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This is a great site about cycling in Copenhagen if anyone's interested: www.copenhagenize.com
I had to laugh at this post where he's talking about how people dress and the absurd "Rambo" outfit--that's what most people look like here cycling in the winter lol. I've even busted out the goggles just walking to work :haha: . http://www.copenhagenize.com/2008/10...nderstood.html |
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Lately, I have been taking Preston out of the neighbourhood. This route is a little bit longer for me as I have to go out of my way East, but Preston is pretty much only one lane so I can just stick close to the parked cars without feeling endangered. However, crossing the intersection of Preston and the freeway is ridiculous. Terrible planning with no regards for bicycling. Oh, how I miss College Park and taking 14th Street... |
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I think some posters on this board should walk through a suburb like Briarwood or Erindale on a sunny day. The parks and streets are full of kids, families, joggers, dog walkers and the like. In many ways the suburbs have a better community feel and dynamism l than many of the core neighbourhoods. It's true that a person living in that type of area has to drive to get to the Co-Op for groceries, but that doesn't negate the positive aspects of that living arrangment. |
Some of you may be surprised how often Saskatoon hits -40, with or without windchill. I suspect many of you dismissing winter cycling don't get out much during the winter months, or take off to some place warm :P I don't commute via bicycle in the winter, but I do load my bike onto a rack, and pedal up and down the river trails, bridges, downtown, and anywhere else where the snow has been cleared (that is the downside to living in the burbs, no one clears the sidewalks, or side streets...treacherous at best). I bike for recreation, but I am still biking during all seasons. It is not as bad as some of you believe it to be.
I don't have the time right now, but when I get back from tonight's talk I'll search Environment Canada's archives and post the Saskatoon temperature data for all to see. Beyond a certain distance (2,3,4,7 km?), the willingness to bike or walk to a destination will drop off sharply for most people. This is especially true during our winter months. However, for those who are able, and within a certain distance (there is data to support this...I will try and find something) of a particular destination, the willingness to travel via bicycle increases at a measurable rate. No one expects suburbanites to navigate arterial roads to hit up downtown. But, if public transit had enough coverage and frequency (only possible with the right mix of land uses and densities), the people could bike for part of the trip, and hop onto a bus (future LRT). A multimodal transportation system is what Saskatoon should strive for. It is not a choice between walking and cycling, transit or automobile, it is more about the interaction of these different modes to achieve a desired level of efficiency. Anyways... |
utilitarianism is also an ideology and one often used to justify free for all capitalism, whose advocates can also be very "religious". Our perceptions of what will make us happy are notoriously easy to manipulate and let's not kid ourselves, the current development models are designed to convince us that a lifestyle which suits corporations and developers (I don't hate either by the way, but I don't want them guiding social decisions) will make us happy. While it might be argued that the original impetus for suburban neighborhoods was our lust for our own little piece of eden, it was equally driven by developers who find it easier and much more profitable to dig up virgin land and build 500 of the same house on it. It is also an imense benefit for corporations like Walmart who get land cheap and can build their stores around their marketing plan rather than the needs of their customers. I would agree that it is not a planners job to ram an ideology down our throats, but it is their job to make it more possible for us to make informed decisions by suggesting and trying things that might be a little outside of tradition. Steps such as those advocated by Geil do not need to be ridiculously expensive and I would venture to guess that even his most extreme recomendations could be fulfilled for less than the cost of a south bridge. Cars cost society a lot.
for anyone who is interested. Check out this link for an example of how corporate interests can drive public planning: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_A...eetcar_scandal Although I know it doesn't happen at this level now, there is every reason to believe it still happens at more subtle levels. |
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This data gives one a much better understanding of our winter temperatures. If anyone is curious about the hourly changes throughout a particular day, click the link below and choose hourly from the pull down menu, rather than daily.
http://img4.imageshack.us/img4/2987/all9052360.jpg Source After seeing the data myself, I remain convinced that Saskatoon should put greater emphasis on winter cycling. For those that couldn't attend the talk, there was a strong focus on bike lane design. If the chosen design fails to address cyclist safety and comfort (e.g. Saskatoon style bike lanes), the increase in the share of commuter cyclists will be limited. As an alternative to the Saskatoon style lanes, Copenhagen style bike lanes provide greater safety and comfort for those who choose to cycle. Hmmm, Third Avenue should become more like this... http://www.streetsblog.org/wp-conten...ike-lane_1.jpg Source Instead of this... http://noimpactman.typepad.com/photo...ike_lane_3.jpg Source Separation of moving traffic and cyclists via parking lane. http://bikeportland.org/wp-content/u...8/11/cully.jpg Source |
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I agree about the current bike lanes that have been "added". I walk beside them everyday and while they're a start, they're definetely not the safest thing in the world since cars pretty much treat them like another lane, especially when turning right. Although, if there were cyclists in them people might become more aware.
Any ideas on how our bridges could be adapted to accomodate dedicated, safe bike lanes? Ruckus, did you look at this past winter's numbers? Yikes! :haha: |
Dedicated bike lanes would be the ideal setup. The problem is that there's only a finite amount of street width to work with. Inevitably that means a reduction in the number of lanes for vehicle movement, or parking. Would Saskatoon residents accept sacrificing a lane on narrower streets for cyclists? Hard to say.
3rd Avenue's parking lanes are pretty wide, as are 1st Avenue's, so conceivably they could be narrowed and the extra room used for bikes only. However I don't think enough city streets are like that for it to be a widely deployed solution. |
I confess that I am a recreational biker at best (although, I have recently invested in a 'commuter' bike, that I find much more comfortable and therefore more likely to use more often). My wife is a regular commuter via walking or biking to her place of employment downtown (about 50 min. walk and 20 min. ride). She chooses active transportation from May-October.
