Get on your bike and ride!
So, you’re thinking to yourself you need to get out and do something this weekend. Something new and fun. Something that will get you around people you like, or will like once you get to know them. Maybe you can check out an old church or heritage building along the way. Well, have we got something for you to sink your cleats into…
Join WindsorEats.com and Scaledown.ca this Sunday, September 28 as we ride our bikes through the city and celebrate Windsor’s heritage on our very first City Cycle!
This is a free ride and we are inviting everyone to come out and join us! Our stops will coincide with heritage sites open to the public during Doors Open Windsor. This is a leisurely ride with friends and an opportunity to take in some great architecture within our own city.
The City Cycle will meet at Taloola Cafe at 10:30 a.m. and head to our first stop promptly at 11:00 a.m. Stops may include:
- Willistead Manor
- Canadian Club Brand Centre
- All Saints Anglican Church
- McGregor-Cowan House
- St. John’s Anglican Church
- St. Mary’s Anglican Church
We’ll end our day at Gourmet Emporium for a few drinks. Ride will go from 11:00 a.m. to approximately 4:00 p.m. If you are interested in joining us on our City Cycle, reserve a spot and email Pina with your name.
This is a relaxed ride so the itinerary is subject to change.
A few things to keep in mind for each ride:
Who knows? If this turns out to be as much fun as it seems, we may have to make this a regular occurrence! There is positively no better way to see the city than on two wheels.
Tags: Alternative Transportation, Architecture, event, walkerville
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Chris, I see you may have left out Assumption Church. Assumption church, better known as Windsor’s cathedral, is also on the Doors Open Tour. Also it is the oldest parish west of Montreal!
So come by and se this elegant church before the Diocese of London has their way and looks to vacate it.
i went with what was listed on the Doors Open Windsor website and Assumption wasn’t included on the list. but I’d definitely would love to see that.
Great idea! But alas, I will have to sit/walk this one out! I’ve had five bikes in twenty years in this city and each one has been stolen, the last one from a secure lockup in my building, I won’t buy another one …just not economical anymore in this city.
So have fun and I hope the weather is great for you!
Bike thieves are pondscum. You’ll find them in any big city. I have both a U-Bolt and a cable type lock and have been lucky so far - but then again I only ride recreationally/occasionally. I have a friend who rode his bike exclusively in Windsor and lost two in a period of one week at the University. Good bikes too. I think he smartened up after that and rolled on a $50 beater bike most the time.
Just wondering… is this national Car-free-Week? I’ve seen a number of promotions in other cities… nuthin in Windsor, however… Is anybody promoting this cause in the area?
Bite your tongue!
A few years back, Windsor used to celebrate with the City Street Celebration by shutting down Devonshire Road between Riverside and Wyandotte in historic Olde Walkerville, but unfortunately it only lasted a couple of years. World Car-Free Day is officially September 22nd and I’m anxiously awaiting another event in the Automotive Capital of Canada.
Please come down my street and help promote my skinny streets initiative
Fill us in with a little more info, Rusalka. Skinny streets? Do you happen to live on Prado?
Chris, skinny streets is reducing to width of roadways, particularly in subdivisions, to make the neighbourhood more intimate. More importantly, it makes neighbourhoods more pedestrian and bicycle friendly and safer for children. Since it also puts a focus on people, it can also increase the connectivity between neighbours.
Many municipalities across the U.S. are actually reducing the width of streets and it is making a positive change in the quality of life. Larger roads and increased traffic flow is destroying the quality of neighbourhoods.
Does that help a little
at least that is what i think i know about it
That sucks I’ll be out of town this weekend. Have fun.
For full details on Doors Open, and all the sites that will be open, check the website: http://doorsopenwindsor.com
You guys might mingle, run into these people on Sunday
Windsor Bicycle Committee’s Riverfront Ride 2008, Sunday September 28th
http://www.alanhalberstadt.com/
When: September 28, 2008 at 11:00 a.m.
What: A community bicycle ride to Charles Clark Square to enjoy:
• the music of local guitarist “Dusty”,
• coffee and fruit courtesy of the Windsor Bicycling Committee, and
• water courtesy of Culligan Water.
All particiants will receive a chance to win bicycle helmets, lights and more.
Where: Two (2) start locations:
Alexander Park (located at Strabane and Riverside Drive E.) This group will cycle west, at a moderate pace, in the bike lane to Lincoln Ave. and continue along the Riverwalk to Glengarry Ave.
Assumption Park (located at Askin Blvd. and Riverside Drive E.) This group will cycle east, at a moderate pace, along the Riverwalk to meet the other group at Glengarry Ave.
