Night rider

 

I'm borrowing half of this lyric from a conversation with the Bluesky account Occasional Transpo (and the other half from Dean Martin), but:

When you bike in the night and your eye hits the light, that's a sore ray

(but) when the moon hits your eye like a big pizza pie, that's amore!

Daylight Saving Time ended last weekend. That means all of a sudden the sun was going down at 5:45 or so, but now it goes down at 4:45. So when I leave the office at about 5pm, it's twilight, and it's full dark by halfway home. 

This isn't a thing I look forward to each fall. That first night when I watch the sun going down from the office windows can be a bit rough. It's not like I don't ride at night all the year round, but this time of year is when I start riding in the dark at rush hour. 

Nights are weirdly dark on the roads in Ottawa. It's hard to make out curbs and corners and edges. On some of the pathways, the headlights of oncoming cars can wash everything else out: it's hard even to see other pathway users through the glare, especially walkers in dark clothes or people without lights. And some of the people on the paths are running powerful headlights that also blind you. And coming towards an intersection, even with lights on my bike, it's hard to be confident that the drivers see me. So there's a little extra tension. Rush hour feels different from late night, when there are fewer cars and things are quieter and it's easier to see by the light of my headlamp.

However, I at least got to start out this dark season at the peak of the Beaver Moon. So the last few trips home have been pretty. The first night I left the office after sundown, the moon was hanging up in the sky above the parking lot, wreathed in clouds, and I thought, "okay, this won't be so bad."

Last night, on the way home, I crossed the Hartwell Locks bridge, and came across the Bike Ottawa Lights On Bikes giveaway: a portable tent and a bunch of cheerful volunteers bedecked with red and white lights giving away little turtle lights to anyone who wanted one. I stopped to chat with a couple of people, got a free light, sang the praises of both studded tires and battery-powered twinkly lights wrapped around the bike frame, and then went on my way. 

Across Carleton Campus, I hit the Rideau River pathway, and then was suddenly struck by the sight of a gigantic rising full moon over the river. I stopped to get the shot at the top of this post a little further on. Standing there in the dark pulling my phone out to get a picture, I thought, yeah, this is okay: I might even take the long, less-steep, fewer-cars route home through the hospital grounds, even if it's dark, even if it feels like I'm darting from the office to my apartment through the long dark of winter. 

A hundred words for snow

You know the story that the Inuit have 100 words for snow? It's kind of a cliche and not exactly true, but you know who needs 100 words for snow? Cyclists. 

I thought about that today as I made my way over and through a vast variety of kinds of snow today on my way back from the office in a storm bad enough that I left at noon hoping to avoid worse. I've said before that whatever it's doing outside, I've ridden in worse but today. . . today came close. There was a couple of centimetres down on top of poorly cleared streets from the last snowfall, fine icy flakes falling and being blown into my face by the wind, and it started snowing around 10 am and it was now 12:30 or 1:00. Not enough time for the plows to really get going or keep up. 

We have one word other than "snow, with description of the situation" for winter cycling: snirt. Snirt is a portmanteau of "snow" and "dirt" and that's what it is: snow with dirt on it or in it. Mostly, in the city, it's that filthy stuff that piles up at the edge of the road, full of grit and salt and grime. It can alse be what you get on a moutain bike track where snow and dirt get churned up. 

Mountaineers get a few more words for snow and ice (cornice, spindrift, verglas, bergschrund). Maybe skiers do too. But bikers need to step it up.

Stuff we need a word for: 

Snow that has been compacted by car tires on an unplowed street, so that where the tire has passed it's got this weird, variable consistency that causes it to sometimes suddenly yank your front tire out of line. You can usually ride just to one side or the other of where the tire has passed with no trouble: but as soon as you hit snow that's been driven over like this, you're swearing and wrestling your handlebars. You have to watch for this snow: it looks a lot like the other kind of tire-tread snow, which is fine to ride in, and it's often found in streaks and patches alongside it. 

The other kind of tire-tread snow: where the car tire has gone over and left the snow chopped up so that it's less dense than the snow beside it. This makes the tire tread a little easier to ride in than the surrounding texture. 

The 1-cm pared-down snow left behind by a higher plow blade (usually found on smaller side streets with a "standard of maintenance" that involves not clearing to bare pavement). Dubious. Less easy to read than the car-tread types, mostly straightforward but also not completely trustworthy.

The stuff left behind that falls back into the road or is not quite picked up by the plow: this lies in patches in the bike travel area and can be either "slush, ride through it" or "Contains Chunks." Generally temperature and the weather of the last few days will help you figure that out. It is a problem deciding which of the two it is as you're riding toward a chunk of it and a driver is passing you with no room to swing out around it though. 

Drifted snow. For some reason unknown to me, drifted snow is more touchy to ride in than fallen snow. It will yank your tires.  

The snow that has been dragged out at an intersection by a plow and left across the bike lane/edge of the road. Either in an arc across the bike space as the plow turned onto the main street, or across the whole intersection.

The oblong ridges of snow left by parked cars that didn't move for the plow so that now the whole lane has a phantom parked car in it. 

Swooshy snow and sludgy snow: these are both newly fallen, unplowed snow, but one of them is quiet and fluffy and muffles everything and is easy to get through: the other is the same depth but drags at your tires. I think the difference is temperature and maybe crystal structure. 

Very cold snow that has been leveled by a plow or warmed and then frozen to a harder consistency: this stuff is often hard enough to ride on with no trouble. A delight. 

Eyes see bike: brain says nah

It's cold and crisp out there this week and the wind chill is intense: today when I went to work the wind chill was at -25C. It had warmed up to like -15C by the time I headed home, and I'd gotten out of the office before sunset so it was a very pretty evening when I got on the bike. And I was feeling pretty good about being outside in the clean cold for my ride home. Blowing some stink off.

Too bad about the drivers. 

Within the first ten or fifteen minutes I'd had four bad interactions with careless or inattentive drivers: people passing too close rather than waiting till it was clear, people turning through my path as though they hadn't seen me or didn't care how close they got. And then I got this, and it's been a few hours by this point but I'm still pretty rattled. 

It feels like I saw the car a lot earlier than it appears on the video, which is proably true: I pulled up to the intersection, planning to turn left. I think the car had a turning signal on, so I was watching it. And then I realized he was cutting the corner. A lot. A whole lot. Way too much. He was heading straight for where I was standing. 

