Road toll: “the price we have to pay”?

Do We Tolerate Too Many Traffic Deaths? [twitterer]

Extreme

Extreme toy racing=extremely funny wipeouts.

Total respect

Pete Heal has cycled around Australia in 48-odd days. That’s an average of more than 300km per day. Respect.

Retribution

Every bicycle theft victim’s dream—methinks this video is more dream than reality, but it still makes pleasant viewing.

Helmet

Anecdote ain’t science, but still…This Helmet Saved My Life!

Park it here

Wall Street Journal reports on the cost of bike parking in New York City:

I’m pleased to report that my local garage is also doing its part to protect my life, by making the price of housing a bike there prohibitive…My garage is charging—no joke—$175 plus 8.875% tax. That’s almost $200 a month to stow a bike! You probably won’t be surprised to hear it has no takers. As one attendant observed, “You can buy a new bike” for that amount.

[via How We Drive]

Local government dickheads: 1

Casino city bans riding bikes through town. Words fail me. [twitterer]

Local government dickheads: 2

The Age reports:

A proposed ”no stopping zone” designed to improve bike safety along a stretch of road in bayside Melbourne will again be knocked back by a local council tomorrow night, despite robust support from the Victorian roads minister.

Bloggage

• Tokyo By Bike: “Once you’ve experienced Tokyo by Bicycle you’ll never ride the train again.”
• Randonneur Apprentice: “Learning something new on each and every brevet”
• Lovely Bicycle!

Perils of winter riding

Cold hands whilst riding – a cautionary tale

Proof

This video would seem to support the argument that you don’t need a mountain bike. [via Sydney Body Art Ride]

Inevitably

Following on from the Warrington Cycle Campaign, we now have out very own crap cycle lanes of Melbourne.

Trying to improve on perfection

10 Brilliant Bike Mods and Designs:

The bicycle is the near-perfect vehicle, but that doesn’t stop people from (brilliantly) messing with the design to increase speed, comfort or desirability to commuters.

DamianM: achiever

DamianM got a gong at the Australian Bicycling Achievement Awards—congratulations.

The problem with Albert

I may have more to say on this shortly, but for now: Albert street bike lane a joke?

Imagine what might happen…

…if all those cyclists gave up riding. [via CityCyclingEdinburgh Forum]

Cross

For some odd reason, I’m very pleased that there’s going to be a cyclocross series in Melbourne this year. Should be heaps of fun.

Fleeting glimpses

• Xtracycle-y Goodness outside the Vic Market
• I love riding in fog

Eh? What’s that one lonely bike? This cage has capacity for about 20 bikes! What’s the story?

Could it be that there is no signage on the cage to tell people how you can access it? If you don’t happen to know what Parkiteer is, you wouldn’t have a clue.

The bike cage at East Malvern: secure and private

Compare and contrast to the modest yet informative sign on the Parkiteer bike cage at Sandringham Railway Station.

Don’t label it, people don’t know what it is. In overlooking this small point, it just makes the bike cage look like something exclusive and private. Of course, signage could still be on the way but I’d have thought you’d want to start the publicity as soon as the cage was built, not weeks or months after it goes into operation.

Just a thought.

Update November

Well, the signage has been installed:

There's a plan. That's good. And the blue cage is part of it. Jolly good.

And it’s been duly branded:

Park it 'ere. Get it?

The cage is still only accommodating one bike, but now at least other people might find out about it.

While they are not something I’m likely to use (I’d only be at the train station because I can’t ride at all for some reason), they are an initiative that might help get people into utility cycling.

The cage does look pretty sturdy, and I’d probably be comfortable leaving a knock-about clunker in there—which is the point, I guess. This one has six Flat Top parking rails and seven Ned Kelly rails, which by my reckoning is parking for 19 bikes—a modest improvement over the half-dozen bike lockers previously (and still) on the site.

Just one reservation though—I sincerely hope security gets beefed-up before this cage is opened for use!

(Yes, yes—I do know that it’s temporary and the cage will have an access card reader installed before it goes into operation.)

