Clean, wholesome fun - cycling Vancouver's "Wholesome Undie" Photo: Conrad Schmidt

27/06/03: Record-breaking turn-out of cyclists for Vancouver Critical Mass

"Get on it!" That’s the message of Bike Month 2003, which features organised and disorganised rides, workshops, bike block parties, happenings and cycle fests throughout June. The mood will be fun, inclusive, creative, festive and occasionally a tad anarchic. The aim: to get more pedal-pushers out there, whether that be to reduce the amount of trips to work made by Single Occupancy Vehicles (SOVs) or to simply have a good time.

There is no lack of activities for all levels and ages. "The list of events is getting longer every year," says Richard Campbell of Better Environmentally Sound Transport (BEST), the organisation behind the annual extravaganza.

So what’s on offer? One of the regular features of Bike Month is the Commuter Challenge, which takes place throughout Canadian Environment Week, the first week of June. Vancouver businesses compete to see who can encourage the most of their employees to bike, walk, take transit or carpool to work. For National Clean Air Day, June 4, you can bike to a free Pancake Breakfast at the CBC Plaza (7:30-9 AM).

Other events will bring out electric bikes, dinos on bikes, furry-framed bikes and a whole bunch of cool and crazy machines, including "fresh music amplified by pedal", at the East Van Chopper Fest (14th, 1-9 PM on Union Street). The kinky cyclists from BikeSexual - web address memorably titled BikeSexual.org(asm) - will be donning leather and latex but not burning rubber in a ride to SinCity fetish night (14th).

BEST will be leading people on what they describe as "the most enjoyable route through the lower mainland", the Central Valley Greenway Ride, a ribbon of green from Vancouver through Burnaby to New Westminster. Campbell also recommends a new addition to the calendar, the Stanley Park Bike Festival (15th). "It will be an interesting, varied event," he says. "Lots of people have put in lots of work into it."

Standing back for a moment though, are facilities for cyclists getting any better? "Sometimes I feel very positive, especially at this time of year," says Campbell, who has been a BEST campaigner since the non-profit agency was started in 1991, "but on the other hand every year there’s more cars on the road".

It’s the problem that won’t go away. As studies regularly remind us, while we appreciate the environmental and health benefits of pedal-pushing, we cycle less because the roads seem too dangerous.

Vancouver cyclists can take comfort from the fact that the cycle network has slowly grown over the last decade and the rate of bike accidents appears to be declining. Enlightened employers like UBC, Urban systems, BC Housing, Crystal Decisions, Vancity and MEC now provide facilities for employees who bike like showers, driers for wet clothing, lockers for change of clothing, and secure housing storage for cycles.

Some things haven’t changed: the car is still king of the road, there are few financial perks like mileage allowances and tax breaks for cyclists, and even the law seems skewed in favour of motorists (if all cyclists must wear helmets at all times, why shouldn’t motorists too?). But the collective mindset is not stuck on auto as it once was.

"We are trying to integrate cycling into our routine activities," says Peter Stary of the City Engineering Services and the City’s "point man" on cycling. Stary, who was a cycle advocate even before cycling appeared on the City’s radar, works as the staff liaison with the Bicycle Advisory Committee, the group of volunteers that advises staff and council on how to spend the annual bike budget of around $900,000.

Bike Month sees the official opening of two new facilities - bike lanes on West Georgia St (adjacent to Chilco St at Stanley Park) and the new Inverness bikeway (connecting the excellent Ridgeway cycleroute at 37th).

The City now helps cyclists in more "subtle ways", says Stary. For example, when a new pedestrian activated signal is put in, a push-button is always located for cyclists at the edge of the curb. "That is now just automatic with our installation," he says. "We have an email hotline and a phone hotline on which people can call in to complain or to praise us, or to tell us about potholes or problems, and we try to be as responsive as we can."

Stary is encouraged by a study done in 1999 that found in the course of five years, during which "the backbone of bikeways was implemented and publicised", the number of trips made in the city by bicycle doubled. Another study may be done next year.

What about the bridge crossings in Vancouver? Stary admits that they can be "a challenge", but the City is currently looking at two design solutions for the Burrard bridge which would involve widening the sidewalk to give cyclists and pedestrians more space. "We hope to begin work on that in the next year or two," he says.

The Granville Bridge has been identified as a second priority with either a separate cycle bridge slung below or attached to the side of the existing structure or a motor vehicle lane converted to a bike lane. "It doesn’t really need four lanes for cars," suggests Richard Campbell at BEST. The west sidewalk on Cambie bridge has been identified as a third priority for upgrading False Creek crossings.

The wheels of change grind slowly, but cyclists themselves are finding ever more creative and resourceful ways of selling the ultimate green machine.

For example, in Ebike Bob’s Kyoto Discount Program numerous merchants around Vancouver are offering discounts of anything from 5-25% off food, clothing, electronics and other goods.

Others are doing anything to get themselves seen, including taking their clothes off in the annual Wholesome Undie, a ride protesting the Molson Indie, where everyone rides in their underwear or less.

Then there’s Critical Mass. This phenomenon started in San Francisco over a decade ago when cyclists started riding en masse through the city. Thousands of cyclists would join in. Word quickly spread and soon cities around the world, Vancouver included, had their own rides. It is no surprise that Vancouver and many other cities started implementing cycle programs around the same time.

Critical Mass (slogan: "We’re not blocking traffic. We are traffic") meets at 5.30pm on the last Friday of every month at the Vancouver Art Gallery (video clip). It seems to have grown in the last year and it is hoped that on the 27th up to a thousand wheels will roll on a record-breaking Bike Month mass.

"I like the spontaneous mentality of it. Critical Mass doesn’t say much apart from, ‘Come and play with us on the street. We’re cycling. We’re having fun!’" says Guy Wera, a ‘bike person’ who is starting a catering service supplying pedal-powered food to festivals.

There’s still a sense that government is dragging their feet. "The provincial government is not doing really anything," says Richard Campbell, rattling off a list of cycle upgrades around the province that are long overdue. Under the previous provincial government’s Cycling Network Program, there was $2 million which municipalities would compete for on a cost share funding basis. The province shared up to 50% of the cost of bike projects. BEST would like to see that figure increased to $5 million. At the moment it is nil.

"While in theory the Cycling Network Program remains, ever since the last election it has been unfunded. It hasn’t been officially deleted, but it hasn’t been funded," says Stary. "Certainly, if the province were to fund it, it would spur development of more bicycle infrastructure."

Bike Month is co-ordianted by BEST (home page, Bike Month program). The Vancouver City Bike hotline is tel 604-871-6070, email, website.
Watch the video of May 30 2003 Critical Mass.

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