Walking and Biking as Gateway Drugs to Social Awareness
Yvette Tendick
May 9. 2010
Now I will introduce myself a little further. My name again is Yvette Tendick. I am from McGregor, which is a town outside Windsor. My husband Mark and daughter Michelle and I moved to Guelph 2 1/2 years ago, following my other daughter Sarah, who attended the University of Guelph. When we visited Sarah we would stay at the Gilbertsons, who shamelessly lured us to move to this city with canoe rides on the Eramosa and breakfasts at Eggcetera.
Several things inspired my talk today; from reading the works of the legendary urban visionary Jane Jacobs, “Death and life of Great American cities,” to James Kunstler, “the Geography of Nowhere, to the work of Andres Duany, who is a renowned planner in the new urbanist movement. Also the good old CBC sometimes has excellent broadcasts of issues around these topics.
I bet some of you are wondering what might be so special about two rather mundane activities, walking and bicycling that I would want to base a whole UU service around them. After all, they are activities that are done everyday by most people, especially the walking part. You don’t need any special training to do them, like you do with yoga, or scuba diving for example.
Well a whole lot that makes them important, as it turns out. Bicycling and walking have a lot to do in common with several of the UU principles. In fact, I have come to believe that walking and biking are such essential activities that cities should be designed to prioritize them by providing wider sidewalks, more bicycle lanes including segregated ones, and far less priority to the personal automobile. There I said it. I think, as a society, we need to bicycle more, walk more, and definitely drive less, and I want to live in a city that encourages us to do so by providing the essential infrastructure to accomplish these goals.
How did I come to be so drawn to these activities?
It all started simply enough, as addictions do. I was 12 years old. My family somehow inherited an old girl’s bike. It was too big for me but since it was a girl’s bike, I could hop on and off, so I was able to teach myself how to ride it. I grew up on a 75 acre farm in Essex County and I rode the bike up and down the lane ways. When I turned 14, I moved to exploring the country roads, much to my mother’s frustration (I was using energy riding a bicycle that I could have been using helping my mother). I often rode barefoot and always with no helmet, no padded shorts or even a water bottle. I would ride for many kilometers at a time, not doing it for exercise but for the feeling of freedom and independence that was not achievable for me up to that point. I was hooked.
Walking and I have had a long history together as well. I began walking through the fields as a child and then in my university years adopted walking as a stress reliever. During a particularly difficult year at school I would cut class somewhat regularly and walk from my townhouse in Waterloo to downtown Kitchener and back. It was a natural antidote to dealing with the stress I was feeling. I have since adopted walking as a way of getting some fresh air and regular exercise on my way to work or to downtown.
I have many angles in which I would like to explore my position that bicycling and walking have very significant benefits to those who engage in them and for society at large. Some of these angles are obvious. I will start with those.
Of course one obvious reason a person should walk or bike is because these activities are non polluting. Everyone knows, except for the occasional climate change denialist, that burning fossil fuels is a major contributor to global warming, and personal vehicle use is a major contributor to burning fossil fuels. I felt energized when I looked at the posters on the wall at my school just last Friday from the children who returned from the grade 5 Earthkeeper program, where you could see that they made the connection with car use and pollution, and bicycle use as an alternative to polluting. When riding a bike or walking, you don’t have to worry about whether your car is gasoline powered, or a hybrid, as the only energy being burned is the calories put in your body. Since we UU’s are concerned about our seventh principle, respect for the interdependent web of all existence of which we are a part, we should, in theory anyway, support bicycling as a viable alternative to car use. Most Guelphites travel 5km or less to work, so other than in the dead of winter, bikes are a great way to travel. We need more bicycle lanes that take us to useful destinations, and separated lanes too so that people feel safe. I would hazard a guess that more people would ride more often if they did not feel that they themselves or their children were at risk of being struck by a vehicle while riding. Not only that, but the more cyclists there are the safer it is for any individual to cycle.
Of course another reason for promoting cycling is the cost benefit ratio of using the bicycle as a primary mode of transportation. There is little cost to riding a bike except for the initial outlay. And if you ride your bike and forgo the car altogether, you save from $6,000 to $10,000 a year according to CAA. Think of what you could do with that money.. One of our brand new members here, who read “Duck on a Bike,” had managed without a car for many years, and with her savings from not having a car, managed to take a year off work last year to travel through India and Nepal. Now that sounds like much more fun than paying for insurance and going for emissions testing.