I yelled "Jesus!" and then yanked the bike out of the way to one side as the car breezed right past me. "Holy shit!!" I was yelling at them. The driver - a man who was probably in his 70s - wasn't looking at me even as he passed within a foot or two of me, and I'm fairly sure he still hadn't actually seen me, standing right there, with a headlight and a bike and a purple jacket. There were three people in the car: as they passed an older woman in the back seat stared out at me in shock.

My rear camera's not recording, so I don't have any video of the car slowing up after it passed me and then stopping in the middle of the street. I imagine the passengers in the car had alerted the driver to the fact he had just nearly hit someone. Or he'd replayed the whole thing in his head and realized there had been someone standing there. 

I'm not going to assume that age had something to do with it, though it might have: he did look to be an old man. But inattention did. Force of habit did. The fact that people turn their brains off and fall into habit and subconscious processing did. And the fact that for whatever reason, people on bikes don't have the salience that people in cars do. Guaranteed he wouldn't have cut that corner that hard if I'd been in a car. And I am pretty convinced that he just. . . . didn't see me. 

And this is why I act at all times as though the people in cars are oblivious to me. When they get mad at me for being alarmed because they're rolling through a left turn at me, and yell "what's your problem you dumb bitch? I saw you!" they don't understand that I have to assume they didn't. I have to assume they looked at the road ahead of them, their eyes saw a person on a bike, and their brains just said, ". . . . nah."

The good stuff

I've been grumpy on here lately so allow me to sing the praises of the first snow. 

This past week, the snow came down to (more or less) stay. My studded tires went on Wednesday night, on an evening I suddenly had free from judo class because the storm was too bad. Thursday, I went out for groceries in steadily falling small icy snow. Studded tires are the absolute greatest. My car's winter tires weren't on yet (because I keep forgetting about my car) so there was something very freeing about riding along unconcerned, sure of the footing of my bike. 

Saturday night I was at a friend's until really late. It was snowing when I set out for his place at something like 6:30 pm, and already dark, of course. But the fresh snow was very sharp, icy, and sparkly in the light from my headlamp. It was a very pretty ride. And I knew several more centimetres were due down that night. 

Somewhere between 1:30 and 2:00 am, I left. The driveway was 10 centimeters deep or so. My friend said if the roads were really bad I could always crash in his spare room, but I figured it was only a matter of about seven kilometres home and I'd be fine. 

I was only really bothered by the suburban street immediately outside his place, as it turned out. When cars have been through even a few centimetres of snow, it compacts it in weird, unpredictable ways that twist your front tire and mess up your steering. I was getting a little annoyed with it after a block, but then I turned off the street to join the network of asphalt pedestrian paths that run through his neighbourhood. And for a bit at least, they'd even been plowed within the last couple of hours. I left happy, zoomy tire tracks in a thin layer of fluffy snow while more flakes fell around me. 

Stepping out of my friend's place, the whole neighbourhood had seemed lit up. Almost twilight. I guess the falling snow, and the snow on the ground, were just bouncing the available light around. It was nearly two in the morning and felt like day. 

A little further on, the path looked like it hadn't been plowed in a while, and it was a good thing I'm very familiar with it and knew where all the turns were. The snow was several centimetres deep, but fluffy, so although it was a little harder to pedal than usual, it didn't cause any steering problems. I just left deeper tracks behind me in the snow. 

Turning onto the cycletrack along Conroy Road, the plow had returned within the last couple of hours, and here I really zoomed. Everything was quiet. There were only a few cars on Conroy, which is a four-lane arterial, and the ones there were had been muted by the snow. I could see really well in the bright, weirdly lit up night, I felt visible with my lights and my dark jacket against the white snow, and my tires were muffled by the thin layer of snow on the path. 

This is what I love about that first snowfall. Especially at night. In November it's cold and very dark and often rainy, and the cars have winter tires on so they make more noise, and it's honestly not that much fun. But then that first snow happens, and you're bombing along through the snowflakes on quiet paths, and the cars are silenced, and the nights are bright, and the chill in the air wakes your cheeks up.

People will say you're "brave" for riding in the winter. I suppose I should tell them how nice it can be. 

The Door Into Summer

 

This dumb, dumb city. 

Designing and planning absolutely everything as though it is always a 23-degree day in June around here. 

Source: Crafting Ottawa's new O-Train Stations: Building Tomorrow

Building intersections that are a pain in the ass to maintain in winter: I highlighted here all the curbs waiting to be smashed into by a plow blade and piled over with snow, including two pointless little concrete pads that are, I guess, supposed to act as "separation" for the cycle track? 

Bronson and Sunnyside at Carleton U

And last week, the William Commanda Bridge over the Ottawa River was barricaded for the winter. This week, they blocked off the Rideau River pedestrian bridge at Carleton U. I am not surprised, by this, mind you, nor am I disappointed: I expected it. I'm just kind of dully angry about it. 

In Ottawa, the snow usually falls to stay around the beginning of December. It melts, generally, toward the end of March. A third of the year, it's snowy here. 

We do not adequately fund snow clearing for the streets. We blow through the budget constantly. 

We do not maintain pedestrian paths, bridges, stairs, or bike lanes. (Oh, sorry: there are 980+ kilometres of bike infrastructure; 60 of them are cleared of snow.)

We have a train system that breaks down when it's cold, icy, or snowy. Sensor switches on the tracks shut the system down because they mistook snow on the tracks for a person in the first winter. 

Streets get cleared well before sidewalks, prioritizing cars and forcing people to walk or roll in the road.

The bus stations have heaters - nominally. When pushing the button does anything, it turns on a glowing electric coil that is mounted up on the glass ceiling, for 15 minutes. 

The LRT stations, famously, caused slips and falls in their first year because they were open to the weather, and the tiles used on the floors were slippery when wet. 

The water fountains in the LRT stations froze and overflowed. 

We close the pathways and stairs around Parliament Hill, probably the most iconic location in the city, for "health and safety reasons." 

Time and time again I look at the design drawings when the City proposes some new feature, and it's a drawing of green grass and blue skies and people sitting on big concrete blocks and steps, sipping their ice coffee, and strolling along the wide pavement. Ottawa, it seems, is constantly looking for the door into summer. And at the same time we get all the people who comment on every design yelling "it's winter eight months out of the year here! Why are we building this bike lane?" 

