Presto has been in the news quite a bit lately. I had a cranky-making experience with being unexpectedly out of tokens on a cold night and having the fancy Spadina streetcar-platform machine refuse to sell me one unless I had exact change (the machines CAN take Interac or Visa, but don’t — the option is […]
Category: Transportation
This is a picture I did not take
of a long line of idling cars waiting to get into the gas station, as I rode by on a bicycle powered only by sweat.
It’s not the headphones
Here we have an article exploring pedestrian-vehicle crashes “in which the pedestrian was using headphones“. Results There were 116 reports of death or injury of pedestrians wearing headphones. The majority of victims were male (68%) and under the age of 30 (67%). The majority of vehicles involved in the crashes were trains (55%), and 89% […]
Bixi – some first impressions
I finally got my Bixi key last Wednesday, hurray! But I had to wait with tappy-footed impatience to try it out since I wasn’t downtown until today. I’ve been looking forward to its launch, as my own bike has been languishing due to the need to take the subway to get M to school and […]
An encouragement: bike commuting
In honour of Bike Month, here’s how to die on a bicycle: Fall under the rear wheels of a large vehicle (bus, dump truck, transport truck, etc.) which is turning or otherwise at an angle to the cyclist. The Coroner’s Report from a decade or so ago has many more details, but that’s the easiest […]
Sometimes the TTC rocks
On my ride home the other day I ended up stopped at a red light. There was a streetcar right next to me so when he honked I looked up to see if I was the target of the honk. But no, he was looking at another streetcar on the other side of the red […]
M’s new bike
M’s new bike Originally uploaded by morecoffeeplease. She chose the red one over the white-and-pink one. I hold out hope that perhaps the pink phase might be nearing its end. Of course, finding a bell that matched the bike’s frame colour was THE most important thing. We spent some time practicing starts and stops at […]
Random advice to at least six cyclists in Chinatown last Thursday
CHAIN OIL. That is all.
Pantsless on the TTC
A silly but entertaining stunt/prank/bit of performance art/whatever from Improv in Toronto: the annual No Pants Subway Ride. Gotta love all the people in the background studiously ignoring the whole thing and just getting on with their day… SO Toronto. (No, I didn’t participate. -9C is a bit cold for my lizard blood.)
Hey, let’s make quiet cars louder!
No, no, no. This is just mad: Hybrid Cars Too Quiet For Pedestrian Safety? Add Engine Noise, Say Researchers Important pedestrian safety issues have emerged with the advent of hybrid and electric vehicles. These vehicles are relatively quiet—they do not emit the sounds pedestrians and bicyclists are accustomed to hearing as a vehicle approaches them […]
Drive: A road trip through our complicated affair with the automobile
Drive: A road trip through our complicated affair with the automobile by Tim Falconer Falconer talks about the history of automobiles, Detroit then and now, car culture, the quirks of traffic, urban sprawl, and much more, all structured around a long road trip of his own. Somehow he manages to treat all the various viewpoints […]
The most underwhelming “green” product possibly ever
This, my friends, is a Cadillac Escalade hybrid. “Green by design!” It is still a car, likely to carry only one person and a box of kleenex from point A to point B. It is still the size of a small moon, taking up an unreasonable share of common space. It is only 25% more […]
I have nothing to add
Quotation of the Day for September 8, 2008 “Bicycling is a big part of the future. It has to be. There’s something wrong with a society that drives a car to workout in a gym.” – Bill Nye, the Science Guy.
On the way home
My colleagues and I settled into our VIA trip yesterday. The snack cart went by, then the conductor came by to collect our tickets, perhaps 30 minutes out of Windsor. Just as the conductor was returning our ticket stubs his radio squawked: “Uh, we just hit something, over”. “OK” responds the conductor tersely, disappears. The […]
They don’t make it easy
$244 to Vancouver, or $245 to Paris? Well now. Good coffee in both places, but Vancouver baguettes cannot possibly compare…
Pedestrians notice this too
Quotation of the Day for October 5, 2007 “This is the basis of car culture, the idea that the world and all of the world’s people are merely in its way.” – Travis Hugh Culley, in The Immortal Class: Bike Messengers and the Cult of Human Power.
Outside
I always end up reading Outside magazine on airplanes. I compulsively buy it in airports. Is it just because airport newsstands have a terrible selection, forcing me to choose between Maxim and Today’s Bride before I finally spy Outside hiding behind a pillar? Maybe. There I am jammed tightly in a tin can with a […]
Meme: In how many metros around the world have you been?
Got at b3co.com!
Unsafe driving behaviour and four wheel drive vehicles: observational study
A study done in London compared cellphone use and seatbelt use for normal cars and 4-wheel-drive behemoths. The results will surprise noone: Results Drivers of four wheel drive vehicles were more likely than drivers of other cars to be seen using hand held mobile phones (8.2% v 2.0%) and not complying with the law on […]
Good for Olivia
Via BikeToronto — Olivia Chow wants to introduce a private members’ bill to require sideguards on trucks. About time.