bicycling – Corey Burger

One last morning celebration station at RJH

Shot of the two tents — RJH celebration station tents

Today was the last 6 am morning for me this week and it was a cold one. The celebration station at the Royal Jubilee Hospital was shadowed by one of the buildings, which made standing around a little chilly. The good weather today certainly helped get people out, especially after yesterday. Seeing the near steady stream of riders come by wasn’t a huge surprise because the Vancouver Island Health Authority, that runs RJH, has over 600 cyclists registered, almost 10% of the total registrations.

Leona Gibbs came out again this morning, which was a great boon. She has done an amazing amount of work these past two mornings, getting up early and talking with dozens of people about Safer Cycling Oak Bay and Oak Bay Bicycle Master Plan. Between us we collected about another 20 maps of people’s bike routes, bringing the total to nearly 80.

I also had a great conversation with Ian Graeme of the Bowker Creek Initiative about a Bowker Creek Greenway (there is a map of the Richmond/Oak Bay Rec Centre section) crossing all three municipalities. A trail like this would be a great path for cyclists and walkers to travel north-west/south-east and would allow easier linkage in with the Lochside and Galloping Goose trails, a connection which is currently very difficult.

This afternoon is the last celebration station I will attending, at the UVic fountain again, which runs from 3:30 to 5:30pm. I also plan on attending the final BBQ at the north end of the Selkirk Trestle tomorrow, which starts at 3pm.

Busy station at Oak Bay municipal hall this morning

Long shot of tents on the lawn — Tents on the lawn of the municipal hall

This morning’s celebration station on the front lawn was a busy time for me and my fellow Safer Cycling OB volunteers, Jane and Leona. We managed to get nearly everybody that came by to tell us where they bicycled by highlighting those roads on a map. Adding the 37 collected today, we have almost 60 responses already. Entering in all these data and then making sense of it is going to be a big job.

Tara Ney talk with Jane van Hoorn — Tara Ney talking with Jane van Hoorn

I was surprised and disappointed that the only member of council that came by today was Tara Ney, who dropped in and chatted with us for a good half an hour. She reiterated her support for what we are doing, which is always heartening, given the scale of the project. Roy Thomassen, the Director of Planning, also made a quick appearance. He clarified that there is a slight change of plans with the covered bike shelter and it is being moved to right against the building.

Transit operator demoing how to load bike

Due to being busy, I didn’t get many pictures today, but there are lots more all the stations on biketowork’s photostream. This Friday is also Bike to Work Day and this is bringing lots of posts about how to making biking more
“normal” on Streetblog.net, an aggregator of blogs about livable streets.

Tomorrow morning Leona and I are off to the Royal Jubilee Hospital, which I learned today will be by the old entrance to the hospital on the south side (map).

New Safer Cycling Oak Bay website goes live

Lesley Ewing and I have been working on a new Safer Cycling Oak Bay website for the past few weeks to correspond with the launch of a new project we, amongst others, have been working on. Rather than being stuck at the old Telus.net webspace, we have finally launched the new website at scob.ca, a nice short and easy to remember url. Expect to see more on the SCOB website in the next few weeks.