The third obvious reason is exercise. Bicycling in particular burns calories, can prevent obesity, diabetes, heart problems, and can reduce health care costs if done regularly. If you use bicycling or walking as a method of transportation, you kill 3, not 2, birds with one stone. You save money on health clubs, it keeps you fit, and you don’t have to find extra time in the day for an exercise routine. I find that it is helpful to incorporate fitness in your daily lifestyle instead of entrusting a fitness routine to something outside your normal activities. Fitness clubs know that 60% of their members never return to the club after the first three months; in fact that is built in to their business model. It is because, I think, life gets in the way. It is too great a commitment. But if you use your bike or feet as regular transportation, this is less likely to happen.
A similar theme to the exercise one is the benefits of walking and bicycling for mental health. It turns out that exercise is found to be as effective as anti-depressants for the treatment of mild to moderate depression, according to the National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence, and seconded by another armchair expert, me, who certainly enjoys the endorphins being released while I partake in these activities.
These are the most obvious reasons for bicycling and walking, and if I stopped here I would have proven my point, I think. But as I mentioned earlier I’ve done a lot of thinking and reading on the subject of land use planning and I now know that there is so much more to it
Have you ever thought about how bicycling and walking could connect with our first and second UU principles, “The inherent worth and dignity of every person” and “the need for justice, equity and compassion for all?” Well, although I have no idea if a fellow named Enrique Penalosa is a UU member, he certainly thinks in these terms.
I first heard of Enrique Penalosa while listening to the CBC a couple of years ago. Enrique Penalosa has become a land use advisor for city planners all around the world, because of work he did in Bogota, Columbia, a city of 7 million. He became the mayor of Bogota in 1998, during the time that the city had been on the map for years for being a very poor, congested, crime infested city. He also had to deal with a group of consultants from Japan who wanted to solve Bogota’s congestion problems by building an 8-lane elevated highway for the 30% of the population who owned cars. Enrique knew that the motives of these consulting companies were to put more Toyotas and Hondas on the road so he decided to spend those millions that would be used on highway infrastructure another way.
First off, he used that money to fund public schools and libraries for the city’s poor. Next, rather than attempting to reduce congestion by building more roads (which, has been proven by the way, to increase congestion in the long run,) Mayor Penalosa reduced congestion by making the city more pedestrian and bike friendly as well as more inconvenient and expensive for car drivers to get around. First off, he made it illegal to park cars on the sidewalks which believe it or not was common practice prior to his becoming mayor. Next, he expanded the bicycle and pedestrian networks by 300 kilometers, including pedestrian promenades in poor neighborhoods. As well, he planted over 100,000 trees to create more attractive public spaces. He also created a new and highly efficient bus-based transit system called the “transmilenia.”
But all those changes weren’t enough for Enrique. He decided to do something very drastic. He pioneered a “Car Free Day”, which by the way, has been picked up by various cities around the world, including our Guelph’s very first car free day which will be on September 20th of this year. But when Penalosa picked a day, it wasn’t a Sunday like cities that participate do now, it was a Thursday. A workday! Can you imagine, being told, that say, on Thursday, May 13, for example, it would be illegal for you to drive your car in Guelph? He gave people plenty of notice to make arrangements: Go to work by bike, on foot, public transit, telecommute, whatever. Just not by car. All of these ideas put forward by Enrique were considered scandalous by the business owners and others. They were going to lose money! They worried that if people wouldn’t come downtown at all on “Car free day”, and couldn’t park their cars freely the other days, it would spell financial disaster for their city.
The end result was that the opposite happened. On the “Car Free Day”, families came out in droves, enjoying the city. On that day and the other days, people flocked to the cafes and the shops because it was safe and inviting to do so. In fact, his initiatives became so popular that the once a year “Car Free Day” was voted in by referendum the following year, along with legislation beginning in 2015 making it illegal to drive a car on all streets during rush hour. As well, the economy of Bogota improved, and crime went down in the ten years since then by a whopping 70 percent. In terms of bicycle use, the city went from virtually no bicycle use to 350,000 people using bicycles every day. Enrique’s objective for making these changes was quantified by him this way. He wanted his citizens to be happy. He wanted them to have a good quality of life.
