Canadian couple Melissa and Chris Bruntlett have carved out a unique position in the conversation around bikes and cities, with their family-friendly focus, clear language, and a clever eye for a persuasive image. Based in Vancouver, their research consultancy Modacity – which grew out of an experiment in ditching the family car in favour of a combo of bikes, car-share, and public transport, and sharing their story with readers – is all about creating catchy and accessible and content for audiences eager to learn about how to bring bike-friendly cities to life. They also get around: the seed of Modacity was nurtured by a 2014 visit to New Zealand; and their 2016 visit …
Bike Auckland
This powerful guest post by Emma McInnes of Women in Urbanism delves into a difficult topic: the lingering trauma from even a minor bike crash. Like previous first-person posts on the subject, we hope it strikes a chord – and inspires an even louder call for safer streets. My first bike crash in central Auckland happened on Symonds Street. I was biking downhill towards the university. A driver coming out of a side road, turning left, didn’t look right, and ran over top of me. I was literally peeled off the road by a stranger, who carried me to the footpath to get me out of the traffic. I remember being too scared to …
Cycling Without Age is a wonderful worldwide initiative that began in Denmark and has been taking root in Aotearoa. It offers older folk a chance to enjoy the wind in their hair, thanks to electrified trishaws powered by volunteer pilots. CWOA began blossoming in Auckland in 2017, at retirement villages on the North Shore, and in early 2018 we wrote about the young people bringing the programme to Selwyn Village in Pt Chevalier. We’re happy to report the Pt Chev programme is going great guns. If you live locally you may have spotted the bike – officially named Daisy Bell! – out and about, ferrying happy passengers to and from beaches, parks, …
We love real stories of everyday bike life! So when we saw Pshem’s delightful string of tweets looking back on his first year of regular cycling for transport around Te Atatu peninsula and to work in the city, we asked if he’d be keen to share them as a guest blog with a few choice photos. Enjoy! It’s been a year since I’ve started biking to work, and this is a summary of my thoughts and observations. I work in Newmarket and live in Te Atatu Peninsula. My one way trip is about 17.5km and it takes me about 35-40 mins. I cycle every workday. I consider myself lucky – the …
Out of the blue came a photo, and a request. Theo Brandt had discovered a snap from the early 1980s of himself wearing a bike advocacy T-shirt. Theo’s question: if he could find a way to replicate this rad design, would we be able to help him get a fresh version printed up? Little did we know, this would lead us to connecting old friends and highlighting the hard work of a previous generation of cycling advocates. Because it turns out, when it comes to making Auckland better on a bike, truly we stand on the T-shirt shoulders of giants. Long before Bike Auckland, and before Cycle Action Auckland became Bike Auckland… …
The $67 billion global cycling industry has ubiquitous brands such as Taiwan’s Giant, which employs 11,000 people and has annual revenues circa $2.6 billion. But it also has plenty of entrepreneurs making waves at a local level. One such is Kiwi Emma Jonsson, a one-woman hive of energy whose mission it is to introduce New Zealanders to the practical and stylish cycling accessories Europeans have enjoyed for years. Emma sells retail through The Urban Cyclist website and to the trade through Velocity Distribution. The distribution business started first, five years ago, when Emma returned to New Zealand from a trip to Copenhagen with her Danish partner, Sebastian. She discovered there …
A recent guest post by Dr Rob Burrell struck a real chord. It was about the irony of how dangerous it is to bike to one of Auckland’s biggest hospitals – despite cycling being one of the healthiest commutes there is. Now, Rob’s anaesthetist colleague Dr Craig Birch follows up with his own story of how difficult it is to bike safely to Middlemore. Content warning: two grisly crashes, resulting in what would officially qualify as merely ‘minor’ injuries. I have cycled to Middlemore Hospital, where I work as an anaesthetist, for many years – since 2001. Unfortunately, safety issues have meant that I’ve had to resort to getting in my car …
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