It's winter for about four months of the year, to be honest, but still, that's four months of the year that are left out of our plans, left out of our budget, and left out of our networks. Come that first snowfall, it's like the City of Ottawa says, "Well, that's it, wasn't that a nice run, everyone inside now. Get inside. Get in your cars. Public spaces are closed now; we will reopen in April."

I mean, come on. Ottawa is a winter city. It's the seventh coldest national capital in the world, behind places like Talinn and Helsinki and Ulaanbataar. It's a place where, theoretically, we celebrate winter. We have Winterlude! We have the Skateway! We have the Rink of Dreams outside City Hall! There are pop-up skating ovals in all the city parks! We are Canadians and we love the winter! Right? 

Apparently not. We close major, beloved pedestrian bridges because of concerns about salt and safety. The Commanda Bridge was "not designed for winter use." Well, why the fuck not? This is a winter city, after all. So, can we groom it for skiing? It connects right up with the Kichi Sibi Winter Trail (a really great amenity that only exists because of grassroots volunteers). . . but nah, the City's not going to do that either.

An actual winter city would recognize that, for one thing, people might visit in the winter for the experience - maybe even for Winterlude? - and, for another, the people that live here need to continue to live our lives, even if it snows. That people need sidewalks and bike paths and cool places to congregate and enjoy the winter. Imagine strolling across the river on the Commanda Bridge with a hot chocolate, enjoying the views of the islands and Parliament Hill up on its escarpment. Imagine a student spending their first winter at Carleton walking across the bridge to go sledding in Vincent Massey Park. Imagine people walking along the canal pathways to the Beaver Tail stand at Dows Lake and then going skating. Imagine people being able to bike to work or school all year - because I can tell you, riding a bike in the snow can be really fun and connect you to your neighbourhood and environment. Imagine an urban ski and snowshoe network that really celebrates that snowy Canadian self-image.

But what we get is this. 

Hummus is lefty nonsense: or, Everything is partisan now

 

Last Sunday was the World Day of Remembrance for Road Traffic Victims. There was a big gathering at Queen's Park in Toronto (obviously: Doug Ford is actively in the process of making roads more dangerous) and someone I follow online posted a video of the crowd. 

Someone else replied with a gif of Donald Trump dancing with the text "TRUMP WON 2024."

The original poster replied with "I don't get it." As far as I know the Trumper didn't answer.

I mean, we do get it, nonsensical though it is. The guy I follow was just trying to get the Trumper to make it explicit. On the face of it all he can say is, "I posted a gloating gif celebrating the victory, in an election held in another country from yours, of someone who I believe will make progressives suffer, and I did that because you want people not to die in traffic crashes." 

In what (alternate from ours) universe does that string of logic make any sense? Taken at face value, he seems to be saying that a Trump administration will result in more people getting killed on the road. Ha ha, suck it, libs! Our loved ones will be mangled by cars! MAGA!

But in fact the guy probably didn't answer because he just wanted to hurt someone. He saw someone who he assumes rides a bicycle because they were at an event against traffic violence. He decided that that person must be a woke snowflake, who must be crying into their spirulina shots over the American election, so har har, Trump won, cry harder about. . . . road deaths. 

It is so exhausting. Why does a mode of transportation, or a tasty chickpea and tahini spread. . . mm, hummus. . . I should make some hummus. . . 

Why does that stuff have to have anything to do with this bullshit MAGA cult? At least on this one front - transportation - just leave us out of it. Deciding that riding a bike is "left wing" is just chowderheaded at best, and downright dangerous at worst. How many MAGA-heads in trucks have deliberately threatened bikers with their vehicles because of their weird political rhetoric?

Rob Ford called us "bike riding pinkos." Doug Ford definitely thinks there's "Ford Nation" and then there's "those cyclists making the roads worse for everyday Ontarians." Meanwhile people on bicycles are just trying to get around. They're going to school or work or heading out to pick up milk or drop the kids off at daycare or whatever. You don't have to sign up for the Communist Party's newsletters to do that shit. 

I know I'm preaching to the choir, but also I am very, very, very tired of it. Hey, here's a meme. 

Anecdata, vibes, and envy

So, the stupid gridlock law is in the legislature now, and the one thing that gives me a flicker of hope is that there are a lot of people out there pointing out all the reasons it is a dumb law that won't fix gridlock. The CBC posted an article summarizing studies from around the world that show safe biking infrastructure does not impact traffic negatively, improves business on main streets, and improves emissions levels. Toronto Today just posted an article quoting the Bloor Street BIA (Bloor being one of the places Doug Ford definitely wants to rip bike lanes out of) as saying that removing the lanes would be "disastrous" for business.

There have been rallies in Toronto and Ottawa so far, the latter organized by my favorite Ottawa councillor Jeff Leiper. Here's CTV News Ottawa on that:

But that's not what I came to talk to you about. 

Came to talk to you about the anecdata.

I am glad, I guess, though it makes my blood boil, that they included streeters in that video with people who are against bike lanes, just because, just vibes, just - agin' em. They give Dave Roberton (vice president of Bike Ottawa) and Jeff a lot more time to talk, and they show the two anti-bike people saying, eloquently: "I think it's great, rip them all out so there's more room for us," and "I just hate bike lanes and they shouldn't be in the downtown, which is where they are." 

Razor sharp reasoning and logic there, kids. 

So in the interest of catharsis, here's some stupid shit I've heard anti-bike-lane people say in the last week or so and my simplest answers. 

"I am a tradesperson and I need my car to get around town." 

Okay. No one is stopping you. 

"What about diabled people and the elderly?"

Leaving aside the fact that plenty of disabled and elderly people can and do ride bikes or otherwise use bike lanes (like, with wheelchairs and scooters and trikes and whatever), no one said everyone has to ride a bike just because there is a bike lane. We're not going to build a bike lane and then outlaw driving. And not for nothing, but just about everyone I hear make that argument is able-bodied.

"We want drivers to be able to get around our cities."

Okay - do you also want me to be able to get around my city? And if not, why not? I work. I shop. I go out. I participate in our economy. So, shouldn't I also be able to get around? 