She chooses to make her way downtown via residential side streets because of the 'safety' issue on more major thorough fares. I think there is an opportunity for some major access roads into the downtown core to be more bike friendly (i.e. Victoria Ave - speaking of which, I have always thought this should be converted to a ped/walking bridge -; Broadway Ave; and perhaps Clarence Ave.) I REALLY like the concept, once downtown, of having a bike lane between sidewalk and parked cars as demonstrated in the Copenhagen photo. This just makes so much sense, it seems to be a no-brainer! 4th and 3rd Ave are definitely wide enough to accommodate this, and since we are in the process of some street work here, let's take the opportunity to do something that has been proven to work!!! And finally, although the 'bike season' for most may realistically only be 5 months of the year, that can still make a huge impact on carbon emissions and congestion due to traffic. Perhaps a more practical goal for our City (which already has the 2nd most bike commuters per capita in Canada!), is to be the most bike friendly city in spring/summer/fall :) |
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Second point: I seem to recall this being brought up before, but I can't remember if there was a link to the source of this info? That's a pretty cool stat, but also kinda sad for Canada at the same time lol. |
re: that jan gehl lecture:
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I know that this has already gone way off topic, but I just wanted to respond briefly (as breifly as I am capable ;) ) to you lbird. Clearly we are way too far apart philosophically to arive at any sort of agreement, but I do see threads of agreement.
To start with, my user name is chosen partly in irony, so don't let that make you think I am a socialist and most definately, I am not a Marxist. In fact I, like you would consider myself a pragmatist, and like you I don't buy into fads. However, dismissing my argument that opinions are shaped by the existing power structure as "Marxist", does not challenge its validity. The idea that people like what is familiar (i.e. what they have grown up with and see regularly) is well demonstrated by research in the social sciences, and I beleive accepted as "common sense" by most people. Therefore, our "desires" are to some degree "shaped" by the environment. Those in power (would you deny that money brings power, even in a democracy?) have the ability to shape that environment more than those who have less power (e.g. bicycyle companies have less ability to shape public opinion than do car companies). Therefore, I believe that while we should not blindly trust the advice provided by bicycle advocates, we should consider that the balance is weighted in favour of oposing arguments (i.e. those of car advocates) and that we should at least give the cycling option a chance and see if public "desires" change accordingly. It doesn't need to be expensive or cause social upheaval. Just design one new neighborhood in a different way, slow down the building of box stores, provide some small incentives for local bussiness and put in a few cycle paths. If it doesn't prove successful, the civic economy will not colapse. If it does prove successful proceed. Sorry to others for dragging this out. Maybe it would be better done in PM, lbird, if you so desire. |
Both of you have valid concerns, and I feel the exchange between the two of you is an invaluable contribution to the discussion.
I would like everyone to know that I will eventually move most, if not all posts related or spurred by Gehl's visit to the thread "Saskatoon: Where do we grow from here?". The construction thread is too vast to search, better to have dedicated threads for the important issues of the day. As you were... |
Socialisthorde has addressed this (and quite adequately, yet I feel compelled) but, entering into the debate and framing your argument in terms of a philosophical or ideological position only serve to obfuscate the heart of the matter.
Our living arrangment has a net negative effect on the environment. I mean environment in the holistic sense: the physical, the ecological, the social, etc. Arguing in favour of the suburbs by saying they are populated with families and children at play is like claiming water is wet. The streets of our core neighbourhoods are equally filled with children; this doesn't reduce the problems associated with drugs, gangs, violence, poverty, etc. The current typical living arrangment in N. American cities is a result of a number of things, including "ideology" in the form of public policy decisions. That these decisions were a result of governments responding to the desires of the populace is a debatable point, but I think it is agreeable to say that it was not the public's desire to have to drive to obtain any good or service that spurred our shift from human scale communities to motordom. Motoring is a hobby. Restoring/building cars is a hobby. Commuting and driving to pick up a carton of milk are not part of this fun hobby. They are the byproducts of a living arrangment that proposed a solution to one problem and created an entire world of new ones. The "problem" with early 20th century N. American cities was not that streets were pedestrian friendly and services were convenient to people's homes on foot, it was that without today's building codes and zoning bylaws traditional neighbourhoods were often dirty, dangerous, and unpleasant. No one wished for expressways, wider streets with faster traffic, or acres of parking lots rather than parks/quality buildings. People simply wanted a safe, comfortable place to raise their children. The desire of the public was not for "motordom" as we know it today. However, to achieve the above stated goals (large houses, large lots, pseudo-private, exclusively residential communities), constant motoring was the result. Any proposed attempt to maintain the existing suburban living arrangment is a commitment to also mainting motordom. It is akin to attemtping to 'clean up' the inner city but insisting that the gangs must remain. |
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We should focus on the good days, not the 10-20 days of bitter cold temperatures. As a closing thought, if the city refused to construct sidewalks for people, given the cost, and loss of driving lanes for cars, should we expect pedestrians to navigate between moving traffic on one side, and parked cars on the other? Under all weather conditions? No, of course not. Then why do we expect cyclists to endure such conditions? (no need to answer). |
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"What I took away was the importance of making cities back into what they used to be, which is people places," Lorje said. So now cities are being built for martians? Last I checked cities are still places where people live (and some rats if you're in Swift Current)... Did our former NDP MLA mean that we need more needle clinics at riverlanding? I suppose every society has kooky people. But the great thing about the West is that our kooky people are funny, not scary. In other parts of the world kooky people blow themselves up or keep women in bee keeper suits. And our kooky people just say things like the quote above or they go on TV and acuse puppets on kids television shows of being gay because they are colored purple.. and everyone laughs! |
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Are you against building our city for people, or are you more inclined to support further entrenchment of the automobile? Is that the difference between yourself and Lorje?
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