News

Some of you may have heard of "ciclovia", the car-free street events that originated in Bogota, Colombia. In Portland, Oregon, they're known as "Sunday Parkways" and they've been a hit there since the first one in 2008.

Sunday Parkways take place at various locations throughout Portland about once a month, and involve closing off a loop of ~10km of streets for 5 hrs so that people can walk, ride, scoot, skate, whatever without the distraction of motor traffic (yes, if you're a local you can still access your house, although they encourage you not to drive if you can avoid it)....

Sami recently wrote about the new Sobi bike system; It is a wonderful concept, and very different from bike sharing systems we have seen in Paris, Montreal and other cities. Urban systems like Velib in Paris or Bixi in Montreal are expensive to set up and maintain.

Sobi (Social Bicycle System) is a simpler system. CrunchGear explains that it is based on smart phone technology; instead of being attached to a fixed stand, it relies on GPS and mobile communications, and a big, secure lock that can attach to any bike rack, or any bike for that matter.

It is...

The single biggest road safety issue in New Zealand today is speed - drivers travelling too fast for the conditions.

Lower speed limits don’t just save lives – they make NZ towns and cities better places to live (source: Simon Kingham in The Conversation, 2022)

In 2008, excess or inappropriate speed was a factor in:

* 34 percent of all road deaths (127 deaths)
* 17 percent of all reported injuries from road crashes (2629 injuries).

As well as road safety, reducing speeds has many benefits for our...

It's here and it's exciting: the new London Barclays Cycle Hire is open for business. Everywhere there are stands of shiny new bicycles just waiting to be ridden. And there are perplexed looking tourists and Londoners wondering how on earth they can get one.

It's easy if you live here: for now only people with a registered address can become a member (membership has its privileges) the rest of the world will have to wait until later in the season. The only drawback is that when all is said and done, you are still riding on the streets of London and that is scary!

...

IBM (yes, the IBM) recently released a global study of traffic, surveying over 8,000 adult drivers in 20 major cities. Perhaps the results are not that surprising - traffic is perceived by drivers as getting worse in the last three years. Thirty percent of those surveyed felt increased stress while 27% reported increased anger. Twenty nine percent reported that traffic harmed their performance in work or school, and 38% reported having cancelled a planned trip due to anticipated traffic. So the two key questions are, why can't we get a grip on traffic, and why does IBM care about...

This is the first in a series of ideas for Wellington, which will be mostly bicycle, and public transport related.

For the people bringing us the Great Harbour Way finding a safe, pleasant and interesting bicycle route between Kaiwharawhara Point and the red lighthouse thingie opposite Ballance Street on the waterfront is a bit quandrous. You’ve got the railway, the motorway, busy roads, and a working port in between. The Boffa Miskell report on the Great Harbour Way has two routes marked, a new route below the motorway and along Aotea and Waterloo Quays, which is a...

For the last Chainlinks we used a new cover design that devoted more space for a photograph. I hope it was well received.

For the September issue of Chainlinks I'd like to find a cover photo that has a picture of cycling in action.  it's very easy for me to get pictures of cyclists riding in stunning scenery, because of where I live, but it's not easy for me to get photos of cycing in a city environment, or in places where there is significant cycling infrastructure (apart from a damn fine recreational rail trail) because of where I live.

CAN committee has chosen three focus...

In a very interesting initiative that began last January, a group of three non governmental organizations from Mexico City are organizing bike rides for the blind and visually impaired. The rides are guided by volunteers on tandem bikes, and are offered on Sunday mornings, when a few streets in the historical center of the city are closed for pedestrians and human powered vehicles. What does this do for these people? More than you would think.

According to El Universal (via Mejor en Bici), the rides are an initiative by Bicitekas, Muévete por tu Ciudad, and Contacto Braille....

When challenged to come up with a way to inspire more people to bike for transportation in addition to recreation, three three "former non-bikers" from New York City proposed a campaign to focus on mutual respect between drivers and bikers. The team, calling itself "!ola," was one of four competitors in a contest sponsored by Yoxi, a new site dedicated to social innovation. In its debut competition, Yoxi (pronounced yo-see) posed this question:

How can we make our cities more welcoming to bikers? How can we encourage more people to ride a bike when they can?

The solution could...