"What if the bike lane runs in front of a church, and there is a funeral, and they need to bring the coffin out of the church and into the hearse, which is parked in the bike lane?" (I am not kidding, I heard this one.) 

Look, if I'm riding along in a bike lane and there is a funeral cortege lined up along the curb, I will stop. send up a thought for the departed and their family and friends, and if they are actively loading the coffin I'll probably wait till they're done? Maybe walk on the sidewalk? Weird fringe reason to object to the lane just generally being there though. 

"But that bike lane is taking up a lane that could be used for us!"

That bike lane has a whole bunch of people on bikes in it who would be in the traffic lane with you if it wasn't there, and I know you wouldn't be sanguine about that. Also, this isn't "my simplest answer" but if you would like, read up on induced demand. 

"We just have too many people moving into the city and we need to build more roads."

Maybe you're trying to pretend your problem isn't with immigration. But okay, fair. If we've got a booming population we don't need to build more roads, we need to build denser housing that people can afford closer to the middle of the city. Kills two expensive birds with one stone: we already need the housing, why also build the roads? Also, see above about induced demand.

"Bike lanes cause pollution because cars are backed up!" 

No, cars cause pollution because they burn fossil fuels. And a whole lot of people IN those cars chose to be there. Sure, some people actually can't walk or bike or take transit. But the vast majority of people stuck in that traffic jam had the choice to be there. I have watched friends choose not to. A good friend just got an e-conversion for his bike because his mental health demanded he not sit in that traffic jam or wait for that delayed or cancelled O-Train. 

"Bike lanes shouldn't be downtown."

Why not? That's where the people and the shops and the jobs are. 

"I just hate bike lanes." 

. . . Um, okay I guess? Can you explain why? Because that's a really weird attitude when you think about it. And you might find yourself coming down to something kind of embarassing if you really sat with why you feel that way. Something like "I think people on bikes are a threat to my manhood" or "I don't want anyone else to have something that I don't use" or "People who aren't stuck in traffic like me make me jealous." And all of those kind of sound like a you problem, something you should maybe work on within yourself. 

Anyway, all that said, I'm off to write to my MP and try to say all this a bit less snarkily. And leave some pointed comments on the Environmental Registry of Ontario's website. 

Reducing Gridlock and Saving . . . WHO. . . Time?

Doug Ford hates bikes. Same as his brother did. It's apparently just an unreasoning, gut-based loathing. It's got the same vibes-based feel as the comment section of the Post whenever there's a story that involves cycling. Problem is, the people in the comment section aren't the premier of the country's most populous and urbanized province. 

Next week, the Ontario government is tabling the childishly named Reducing Gridlock and Saving You Time Act in the legislature. (Seriously, these people can't even name their laws as if they were grownups.) This staggeringly dumb law will require municipalities to seek the provincial government's approval to build new bike facilities if they might have "a negative impact on vehicle traffic." 

(don't mind me, just adding a screenshot from the ontario.ca website)

Based on gut feeling, they have decided (according to Minister of Transportation Prabmeet Sarkaria), that bike lanes installed during the pandemic, when "fewer vehicles were on the road and their impacts on traffic were unclear," are causing gridlock. Because of course they must be. Do they have data? Of course not. Would they listen to data? Continue dreaming. Sakaria's making this announcement in fucking Etobicoke. People in the godforsaken suburbs of Toronto will clap like seals for this. 

I keep having to stop while writing this to take a breath and calm down. It's not particularly helpful just to rage at stupidity. 

But the whole pausing-for-a-breath thing doesn't really work, if I'm being honest. Not when the next thing Sarkaria said was "This is why our government is bringing informed decision-making and oversight to bike lanes as well as taking steps to increase speed limits safely [you bet those italics are mine]."

Oh, and they're also requesting a review of every bike lane built in the last five years, to see if they can maybe strip those out as well. The "built during the pandemic when there were fewer cars" thing is window dressing. You know what dropped during the pandemic and never recovered? Public transit ridership. You know what had bounced back to 2016 levels by May of 2022? Car commuting. So unless we bolted off to design, approve, implement and construct thousands of kilometres of bike infrastructure between March of 2020 and about a year to a year and a half later, your argument is invalid. Your gridlock - inasmuch as it has increased since 2020 - is being caused by people not taking transit.

Source - Statistics Canada

Yet we're going to ban most new bike lanes, rip out some existing ones maybe, maintain road widths, and increase speed limits, all to save drivers time. And people are going to die. And no driver's time will actually be saved.

If you're reading this you probably don't need me re-litigating the data on induced demand, actual causes of gridlock, correlation of increased speed limits and pedestrian deaths, actual impact of bike lanes on traffic speeds, etc., etc. I just want us to sit for a moment with the sheer carbrained, knee-jerk hatefulness of this. 

You can't fix gridlock by making it easier to drive. The data are in on that. Every time you disincentivise transit and cycling (and scooters, and walking) you push another person into a single-occupancy car choking out fumes on a bumper-to-bumper commute to Barrie or Scarborough. All you can do with this bullshit law - and all they want to do, really - is get more votes from their SUV-driving suburban base, which is ironic, given the Conservatives are supposed to be all about small government and now every municipality in Ontario is going to have to come to Queen's Park with their proposals for bike lanes for approval. The paperwork will pile up. The bureaucracy will pile up. Projects will stall out. Car traffic will continue to clog the roads. And - again - people on bikes and on foot will die. 

But they said this law would Save You Time (where "You" is understood to mean "drivers/Conservative voters/suburban Torontonians," not, you know, all the rest of us). And to a whole lot of people that'll sound real truthy. And the facts do not matter as long as they're sticking it to those bike riding pinkos.

Do you know the rules at a four way stop?

 I thought I did. 

Every so often it comes up in bike conversations online: people share their exasperation with how drivers behave when there's a bike in the mix at an all-way stop. They'll tell stories about drivers who try to wave them through when the driver has the right of way, or drivers who assume the cyclist is required to yield so they roll right through, or drivers who slow down to let you go ahead when they have the right of way, messing up the timing of the whole interaction and confusing other drivers: in general, drivers being unpredictable.

When people say, "what's wrong with drivers waving you through, they're being polite," I tend to reply that I would much rather people be consistent than polite. I'd like to be able to predict what they'll do.

