How many bicycles?

Late last year the city council installed this bicycle and pedestrian counter on my local bikeway.

I especially like the little logos. It makes it feel like a sports competition. How active and healthy can Brisbane be?

I took this photo today, 26 January. There have been more than 100,000 people on bikes go past the point in less than a month. Exciting to know that the bikeway is so well used.

PS. See the March update.

The day I got a death threat at work

I am fortunate. Part of my job is to promote sustainability and environmentally friendly activities. In a team meeting I mentioned the worldwide activity known as PARKing Day.

PARKing Day is one day a year where community groups and others temporarily transform a metered car space into an alternate use. Sometimes it's a mini-park, with fake grass and deck chairs. Sometimes it's a mini coffee shop. I've even seen a mini-golf set-up and an op-shop for second-hand clothing. It's a great way to highlight how much of our city is consumed by parking and how many other things could be done with that space if we were less car dependent. The activity is legal, paid for and has local council approval.

In the meeting I gave the op-shop example. A colleague said that if she saw an op-shop in a car parking space, she'd drive over the shop and anyone in it. As a supporter of the event and possible attendee I tried to look for other ways to take this - other than as a threat on my life.

My colleague is not evil. As far as I know, she doesn't generally threaten to kill people. But that's part of the effect of spending time behind the wheel. When I had a car, driving in traffic could often make me quite agitated and sometimes aggressive towards other drivers. This was part of the reason I gave up driving.

If something turns you into an aggressive and hostile person, the sensible thing is to give up that thing. I choose my character, my faith and my humanity over having a car. Clearly not everyone is in a position to make that choice, so we get situations like this.

It seems when a person spends enough time behind the wheel, they view the car almost as an extension of theirself. They see a parking space as some sort of birthright that the rest of the world owes them. Wherever they go, even in the busy areas, they have an expectation that room must be made for them and for their two tonnes of metal.

Is this why we sometimes talk about car "addiction"? People acting like desperate drug addicts when they don't get their fix. Unable to imagine an existence without the thing they crave.

As humans we generally say that we love other people - or at least like them enough not to kill them. It seems that driving a car takes us far away from that ideal.

The Secret of Happiness

I've just read an article on Enrique Peñalosa, the former mayor of Bogotá, Colombia. "We might not be able to fix the economy. But we can design the city to give people dignity, to make them feel rich. The city can make them happier."

One experiment was to have a day of a total car ban. The 'car free' day was the first day in 4 years that nobody was killed in traffic. Hospital admissions were down, smog thinned, and people were feeling more optimistic about life. All from just one day without cars.

Why does better city design, and fewer cars, give such a boost to our happiness? The article had some stats on that - and it seems that we've over-valued the role of money in happiness.

• The British got 40% richer from 1993 to 2012, but the rate of psychiatric disorders and neuroses grew.
• Londoners are among the least happy people in the UK, despite the city being the richest region in the UK.
• The more connected we are, the less likely we are to experience heart attacks, strokes, cancer and depression. Connected people sleep better at night. They live longer. They consistently report being happier.
• People who endure more than a 45-minute commute were 40% more likely to divorce.
• People who live in car‑dependent neighbourhoods are much less trusting of other people.
• Longer commutes mean lower life-satisfaction. A person with a one-hour commute has to be paid 40% more money to be as satisfied with life as someone who walks to the office. For a single person, exchanging a long commute for a short walk to work has the same effect on happiness as finding a new love.

So why is driving so bad? So bad that being freed from it is the equivalent of falling in love - or getting a 40% pay rise?

"Driving in traffic is harrowing for both brain and body. The blood of people who drive in cities is a stew of stress hormones. The worse the traffic, the more your system is flooded with adrenaline and cortisol, the fight-or-flight juices that, in the short-term, get your heart pumping faster, dilate your air passages and help sharpen your alertness, but in the long-term can make you ill. Brain researchers found that peak-hour travellers suffered worse stress than fighter pilots or riot police facing mobs of angry protesters."

Apparently, it's the mobility of walking, running or riding that makes commuting enjoyable.

"We were born to move. Immobility is to the human body what rust is to the classic car. Stop moving long enough, and your muscles will atrophy. Bones will weaken. Blood will clot. You will find it harder to concentrate and solve problems. Immobility is not merely a state closer to death: it hastens it."