Both groups will then cycle south on Glengarry Ave., and west on Chatham St. E. to Charles Clark Square.
* All participants must wear a helmet and follow the rules of the road.
For more details Call 311 or check the web at cyclewindsor.ca
Thanks to Adriano Ciotoli for providing that summary for me…I have been busy…Skinny streets is exactly as described…and enough cities are doing it, with posoitive results, to make it a “salable” option…Many articles on New Zealand can be referenced……It is what the Riverside Drive Community advocated for their street…but Don Drackley is a transportation engineer…so naturally, any solution for Riverside Drive that didn’t cater to the car was merely “sneer-worthy”
It is unfortunate that the cyclist’s lobby was unwilling to actually listen to what the Riverside folks had to say…it could have made a huge difference to everyone
Ah, yes… “SAVE OUR FRONTAGE!” - seems like it was only yesterday.
Sorry about the spelling mistake!
Is that meant to be clever? Just what have all those “clever” remarks accomplished for you?
Sorry we all don’t march to the same drum.
I think what JCS is trying to say is that the Riverside Drive residents now saying they want “skinny streets” is JUST spin. The “Scenic Drive YES, City Highway NO” is misleading bullshit. The plan for riverside drive was NEVER to turn it into a “highway” and anyone that read the plan or went to the meetings would know that the plan was in fact to reduce traffic on riverside drive and to install traffic calming devices to even slow traffic down.
But of course, the residents didn’t want a few meters of their precious land (or shall I say, the city’s land that they wrongly thought was their own in some cases) to be taken away, and they didn’t want to have construction in front of their houses.
The Riverside drive plan was not to add more lanes to the road, making it wider was only for safety and to accommodate bicycles. By saying you want “skinny roads” you are essentially saying you want to make it unsafe for bicycles (like it currently is now).
So don’t say “skinny streets” is what the riverside drive residents advocated, cause you know that’s full of shit. Riverside drive residents advocated short-sighted selfish NIMBY thinking and that’s it. Don’t try to give it an “urban renewal” spin, I’m not buying it.
Shall I assume that all the Riverside Drive residents that want these “skinny roads” all drive narrow vehicles? One look at the cars parked in front of their houses would tell me otherwise I’m sure.
Lastly, before you adopt New Zealand’s way of thinking, maybe you should come down here and actually see it in person. I’m currently staring out my office window at a wide 4-lane wide road, with 2 lanes being bus-only which cyclists also use (maybe they should do THAT to riverside drive). Furthermore, lots of residential streets are quite wide with bicycle lanes. While the heavy-volume roads are death-traps for bicyclists, they are accommodated on parallel dedicated cycling paths and trails where possible. Cities like Christchurch have large networks of bicycle lanes on their roads for commuters. Auckland roads are wide to accommodate cyclists and on-street parking. Across the country, busy streets have pedestrian crossings (a feature of the riverside drive plan the residents shot-down), round-abouts and other traffic calming devices (another feature of the riverside drive plan the residents shot-down).
Mike
Presumably, we do…the name of this site is “scaledown”, not “let’s cover everything in asphalt until it begs for mercy”
Well again, sorry to disappoint you, but just because we have some common visions doesn’t mean we’ll always see things the exact same way on every issue. That has been demonstrated over and over. Even the site’s own team members have their own visions and ideas that don’t always walk in step with each other.
Dear Mike,
It would be perverse in the extreme for anyone to suggest that we should let the worst examples of transportation planning form the basis of a environmentally gentle solution for Riverside Drive or anywhere else.
Since I cannot enjoy the view from your personal office, I can only reference articles such as the one by Emily Watt in stuff.co.nz 22 August 2008…Of course the wonderful thing about the net is that anyone else can google these materials too.
It is interesting how you refer to Riverside Drive as if it was nothing but a strip of pavement that should be converted to your pleasure and that you refer to the people who live on it 24/7 as “short sighted, selfish, NIMBIES”. Your animosity toward them really does you no credit.
Folks can we try and regain a little of the civility that we’re known for?
I , too, was present at many of the RDVIP public forums. I witnessed, and was a target of, derogatory remarks aimed at the cycling community. I didn’t witness any progressive measures being put forth by the drive’s residents. Speaking with Bruck Easton outside of the forum at Riverside arena, it was clear they just didn’t want anyone messing with the drive. Shunt the vehicular traffic over to Wyandotte and leave us alone was the general feeling that as expressed.
So, Rusalka, if there has been a change of heart please tell us. If the residents of the drive wish to be a part of something good and inclusive for everyone in the city, we would want to work with them towards that same goal. We need to build consensus in this city to move forward.