Other cities have found, as well, that making areas more inviting for pedestrians and less inviting to cars has been helpful to the pocketbooks of the merchants in the area. It is one of the reasons why parts of Time Square in New York remain permanently closed to traffic after a year test pilot to see if would be a good idea.
What do initiatives like those that Enrique Penalosa and others have instituted have to do with justice and equity, and the dignity of every person? A lot, as it turns out. In the words of Enrique himself, “ a person who rides a $30 bike is as important as a person in a $30,000 car.” These words really struck me. It is not only people who own cars who should have priority in a city. People who can’t afford cars or don’t want to use them are also important. Children should have priority in a city too. They should be able to walk and bike to school and around their neighbourhoods in safety. Their parents shouldn’t have to fear their child getting hit by a car while their child is engaging in a normal, healthy, social activity. Teenagers as well shouldn’t have to rely on mom and dad to get to their work or to visit friends because it is too unsafe to reach their destination except by car or time consuming and gradually more expensive public transit.
Speaking of public transit, elderly people and people with disabilities shouldn’t be considered second class citizens as they are treated when they can’t drive anymore. Too much private automobile use in a city results in a lousy transit system, which means those who can’t drive may have to wait 20 to 30 minutes for a bus, if they’re lucky. In Guelph on a Sunday evening a person can’t get anywhere at all unless he or she pays the cab fare. I learned a lot about the inconvenience of public transit when I used it instead of my car a year ago last winter, when the school I worked at was about 5 km from my house. Each trip home consisted of 2 long bus rides, with lots of waiting around. I sure felt like a second class citizen too. Change is in the air, though, as Guelph is planning on improving bus efficiency in the next while as a result of the GO train coming to Guelph.
Another UU principle that can be realized through walking and biking is “ The goal of world community with peace, liberty, and justice for all.” How do biking and walking and communities go together? Well, in communities where pedestrians are given strong consideration, zoning bylaws allow for mixed uses. It means that a typical day might not consist of driving 15 minutes in one direction to work in a business park , then another direction for school, then in another direction to a recreation zone for leisure, and another 15 minutes in another direction for commercially zoned shopping. That means that instead, in a pedestrian friendly re-zoned city, you will find more local grocers that you can walk to and fewer Walmarts. You may actually get to know your local hardware store owner instead of running out with your car to a big box store on the edge of town just for a few nails. You might be able to walk or bike with your child to school, instead of the present practice of closing small schools in order to build big mega schools that children have to get bused to, as is currently being done in some parts of Guelph and mandated in all parts of Ontario. It would mean less urban sprawl as people will need to live closer to one another for the transit system and bike lanes to be effective. Once people are out and about and out of their cars, they might get to know their neighbours better. Maybe they will fell less isolated and more socially connected.
Since I have been seeing the city of Guelph from the angle of the bicycle and the walker for a couple of years now, I ask myself sometimes, what kind of city do I want? Do I want to live in a city is that is forced to house our cars in every location we visit during the day? Think about that for a moment. We don’t only need a place for our cars in our garages and on our driveways, but we also need one where we work, where we shop, where we go to the dentist, where we get our spiritual fulfillment. That’s a lot of parking spots, and that just makes our cities look ugly and takes away room for housing or parks. Do we like having a city with many big box stores, huge parking lots and tacky signs that have to be made big in order to be seen while we are whizzing by in a car at 50 kms an hour on a four lane road? Do we like living in a city with such screwy land use planning–this one really illustrates our car-centric society–the city allowed a Cineplex to be built on Woodlawn Road at the edge of town, whose main market is non-licensed teenagers, and then not even build them a sidewalk or a bike lane to get there?
So as Guelph continues to grow with its “Places to Grow” legislation, what kind of Guelph do we want? Do we want a Guelph where cars and congestion rule, with more and more Walmarts, urban sprawl, subdivisions on forest or farm land that are easily accessible by car while being inefficient for public transit use? Do we want to develop more Hanlon Business Parks in forested areas or do we want to redevelop and deal with our brownfield areas inside the city that are closer to travel to? Do we want a 30 minute commute when we need to go somewhere or do we want to live in a perhaps more dense environment with many amenities that we can walk or bike to? Could this dense environment actually be inviting because a) time and money are spent on quality pedestrian friendly public spaces, and b)these public spaces are so inviting that everyone uses them, not just the troublemakers, and c) the air is cleaner and quieter because fewer people are using cars and more people are using their feet, their bikes, and public transit to get around? Keep an eye when these items are being discussed at council and other meetings. These are important quality of life issues.
