The vast majority of cyclists are frequently making these errors on the roads. Anyone who recognises and corrects their errors can cycle more safely, confidently and efficiently. Up until last week I was regularly making these mistakes too. However, a 2 hour course I completed last Thursday, by the highly recommended Cycle Training UK, completely changed my cycling technique. Here are the mistakes commonly made and how they can be corrected. 1. Riding where cars can’t see you Perhaps the most frequent error made by new cyclists is riding in the gutter or too near the pavement. This often feels safer as you believe you are out of the way of cars. However, it is actually far more dangerous. For a start it encourages drivers to attempt risky manoeuvres when there is clearly not enough space to overtake you. You are also less visible not only to cars but also to...
News: May 2010
May
May
New York (CNN) -- When writer-actor John Leguizamo shows up to do a show in New York, fans outside the theater are surprised to see him ride up on a bicycle. "People go, 'Hey, John, I thought you'd be in a limo.' "This is my limo, my green limo. I'm saving the planet for your kids and your grandkids," says the performer, who has starred in award-winning one-man shows on Broadway and appeared in dozens of films and TV shows. Biking gets you places faster, reduces your carbon footprint, lowers noise, makes you fit and lowers your stress level -- unless you get impaled on the door of a suddenly opened cab or cut off by a guy from New Jersey. Leguizamo thinks urban biking is a form of transportation that dramatically improves the environment and riders' physical and mental health. New York City's government shares Leguizamo's enthusiasm about biking, having...
May
About a year ago, we wrote about the trial of new physically separated bike lanes on Vancouver's Burrard bridge. Time has passed, wheels have turned. So how did the trial work out? StreetFilms has just released a video about it, and apparently cycling is up by about 1/3 on the Burrard bridge since the protected bike lanes were added. As Kari Hewett of the Vancouver Bicycle Advisory Committee says near the end of the video, we hope that other cities will look at this as an example of what to do. Via StreetFilms. See also: Find Out Why Bicycle Magazine Named Minneapolis #1 Bike-Friendly City in the US (Video)Good one! http://www.treehugger.com/files/2010/05/vancouver-burrard-bridge-protected-bike-lanes-bicycles-cycling-video.php
May
David Cameron's cycling travails continued this morning when he stepped out of his home in Notting Hill to discover that his bike had been stolen for the second time in a year. The Tory leader was spared the prospect of catching the bus to work when his Parliamentary aide offered up his own bicycle and told his boss that he would run to Westminster instead. Desmond Swayne, the MP for New Forest West, said: "His need was greater; the party would have expected nothing less." Mr Cameron arrived safely in time for his weekly briefing ahead of Prime Minister's Questions, riding into Parliament Square alongside George Osborne, the Shadow Chancellor. The same bicycle was stolen last summer when Mr Cameron chained it to a three-foot bollard outside a shop on Portobello Road. The opportunist simply lifted it off the post and disappeared. After Mr Cameron was pictured in newspapers wandering...
May
The Nelson Environment Centre (NEC) has created the role of a full-time General Manager to oversee and align its two entities - the Nelson Recycling Centre in Vivian Place and the team working on raising community awareness on waste education, climate change, renewable energy and other sustainability initiatives at the soon to be completed Sustainability Centre. The NEC receives funding to fulfill a range of contracts. These contracts require regular negotiation, management and review. Reporting to the Governance Committee, you will: implement the business plan be an effective leader of 28 part-time and fulltime staff, interns and volunteers seek funding for new and existing projects and programmes have excellent stakeholder communication skills have the requisite financial, project and people management skills identify further opportunities for growth...
May
Anne and Patrick indicated they'd had some indication of maintenance options from Egressive, but didn't have it avaialbe on Saturday. I'm interested to see the option and prices , as well as knowingif Egressive have us locked in to using them. They host the site, and presumably we pay them for that. does the hosting contract have an element of maintenance and security built in since the site was also developed by them?What thigns are we free to take on ourselves?what things are we free to contract out to other parties? presumably some of this can occur as I understand the integratio with CiviCRM is being done by someone else.
