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Pedal plans
Winnipeg’s ‘Bicycle Mayor’ to give city the gears on lack of infrastructure
https://www.winnipegfreepress.com/breakingnews/2024/05/09/pedal-plans
PATTY Wiens refuses to tread lightly in her new role as Winnipeg’s top cyclist. Wiens has been bestowed with the title Bicycle Mayor of Winnipeg by an international organization that advocates for more active transportation and encourages drivers to take up cycling for daily trips.
“When you start riding your bike to work, you really start noticing what kind of infrastructure is around bikes for safety, you start noticing how people behave on the road,” she said Thursday afternoon.
The year-round cyclist applied for the role to be more involved in advocacy and petition for more, and safer, cycling infrastructure.
Wiens, 50, favoured cycling over driving to work in 2021 when she began a new job at the University of Winnipeg to save some cash on parking. After seeing what it did for her mental and physical health, she sold her car and took up the commute full-time.
Winter driving made her take notice of the city’s infrastructure she called lopsided towards drivers.
“That’s what sent me on a real advocacy journey,” she said.
The mayoral title is given to successful applicants by BYCS, an Amsterdam-based non-governmental organization with an international network of bike enthusiasts. Mayors are selected for a period of two years during which they focus on addressing the main barriers to increasing cycling in their cities.
Wiens is one of five bicycle mayors in Canada and 147 worldwide. She also serves on the board of directors for advocacy group Bike Winnipeg.
The Brazilian transplant speculates the number of cyclists is increasing due to an increased cost of living and price of fuel, but she welcomes the trend and, using her new role, plans to petition the city for slower speeds on side streets where fewer cars tend to drive and active transportation is favoured.
“If we would have more of that, we wouldn’t need to worry so much about protected bike infrastructure,” she said. She also wants to raise the profile of cyclists who use bikes for any type of transportation, whether it be for work, grocery shopping, sport or leisure.
“That’s who I want to represent … the less cars you have on the road, the better it is for everyone. Cars get around faster and cyclists are safer.”
City council’s public works committee recently approved a project that will eliminate vehicle right turns from Assiniboine Avenue onto Main Street and divert eastbound vehicles north on Fort Street, which Wiens calls a win for bike safety.
“We have this mentality here that people who drive pay for roads and it’s not true. Everyone pays for roads … yet cars get the priority,” she said.
Mark Cohoe, executive director of Bike Winnipeg, lauded Wiens’ new designation as an important step in the organization’s multi-pronged approach to advocating for a bike-safe city.
“It’s important that the bike mayor is able to tell the stories of people on bikes to help people overcome barriers to biking,” Cohoe said.
The executive director says connectivity between Winnipeg neighbourhoods is a hurdle to getting more bums in bike seats and is top of mind for the non-profit, which has been working with the city on bike infrastructure projects since 2015.
Theft is also a deterrent, Wiens and Cohoe say. Although Winnipeg Police Service statistics show an overall decrease in the number of reported stolen bicycles in recent years, 1,452 were still reported pilfered in 2023. That’s compared to 2,098 in 2018.
To combat the theft, council announced a new program in which Winnipeggers can register their bikes for free using the city’s cloud-based Garage 529 service.
Bikes registered in the database can be used by police when attempting to return recovered bikes.
“The next step is to advocate for secure bike parking, especially in the downtown area. If we have more secure parking, more people are likely to ride their bikes instead of their cars,” Wiens said.
Wiens will be calling on the city to install secure bike parking in the Exchange District and look for areas to incorporate bikes in the design for the Portage Place overhaul.
nicole.buffie(a)freepress.mb.ca<mailto:nicole.buffie@freepress.mb.ca>
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The City of Winnipeg is hiring a Road Safety Outreach Coordinator who will be responsible for developing and implementing road safety educational programming and improving road safety culture in Winnipeg. The position includes strong components of research, program development and evaluation, education, partnerships and outreaching, and community engagement/mobilization. Please see the attached posting for more details.
Online applications can be submitted at www.winnipeg.ca/hr<http://www.winnipeg.ca/hr> and the posting closes on May 22, 2024.
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Seeing how the other half rides in Amsterdam
OPINION
https://www.winnipegfreepress.com/arts-and-life/2024/05/04/seeing-how-the-o…
A CONFESSION: I haven’t been on my bike in two summers. This isn’t my first long breakup with a bicycle. From the ages of 13 to 31, I didn’t go anywhere near a bike following a pretty significant wipeout that left me with an arm studded with bloody pebbles and a contusion at the top of my pelvis.
Lately, I’ve been trying to figure out what this recent avoidance has been about because here’s the thing: I love riding my bike. In fact, I’d go as far as to say that cycling is one of my preferred methods of both physical activity and transportation.
And then, last month, I went to Amsterdam.
The capital of the Netherlands isn’t just one of the most bike-friendly cities in the world; cycling is woven into Dutch culture. I was in awe of not only the sheer number of people out cycling — even in terribly windy, rainy, sleety weather, I will add — but the number of parked bikes crowding every available public space.
Most Dutch cyclists I witnessed weren’t clad in spandex or athleisure (or helmets, for that matter); they were dressed for their destinations. Others had clearly taken their bikes to run errands, balancing groceries and, on more than one occasion, bouquets of flowers.
I was in awe of how smooth and well-maintained the bike lanes looked. (I was too intimidated to try for myself.)
I had never been anywhere like that, a place where cyclists, not motorists, seemed to be the ruling class. A place that’s the diametric opposite of Winnipeg, basically.
Of course, this fact doesn’t always make for an idyll. “Watch out for the bikes,” the friend I was travelling with cautioned me and this proved to be good advice.
As a pedestrian, it’s not enough to “look both ways” in Amsterdam; you have to look left-right-left again, otherwise you will almost certainly be mowed over by a cyclist. Or at the very least yelled at.
But still, I was jealous. I would love to be the kind of person who could ride to the bakery to pick up a loaf of bread and then meet a friend for a coffee. I’d love to be a commuter cyclist, riding to and from work to build some fresh air and fitness into my day. I would love to do all these things without the threat of being run off the road by a car that could injure me or worse.
And that’s when I had an epiphany. I love riding my bike. I don’t love riding my bike in Winnipeg.
Honestly? I’m scared to ride my bike in Winnipeg. Whenever I do ride my bike — which is never, these days — I stick to paths that do not share the road with vehicles.
I can’t bear to be yelled at, again, for turning left from the correct lane because motorists think I shouldn’t even be there. (I only make right-hand turns if I can help it, which is, uh, limiting.)
Being a cyclist in Winnipeg feels a bit like being a pedestrian in Amsterdam, except a cyclist probably won’t kill you if they hit you.
It’s very hard to adopt any kind of lifestyle when there is no systemic support for that lifestyle.
It’s hard to “eat healthy” if you live in a food desert. It’s hard to have work-life balance if your workplace culture punishes you for taking vacation and rewards being the “last to leave.” It’s hard to balance career goals with having a family if childcare is inaccessible. It’s hard to leave your car at home if you don’t live in a walkable neighbourhood.
So, I can express a desire, as an individual, to adopt a Dutch attitude towards cycling, but it’s hard to actually live out that desire in a place not built for it.
Still, being around all those bikes in Amsterdam has inspired me to get back on mine. One person on one bicycle does not a bicycle-friendly city make, but hey — it’s one more bike out on the road.
jen.zoratti(a)winnipegfreepress.com<mailto:jen.zoratti@winnipegfreepress.com>