Just remember that in other parts of the world, decisions were made in the 1970's and beyond that allowed cities to limit car use and encourage walking and cycling, and not just in poor cities either. As a result of these and other initiatives, Copenhagen, in Denmark, which was voted the happiest city in the world in 2009 by the Organization for Economic Co-Operation and Development - has over one third of their citizens traveling by bike every day to work, to a total of half a million cycling trips per day. I find this exciting would love to live in a city that understands the benefits of promoting bicycle use.
Well that, ladies and gents, is how my simple act of riding my bike and walking has become a gateway drug for me to being more concerned with my city, my community, and quality of life for all, no matter what economic or age group someone might belong to. I hope it gives you some food for thought, and you never know, it may inspire you to take one or two fewer trips by car as well. And to further emphasize the wonderful community aspects of bicycling, I invite you all to UCG’s hopefully first annual Breakfast and Bike Ride taking place on June 6. This is a great family activity by the way. We will first gather at Angel’s Diner for breakfast at about 9, then ride our bikes over the covered bridge, to the Eramosa Park trail, and then take the trail past Lyon’s park for service commencing at 10:30. I hope you are available to join us that day. Thank you.
Final Hymn
Please join us in signing our final hymn, #346, Come Sing a Song with Me. How about, for the first verse, instead of singing, “Come sing a Song with me”, sing, “Come, Ride a Bike with Me
I have two closing quotes in relation to this topic for you today that I read off the internet that have meaning for me. The first is serious, the second is a humourous and a bit politically incorrect.
Here’s the first. “The loss of a forest or a farm is justified only if it is replaced by a village. To replace them with a subdivision or a shopping center is not an even trade.” Andres Duany, popular New Urbanist planner
And,
The car is like our mother-in-law. We have a good relationship with her, but we cannot let her conduct our lives. In other words, if the only woman in your life is your mother-in-law, then you have a problem. - former Curitiba, Brazil mayor Jaime Lerner
Walking and Biking as Gateway Drugs to Social Awareness
Now I will introduce myself a little further. My name again is Yvette Tendick. I am from McGregor, which is a town outside Windsor. My husband Mark and daughter Michelle and I moved to Guelph 2 1/2 years ago, following my other daughter Sarah, who attended the University of Guelph. When we visited Sarah we would stay at the Gilbertsons, who shamelessly lured us to move to this city with canoe rides on the Eramosa and breakfasts at Eggcetera.
Several things inspired my talk today; from reading the works of the legendary urban visionary Jane Jacobs, “Death and life of Great American cities,” to James Kunstler, “the Geography of Nowhere, to the work of Andres Duany, who is a renowned planner in the new urbanist movement. Also the good old CBC sometimes has excellent broadcasts of issues around these topics.
I bet some of you are wondering what might be so special about two rather mundane activities, walking and bicycling that I would want to base a whole UU service around them. After all, they are activities that are done everyday by most people, especially the walking part. You don’t need any special training to do them, like you do with yoga, or scuba diving for example.
Well a whole lot that makes them important, as it turns out. Bicycling and walking have a lot to do in common with several of the UU principles. In fact, I have come to believe that walking and biking are such essential activities that cities should be designed to prioritize them by providing wider sidewalks, more bicycle lanes including segregated ones, and far less priority to the personal automobile. There I said it. I think, as a society, we need to bicycle more, walk more, and definitely drive less, and I want to live in a city that encourages us to do so by providing the essential infrastructure to accomplish these goals.
How did I come to be so drawn to these activities?
It all started simply enough, as addictions do. I was 12 years old. My family somehow inherited an old girl’s bike. It was too big for me but since it was a girl’s bike, I could hop on and off, so I was able to teach myself how to ride it. I grew up on a 75 acre farm in Essex County and I rode the bike up and down the lane ways. When I turned 14, I moved to exploring the country roads, much to my mother’s frustration (I was using energy riding a bicycle that I could have been using helping my mother). I often rode barefoot and always with no helmet, no padded shorts or even a water bottle. I would ride for many kilometers at a time, not doing it for exercise but for the feeling of freedom and independence that was not achievable for me up to that point. I was hooked.
