August 2nd, 2010
The following essay appears in the August 2010 issue of Muse, a Hong Kong arts and culture magazine.
I still remember bicycling up Mount Royal. It was a warm summer night and there were five of us riding through the streets of Montreal, looking for something to do. Somebody suggested heading up the mountain that rises like a crouching giant from the middle of the city. The path uphill was surprisingly level but completely dark. Our eyes rendered useless, we relied on our other senses to guide us forward, listening to the gravel under our tires, the wind in the trees. The air smelled damp and earthy. I looked up at the treetops silhouetted against the bright city sky.
More
July 29th, 2010
C’est l’été et les responsables de bike sharing ne lésinent pas sur les arguments de choc pour encourager l’usage du vélo !
“Avec moi, tu consommes au minimum 300 calories par heure.” / “With me, you burn at least 300 calories an hour.”
June 27th, 2010
Martin Turner has a way of getting to work that is faster than the MTR and much cheaper than a taxi: he rides a bike. For most of his ten years working at a marketing firm in Wan Chai, Turner has commuted from his North Point home by bicycle. “It takes about 15 minutes door to door,” he said. “That’s about half the time it would take by public transport.”
Across the harbour, Charlie Wong Liang-yih works as a graphic designer from his home in Mongkok. When he leaves his flat to visit friends in other parts of Kowloon, he often takes his bike. “Before, people thought it was ridiculous to ride a bicycle around Hong Kong, but more and more people use them to get around,” he said.
People in dozens of neighbourhoods across Hong Kong use bicycles to commute to train stations, work and to run daily errands, but the government officially recognizes cycling only as a form of recreation, not as transport — something cycling activists are fighting to change.
Every day, according to a 2004 Transport Department study on cycling, more than 65,000 bicycle trips are made, mainly by people biking from their homes to train stations, schools, workplaces and shops.
Other studies suggest the number of daily bike trips is actually much higher. Last year, the Shatin District Council commissioned a study on cycling in the district, which is home to more than 600,000 people, and found that 33.5 percent of the population cycles more than once a week. The study also reported that 65 percent of residents perceive cycling as “an important mode of transport” and that each Shatin family owns, on average, about two bicycles.
More
July 22nd, 2009
Photo by cagliostro
The launch of Bixi, Montreal’s new bike-sharing system, has been nothing short of spectacular. Despite early problems — faulty lock mechanisms have led to the theft of dozens of bikes — it has been more successful than anyone imagined. In fact, Montrealers have taken so well to Bixi that Stationnement de Montréal, the municipal agency that runs the system, has decided to bump up an expansion that wasn’t planned until next year. Next month, an additional 2,000 bikes will be added at 100 new stations in Villeray, Little Burgundy and Côte des Neiges.
Just as the public has quickly taken to Bixi, the bike-sharing service has already engrained itself in the city. “Bixi has truly changed the urban landscape here,” notes On Two Wheels, the Gazette’s cycling blog. “There is a new, yet already familiar ‘blink’ on the bike paths; downtown it seems like every third bike is a Bixi. This program is clearly doing some heavy lifting toward getting more people using bikes that might not have otherwise.”
More
