North America. The automobile and the multi-billion dollar industry that surrounds it wreak more of havoc on the planet then the lowly cigarette could ever hope to dream of achieving.

Here is a small sampling. More people have been killed in the United States by the automobile than in all the wars the United States has ever been involved in. A quarter of a million people a year die from auto-related collisions the world over and more than a thousand of those are in Ontario. Over 20,000 auto-related injuries are reported in Metro Toronto alone. Multiply that figure by the number of large urban centres in Canada, in the US, in the world and you will get an idea of the carnage that can be placed squarely on the hood of the auto industry.

And let’s not forget emissions. Asthma and TB and simple difficulty in breathing are rising at an alarming rate in all urban areas, especially during the summer months, coinciding with increased concentrations of ground-level ozone and tailpipe pollutants. Maybe not all those cancer deaths should be placed on the front map of Philip Morris and Players.

If politicians are really so concerned with public safety and health, they should ban the automobile immediately. But this will never happen because our society is locked in a dance with apocalypse. We have been brainwashed by the automobile companies and their billions of advertising dollars that the carbon burner is an indispensable part of our world.

When I polled the members of Toronto City Council (at least those in favour of a bar and restaurant ban on the evil tobacco) on the question of an automobile ban, the response they gave came as no surprise. The majority replied with silence. They obviously considered the subject too ridiculous to contemplate. The three who did reply gave the responses you would expect from those who want to hang on to their jobs at the next election. They all came from the same skipping record: we care about the public’s health; we know that car exhaust is harmful, but there is no political will present to make those changes.

After looking at the true costs of the automobile, why aren’t the politicians, health experts and special interest groups who have chased the tobacco industry into the ground aiming their formidable lobbying powers toward the car-banning issue?

Could it be because all these people ride around in cars? Because they can’t smell the stench from inside their air-conditioned coffins; because every time they run someone down it’s just another inconvenience? Or just because they are in the wrong and no one likes to admit being wrong? Is it because General Motors is the biggest employer in the world, because the United Auto Workers is one of the most powerful unions in the world, because we have been brainwashed by the billions of dollars spent on TV, radio, magazine and billboard advertising into thinking the automobile is as essential to our lives as breathing?

Constrain the automakers with the same restrictions imposed on the tobacco industry and maybe we would see people thinking differently. No more car ads on television, no more cars glorified in movies and no more subsidies from the government. A couple of class action suits leveled at Toyota or BMW. Proper publicity about the destruction and chaos the car is responsible for. Maybe then perceptions would change and then the streets would be safe for cyclists and rollerbladers, pedestrians and kids who just want a game of road hockey.

And if you’re still not convinced that the automobile is worse than the cigarette, perform this simple test. Spend an hour in a garage with twelve chain smokers and have a friend spend an hour in a garage with an idling car, and see who comes out ahead – or just see who comes out.

Derek Chadbourne is a bike messenger and a tireless participant in Toronto’s direct action group Advocacy for Respect for Cyclists (ARC).

Condors and you
A university study was done in the 1990’s (can’t recall where) to determine what animal was the most efficient at transporting itself. The giant condor of South America was found to be the world’s most efficient animal at converting effort into movement. This creature can glide hundreds of miles surfing the thermals above deserts and exploiting up draughts around mountains, with just a few seemingly effortless slow movements of its wings. All factors considered, including energy used, mass, speed, renewability, range etc., the condor was far in the lead. A human, on the other hand, is not so efficient. In fact in the animal kingdom premiership table, humans are lucky to scrape in to the top third.

When man is put in an automobile he fares even worse.

However, when that human was put onto a bicycle he became three times more efficient than the condor!