To help reduce smog in the city and climate change, there are people busily working away at alternative transport options, which include cycling.
This Saturday, join fellow cyclists and bike activists for a group ride across Bloor-Danforth, where TakeTheTooker.ca supporters envision a bikeway connecting cyclists from Mississauga to Scarborough through the downtown core — a living legacy for bike advocate Tooker Gomberg.
In the lead-up to the municipal election, Take the Tooker and cycling advocates are lobbying City Council candidates for a Bloor-Danforth bikeway — the group ride is part of the campaign. There is a list of the Councillors along the Bloor Danforth line here.
Two groups will ride to the Bloor and Spadina parkette, one from the east end (Kennedy Station) and the other from the west end (Kipling Station). There are more details on the Cycling Cog website.
After the ride, you can join a group viewing of The Amazing History of the Bicycle in Toronto at the Market Gallery on Front Street. Beer after.
(Take the Tooker advocates would like media contacts to know that there were 30 to 40 bell-ringing, horn-tooting riders on their September group ride.)
Photo courtesy of Martino’s Bike Lane Diary
4 comments
Just a caveat: let’s not assume that cycling by itself will have a positive effect on “global warming”. The “fuel” used by cyclists (food) takes huge amounts of energy to raise, transport, market, and cook. Whether or not a person contributes fewer greenhouse gasses by cycling therefore depends on a number of complex factors. These include: what the cyclist eats, what percentage of calories he or she burns in cycling, whether the cyclist dedicates caloric consumption to riding (or whether a cyclist makes an effort to lose weight).Cycling offers huge personal benefits in health, fitness, and control over your life. It offers considerable civic benefits by reducing congestion and traffic noise. Green house gasses and saving the planet… a little tougher case to make here.
A person is going to eat no matter if they ride a bike or drive a car. If they make the swith to a bike, they WILL reduce green house gasses. There is nothing that can dispute that. Cars contribute 50% of all greenhouse gases — So no matter what alogrithm you want to work from, switching to a bike will be a significant reduction of personal contribution to greenhosue gas.
I do not buy into your theroy John.
Actually, bicycling advocates (besides myself) will tell you that selecting the diet you use for cycling does matter. You can find a pretty good balanced discussion of the role of oil in our food production here; you’ll find the pessimistic version here.Bottom line: we don’t get the energy we use in bicycling from nothing, and it doesn’t do to pretend that taking your bike simply eliminates emissions associated with energy production. Cycling can, and does, have highly beneficial effects on the planet, but you have to have respect for the complexity of these issues. A simple “four wheels bad, two wheels good” attitude won’t accomplish that.
Hi John et all – thanks for posts and critiques, and yes, we’re all gashouse greens and energy pigs one way or another, but the energetics of hypermobility in all forms (direct or embodied) tends to be somewhat ahead of the energy from food fueltransport, but sometimes it’s not – likely coffee, bananas,chocolates, sugar – being some examples. The harm to things from mobile furnaces (cars) I feel is likely way beyond being a hypocrite with eating and drinking some things. But it’s still a very valid general point; our food miles are very high, though it’s often very tasty.