Car-Free Living

Apparently there are these things called “shadows” that appear when the “sun” comes out.

If you can, do take advantage of the stunning sunshine and blue sky out today. It’s so refreshing; so good to be squinting towards a searing blue world. Bundled but comfortable; the sun secretly baking dark surfaces. I’ve missed this.

From Copenhagenize,

there are now bicycle lanes that are double as wide, after another lane was reclaimed from motorised traffic. Simply to accomodate the 38,000 cyclists that use the stretch each day. The width of the lanes is now over 5 metres wide.

Here’s the detail. At the beginning the new ‘outside lane’ was referred to as a ‘fast lane’. When the lanes were completed there was no reference to the outside lane. Instead, the pre-existing inside lane was now called the “Conversation Lane”.

Why sell speed when the vast majority of people on bicycles are content to take it easy on their way to work or the cinema or a café? Selling speed isn’t exactly good for traffic safety. Nor does catering to the minority who like to go faster benefit the majority who don’t.

It’s simultaneously cathartic and frustrating to read this blogger’s commentary, mainly because he lives in a city that appears like a transcendent fantasy at the horizon of possibility….and because he writes all the commentary I am too slow to come up with.

I love the conversation lanes. And the green wave. And the foot rests…etc, etc.

Like so many other elements of Copenhagen, it’s reflective of a coherent infrastructure. In Peterborough – indeed, in most North American communities – this is precisely what we’re missing. And precisely what is going to remain a problem for decades to come unless coherence becomes part of policy for all alternative transportation.

We’re always pushing people out of the norms that are so heavily reinforced in culture and media (drive, drive, drive). So it absolutely does not help that, for instance, in Peterborough bike infrastructure consists of

• Shared use sidewalks (legal in two places, a ticketable offence everywhere else. Huh?!)
• On street bike paths (some effective, others that spend 80% of their daily existence as legal parking spots for cars. Huh?!)
• Multi-use trails (upon which pedestrians, bicycles and even vespa-style e-bikes are allowed; with minimal signage and occasionally baffling interactions with traffic — i.e., the trail head at Armour Road & Nassua Mills intersection)
• Regular on-street riding with other vehicles.

Now, there’s an endless and very touchy debate among planners and cyclists about bike lanes and trails. Without stepping into that, I’d just like to make the point that so long as we are promoting that people take up an activity about which they have no formal training, a vague understanding of the rules governing their behaviour, and that they do so in an incoherent infrastructure that forces them to make decisions that are legal in some areas and illegal in others, cycling is never going to be a viable choice.

If folks go out on a limb to try the alternative transportation options available to them (a choice that, I often wonder, may or may not have anything to do with all the promotion we throw at them), the last thing they need be confronted with is a byzantine and dubious network of poorly maintained routes.

Cyclists get a bad rap by some drivers, but it’s important to keep in mind that they are being forced to navigate an incoherent transportation system that is largely invisible to cars, with rules that very few are familiar with, using a machine that extraordinarily few have ever actually been taught to use!

I’m grateful for the blinding luminescence granted by the white sheet covering the city today. The grey clouds finally exhausted of their precipitation, I feel the sun like a knife intervening against the oppressive sameness of mud, wet and darkness.

The cold crawled right through my wind barriers today. Hands and feet are still warming up from their tingling freeze.

When I came home last night I had to do a bit of clearing up from that very strange weather yesterday. Ferocious wind, blustery snow, total whiteout, sunny & clear.

I was thankful for the car-free household: shoveling means only clearing a 6′ wide section.

Like most, I find myself feeling low sometimes during these grey, muddy days. We’re well dug in to the middle of winter, unpleasantly faced with traversing as much time with this weather remaining as we’ve endured already.

With pithy accuracy, David Attenborough says “If I can bicycle, I bicycle”.

I do the same, and I think that element of activity helps offset some winter blues. It certainly makes my mornings a little more exciting; I love feeling invigorated when I arrive at work.

But at the other end of the “If I can bicycle, I bicycle” spectrum is the less desirable elements of a (ethically, spiritually, politically, personally necessary) choice: it’s 6:45pm, you’re missing a key ingredient for the dinner you’ve started preparing. It’s dark, raining; drivers are in a hurry to get home, you’re in a hurry to get things done. Cycling to the corner store is still a choice – a good choice, at that – but it isn’t necessarily contributing to the “active transportation equals happiness” pitch that we tend to foster.

How about we make a small change to that equation? Active lifestyle equals happiness — or at least can contribute in a meaningful way to reduced stress, a clearer mind, and the ever elusive sense of well-being.

These aren’t just buzzwords. And “these aren’t just buzzwords” isn’t just a buzz phrase. For the past two years, I’ve been experiencing the benefit of taking the ‘active lifestyle’ stuff serious. I go to the YMCA twice a week at lunch for a workout class, and am never happier than on those days. I sleep well, eat well, and feel good. I feel stress fade, and find a sort of clear headedness that I could never produce otherwise. I’ve seen radical changes in my body, energy level and overall fitness. Sometimes I really don’t want to go – I’m feeling well-planted in my chair at work, or just a little lazy/tired/behind in work, or the weather’s nasty outside. But I’ve trained myself – and it’s taken quite a while to get to that point – to always just go. The secret behind active living, active transportation is…you’ve got to actually do it. It’s that simple.

Like I said in an earlier post, it’s not about what shirt/app/tool/gear you need to buy to do something. The hardest thing – and what becomes, eventually, the simplest thing – is simply doing it.

Consuming and the perceived necessity of consumption as a prerequisite for action is the easiest way to avoid actually acting in the world!

Saturday morning market brussel sprouts by bike.

The only concern is making it through doorways.

The wide stalk knocks on jambs, errant sprouts rolls under couches…