Recent News

By Meagan Thibeault

Flirting with fatality on a narrow path hugging a metropolitan speedway can be enough to dishearten any bicyclist or pedestrian. Nevertheless, emerging onto a wide-open, freshly paved dedicated car-free lane can instantly revive that spark for self-mobility.

The correlation between improved walking and cycling infrastructure and the number of people who choose these forms of transit, is just one of the major findings in a recent report released by the Alliance for Biking and Walking.

MINNEAPOLIS, MINNESOTA – Not enough room for bike parking? The Dero Bike Rack Company has developed a new two-level bike parking system called the Dero Decker that could solve your problem.

The two-level system doubles bike parking capacity by allowing cyclists to stack their bike on a two-tiered system. The unique bike parking structure uses lift-assist top trays that slide down to just inches off the ground and require minimal lifting of the bike to secure it into the tray. It also has a front wheel safety locking lever and tray dampers to provide safe lowering of upper trays.

“We were really looking to make the Dero Decker the most space-efficient two-level bike parking system on the market,” said Rolf Scholtz, founder of Dero Bike Racks.

The vertical load trays reduce the required aisle space, giving the system an incredibly small footprint.

Efficient use of space is part and parcel of the Dero Decker design, making it ideal for bike centers, bike rooms and parking garages.

By Wong Wing-Siu

Location: 1010 Commercial Drive, Vancouver, BC

Tel: 604.253.3737

Maybe you’re a daily commuter riding a fixie, a hybrid, a mountain bike or a road bike. Maybe you’re an out-of-town tourist visiting Vancouver during the Olympics and want to crank out a few miles between watching the action and partying with the crowds at night. Maybe you are a bike courier who needs their bike to be in top notch condition day-in, day-out. Or maybe you are a serious racer or a randonneur.

Regardless of where you’re coming from, Dream Cycle offers a service that will help keep your bike up and running.

The reason to take notice of them: a quick turnaround on your bike repair.

I ride my bike every day. Can’t do without it. I ride it everywhere and anywhere I go – for groceries, errands, to parties, movies, band practice – everywhere.

By Elizabeth Godley

Sarena Tomchin’s off-center, anarchic humor has found the perfect outlet – the Sydney, Australia-based artist channels her wicked wit into slogans for a line of cycling T-shirts produced by Après Velo, a small but growing company headed by Tomchin, her husband Michael Tomchin and Leonard Greis.

Made of high-quality, ultra-soft cotton, each T-shirt radiates a hand-crafted look. Indeed, a label attached to each shirt advises that “irregular stitching is not faulty … it is part of our ‘Grand Plan’,” and any imperfections in color, finish and stitching are deliberate and achieved by elaborate methods of pigment dying.

For example, a women’s shirt silkscreened with the words “Bicycle Chic” and adorned with a red and pink image of a women’s bike, features red-and-white detailing around the short-sleeve cuffs and V-neck, and the hem is scooped to flatter the female form.

The Dutch biking spirit is coming to Vancouver after all. The Dutch government has organized a group ride in Richmond to take place shortly before the Olympics, and it is even providing 400 bikes for people to use for the ride. Those bikes will then be available to be borrowed for free during the Olympics at the Heineken House.

The Dutch government had originally planned to import bikes for the Olympics, and then donate them afterward, but high import duties made that difficult. So instead they've worked out a compromise: 25 Canadian Tire bicycles will be purchased locally to be donated to underprivileged children, while another 400 Dutch bikes will be brought in for the games and then shipped back to the Netherlands.

Brian Hodes is what you might call a Facebook aficionado. The professional cycling photographer uses the massively popular social media hub - and its broadcasting compadre Twitter - for both work and for fun. And, as of two weeks ago, he uses it for advocacy too.  

Hodes' turn toward advocacy began just two weeks ago, when an anti-bike hate group on Facebook with the wordy title "There's a perfectly good path right next to the road you stupid cyclist!" caught his attention.

Launched in November of 2009, the virtual space gives bike haters an outlet for engaging in vitriolic chatter about why they don't want to share the road, and also gives cyclists a venue to voice a response.

ALAMEDA, CA - In one corner of Alameda island, a flat swath of sand and concrete on the eastern edge of the San Francisco Bay, B-52 bombers have been replaced by bikes.

Since it opened in 2006 on land once occupied by a US Naval station, Cycles of Change APC has become a vital link within the Alameda Point Collaborative, a vibrant community of formerly homeless families, by offering bike-related services, classes and access to tools that help empower through self-sufficiency. From job training to the popular Earn-A-Bike program, the non-profit shop offers a little something for everyone who visits.

"Job trainees learn hands-on about every facet of how the shop is run from mechanics to sales to promoting the shop," said Evan Lovett-Harris, the director of community outreach. "Our aim is to give them skills with bikes, running a small business and interacting with a very diverse group of customers and volunteers."

When Jim Fryer met Iri Greco at the 2009 Tour of California, the two film producers – he from the San Francisco Bay Area and she from New York City – did what any two like-minded media professionals with a shared passion for food and biking would do: They dreamed up a project combining the two concepts and developed the idea into a web-based video show.