Walking and I have had a long history together as well. I began walking through the fields as a child and then in my university years adopted walking as a stress reliever. During a particularly difficult year at school I would cut class somewhat regularly and walk from my townhouse in Waterloo to downtown Kitchener and back. It was a natural antidote to dealing with the stress I was feeling. I have since adopted walking as a way of getting some fresh air and regular exercise on my way to work or to downtown.
I have many angles in which I would like to explore my position that bicycling and walking have very significant benefits to those who engage in them and for society at large. Some of these angles are obvious. I will start with those.
Of course one obvious reason a person should walk or bike is because these activities are non polluting. Everyone knows, except for the occasional climate change denialist, that burning fossil fuels is a major contributor to global warming, and personal vehicle use is a major contributor to burning fossil fuels. I felt energized when I looked at the posters on the wall at my school just last Friday from the children who returned from the grade 5 Earthkeeper program, where you could see that they made the connection with car use and pollution, and bicycle use as an alternative to polluting. When riding a bike or walking, you don’t have to worry about whether your car is gasoline powered, or a hybrid, as the only energy being burned is the calories put in your body. Since we UU’s are concerned about our seventh principle, respect for the interdependent web of all existence of which we are a part, we should, in theory anyway, support bicycling as a viable alternative to car use. Most Guelphites travel 5km or less to work, so other than in the dead of winter, bikes are a great way to travel. We need more bicycle lanes that take us to useful destinations, and separated lanes too so that people feel safe. I would hazard a guess that more people would ride more often if they did not feel that they themselves or their children were at risk of being struck by a vehicle while riding. Not only that, but the more cyclists there are the safer it is for any individual to cycle.
Of course another reason for promoting cycling is the cost benefit ratio of using the bicycle as a primary mode of transportation. There is little cost to riding a bike except for the initial outlay. And if you ride your bike and forgo the car altogether, you save from $6,000 to $10,000 a year according to CAA. Think of what you could do with that money.. One of our brand new members here, who read “Duck on a Bike,” had managed without a car for many years, and with her savings from not having a car, managed to take a year off work last year to travel through India and Nepal. Now that sounds like much more fun than paying for insurance and going for emissions testing.
The third obvious reason is exercise. Bicycling in particular burns calories, can prevent obesity, diabetes, heart problems, and can reduce health care costs if done regularly. If you use bicycling or walking as a method of transportation, you kill 3, not 2, birds with one stone. You save money on health clubs, it keeps you fit, and you don’t have to find extra time in the day for an exercise routine. I find that it is helpful to incorporate fitness in your daily lifestyle instead of entrusting a fitness routine to something outside your normal activities. Fitness clubs know that 60% of their members never return to the club after the first three months; in fact that is built in to their business model. It is because, I think, life gets in the way. It is too great a commitment. But if you use your bike or feet as regular transportation, this is less likely to happen.
A similar theme to the exercise one is the benefits of walking and bicycling for mental health. It turns out that exercise is found to be as effective as anti-depressants for the treatment of mild to moderate depression, according to the National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence, and seconded by another armchair expert, me, who certainly enjoys the endorphins being released while I partake in these activities.
These are the most obvious reasons for bicycling and walking, and if I stopped here I would have proven my point, I think. But as I mentioned earlier I’ve done a lot of thinking and reading on the subject of land use planning and I now know that there is so much more to it
Have you ever thought about how bicycling and walking could connect with our first and second UU principles, “The inherent worth and dignity of every person” and “the need for justice, equity and compassion for all?” Well, although I have no idea if a fellow named Enrique Penalosa is a UU member, he certainly thinks in these terms.
I first heard of Enrique Penalosa while listening to the CBC a couple of years ago. Enrique Penalosa has become a land use advisor for city planners all around the world, because of work he did in Bogota, Columbia, a city of 7 million. He became the mayor of Bogota in 1998, during the time that the city had been on the map for years for being a very poor, congested, crime infested city. He also had to deal with a group of consultants from Japan who wanted to solve Bogota’s congestion problems by building an 8-lane elevated highway for the 30% of the population who owned cars. Enrique knew that the motives of these consulting companies were to put more Toyotas and Hondas on the road so he decided to spend those millions that would be used on highway infrastructure another way.
