Cycles

Yesterday I was surprised, but also pleased, when Kevin handed me the local free sheet and said,
'You're in the paper.' I thought he was making a joke about an advert with a girl whose hair was spiked up all over the place, but in fact a letter I had written was printed.

The subject of my letter had been an article about a local man who was possibly going to be fined for taking his bike into his own flat. This was his third bike and the other two had been stolen.

One thing I need to explain here for friends in Britain is the idea of condos and stratas. But how to explain? Imagine a small housing estate. When the houses and flats are finished and sold off, the estate itself is held together as a little community with its own council, the strata. The strata council imposes some rules and takes responsibility for community areas, such as flower beds and the exteriors of the units. There is usually a community building such as a gym or a clubhouse.

Now, the man in the article was being stopped and fined by his strata council from taking his bike into his own flat because it caused dirt to be trekked in, however they didn't have the same concerns over pushchairs and motorised scooters.

When I was in Portsmouth, the only safe place to keep my bike was in my classroom, so every day I had to bring it up the stairs, and oddly, I had to carry it, so no more dirt was brought in by my bike than by other people's shoes. Other colleagues who cycled had to do the same thing. We were in a similar position to the man in the article, there was nowhere secure outside to lock our bikes.

Here in Richmond and in Vancouver, there are quite a number of cycleways, but it is not a common occurrence to see people cycling. A number of Kevin's co-workers cycle in, but they tend to be the very athletic types who travel a long distance and still face the same problem about where to leave their bikes when at work.

Whilst I was aware of bike theft happening in Portsmouth, here it seems to be rampant, which is quite bizarre for a city where so few people actually use bikes.

The great thing about cycling in Pompey was that people of all shapes, sizes, ages and levels of fitness did it. And of course, there were also the postal workers and some police who used bikes to get around so it was much more ingrained as part of the culture just as it is in other parts of Europe.

One day when I was driving here, I pause to blush, I witnessed an ederly Sikh man, cycling in the cycle lane and being followed, in the cycle lane, by a motorist who was beeping him continuously.
I have seen cars and trucks parked in the cycle lanes.
It can certainly be argued that distances are greater here, for me to cycle to downtown Vancouver for example would perhaps be the equivalent of me cycling from Southsea to Havant, but then why don't people who live in the city of Vancouver cycle? It is a rare sight.

I think that attitudes need to change. The City councils encourage cycling, but they don't put enough into it. I feel here that when something is badly received, people back off. One way for example of encouraging cycling and discouraging theft is to provide cheap bikes to be used and returned free to any bike bank in the city. Another way is to subsidise fold-up commuter bikes.

I was pleased to see that one item in Gordon Brown's budget yesterday was an extra tax on the highest fuel-using cars. This is simply another step towards a totally graded system of car taxation based on fuel consumption. More measures like these need to be introduced here too, to discourage the use of larger cars and Satan's Utility Vehicles. I am proud to say that our own car is a small, fuel efficient one and we always walk when we can or take the bus or skytrain when possible.

Canada, and Vancouver in particular, are very green, both literally and metaphorically, but..... when this beautiful city can be unfavourably compared with Portsmouth on an issue, it's time to sit up and take stock.