On Wednesday, January 30, 2019, Brampton Council carried a motion that considered the following:
The City is facing an epidemic with elevated rates of diabetes
Traffic congestion and gridlock negatively impacts health, quality of life and the environment in our city, and there is an immediate need to support alternative means of transportation
Brampton’s reliance on the automobile is the most expensive choice for commuting due to increasing costs such as auto-insurance and fuel prices
The current transportation design of the city limits alternative options to commute outside automobile and transit
Cycling is a sustainable means of transportation which will lead to better health outcomes, reduced healthcare costs, reduced traffic congestion, reduced road infrastructure costs, and helps to improve the environment
Brampton has a growing cycling community supported by organizations, innovators, and programs such as BikeBrampton, BikeWrx, Pedalwise, and The Bikeport
Council moved that $1.875 Million immediately establish a Project Budget to be utilized to begin implementing an active transportation plan with North-South and East-West cycling routes, with the Council Member appointed to the Cycling Advisory Committee (Councillor Santos), and the Mayor in coordination with city staff, report back to Council by April 1, 2019, on a potential implementation plan.
Over the next 2 months, The Bikeport and BikeBrampton had several meetings with Councillor Santos and Brampton City Staff. We arrived at amiable recommendations and presented them to the Committee of Council on April 3, 2019. Dayle Laing of BikeBrampton gave the delegation.
Kevin Montgomery followed-up with a presentation regarding “The Value of A Dollar”, which presented information from various sources such as CAA and the Region of Peel, in a model similar to one now being used in Copenhagen and the EU to assess the value of bicycle infrastructure.
Whether you ride year-round or are just getting to taking your bike out for the year, here is a small list of things to check as warmer weather and more sunshine approaches.
Check your bell.
By law, bicycles need to have a working bell, horn, or gong. If your’s isn’t up to par, check out the selection of bells available through The Bikeport.
30 Days of Biking (a.k.a., 30DOB) is a pledge to ride your bike every day in April — any distance, any destination, in any kind of weather — and share your experiences online with the hashtag #30daysofbiking.
Android devices have a neat feature called Google Fit. Google Fit has teamed up with the World Health Organization to produce two activity goals: Move Minutes and Heart Points.
Move Minutes are basically defined as minutes when you’re being physically active. Heart Points are awarded for every minute of moderate activity like “a brisk walk that’s over 100 steps per minute”. Two Heart Points are awarded for every minutes of more intense workouts.
Why Does This Matter?
People are not active enough. The World Health Organization recommends at least 150 minutes of moderate exercise, or 75 minutes of vigorous exercise, or a combination of both every week.
Sound like a lot? It might be if you have to go out of your way to make time for activity. It’s not so difficult when you integrate bicycles as transport.
Google Fit counts a minute of modest cycling as 1 Heart Point. If a bicycle is used just for commuting for 5 days per week, 30 minutes per day, you would only have to travel for 15 minutes each way to meet the minimum amount of recommended exercise. Using a bicycle for additional transport trips such as shopping and other errands — including going to the gym — is a bonus.
For Valentines Day, show yourself some love. Consider how to integrate a bicycle as transport into your life to earn points for your own heart. The Bikeport offers Cycling Courses that can help with this goal.
Much of the conversation around using bicycles as transport tends to focus on education and the need for political support to build infrastructure — separated bike lanes. But there is an often overlooked topic that is important. Even if people are able to use their bicycle to get to their destination, then what? Where do they put their bicycle?
Bicycle Parking Minimum Requirements
The City of Brampton recently published a draft technical paper on parking and loading standards. The document identifies opportunities to improve bicycle parking supply by implementing minimum bicycle parking requirements.
That’s starting to change.
The City of Brampton recently published a draft technical paper on parking and loading standards. In it, the document identifies opportunities to improve bicycle parking supply by implementing minimum bicycle parking requirements.
The document recognizes that minimum bicycle parking requirements are not presently included in the City of Brampton Zoning By-law. This has resulted in low or inconsistent availability in bicycle parking supply. More bicycle parking supply can increase the convenience and security of cycling and provide an alternative to automobile parking.
The document further proposes to analyze travel patterns for areas of higher cycling activity and to further promote cycling by providing bicycle parking in lieu of automobile parking.