Cyclists report feeling "connected to the world around them" in a way that's not possible in a sealed vehicle. Their journeys are "sensual and kinesthetic".

So how did Bogotá's experiment go?

It made life better for almost everyone. Commuting times fell by a fifth. The streets were calmer. The accident rate halved, as did the murder rate, even as the country as a whole got more violent. There was better air quality. Bogotáns got healthier. The city experienced a spike in feelings of optimism. People believed that life was good and getting better.

To find out more, read the article, or get the book it comes from - "Happy City: Transforming Our Lives Through Urban Design" by Charles Montgomery.

The mobile device that charges you

There's nothing quite like a nice bike ride.

I reckon this would be t-shirt worthy.

(Image is my slight variation on this one)

Billy Slater for Bikes

Rugby league star Billy Slater (Melbourne and Austalian fullback) promoting Ride to Work day (and Australian Bananas).

Overheard on the train

This is what I overheard from 'Samantha' on the train this afternoon:

I ran through a red light last night. I was sooo tired.
Nathan said to me "you just went through a red light"
I said "just-red or red-red"
He said "red-red"
I wasn't worried so much about the camera; whatever. I was endangering people's lives!

This is one of the reasons i like public transport. If i'm tired/exhausted, it's much better to be the passenger rather then behind the wheel (running red lights).

Related link: What causes bad driving

23.5 Hour Challenge

Who would have thought a doctor talking for 9 minutes would get over 3 million views on you tube? But that's what happened withe the 23.5 hour challenge.


According to the video, the best single thing you can do for your health is exercise. But that doesn't mean being a fitness fanatic. It just means keeping your inactive time to less than 23.5 hours per day.

That could be as simple as riding a bike to work or the shops. Or maybe walking to the train station each day. (A friend of mine used to get off the train one stop early to get in some walking after work).

Why "other drivers" are worse than us

"I can't believe what that maniac driver just did!
How do these people get a licence?"
We've no doubt heard something like that said (maybe with some beeping and finger gestures). We may have said it ourselves.

The psychological term for this is "Fundamental Attribution Error". It's where we (incorrectly) blame an outcome on the people rather than the circumstance. (Unless it's our mistake of course - than there's always another reason)

A driver who is normally good (or at least as good as us) will occasionally do something 'crazy' because of other circumstances - screaming kids in the back seat, tiredness, fatigue, thinking about other things, or running late for work.

What has this got to do with being car free? It's a safety thing. And this is probably a big part of the reason why public transport is enormously safer than driving. If the danger isn't bad drivers - but circumstances - it's about stopping bad circumstances becoming a danger.

If I'm running late for work, i'm not putting anyone at risk, because i'm not driving the train. If I'm exhausted at the end of a long work week, the biggest danger is me missing my train station after an accidental nap. (That hasn't happened yet). It would be inconvenient, but it's better than a collision with another vehicle.
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* The picture is of Switch - the book where i read about the concept of Fundamtental Attribution Error

Stating the Obvious

I recently saw this graphic in a report on the environment and health. Unsurprisingly, the countries that have higher frequency of walking and cycling trips (darker line) have less obesity (coloured line).

It's not exactly a new discovery but still another good reason to choose non-car alternatives.

Benefits of Riding to Work

This was part of my email invite to join Ride to Work day. It summarises some of the reasons i like going car free.

By the way, if you're interested, Ride to Work day this year is Wednesday 17 October.

No Regrets

Like the t-shirt i showed you the other week, i saw this one online. It caught my eye because it's a very similar design to the great one i have.


I think it's a good summary of the advantages of going car free. "No fuel tank. No emissions. No oil wars. No regrets."

Burn Fat - Save Money

Saw this t-shirt through an online ad. It reads "This one runs on fat and saves you money. This one runs on money and makes you fat."


It's a fairly obvious choice isn't it? Even without taking the planet factor into account. ;)

[Related Link: No Regrets t-shirt]

Bike-Share Improvements

This week Brisbane's CityCycle bike-share scheme announced some improvements. Most noteable is the 400 free helmets at bike stations (very helpful for the spontaneous user), the reduction in a daily subscription, and the introduction of a weekly subscription.


Meanwhile, in a piece called Ride For Your Life, experts worked out that (in addition to convenience, exercise, reduced pollution and reduced traffic congestion) Barcelona's bike-share scheme is also saving lives.

