Wednesday, April 27, 2011

Greening marathons


Greening marathons

Last week I was in Boston to run the marathon and I was impressed with the efforts major races take in making their events environmentally friendly. The water supplier for the Boston Marathon is Poland Springs. They have an impressive record of environmentally sustainable products. Their 500ml bottle is incredibly thin and apparently uses 30% less plastic than the average bottle. It felt so thin that I almost felt that I could rupture it by squeezing it.
In my race kit I received a 1 liter bottle of Poland Springs plus a 500ml bottle at the finish and a 500ml bottle of Gatorade. Multiply that by 25,000 runners and that is a lot of bottles. Every little bit helps!
The Vancouver Marathon goes a little further. They have eliminated water bottles altogether. Brita (the water purification company) has partnered with the Vancouver Marathon again this year to go bottle free. Brita serves water in corn-based compostable cups. They filtered 30,000 liters of water using 21 trucks and a custom water filtration system at the Vancouver Marathon 2010 and will be doing the same at the marathon on May 1st this year. Appropriate considering there is no more environmentally friendly way of getting around 42.2 kilometers than using one’s own two feet!

Wednesday, April 13, 2011

If you can cycle here you can cycle anywhere...New York, New York!


Photo by John Öberg

If you can cycle here, you can cycle anywhere...New York, New York!

They now have cycling lanes in Times Square. How difficult must that have been? Apparently many said it would not be possible. But in just a few short years the impossible has become reality. If they can make these changes in car-is-king New York, then surely we can make Ottawa more bike friendly. This is a brief excerpt from an article written for Dagens Nyheter (DagensNyheter) by reporter John Öberg. Dagens Nyheter is the largest newspaper in Sweden. The translation is by Google with some editing by me.




Saying bicycle and New York in the same sentence will cause most people who have visited the city to think of death-defying bike messengers who throw themselves between the yellow taxis, vans and limos along the avenues. Or rare families on bike rides in Central Park.

But in just a few years, New York City transformed from a cyclist's nightmare into a great city for cycling. There are 1700 kilometres of marked bicycle paths on Manhattan, the Bronx, Brooklyn, Queens and Staten Island. The city hands out good bike maps for free and, of course, the proportion of cycling New Yorkers has increased. Similarly, tourists on two wheels have increased and now see the city from new angles.

New York had America's first bike lanes in 1894. But soon the car took over more and more. The city has a good system of public transport, which may account for why only ten percent of Manhattan residents own a car. In the summer of 2008, attempts were made to close some streets off to cars for the benefit of cyclists even if only for a few days. It was a great success and since then the network of bike lanes has grown rapidly, in part as a result of bicycle activists who were pushing for this but also as a result of far-sighted politicians. Often the lanes are only a painted line, as in many Swedish cities, but more and more cycle routes are being separated from the cars with curbs.

It's quite simple really. You start with a painted line here and a segregated lane there...maybe a Sunday road closure becomes a weekend road closure? Before you know it you'll have a cycle city!

I think it's really not that complicated. We just need to change the thinking in this city from "why we can't do it" to one of "how can we do it".

Friday, April 8, 2011

Bike weather is here!

A few relatively warm days were all it took for the bicycles to come out in force. Road bikes and foldables and fixies and uprights are everywhere now. Even the Ottawa police were out on bikes today. Perhaps an errant snowflake is still to come but I think it's safe to say that spring is really here.
If there is a cycling trend in the last few years it's certainly with uprights and the retro-looking fixed-gear bikes. “Fixies” are the choice of bicycle messengers. For commuter cyclists, I spotted 2 British Pashleys today and a Jorge and Olif bike (Canadian-made upright) . Yesterday both a Monark and a Kronan from Sweden.


Foster’s Sports on Bank Street has some rather attractive American-made bikes called the Linus, a simple and elegant European-inspired upright. I noticed quite a few people admiring them through the store window today. A few hours after I took the picture through the window, the cream-coloured ladies bike was sold. I really like this small blurb taken from the Linus webpage "In most urban cultures bicycles are viewed as legitimate transportation and not merely recreation, but sadly this idea never really caught on in the US. We take numerous little journeys, under 5 miles, as part of our everyday life…. to the store, the pub, to work, etc. Besides the obvious joy of riding a bicycle, these small bicycle trips reduce carbon emissions, congestion, noise pollution, and make for a happier, city experience."






Whatever type of bike you favour…it’s time to get cycling!