Skip to content

Canadian Urbanism Uncovered

A girl I admire

Read more articles by

Crossposted to I Bike TO
A 16-year-old Toronto teenager tells the National Post about her harrowing experience trying to commute to her summer job…by bike.

In her story, she asks this eternal question: Usually — and generously — cyclists move to the side of the road to allow faster moving vehicles to pass. Why do motorists never show the same respect for cyclists?

Read her full story.

Recommended

4 comments

  1. This lovely young woman shows a lot of understanding. Too bad most of my peers, at more than twice her age, have so much less sense. If it’s not enough for our car culture to endanger those who cannot afford a car and others who choose to commute by bike, we endanger our youth every day. Shame!

  2. http://clevercycles.com/?p=180

    Who would have thought the Dutch needed encouragement to bicycle? Why don’t we have these? Car lobby?

    You don’t need any Dutch to get the jokes. Watch them all, the last is the best: as far as I can tell, the gangsters laugh at the man for coming to dinner by bike before getting in their car.

  3. The one stretch of GLen Road has been rough for years, just like another nearby piece of South Drive. Maybe it’s traffic calming, but it seems strange that we can borrow $25M to re-do a single km of nearby Bloor, maybe with bike lanes, but smoother pavement often eludes us.
    Presumably this cycliste knows to go over the the ped crossing bridge over the railway tracks at the top of MacLennan at the west end of Summerhill to avoid a lot of the car-azy roads, though many drivers are okay.
    But it seems that a simple act of riding a bike gets one to be a “roadical”.
    Of more concern may be the implications of the cuts to road repairs unless they’re “emergencies” – for whom?, a car-cooned, or a cyclist. The roads are bad enough as it is, and the gutters where we are by law supposed to ride in kinda, are more subject to the problems of freeze-thaw cycles than the crown of the road. More systemic prejudice against safe cycling! with the threat of violence by being run over by a member of the cartillery if we get out of line or in the way.

  4. I bike, drive and _walk_ in the city. There are pluses and minuses to all roles. The key thing for _all_ roles is to be patient, allow that other people will be idiots from time to time and leave yourself some extra time for the commute.(not that I do consistently) Oh yeah and you know your tax dollars? Entrophy rules and they’re kind of necessary for pothole (and road and infrastructure) repair.

    Come with me on _my_ ride from Parklawn to Parkdale.