First off, he used that money to fund public schools and libraries for the city’s poor. Next, rather than attempting to reduce congestion by building more roads (which, has been proven by the way, to increase congestion in the long run,) Mayor Penalosa reduced congestion by making the city more pedestrian and bike friendly as well as more inconvenient and expensive for car drivers to get around. First off, he made it illegal to park cars on the sidewalks which believe it or not was common practice prior to his becoming mayor. Next, he expanded the bicycle and pedestrian networks by 300 kilometers, including pedestrian promenades in poor neighborhoods. As well, he planted over 100,000 trees to create more attractive public spaces. He also created a new and highly efficient bus-based transit system called the “transmilenia.”
But all those changes weren’t enough for Enrique. He decided to do something very drastic. He pioneered a “Car Free Day”, which by the way, has been picked up by various cities around the world, including our Guelph’s very first car free day which will be on September 20th of this year. But when Penalosa picked a day, it wasn’t a Sunday like cities that participate do now, it was a Thursday. A workday! Can you imagine, being told, that say, on Thursday, May 13, for example, it would be illegal for you to drive your car in Guelph? He gave people plenty of notice to make arrangements: Go to work by bike, on foot, public transit, telecommute, whatever. Just not by car. All of these ideas put forward by Enrique were considered scandalous by the business owners and others. They were going to lose money! They worried that if people wouldn’t come downtown at all on “Car free day”, and couldn’t park their cars freely the other days, it would spell financial disaster for their city.
The end result was that the opposite happened. On the “Car Free Day”, families came out in droves, enjoying the city. On that day and the other days, people flocked to the cafes and the shops because it was safe and inviting to do so. In fact, his initiatives became so popular that the once a year “Car Free Day” was voted in by referendum the following year, along with legislation beginning in 2015 making it illegal to drive a car on all streets during rush hour. As well, the economy of Bogota improved, and crime went down in the ten years since then by a whopping 70 percent. In terms of bicycle use, the city went from virtually no bicycle use to 350,000 people using bicycles every day. Enrique’s objective for making these changes was quantified by him this way. He wanted his citizens to be happy. He wanted them to have a good quality of life.
Other cities have found, as well, that making areas more inviting for pedestrians and less inviting to cars has been helpful to the pocketbooks of the merchants in the area. It is one of the reasons why parts of Time Square in New York remain permanently closed to traffic after a year test pilot to see if would be a good idea.
What do initiatives like those that Enrique Penalosa and others have instituted have to do with justice and equity, and the dignity of every person? A lot, as it turns out. In the words of Enrique himself, “ a person who rides a $30 bike is as important as a person in a $30,000 car.” These words really struck me. It is not only people who own cars who should have priority in a city. People who can’t afford cars or don’t want to use them are also important. Children should have priority in a city too. They should be able to walk and bike to school and around their neighbourhoods in safety. Their parents shouldn’t have to fear their child getting hit by a car while their child is engaging in a normal, healthy, social activity. Teenagers as well shouldn’t have to rely on mom and dad to get to their work or to visit friends because it is too unsafe to reach their destination except by car or time consuming and gradually more expensive public transit.
Speaking of public transit, elderly people and people with disabilities shouldn’t be considered second class citizens as they are treated when they can’t drive anymore. Too much private automobile use in a city results in a lousy transit system, which means those who can’t drive may have to wait 20 to 30 minutes for a bus, if they’re lucky. In Guelph on a Sunday evening a person can’t get anywhere at all unless he or she pays the cab fare. I learned a lot about the inconvenience of public transit when I used it instead of my car a year ago last winter, when the school I worked at was about 5 km from my house. Each trip home consisted of 2 long bus rides, with lots of waiting around. I sure felt like a second class citizen too. Change is in the air, though, as Guelph is planning on improving bus efficiency in the next while as a result of the GO train coming to Guelph.