Generally, the assumption among Online Bike People seems to be that people don't know or remember what the rules are at an all-way stop. We learned it for the written test whenever we took it, then forgot, and our behaviour at stops became more or less vibes-based. In the most recent discussion about this, I suggested that cyclists (particularly cycling advocates) probably know the rules more often than people who only drive, because we are invested in this shit.

And I went off to look at the Highway Traffic Act for Ontario to confirm the rules. And I found out I was wrong. We all were. 

At a stop, most bikers I know (that is, the ones who talk to each other about it online and attend city consultations) apply the rules for drivers. It's, like, the only time most of them become sticklers for vehicular cycling principles.

1. If the intersection is empty, stop, look, and proceed (yeah yeah yeah I know, Idaho stops, I do them.) 
2. If two or more vehicles arrive at the stop at the same time, the one to the right goes first. 
3. If the vehicles are facing each other, the one going straight goes first. 

Turns out, according to the Act, cyclists and pedestrians have the right of way first, before all motor traffic. Cyclists, who are in the street with the motor traffic, and who are usually told they have to obey all the rules that drivers do, get ROW at a stop sign. Every time I've stopped because a driver got to the intersection at the same time as me, and I've shouted, "you've got the right of way!" at them while they waved for me to go, I was technically wrong. 

But I ask you. On a bike, am I going to think, "okay, I have the right of way so I'm just going to proceed through the intersection first"? HELL no, Again, I'd rather things be predictable. And I know that no one remembers - probably very few were taught - that bikes have the right of way first. Am I going to put my safety on the line because in this one case, the rules are different for me? Nope. 

Since we can't re-educate an entire population, I'd argue this rule should go. Don't make the calculations at all-way stops any more complicated than they need to be. Pedestrians should absolutely have the right of way first, yes. They're on sidewalks. They're not using the street. Cyclists should, in this case, just follow the same turn-taking as everyone else. That way there's just one set of rules to follow. There's one less opportunity for a misunderstanding that could result in someone getting hurt. Just this once - this once - I actually agree with John Forester. 

Ugh. But it's true.

Even more flex posts on Kilborn. Joy.

 As I was heading to the office yesterday, I spotted a bunch of new mounting points for flex posts on Kilborn west of Alta Vista. (There are already a bunch of these things east of Alta Vista, occasionally getting whacked by delivery vans and lying across the bike lane.)

Look, I get it. People speed and the cheapest thing the city can do about it (because they won't do the math on speed camera revenue) is put up hundreds and hundreds of these flexible wickets, so that the drivers will slow up a bit: not because they're afraid they'll hit a person, but because they're afraid something will hit their car. 

But as a bike rider I really dislike these things. This latest set, I discovered as I almost hit one of the mount points while going upwards of 40 km/h down the hill at the bottom of the road. Those bolts aren't really noticeable to a car tire: I definitely don't want to hit one at speed on a bike though.

And once the posts go up, they'll be one more thing I have to navigate and calculate for. Do I have room to pass that post on the right? Or do I have to take the lane for a second to pass it on the left, so that a driver doesn't try to go through the (usually about 3.5-m) space alongside me? Are there also parked cars to weave around and work into the equation? (There aren't any bike lanes on this part of Kilborn: the painted lines delineate a parking zone.) And in the winter, when they take them down, I'll need to watch for the little plates, which are permanent.

At least here, they don't appear to be putting in centre posts. The centre posts just create artificial pinch points where drivers unconsciously squeeze further over toward me because they don't want to hit the poles - all the while having their attention pulled to the pole they're passing, not the person on a bike. And on Pleasant Park, another street near me, there are centre posts flanked by side posts, where the side posts aren't far enough from the curb for a bike to get through. So about twice a block I have to shoulder check and move out to take the lane through the gap, or slam on the brakes to let cars past me because there's no room. 

Is speeding a problem? Sure. Are these things more hazardous than speeding? I don't know. Do these things slow people down? Sure - by, apparently, as much as 5 km/h! (Wow! Such much?) But it sure feels like trading one set of cycling hazards for another, without much of an upside for the cyclists.

Oh what a difference a little link makes

Last weekend they finally opened the new ped/bike bridge over the Rideau River at Carleton University, linking the campus to Vincent Massey Park. It's about time: this bridge has been in place for two freaking years. It opened for a single solitary day this spring, apparently by accident when the contractor took down a barricade, and was then thoroughly barricaded and bolted shut for months. Apparently some smoothbrain thought we should all wait to use the bridge until the LRT line next to it was complete, which is infuriatingly on brand for this city. 

Whatever: it's open now. Sound the trumpets! 

I'd been watching for it to open because, ever since last summer, I'd wanted to use it to get to Carleton on Saturdays for a martial arts class. It would allow me to skip having to cross Billings Bridge, ever the bane of my existence (see many, many posts on here for why) and ride through Old Ottawa South (another bane) to get to campus. Now, I can take my usual quiet neighbourhood streets to the Rideau River Path, ride along that to the park, cut across the bridge, and know that it's likely that the only violence I have to deal with that morning will be consensual.

But I hadn't realized, until yesterday, that it has also cut the amount of on-road riding I have to do to get to work down to practically nothing. I headed out of the office yesterday evening  and decided to see how little on-road riding I could manage. If I stay on the Rideau River path till I get to the connection to the Hospital ring road, which has a separated path, I can literally travel 13 km and spend only 1 km total on a shared road or street. (Assuming you don't consider the Experimental Farm roads "roads," which I don't: they have virtually no cars, are slowed to 30km, have no lane lines, and are pedestrian- and farm-equipment priority.) And even then, none of the "streets" I'm on are in any way busy. They're the sorts of streets people walk and play road hockey in.

Even if I get off the river path at Pleasant Park, which shortens my trip by 3 km, I only spend 2.25 km more on streets. And again, really quiet and pleasant streets. 

Contrast with how things were before this bridge existed. I had three main (non-winter) routes: the first two took either the Rideau River path through Vincent Massey Park or the Brookfield underpass, both of which link up to Hog's Back Falls, where I crossed the river and connected with Prince of Wales Drive. I would then have to merge onto this thing. 

I would also have to cut through the Worst Parking Lot In Nepean as the last step of my trip to work: a grim and lawless hellscape with a wide area where there are no lanes, no rules, and drivers crisscrossing from one side to the next to get to the right or left turn lanes. It sucks. 