The outcome of their collaboration is PEDALING: NYC, a six-episode series that follows an eclectic mish-mash of cyclists on their food-centric adventures throughout the Big Apple.

The first episode, "Pizza Fixation," follows New York City chef Chris Jaeckle as he and a pair of fixed-gear riding buddies head off in search of pizza ingredients to deliver to Dave Sclarow, the mobile pie maestro at Brooklyn's Pizza Moto. 

After a shopping spree at Whole Foods and a cycling sprint over the Williamsburg Bridge, viewers watch the trio indulge in a clam, ham and Brussels sprouts concoction that fuels them for the wet ride back to Manhattan.

By Kathryn Mostow

I’m flying down the hill on my bike, and I feel like I just got a “get out of jail free” card. The wind is bitter cold, but I don’t mind. I’m secure in my winter scarf, and the knowledge that I have exactly two hours to myself today.

For these two hours, I’m riding solo -- no tagalong, bike trailer or diaper bag in tow. I am a woman alone.

Other bikers pass by on the trail, faces flushed from the morning’s exertion, and we nod or smile our silent greetings. For all they know, I am single, childless, fearless. There is no outside marker of my married, mother status.

I breathe deeply, take a corner FAST, feel the giddy sense of danger that taking these risks entail. Risks I do not take when my kids are along for the ride. I pass by horses chewing lazily, Sunday morning dog walkers, and runners, sleek in their spandex.

My children – beloved, cherished – feel far away. They are on another planet, safe with their Dad. For these few precious hours, I am only beholden to myself.

PRESCOTT, ARIZONA – One Street is expanding its affordable bike program to neighborhoods in the southwestern United States.

The Social Bike Business program, already underway in Prague, Budapest and Los Angeles, provides affordable, quality transportation bicycles to locally-run bicycle community centers and bike shops that serve disadvantaged neighborhoods.

One Street developed the program to be transferable and helps local leaders raise the funds needed to open a bicycle community center. Local residents can visit their local bicycle community center to take part in certification and job training courses. These skills can help them build careers in business management, customer service and bicycle manufacturing.

The program aims to solve “the serious lack of access to bike shops and affordable, sturdy transportation bicycles for the majority of the world’s population,” according to a One Street release.

CANADA - Teams of a dozen or more motivated and energetic young people, aged 18 to 30, will set off on cycling and performing tours in 2010. And the Otesha Project, a national youth-run charitable organization that has reached over 100,000 Canadians through its theater presentations and workshops, wants you to be one of them.

The project, created in 2002, combines sustainable living, community building, theater, leadership training and bicycle touring. The group’s theater presentations and workshops are designed to inspire youth to re-evaluate their daily consumer choices and to reflect on the kind of world they want to live in.

COPENHAGEN, DENMARK - The world might not have agreed on how to divvy up responsibility in the fight against climate change during the Copenhagen summit, but delegates at least seem have agreed that bicycles are a great way to go about reducing emissions. The free bicycle initiatives at the conference have been hailed a great success.

Baisikeli - which means bicycle in Swahili - provided 160 free bicycles at the conference.

The Copenhagen-based company typically uses the profits from its bicycle rental operation to send donated bicycles to Africa, where they are converted into ambulances, water carriers and 'school buses'.

In this case, the complimentary rental bicycles were provided to highlight this greener mode of transportation.

Henrik Smedegaard Mortensen, one of the creators of the Baisikeli initiative, said the free bicycles at the conference were very popular, despite the near-freezing temperatures.

NEW YORK, NY - It's a sad sight on many a city street: the bicycle carcass, picked clean, save for a lone wheel with U-Lock still attached, the pathetic victim of seemingly ubiquitous urban bike thieves. However, a new law may curb not only the bike theft epidemic in New York City, but could also support bike commuting by giving cyclists safe, onsite parking for their two-wheel transport.

The Bike Access Law, which was signed by Mayor Michael Bloomberg in August, went into effect on December 11, 2009. With it, commuter cyclists have been granted a legitimate course of action for requesting secure bike parking inside their workplaces. There is one little hitch, however, the building must have a freight elevator.

Freight elevators – which most commercial buildings in NYC are equipped with – are critical for alleviating the crowding issue that has made bikes non grata in many buildings during peak elevator-usage periods. "It solves the overcrowding issue," said Wiley Norvell, of the non-profit advocacy group Transportation Alternatives.

If you are keen to boost your pedal power and green-cred at the same time you may want to lock the Copenhagen Wheel into your rear drop-outs. This electric-assist wheel was launched in concert with the recent United Nations Climate Conference in Copenhagen, Denmark. The Wheel's creators, SENSEable City Lab for the Kobenhavns Kommune, and others, say it "allows you to capture the energy dissipated while cycling and braking and save it for when you need a bit of a boost." In addition to the boost, the Wheel "maps pollution levels, traffic congestion and road conditions in real-time."