Adequate bicycle parking supply is sometimes a missing piece in using bicycles as transport. That the City of Brampton is starting to consider how to address this is excellent news for carfree transportation.
On December 5, 2018, Kevin Montgomery delegated to Brampton Committee of Council to talk about The Bikeport and bicycles as an equitable transport choice in the City of Brampton.
It was a long one: 11 hours! The video below is advanced to where Kevin’s delegation begins and is followed by questions from the Committee of Council.
Below the video is a transcript of Kevin’s delegation.
Video
Transcript
Good morning everyone.
First, I want to open by saying “congratulations” to everybody here. It was a very exciting election and every one of you have well earned your place here, so, well done all of you.
A little bit about me — I haven’t really had a chance to introduce myself to everyone here. I started The Bikeport a few years ago primarily with the goal to enable people to discover how to integrate using bicycles in their everyday lives. As for myself, I’ve been a Brampton resident all my life, but I’ve been car-free — that is free of car ownership — since 2011. I’m a Certified User Experience Designer and also a Registered CAN-BIKE Instructor. What that allows me to do apart from giving cycling instruction is that I pay particular attention to things like the data accumulation and feedback, and consider how to improve the user experience of using a bicycle, for everyone.
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Throughout the election, there were some common election themes that came up. Missing from this list (in the slide deck) that was discussed recently, of course, is “economic development”. But we heard things like Crime and community safety concerns. We heard issues regarding congestion and road safety, health and healthcare and of course, taxes, car insurance and generally things affecting our home budget and our bottom lines.
Further, with a change in the political landscape, there might be some challenges on the horizon about how do we get funding for larger capital projects in the City of Brampton. So, we need to consider: How do we better use the resources that are available to us.
But, what if I said, there is a cost-effective way to address all of these issues?
With that in mind, I want to introduce the idea of Bicycles As Transport. This is a theme that I’ve been starting to build up a little bit over this year. The idea being: To use bicycles to enable people to connect to their communities.
One of the things that happened during the course of the election was that there was also a neighbourhood audit. One of the beautiful things about active transport, and bicycles in particular: Daily neighbourhood audits if you have enough people using this as a transport tool.
Resolving congestion: You can fit a lot more people on bicycles in the same space as a car. You can get as much as 4-5x more throughput in the same lane-width as a car with people using bicycles.
Improvements to mental and physical health to perhaps reduce some of the burden on our medical services in the City of Brampton. Of course, we know about the issues ongoing through there.
And of course, unless one chooses to take out a separate claim [sic] (policy), there’s no insurance, no gas costs. There’s a far better return on investment for your home budget and of course, for the use of taxes in the City of Brampton.
And, bicycles can be useful transport tools. As you can see here (in the slide), here are some examples. I’ve owned a few cargo bikes now. Here are some pictures of what I get to experience on a day-to-day basis when people are out there using their bicycles. There’s a lot of opportunities. I think there’s definitely an untapped market for supporting using bicycles as transportation.
Ultimately, I think my ask of Council is to challenge yourselves to broaden your scope of how bicycles can be used in the City of Brampton. To think bigger than recreation, but to think of transportation equity in the sense of any conversation that involves parking or addressing traffic concerns. These are also opportunities to make strides toward equitable solutions of other transportation modes and bicycles in particular.
Everyone should be able to get from anywhere, to anywhere, on a bicycle in the City of Brampton, safely and comfortably — or even more so — as taking a car.
[button href=”http://www.brampton.ca/EN/City-Hall/meetings-agendas/Committee%20of%20Council%202010/20181205cwmn.pdf”]See Public Meeting Minutes[/button]
Looking for ideas for stocking stuffers and other gift-giving events throughout the month of December? Check out these curated holiday gift ideas from The Bikeport.
The purpose of the Carbon Reduction Challenge was to encourage Brampton Bike Hub’s Pedalwise protégés to use their bikes as often as possible to get to destinations. The Challenge did its job and then some!
The Bikeport is happy to be a data partner for this initiative. The data from this program has provided valuable insights and will help define similar programs in the future. Stay tuned!
Sometimes, it’s the simple things that make all the difference.
It probably sounds obvious to anyone who has already discovered the joy of a bike basket, but there’s something immensely practical about not having to worry about backpacks or pannier bags when you want to run a quick errand to the grocery store.