Cycling and the job search

Jeff’s Ten Reasons to Start Biking While Looking for Job

Cycling and the retired footballer

Ex-Wallaby, the gorgeous George Gregan has taken up mountain biking

Bike parking at work?

Commuters and would-be commuters, have a bash at Bicycle Victoria’s bike parking workplace audit 2009.

Two-wheeled paramedics

Paramedics cycle to emergency patients:

A spokesman for the London Ambulance Service said: “We have increased our use of fast response cars, motorcycles and bicycles to navigate London’s busy roads.”

[twitterer]

Cool and rugged

Can a folder bike be “cool?” Yeah, I think the Dahon Mμ UNO probably counts as cool.

On the other hand, the Montague Paratrooper is “the tactical mountain bike that folds.” Whoa! (There’s also a civilian version.)

Go and ride

Among the rides mentioned by YarraBUG radio, the Mums & Dads on Bikes Rides caught my eye:

Kids in bike seats welcome! Kids in trailers welcome! Kids on training wheels welcome! Kids on tag-a-longs welcome! Kids on own bikes welcome! Want to ride with your rides for fun, exercise and socialising? Join us on one of our easy rides to one of Melbourne’s many child-friendly destinations. Rides take place the first Sunday of every month. Rides leave from Jika Jika Community Centre, Plant Street, Northcote, Contact Kathy kbrunning@bigpond.com.

How cool is that?

It’s a fair cop

The Londoner’s stolen bike double-take

“Mr Fletcher? This is Fulham police station. We think we may have recovered your stolen bicycle.”

Braving a budget bike

Helen Pidd is trialling “Britain’s cheapest new bike”. It will be interesting to see how that goes.

That reminds me of Steve’s Bike of Doom and BT Humble’s Budget Bike.

Gadgets

• B.iCycle: iPhone as cyclometer

• Building a strong flexible bicycle trailer coupler

• I first mentioned the Gyrobike a few years ago and I’m pleased to see that it’s soon to be released for general purchase. This is a good thing.

Get off the grass

What’s stopping the bamboo bike from shooting into the mainstream?

I hypothesise that it’s a lack of a high-profile race winner on such a machine. But if ever there’s a bamboo bike Tour de France winner, it will become the bike material du jour for the ‘new golf’ set.

“Angular, dude”

The Bau Bike provokes some hilarious comments at MetaFilter

Doyle’s dream down the drain

The Lord Mayor of Melbourne had a dream of returning cars to Swanston St. A recent survey of options rejected that idea whole-heartedly, with most respondents preferring Option 6 “Decreased motor vehicle access”.

I’d caution excitable cyclists that this wouldn’t necessarily make Swantson St a pedaller’s paradise—avoiding tangling with pedestrians could become even more a factor than it is now.

World’s biggest, deepest velodrome

Hydroelectric power station Avce – Fixed gear heaven [via A Woman and a Fixed Wheel and Bottles and Chains]

Attitudes?

• Questioning attitudes towards cyclists

• I think this guys is confusing “civil disobedience” with “complete dipshittery” [twitterer]

• How Do You Respond to Bicycle Haters? [twitterer]

• Bike safety public service announcements “Are ads like this counterproductive to cycling advocacy?”

Biggest winners?

Government subsidies for people to lose weight and get fit [twitterer]

Biggest losers?

Connex and Yarra Trams dumped in favour of MTR and Keolis

But the effect of this was that it gave shoppers a different place to leave their trolleys, hopefully leaving the bike parking clear and protecting nearby cars from damage.

The secondary bike storage bay was unlocked and open this time, but was home to a solitary trolley. Why do people do that? Could it be that the only available trolley bays are on a raised area requiring shoppers to bounce their trolleys up a kerb to store them correctly?

When I returned a few days later I was pleased to find a notice hanging by every door to the bike parking cages:

Now I don’t know whether centre management had received complaints (I was being wait-and-see about it, so I hadn’t contacted them) or if they are being proactive about the bike parking. But I will note in passing that a security guard made a sweep through the bike cage while I was there, which (along with the new signage) suggests that they are taking secure bike parking seriously.

And as long as bike parking remains available and secure, this centre will keep getting my business.