Understandably The Age has a couple of Ride To Work related stories for Melbourne, I've yet to find mention of the Sydney event in the Sydney Morning Herald or the Daily Telegraph. In Sydney the bicycle news relates to the proposal of painting bike boxes on the road in order to get cyclists at the head of traffic at lights. Box or no box it's something that most cyclists are doing any way so I hardly see what all the fuss is about. I suppose it legitimises the practice in the eyes of motorists who often seem angered by what they think is an illegal practice.
So, if you want to read an article about Ride to Work day, head over to Setting wheels in motion for a cycling future where you can read Bicycle Victoria's Harry Barber's comments about cycle commuting. Including this interesting claim,
| Commuters in Melbourne generally ride about 15 kilometres for a half-hour commute. |
So, Melbourne commuters are averaging 30km/h are they? Not likely to be using those lovely shared bicycle/pedestrian paths then are they .... that would be a pretty dangerous average speed to be doing along those wouldn't it?
However, he does have some sensible things to say about encouraging more people to cycle by incoorporating safe storage at workplaces and transport hubs as well as showers in workplaces.
However, he is still trotting out the same old hoary chestnuts, about health and environment as well as,
| easy, convenient, cheap and fun |
Convenient is usually a turn on. Forget the easy, cheap, fun angle. It's time for it to be sexy, and an activity designed to elevate your status. Barber does actually hint at this last one,
| the chief justice and the chief executives of BHP Billiton and ANZ ride to work |
give us more on this angle ..... cycling is a great career move.
2 comments:
Newsflash for Bicycle NSW: these things don't get into the newspaper on their own.
Compare home pages at http://www.bicyclensw.org.au/ and http://www.bv.com.au/: not one mention of Ride to Work Day on the former, very prominent news item on the latter (with a link to a pretty comprehensive information page).
You can find mention of Ride to Work Day at Bicycle NSW (in the news section) but what happened to the information page at http://www.bicyclensw.org.au/ridetowork.htm ? It's almost as if they don't want anyone to notice that it's on…
Ah yes, the Bicycle NSW website is sadly in need of a major overhaul, for this and so many other reasons.
Even this morning, as we cycled the bike bus into the city for the free Ride to Work Breakfast we met cyclists along the way who had no idea firstly that it was ride to work day and second that there was a free brekky.
Having said that, there was a good turn out at the Bovis Lend Lease breakfast, and quite a bit of press activity so hopefully we'll see some good cycling news stories tomorrow.
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