The gift that keeping on giving - in a good way!

IKEA walks the talk.  

After finding that 20% of its Danish customers biked to IKEA, the world's biggest put-it-together-yourself furniture chain, provided bike trailers to enable their Danish customers to get the household products home!

Here in North America, IKEA USA really does believe that Change Begins at Home!  Each of its 12,400 U.S. employees were given bikes for Christmas.


No assembly required!!!!!!
"IKEA notes that riding a bicycle 30 minutes a day can burn a number of calories equivalent to an individual shedding 30 lbs. Cycling just 30km a week can help reduce the risk of coronary heart disease by 50%. Riding a bike versus owning and driving a car can also save an individual $8,000 annually in automobile-related costs (gasoline, general car maintenance, and insurance costs)."  It's the gift that keeps on giving in a good way!  Healthier employees, also take less time off, lower the company's health costs and are happier!


Sadly, Canadian employees didn’t get bikes.  However, IKEA Canada commissioned Canadian artists to produce 5,000 unique pieces, one-of-a-kind art for their annual co-worker holiday gift, supporting Canadian talent and artists.   

No Assembly!

Let's hope, the bike, as a company Christmas gift is a prelude of great things to come!  Hopefully other retailers, and companies jump on the bandwagon and offer their employees bikes sweetened with a uniquely Canadian 1 year free service program at MEC.  It would require confident, forward thinking CEOs and management to embrace this idea.  I'll wager that an Return on Investment analysis would show the company would recoup its investment many times over.
Thanks for your comments and emails.
Merry Christmas to all!  

Beijing out of its haze - Back to the Future

No longer a common sight

"Twenty years ago, four out of five residents in the Chinese capital pedalled to work through  one of the world’s best systems of bicycle lanes."   Beijing's 9 million bicycles are being crowded out & disappearing.  Bike lanes are blocked by parked cars & frustrated motorists seeking to avoid traffic jams.  It is now "The most congested city on earth." 


The number of cars in Beijing has doubled since 2005 & 2,000 more cars are added daily.  4.7 million cars in 2010!  Pending car regulations, have spiked sales to 3,000 per day in Dec.

The Globe's Wheels section points out the fallacy of the auto-centric planning mentality.  According to Zhang Yu, a senior engineer with the Urban Transport Center under the Ministry of Housing and Urban-Rural Development, “Before 1990 the government was building more and more roads but that was fine because there was a need for those roadways,” she said. “But after that, the more roads they built, the more serious the traffic jams became. So building new roads does not solve traffic jams.”

Avg Speed 20kph!
4miles in 2 hours.

"Zhang suggested different classes of tickets on public transportation to attract better-off customers, better bus and bike lanes, and more space for pedestrians. Building more roads was not the answer, she said." 
During the Olympics traffic congestion was reduced.  Cars were banned from roads on alternate days based on an even / odd system and the license plate number.   At some time, the only option is to ban cars or ironically, to make the cost so prohibitive, only the rich of this socialist country will be able to drive.  

Are there any clear days left to see
Beijing?

"[Chinese].... studies show that 60 per cent of the time, people's destinations are less than 3 miles (5 kilometers) from their homes."  Its 57% in Canada!
 
Drowning in cars, bumper to bumper gridlock and a sickening pall of air pollution blocking the sun, Chinese leaders are now drafting regulations to "encouraging people in the former land of bicycles to revert to pedal power."  The state's next 5 year plan targets boosting  the number of cyclists by 25%.
The haze in Burlington is also lifting as it slowly moves back to the future.  Bike lanes help everyone, including drivers!  Why shouldn't there be bike lanes on Lakeshore Road?  The sooner, the better!

Halton's one size fits all - short-sighted approach

Beautiful landscape, winding roads

Italy with its unique topography, landscape and winding routes is a mecca for cycling.  Cycling tourism is big, big business in Italy.

Italian roads lack basic safeguards needed to keep cyclists safe.  Wide paved shoulders are non-existent.  Many roads lack the centre dividing line.  Yet despite these shortfalls cycling tourism thrives, significantly boosting the economy of many hilltop towns.

Typical Italian road, no shoulder, uphill

Encountering many cyclists, I asked if they felt threatened on Italian  roads.  Unexpectedly, they believed Italian motorists were especially cautious on the roads, aware of cyclists.  As one of the motoring tourists, I really questioned this belief.

At home, cycling tourism has a tremendous positive impact in Niagara. ~ 5,000 jobs, $200 million in annual revenues.   While cycling our waterfront trail, I encountered a group of Penny Farthing cyclists from South Africa, Germany and New Zealand.  Cycling tourists spend more per day and stay longer in the area than other tourists.

Halton Region sometimes adds 1 metre paved shoulders to rural roads when they are resurfaced.  Numerous studies show the paved shoulder extends road life and provide other benefits making it worth the added cost.  It appears that Halton views the speeds vehicles travel on these roads as a secondary issue e.g. currently under resurfacing, Derry Road has a 1 metre shoulder (sometimes less) despite cars buzzing by at speeds well over 70kph.  Going forward after Derry Road, Halton is proposing 1.5m - if it can be easily done.  One size fits all is the Halton approach.

From Haliburton Cycling Master Plan

We'll never match Italy's topography but by adding wider paved shoulders to all of Halton's rural roads, wider than 1 meter, we will attract cycling tourists to our region generating returns far greater than the original investment.  Haliburton believes this and the paved shoulder width depends on vehicle speeds and traffic.   It will save lives too!

Early Christmas gift for cyclists and all others too!

Confucius had it half right.  The picture map below is worthy of a million words - all of them grand.

Bronte Creek Prov. Park  to City Hall - by bike!

A year ago, Google Maps gave us the transit option.  You could get from point A to your destination using public transit without having to decipher Burlington's Einsteinian bus schedule.

This year Google added bike routes as a travel option and said it would be rolled out soon to a town near you.

It works in Burlington!

It displays our hydro corridor trail!

The maps show a bike route from Bronte Creek Provincial Park to Burlington City Hall.  Yes, you cycle Burloak Drive over the QEW but then Google maps suggests you get onto the Centennial Bike Trail all the way to Dynes Road.  That's the new & improved, safe, recently paved hydro corridor.

Thank you Google.  It's still in Beta mode and has bugs.  It doesn't display the Headon hydro corridor and it may take you on a road without a bike lane but its a start!  Expect it to improve over time as more data is added & routes are refined. 

The city & Halton Region repaved Burloak with fabulous, wide, comfortable bike lanes but the bike lanes stop at the QEW overpass.  Maybe  Google has the solution for MTO to make it safer for cyclists to get over the QEW.