I need to get from, more or less, lower right to upper left here.
It's . . . an adventure.

OR: I could cut onto Bank Street at Riverside, go over Billings Bridge and through Old Ottawa South to Cameron, then through Brewer Park and Carleton campus to the Experimental Farm roads, and through the farm to the office. This, however, involves the part of the city (the bridge and OOS) where I have probably had the greatest number of adverse interactions with drivers, from punishment passing to tailgating to bullying, shouting, honking, and, at least once, me crying on the sidewalk for a minute. 

Now, though, I don't have to decide of a morning whether I'd rather face Prince of Wales or Billings Bridge. They've both been cleared off my list of problems: at least until there's too much snow down to use the river path, which isn't winter maintained. 

This tiny little link - one 60m long bridge! - is an absolute game changer.

Greek streets: the kingdom of the motorcycle

This fall I went on a climbing trip to a village in Greece for a week and a half or so, and as usually happens when I travel, I found myself adapting to a new attitude around roads and streets. This time, I found myself thinking differently about motorcycles. 

The first thing I noticed after landing in Athens was that the highways were full of motorcycles going much faster than the car traffic and weaving through it at speeds that were kind of scary to us at first. There were bikes on the highway - dirtbike-looking things - that wouldn't be legal on that class of road in Canada, and as we drove three hours down to the Peloponnese and got further and further from the big cities, the motorcycles started to make more and more sense. The roads are narrow. They're steep. They wind and switch back and dive down precipitous cliffsides. 

And then you get into the towns, and you really understand why there are so many motorcycles. It's a bit of a shock at first as you wind your way up the hill through Leonidio (the small town we were staying in, with a population of about 6,000) and the streets just keep getting narrower. There's a slightly unnerving sense that you might encounter a narrowing spot that you just can't fit through, or you might wind up in a street you can't get back out of. 

This is a pinchpoint just 
down the hill from where 
we were staying.

There are cars in Leonidio. For one thing, it's an area that attracts climbers from all over Europe, who often bring cars, and it's an agricultural town (its main crop being eggplants) that has light trucks coming in and out of the flat farmland below the town, which lies tucked in between steep hills and ends at the Aegean Sea.

But in the village itself, drivers have to navigate very narrow streets with strange hairpin turns at times and steep grades - and people walking in them, and motorcycles and bicycles everywhere. You just navigate around them, and take intersections very carefully in case there might be another car (although there were very few cars moving around the town at any point).

So people generally get around on foot or (because the side streets are steep) dirtbikes, ebikes, scooters and light motorcycles. They zip up and down the streets, making me, as a pedestrian, jump - for the first day or so. Then I got used to it, because they all know what they're doing. 

Everyone rides these. Maybe (I don't know for sure) it's like snowmobiles in a far northern town. I watched moms and dads taking their kids to school on dirtbikes. We were passed one afternoon by a man steering with one hand and carrying a chainsaw in the other. Older ladies in black took scooters to church. There were some (generally teenaged) people who rode bicycles, but watching them pedal in the lowest gear possible past us up the steep hill I didn't think I'd want to deal with that every day, and definitely most of the older, working folks used bikes with motors, of whatever kind. Some of the side streets, especially on the steep side of the village, were at impressive grades that I couldn't imagine trying to pedal a bike up. 

Streets were asphalt or paved in flat limestone cobbles. They weren't a consistent width and there was no sidewalk. There were no lane markers on the road: no parking spaces, no zebra stripes. Almost no signage meant for cars, within the village itself. There simply weren't enough cars moving around inside the town to require street markings. If you were coming uphill and encountered another driver coming downhill, one of you found a way to skootch over so you could get by each other - or one of you threw it into reverse until you could. 

If you must block a door
because there's nowhere
else to put a car, at least
make it your OWN door

If you were going to park somewhere it was a matter of figuring out whether it was polite to park there - are you blocking anyone's door? Are you making the street too narrow? Does it seem like you should? Outside our AirBnB there was a slightly wider stretch of street, next to a restaurant patio, where we could usually park. When we were out climbing, sometimes the staff at the taberna on the ground floor would park three scooters in the spot where we usually kept the car at night. When we returned, they'd jump up and walk the scooters across the street to clear the spot for us. 

This is a two-way street used by cars, bikes, and pedestrians.

It wasn't that you couldn't get a big vehicle through this town. There were beat-up old Ford pickups and cargo vans and at least once a couple driving a camper van through Leonidio. But the streets were not made for them and definitely did not go out of their way to accommodate them. Once, I saw a sign that warned of a narrow passage ahead that a car might not fit through, but that was about it for indications to drivers as to what they should do: because cars were absolutely the minority transportation. This town was here long before them and, I felt, will still be here after them. 

And it all works. I stopped jumping at the sound of engines behind me after a day or so. I gained a whole new appreciation for the agility and versatility and surefootedness of motorcycles and scooters. And it was, as always, a bit of a culture shock returning home to the supremacy of the car. 

Bikes and scooters parked in a plaza off the main street.
Nary a car.

Unexpected recovery (and more questions than answers)

Status update: About a month after my Trek got stolen from the bike room in my building, I got an email and a voicemail from a sergeant with the Ottawa Police Services to let me know that it was now back in the room. I talked with him for a bit, and then went down to confirm that it was in fact there, and. . . there it was. 

The worse for wear: It had had every single accessory removed. Fenders gone. Trailer hitch gone. Camera mount gone (the cameras, thankfully, come off every time I leave the bike, so I still have them). The OneUp multitool I'd just gotten from a friend and installed - gone. Even the bell was gone. And the Project 529 shield on the seat tube was spraypainted over in white. The seat had been dropped several inches too. But - it's my bike. 

Aside from dealing with the sense of violation when I look at the smear of white spraypaint across the frame and the derailleur, and the hole where my cute OneUp tool was stashed, I'm also left with some patchy information and a lot of other questions.

The cop I spoke with told me that after the bikes were stolen, the property manager posted notices about the theft in the building and got some information from tenants. The security cameras in the elevator area also caught the kids taking the bikes out of the basement where the bike room is. The kids were apparently identified from the video, because the cop was able to tell me that they were eleven years old - a girl and two boys. The girl lives in the building and let her two friends in.