Another UU principle that can be realized through walking and biking is “ The goal of world community with peace, liberty, and justice for all.” How do biking and walking and communities go together? Well, in communities where pedestrians are given strong consideration, zoning bylaws allow for mixed uses. It means that a typical day might not consist of driving 15 minutes in one direction to work in a business park , then another direction for school, then in another direction to a recreation zone for leisure, and another 15 minutes in another direction for commercially zoned shopping. That means that instead, in a pedestrian friendly re-zoned city, you will find more local grocers that you can walk to and fewer Walmarts. You may actually get to know your local hardware store owner instead of running out with your car to a big box store on the edge of town just for a few nails. You might be able to walk or bike with your child to school, instead of the present practice of closing small schools in order to build big mega schools that children have to get bused to, as is currently being done in some parts of Guelph and mandated in all parts of Ontario. It would mean less urban sprawl as people will need to live closer to one another for the transit system and bike lanes to be effective. Once people are out and about and out of their cars, they might get to know their neighbours better. Maybe they will fell less isolated and more socially connected.
Since I have been seeing the city of Guelph from the angle of the bicycle and the walker for a couple of years now, I ask myself sometimes, what kind of city do I want? Do I want to live in a city is that is forced to house our cars in every location we visit during the day? Think about that for a moment. We don’t only need a place for our cars in our garages and on our driveways, but we also need one where we work, where we shop, where we go to the dentist, where we get our spiritual fulfillment. That’s a lot of parking spots, and that just makes our cities look ugly and takes away room for housing or parks. Do we like having a city with many big box stores, huge parking lots and tacky signs that have to be made big in order to be seen while we are whizzing by in a car at 50 kms an hour on a four lane road? Do we like living in a city with such screwy land use planning–this one really illustrates our car-centric society–the city allowed a Cineplex to be built on Woodlawn Road at the edge of town, whose main market is non-licensed teenagers, and then not even build them a sidewalk or a bike lane to get there?
So as Guelph continues to grow with its “Places to Grow” legislation, what kind of Guelph do we want? Do we want a Guelph where cars and congestion rule, with more and more Walmarts, urban sprawl, subdivisions on forest or farm land that are easily accessible by car while being inefficient for public transit use? Do we want to develop more Hanlon Business Parks in forested areas or do we want to redevelop and deal with our brownfield areas inside the city that are closer to travel to? Do we want a 30 minute commute when we need to go somewhere or do we want to live in a perhaps more dense environment with many amenities that we can walk or bike to? Could this dense environment actually be inviting because a) time and money are spent on quality pedestrian friendly public spaces, and b)these public spaces are so inviting that everyone uses them, not just the troublemakers, and c) the air is cleaner and quieter because fewer people are using cars and more people are using their feet, their bikes, and public transit to get around? Keep an eye when these items are being discussed at council and other meetings. These are important quality of life issues.
Just remember that in other parts of the world, decisions were made in the 1970's and beyond that allowed cities to limit car use and encourage walking and cycling, and not just in poor cities either. As a result of these and other initiatives, Copenhagen, in Denmark, which was voted the happiest city in the world in 2009 by the Organization for Economic Co-Operation and Development - has over one third of their citizens traveling by bike every day to work, to a total of half a million cycling trips per day. I find this exciting would love to live in a city that understands the benefits of promoting bicycle use.
Well that, ladies and gents, is how my simple act of riding my bike and walking has become a gateway drug for me to being more concerned with my city, my community, and quality of life for all, no matter what economic or age group someone might belong to. I hope it gives you some food for thought, and you never know, it may inspire you to take one or two fewer trips by car as well. And to further emphasize the wonderful community aspects of bicycling, I invite you all to UCG’s hopefully first annual Breakfast and Bike Ride taking place on June 6. This is a great family activity by the way. We will first gather at Angel’s Diner for breakfast at about 9, then ride our bikes over the covered bridge, to the Eramosa Park trail, and then take the trail past Lyon’s park for service commencing at 10:30. I hope you are available to join us that day. Thank you.
Final Hymn
Please join us in signing our final hymn, #346, Come Sing a Song with Me. How about, for the first verse, instead of singing, “Come sing a Song with me”, sing, “Come, Ride a Bike with Me
I have two closing quotes in relation to this topic for you today that I read off the internet that have meaning for me. The first is serious, the second is a humourous and a bit politically incorrect.
Here’s the first. “The loss of a forest or a farm is justified only if it is replaced by a village. To replace them with a subdivision or a shopping center is not an even trade.” Andres Duany, popular New Urbanist planner
And,
The car is like our mother-in-law. We have a good relationship with her, but we cannot let her conduct our lives. In other words, if the only woman in your life is your mother-in-law, then you have a problem. - former Curitiba, Brazil mayor Jaime Lerner
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