It certainly is encouraging to see Bluesfest working with Citizens for Safe Cycling to make the site more accessible for cyclists. However in some ways this simply seems to be a further move to brand Bluesfest as a green festival and not a legitimate move designed to actually make life easier for cyclists. The bike parking-lot is one large lot spot located on Booth street and far away from any of the gates for the festival.

This creates a few problems. The first is that if you park your bike there then expect to walk, especially if you are headed to the Roots or River Stage then you have quite a hike. What this means is cyclists will still end up locking up to spare fences and trees out of convenience. The second is the fact that there is one lot which inevitably becomes congested when the shows finish for the night.

The real solution is to view bike parking as another service. If the problem last year was washroom capacity then the solution wouldn’t be to double the number of porta-potties, condense it into one location and move that location further away from the site.  Increasing capacity is part of the solution yes, but it also involves spreading out the facilities, making them easy to access and limiting the length of line-ups. If I bring my bike I should be able to park is near the River Stage and retrieve it after the show. I shouldn’t have to wade through 30 000 Tragically Hip fans to get to where my bike is parked, only to have to wait in line.

The efforts of this years Bluesfest is appreciated however their approach indicates that cyclist parking is simply an afterthought, not a priority.

(thanks to Treehugger)

[W]e are seeking your advice as to what package of incentives would be required to motivate building owners and managers to install infrastructure to support commuter cycling.

I don’t own or manage a building, so I don’t have much to say on this issue – hopefully someone does. My view would probably be less concerned with incentives, and more with flat-out regulation, and that doesn’t sound like that’s what Hume is looking for…

This is an interesting case of the different approaches to transportation policy between the developed and underdeveloped world; unlike in car-saturated North America, where pro-bike policies are designed to reduce pollution or congestion, here they are justified by city officials as helpful in reducing the public transit load:

“For every 25 people who ride bikes to the terminal,” Gil said, “That is one less ‘feeder bus’ we need to run through the neighborhoods. You do the math and pretty quickly you see it makes financial sense to set aside some space and hire a security guard to help people to ride their bikes.”

I was in Colombia several years back; my most prominent bike-related memory was the visible change as we crossed the border. In oil-producing Venezuela, where gasoline costs less than water, mopeds and scooters were everywhere; in oil-poor Colombia, they were replaced by bicycles.

While I’ve never thought of Ottawa’s current racks as overly obtrusive, this is a sexy design and one that would aesthetically improve any city street. The square at the lower center is meant for ad space, though, so that could be a visual impediment.