At eleven years old, I'd have assumed they were just messing around. But they - or someone - systematically removed anything that might identify the bike. Including the OneUp tool, which requires you to know what it is and how to take it out: it's a tool housed in a little cylinder that you drop into the steering tube and then bolt into place through the bottom of the cylinder. And they spraypainted over the Project 529 shield. 

These children can't be experienced bike thieves. For one thing, they didn't hock it or ditch it. One of them seems to have been riding it: the seat was lowered and there was an elastic LED light on the handlebars. But - that spraypaint says they know something.

When I emailed the cop back to let him know the condition of the bike, his answer was "oh, wow," and he said he'd go talk to the boy and his parents, so I guess he also thinks the fact all the identifying items were removed is sketchy. And I still don't know how the bike wound up back in the room - did the boy fess up? Was he caught? Did he just put the bike back and the property manager noticed it? I didn't think to ask, so I guess I probably won't ever know.

But at least, and very improbably, I got my bike back! 

Ride review (and introducing Idris)

It was probably an ideal day to take the new Priority Continuum (I have named it Idris) to the office. Drizzly, a little above freezing, with balls of slushy snow in the bike lanes. The sort of thing I imagine this bike was designed for. 

I ride about 20km round trip to the office building I work in. Plenty of time to get used to a new bike. So, first impressions.

First, that big internal gear hub does make the back end heavy. At some spots, like intersections, where I might have stopped, put feet down, and then just swung the bike under me to a new direction, I couldn't easily do that. The bike itself is not light; it's something like 40 pounds. I felt that a little bit on hills, but I don't mind the extra legwork. And the weight does make it feel sturdy. I'm interested in how that heavy back wheel performs in winter with studded tires (I'm getting a set this weekend). 

One odd thing about it is that it's so quiet. There's no chain; there's no derailleur; the gearshift is a barrel shifter with no separate gears to cycle through; there's no clicking.  I think even when you're coasting, there isn't that little tiktiktik noise from the freewheel. It's just silent.

I'm still getting used to the shifting, I think. Because there aren't discrete gears, you just sort of ease the resistance back and forth to where you're comfortable. Your indicator, instead of numbered gears, is a little dude on a bike on a hill. The hill gets gradually steeper as you shift into lower gears. I admit to being kind of charmed any time I had to climb a steepish hill and shifted the little bonhomme till he was practically aiming for the sky.

It seems counterintuitive to me that you twist the barrel forward to go into lower gears and backward to shift back up - but my last couple of bikes had paddle shifters, so I might just be out of practice with barrels. I kept accidentally shifting the wrong direction. But again, because you just flow between "gears" it didn't do a bunch of mechanical clicking and jumping from cog to cog.

It was rainy and dark enough that I left the office ahead of twilight: people drive like morons in this town when the weather's bad, and I didn't want the temperature to fall and lay down ice on the roads - I don't have the studs on yet. So I didn't really get to see how bright the lights are for night riding. I expect I'll want to have a separate headlamp if I'm going to be on unlit paths or streets at night, but it really is nice to know that I'm lit up front and back no matter what. 

(Update, added later: the front headlight is actually plenty good enough to see by on an unlit path, in the rain. Hurrah!)

I'm slowly amassing the accessories that were stolen along with the Trek - the mount for my Fly12 camera, the bell, the trailer hitch. They've been ordered, and I'll start decking the bike out with them as they come in. 

So. . . so far, Idris and I seem to be getting along just fine. Looking forward to seeing what happens with studs and snow.

Hello you sexy thing

So. . . my new bike arrived today. And I got to assemble it this evening. Say hi to Idris. 

Idris is a Priority Continuum Onyx, which means it's a bike I have had my eye on for roughly a decade, it's a bike I had to order directly from the manufacturer in New York, and it's a bike I had to assemble myself. 

But, after my Trek commuter was stolen a few weeks ago, I decided if I was going to have to get a new bike anyway. . . why not splurge on the all-season commuter I'd been looking longingly at for years? 

And so I found myself ordering a bike from a direct distribution company, getting it delivered to my door, and following along to YouTube videos on how to assemble it. 

But I am pretty stoked about this bike. 

Here's the basics. I've been aware of the Priority Continuum for something like a decade. This bike has an internal hub, a carbon belt drive, hydraulic disc brakes, built-in dynamo lights, and built-in fenders. Plus, the front headlight actually has a capacitor that lets you charge other devices off of it. And it looks COOL AS FUCK, can we just agree on that. That matte black finish! The insouciant sans-serif reflective branding on the top tube! The headstock logo that's only really visible under direct light because it's reflective too! GAH.

I only got it today and I spent an hour or so after work putting it together out of the box (with help from the awesome YouTube tutorials the company provides), so I haven't got a ride review yet. But, let's be real: I am probably going to look to like -- if looking liking move. 

Apparently, what you get with one of these bikes is a low-maintenance (because of the sealed hub and belt drive), hardy, all-season commuter. I'm in Ottawa - not a whole lot of elevation to worry about, but definitely a lot of salt, grit, and freeze-thaw. The day I got this, we came in for a night of freezing rain. I'm probably going to go ahead and order some studded tires to fit this bike. 

One con: sure, I won't be able to service this bike on my own as easily as I could a straightforward chain drive bike. But, I'm okay with supporting my local bike shop by bringing it in once in a while for support. I'm not going to learn how to build or fix a CVT hub, of course. But for the more infrequent maintenance, I'm just fine to pay my LBS to do the work for me. Same for the hydraulic brakes. Sure, I can't replace my own brake pads easily. Fine. My mechanics can do it. And this bike looks like it's going to be a blast to ride. 

I've also gotten the heads up from a couple of other Ottawa bike folks that in very cold conditions the carbon belt can snap. . . but when that happened the company sent them replacements for free. So, I guess I'll keep that in mind. And, honestly. . . 

I'm really looking forward to the ride. 

Bike theft update

Well, I know a little more about the theft now. It looks like my bike, and one other, were taken by three teenagers, literally less than an hour after I left it in the room. They were caught on camera getting into the elevators (I don't know if it was the elevators for my building or the one next door - the garage is shared). That means if they didn't ship the bike off somewhere, it might actually still be in the building, or the one next door.

I'm heartened that at least the landlord did check the video surveillance, and have sent the video to the police. I just emailed them to let them know the report number, so the cops can connect the video to my report. And the landlord has now installed a security camera in the bike room, which is also encouraging. 