Tour De Hometown

With Australian cyclist Cadell Evans winning the Tour de France this week, many people are going to be dusting off the old bicycle (or getting one for the first time) to experience the joy of bike riding.


So one of the newspapers did a helpful piece on some really good places to go for a ride. Places with nice scenery (though not exactly France) and most along bikeways, or roads with bike lanes. Each suggestion has its own map and, like the Tour de France, a terrain map to indicate the 'hillyness'.


OK, compared to "the Tour", the trips might be short, and the hills might be small, but for us mere mortals it's the closest we'll ever get :)

Pushy Pushbikers ;) ... (not)

Great satirical piece by Danny Katz, pretending to be the rant of an angry motorist, but actually showing the benefits of cycling (and perhaps how motorists could be more considerate). Here are some small excerpts:

Cyclists don't seem to care about road safety either. Sometimes when I open my driver's-side door without looking, a cyclist will ride up really close and try to rip off the door with their upper-body - I don't understand this extreme hostility towards us!

OK, maybe they're slightly more fit and healthy, but do they have to taunt us so cruelly by wiggling their sexy pert buttocks in our faces as they ride by? It just makes us feel insecure and unattractive, sitting in our cars, our arse-flab dribbling over the edge of the seat into the little gap where the handbrake is.

Pushy pushbikers: it's time they showed a little consideration for us poor victimised petrol-dependent parking-overcharged traffic-jammed ozone-depleting beanbag-bummed motorists.

Bike Riding And Well-Being

We know riding a bike can be better than car-driving. But sometimes there are obstacles to changing our habits. Some of these obstacles are all in our head.

One of these psychological barriers is concerns about health and safety. I think it is mostly an illusion created by over-protective laws. After all, if it requires a helmet it must be unsafe mustn't it?

But i've just read a European study measured the effect in "life years" gained or lost. Increased exposure to pollution (of cars) caused a loss of 0.8-40 days. Traffic accidents were an average loss of 5-9 days.

The health benefits gained from physical exercise were at least 10 times larger - a gain of 3-14 months. Or as the study concluded:

On average, the estimated health benefits of cycling were substantially larger than the risks relative to car driving for individuals shifting their mode of transport.

And that's just the personal benefits. Obviously society also benefits from the reduction in air pollution and greenhouse gas emissions.

Talk on the Street

Walking over to a mate's place last night (about 6pm) and i met another friend of mine on the way. She was coming home from work, and got off one train station early to get some walking in.

As we were talking, we agreed walking was more fun that the nearby drivers - sitting waiting for traffic to move, getting cut off by other cars, and blasting horns at one another.

Good Call

So if you've been watching the Tour de France, you've probably seen an ad for Bike Exchange. I checked out their website, and came across a nice line that summed up cycling...

In an increasingly obese and polluted world where the roads are congested, cycling tackles all three issues.

More Benefits

The Rapid Active & Affordable Transport Alliance (RAATA) recently launched a report entitled "Investing in Sustainable Transport".

At the launch, ACF diector Don Henry spoke of benefits in terms of reduced greenhouse emissions and less addiction to oil. Heart Foundation CEO Dr Lyn Roberts pointed out the health benefits of active transport (cycling, walking).

More than 16,000 Australians are estimated to die prematurely each year, mostly from heart disease and stroke, because they are insufficiently physically active. Physical inactivity also costs the community an estimated $13.8 billion a year ... We need to make the healthier transport choices – walking, cycling, public transport – the easier choices. And we need to replan our communities to promote physical activity – not obesity.

Matt O’Brien (CEO of Diabetes Australia) had a similar view.

Active community environments that encourage walking, bike riding and incidental exercise can help reduce the number of people who are overweight and obese. People who are overweight or obese are at a much higher risk of developing type 2 diabetes. This is of grave concern in Australia as the number of new cases of diabetes each year would fill the Melbourne Cricket Ground

Bless Our Bikes

A friend emailed me about this one - a church that decided to have a Bicycle Blessing ceremony for the cycling community.


The prayers of blessing included:

In a world groaning under the excesses of consumption, we acknowledge the inherent goodness of non-motorized human powered transportation and give thanks for the simple beauty of the bicycle... Bless those who choose to not drive to work and those for whom driving isn’t even an option... Keep us safe as we ride.
God of life, hear our prayer. Amen