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Today is World Car Free Day. I met David, Liz and Richard in Island Bay and we teamed up to ride into town. Yvonne and Gilbert greeted us at the Basin Reserve with free chocolates (thanks Whittakers), then we headed for Civic Sq to meet the other grupettos, from Ngaio, Lyall Bay, Karori and all over. One superhero pedalled in from Waikanae. Crikey. Met a bunch of lovely people and some old friends. Thanks to the GW team and CAW volunteers. That’s how we roll.

From Cycling in Wellington

A lot of Torontonians are wondering where they will move after the election in October, as the candidates race to the bottom to outdo each other in slashing services, getting rid of bike lanes, building underground highways that make Boston's Big Dig look small and cheap, and where the formerly leading candidate lost my vote with his rallying cry "Scarborough, not Copenhagen"! (Scarborough is a troubled, car-dominated suburb)

That rallying cry was particularly troubling because Toronto could use a little Copenhagen, and even more Jönköping, a Swedish city where Architects We...

When you first visit Copenhagen, the first thing you'll notice after being mesmerized by the sheer number of cyclists on the roads is the eclectic kinds of bikes, especially ones that carry groceries, baggage, furniture or other people & children.  As Copenhagenize's Mikael Colville-Andersen happily points out: for many in his city, the cargo bike is equivalent to the SUV.

Thus, for this final chapter in Streetfilms' 2010 Copenhagen Triology (check here: for previous vids on bicycling & pedestrian space) we present this quirky look at some of the types of wonderful bikes...

Those on the sharp end of cycling injuries want to keep the laws, writes Steve Dow.

A COUPLE of times a month, the neurosurgeon Jeffrey Rosenfeld operates on a cyclist who has suffered a serious head injury. They've almost always been wearing a helmet, removed by paramedics who bring it into the hospital. The helmet is often "crushed and messed up".

In half of severe brain injury cases there is a poor outcome. Haemorrhaging is bad enough, requiring urgent surgery to relieve the blood clot, but brain swelling is worse, and 70 per cent of patients with...

FROCKS on Bikes member Isabella Cawthorn is one of 10 (out of 12) submitters in favour of lowering speed limits along the Golden Mile. She believes it will make the city safer and more cycle-friendly.

“This is the kind of trend that Wellington would be wise to encourage,” she says. “[Cycling] saves money, and that disposable income can be spent in the local economy or saved. A policy that provides for increased urban cycling will be celebrated for generations to come.”

The proposal, which will be discussed by the Wellington City Council on Thursday, is part of the “...

Commuter on Victoria St

CAN's Annual General Meeting will be held on the Saturday afternoon (30 October 2010) of the CAN Do.

The venue will be the Petone Central School, 16 Britannia St, Petone, Lower Hutt. For more details, see the CAN Do page.

For your information, here are the minutes from the 2009 CAN AGM.
Also, here is a copy of CAN's Rules (aka Constitution).

Google the phrase "war on cars" and you will find that across North America, people are using the phrase to defend the happy motorized way of life. As one blog put it:

Yup, that's us, and a whole lot of urban types in a fight with suburban types who we slow down with our streetcars and bike lanes....

I've had a soft spot for Puerto Rico since taking a work trip there four or five years ago. I'd heard some negative things about the island, which many people seemed to think of as a third-rate part of the Caribbean, but I found much to enjoy -- the natural beauty of its coastlines and rainforests, the charming and lively capital of San Juan, not to mention the mofongo and the rum. Fending with the traffic, however, was hardly a highlight. "People complain about traffic jams, but they see congestion as a sign of progress," an environmentally minded priest told me at the time...

When the New York Police blamed cyclists for causing 75% of accidents -- without offering supporting data, the organization Right of Way struck back with a report showing only 25% of bikers at fault, and that only on the assumption that the drivers responsible for bicycle fatalities testified fairly, in the absence of the victim's point of view. In a Toronto study, a convalescing bicyclist demonstrated that cyclists cause less than 10% of bike/car accidents. The Berlin study delivers another big surprise -- that blows in the face of common perceptions.

So how did a...