But it also is not a good feeling that these were dumbass kids. Are they stealing bikes for some kind of ring? That's shitty. Are they just stealing bikes for the lulz? That's also shitty. If it's just them messing around, I don't want to bring the cops down on them but also I want them not to steal bikes just because they're shitty teens. If they're stealing bikes for a ring, I want them to get the hell out of that now (and also I can be pretty sure my bike's already been broken down in Montreal).

It sucks all around. At least we're getting better security in the bike room out of it.

My bike got stolen

I suppose it was inevitable? 

About two weeks ago, I headed down to the bike room in my building to grab my bike and head to my Saturday martial arts class. I got to the room and there was someone in there getting her bike out as well. I stopped. Looked around. Assuming she'd moved my bike to get at hers, I checked all the nearby bikes. 

Nothing. 

"My bike's not here," I said, staring around. I know I had that look on my face, the one everyone has when what they expected to see just isn't there. I saw it on someone's face in the bike cage at work, when he came out, panniers in hand, and then stopped, just like I had, looking all around him in a search pattern. 

"Someone stole my fucking bike," I said finally, although I was still looking for it as though it would just appear. 

But I was going to be late for class, so I went back outside and got in my car. Between having to drive and the fact that Carleton University was holding Convocation that day and the parking lot was crammed, I was feeling pretty damn combative by the time I made it to the Combatives Room. 

Got home and reported the theft to the police and to Project 529, and to the landlord. And to Ottawa Bike Twitter. And I went down to the bike room with a sign for the door warning other users that my bike had been stolen and telling the thief - who I figure had to have been someone with a key, and therefore another resident - that if they just put the bike back, I'd cancel the police report. But so far, nothing. 

Sure, I might still get the bike back through Project 529 or the cops, or the person who took it might put it back. 

People ask if I had it locked up in the room, and my answer is, I thought that a locked bike room in a locked garage in my own apartment building might - possibly - be secure enough. Not a mistake I'm going to make again. The room does not have any racks, so the only way to secure your bike is to lock the wheel to the frame and hope that's enough of a deterrent. 

I've asked the landlord if there are any plans to install racks. I don't expect much, though. 

However - since I need a winter bike and Long John will NOT work in bad weather conditions. . . I've bitten the bullet and ordered a Priority Continuum Onyx, a bike I've wanted for literally years. It's getting delivered sometime in the next few days. There will be reviews! And I will be locking it the hell up, no matter where it is. 

That PSA

There was a good old-fashioned ratio on the thing that used to be Twitter today. The Richmond RCMP decided to go out with a fall PSA on pedestrian safety. In the fall, crashes involving pedestrians tick up a little as it gets darker, and inevitably you wind up watching something like this.

Girl heads out, in a black hoodie. She pops in her AirPods, flips up her hood. She hits the beg button at the crosswalk and when she gets the signal and the flashing lights she starts to cross. Meanwhile, a driver gets a text notification or a call or something, so he picks his phone up from the cupholder and starts to respond, ignoring the road. Screech of tires. The two look at each other in shock. The driver puts his phone back into the cupholder. The girl removes her earbuds. Fade out: "Pedestrian safety is a two way street." 

Twitter's response? Cordially: oh fuck off, Richmond RCMP. 

What this PSA showed was a person going for a walk, in broad daylight, pressing the crossing button, waiting for the flashing lights at the pedestrian crossing, then crossing the street - and a person driving a car while trying to answer a text message. One of these things is illegal.

The PSA frames them as equivalent. Two-way street. Sure, that driver shouldn't have answered the phone. But she was walking with headphones in! 

They got rightly dragged. I participated in some of the dragging. 

I am probably preaching to the choir on this blog, but if we are living in a world where no one can listen to music while they walk (while drivers cruise along in a soundproofed box that doubles as a stereo sound system), then we are also in a world where no person with hearing loss should be permitted to walk around unattended, and what about blind people? If we're saying you have to wear a high-visibility vest, be on high alert, and also be able-bodied to. . . walk. . . then we truly have ceded our public spaces to the automobile.

In general, even if they've got headphones on, pedestrians and cyclists are more aware of the environment than drivers, because they're not in a sound-dampened, climate-controlled, windproofed roll cage. The burden of responsibility should always be on the person who is capable of the most damage. The one behind the wheel of the large, heavy, fast-moving vehicle. And if you're going to say that there's a shared responsibility, maybe don't draw an equivalence between wearing headphones and a hoodie to go for a walk, and operating a vehicle while focusing on your phone. 

In response to getting righteously pilloried, the Richmond RCMP responded, in part: 

"Every year we put out a media release on pedestrian safety, roughly at this time of year. We offer tips for sharing the road for both the pedestrian/cyclist and the motorist. 

This year, is the first year we decided to make a video. The video was conceived in-house and a student with a gift for film, graciously donated his time and his skillset. The people in the video were volunteers. 

This was a positive experience for us, but the response to it has been extremely disheartening. The purpose is of the video is to reduce harm, save, lives, and create awareness. Full stop. Nothing more an certainly, nothing less. The video is not about X being more right than Y. That is not it's purpose. 

We have investigated many, many pedestrian and cyclist collisions throughout the years. They can be gruesome. They can take their toll mentally on everyone involved. Many of them are entirely preventable." 

WAY to double down. 

You conceived this in-house? That just indicates your internal bias: this pernicious car-brainedness that says "distracted driving is just something that happens. Speeding? I mean, we all do that, it's only bad if you're going more than 20 over. You can't do anything about cars maiming people, it's everyone else that has to be on high alert at all times for their own safety. You can't trust that the people in those cars actually see you. I mean, if you're sharing the road with these things it's on you not to get killed." 

It's not about X being more right than Y? Yeah, except one of those things is against the law and can result in your killing other people, and the other of those things is listening to music while you walk. 

Your student filmmaker went along with the message and did his best to get it across? He did a good job, it's not a bad little piece of video. But from the start to the finish it is based in an assumption that pedestrians are asking to be injured or killed if they don't head out on that walk prepped for a high-risk undertaking. And you are the police force that will be responding to that crash scene and asking, "so, was the victim wearing dark clothes, or earbuds?" 

And that. . . that is why we're dragging you. We're begging you to see it.