May
In the spring, biking feels so comfortable and natural happy cyclists are left wondering why they would ever drive or take public transport. Then summer hits and that pleasant morning ride becomes a sweaty nightmare. One way to fight the heat and humidity is to let the bike do some—if not all—of the work for you.Good writes: Electric bikes are not for the tiny-hatted bike geeks leaning over racks of $400 carbon fiber wheels at your local bike shop. They're not even for people who are happily biking to work already. Electric bicycles are for people who would otherwise drive. In other words: people who know nothing about bikes, much less the electrified kind.From Treehugger.com
May
Portland, Oregon is becoming a premier location for cargo bike innovation - Clever Cycles blazed this trail in 2007 by starting to import Dutch Bakfiets cargo boxes and other specialty cargo solutions, and Joe-Bike and Metrofiets are taking a lead in handmade custom-built cargo bikes. There's so much happening that it can be a little daunting for the uninitiated. If you already know that you'll want to haul kids and cargo on a utility bike but have a low threshold for tech talk, how do you figure out what works? Mostly by test driving - it turns out that choosing a cargo bike and kid hauler is a personal affair. Click forward to read about five fabulous kid and cargo utility bikes at a variety of price points, to get your wheels turning. Photo courtesy Yuba Mundo. 1. Yuba Mundo Is A Cargo-Carrying Minivan.Yuba Mundo cargo bike v3.0, which was designed by a former...
May
Recently the Ministry of Transport and NZTA made an amendment to rule 41001/5, which specifies the dimensions that vahicles must comply with. The amendment generally relates to heavy vehicles such as trucks transporting frieght, but the Rule also includes a number of other changes that address issues raised by the transport industry or local authorities. The amendment Rule:* extends the overall length allowed for certain types of ‘rigid bus’ to reflect the dimensions currently permitted for some buses under exemptions;* allows buses to be fitted with bicycle racks, which may project beyond the allowed overall length or dimension of the vehicle;"A bicycle rack fitted to the front of a bus... is not included in determining the overall length or forward distance of the bus, provided that the vehicle complies with the appliable swept path performance measures in Schedule 8...
May
The creative team at Elements cafe who will be catering for us on Saturday would like to know how many of us prefer not to eat our animal friends. In the interests of expediency please mail me directly and i will communicate to Scott at elements. benefieldn@npdc.govt.nz Thanks a million Nathaniel
May
Campaigners for a tolled pedestrian and cycle path across Auckland Harbour Bridge have attracted a leading coastal development company to build and operate it as a joint venture. Orewa-based Hopper Developments - with pioneering projects such as canal housing and marina schemes at Pauanui, Whitianga and Marsden Pt under its belt - has signed a heads of agreement to work with a walking and cycling charitable trust on a $16 million pathway over the bridge. Architects and structural engineers have already produced a concept design for a shared pathway beneath the bridge's southbound clip-on, which the Getacross Campaign presented last week to the Transport Agency as custodians of Auckland's 51-year-old transport lifeline. The concept differs from a proposal by Transport Agency consultants, rejected by the agency's board in 2008, which was for separate paths to be cantilevered at...
May
You Have to See Those Near-Crashes Our friends at StreetFilms sat down with Tom Vanderbilt, the author of the excellent book Traffic: Why We Drive the Way We Do (which Lloyd reviewed a couple years ago). If you ever drive a car, you should read it, or at least watch this interview. It is very scary to learn just how our evolved mechanisms start to fail when we drive, and how less aware of our environment we are. The sequence where they show footage from spy cams in cars that are having accidents is quite telling. See video hereFrom treehugger.com and streetfilms.org
May
I recently spent several days in Kochi Japan, a city of around 400,000 population on the mainly rural Island of Shikoku. Shikoku is the smallest and least populated of the four main Japanese Islands, but still has more people than all of New Zealand. The climate is not unlike that of Northland. The Island is about 200 km wide and between 120 and 80 km from top to bottom. There are four big cities on Shikoku all around 400,000, and Kochi is on the South side of the island. The Centre of the city, as with most Japanese cities is the Railway Station, all other transport radiates from there. In Kochi, the modern Station is the terminus of bus and tram lines and the station incorporates huge parking areas for bicycles. All the footpaths I saw in the city were clearly divided between the bicycles and pedestrians. This photo...