But I must admit, to seemingly embrace “skinny streets” (which were never meant to be applied to arterial roads, which - like it or not - Riverside Drive is) as a way of blocking access to modes of alternative transportation is just sleazy.
Not only is the Riverside Drive residents embracing of “Skinny streets” sleazy, it is also painfully uninformed. The article supplied by Rusalka talks about slowing traffic, increasing pedestrian friendliness and adding dedicated bus and carpool lanes as an alternative to widening roads.
When taken as a whole, this is very smart.
The problem comes from just cherry picking out the “not widening roads” part and ignoring everything else. If the Riverside Drive residents actually wanted to follow the example in the New Zealand article, (which would be applauded by me and most people in this forum), they would WANT to have the street widened for a dedicated bus and carpool lane in addition to a parallel dedicated bicycle path. Heck, they’d also want to have a light rail ROW installed next to the road as well. They would also want traffic calming devices like roundabouts and pedestrian crossings installed (both very common here in New Zealand).
Coincidentally, this sounds exactly like the proposed plan for Riverside Drive… included the addition of bicycle paths, traffic calming devices and pedestrian crossings.
When normal people are opposed to “widening roads”, they are opposing additional lanes for cars. RDVIP was widening the roads for bicycle lanes and the safety of drivers. Not adding additional car lanes. In fact they were doing things slow cars and limit traffic, making Wyandotte handle more of it.
But anyways, this is the last I’ll post on this thread.
I’ll never forget the Riverside Drive citizen at the RDVIP meeting, giving a slideshow presentation about how the RDVIP project would be “bad for the trees”. His example was a picture of some “dead” trees across from the Ford power plant in the Fall. Sure enough, come spring… I rode past those very same trees and they were all filled with healthy green leaves. That pretty much summarizes the authenticity and the honesty of the Riverside Drive residents on this issue.
Mike
I don’t know what Bruck Easton said to you Chris…all I can tell you is what was proposed at the meeting with the city…and that was the creation of a bicycle boulevard by dedicating an existing lane of traffic for the use of cyclists and alternate modes of transportation, while making the neighborhood portion of the street one-way.
Without going into a great volume of detail, this is happening in various places across the world, including NZ., and it is fairly easy to find more information on it.
There are those that like to describe Riverside Drive as an arterial road and feel that they can justify wrecking a neighborhood on that basis…but if I understood the original precepts of your site, one of them was to challenge the existing practices and definitions that have led us to our present environmentally offensive habits and suggest alternate solutions.
Continuing to slag Riverside Drive residents and/or people who share their views, does nothing to accomplish that lofty goal.
Just to reiterate…
Rusalka, I hope you’re not confusing my previous environmental activist positions with the positions of ScaleDown. ScaleDown is not an environmental group, though what we’re espousing will end up benefitting not only our environment, but our economy and our quality/standard of life.
It is unfair to raise anything brought up in a private meeting between Riverside residents and the city. Nobody was there to corroborate so at this point it is just heresay. I am alluding to public meetings which were well attended by not only residents and cyclists, but the media and city councillors. Those are statements which we can hold up to judgement.
Since when are we advocating “wrecking a neighbourhood“? Please don’t put words into our mouths. From all the evidence that I have read, written about, and have had presented to me, the things we are advocating would benefit the community greatly and add value. I am jealous that these things aren’t being proposed for my neighbourhood!
Believe it or not, the RDVIP and the residents reaction have not been a hot topic on this website. I believe it has been you who have raised it the two times we’ve addressed it. So trying to provoke us into a flame war seems pretty self-serving. Since you are (presumably) not writing under your real name, we have no clue as to who you are and what agenda you are advocating for, therefore we are at a dsadvantage to establishing a true give-and-take dialogue on the subject.
I stand by everything that happens on this site, as the vast majority of the participants are open and honest as to what their goals are. I cannot say that about the debate over the RDVIP and the residents of the Drive. Until that happens we will continue to tread water and accomplish nothing, you will still live on a street with traffic volumes you are unhappy with and people who cannot/will not drive are at a huge disadvantage in achieving any kind of equality of mobility in this city.
Are you suggesting that you want to “connect every Windsorite to their own walkable neighborhood” except for those people who live on Riverside Drive? I apologize for not realizing that this is such an exclusive club.
BTW, the meeting you speak of was not “private” as you suggest…and was attended by several city councillors…minutes were taken and are available to the public since it was part of the EA process.
Rusalka - your credibility is weak unless you can prove that the RDVIP will decrease the walkability/livability of Riverside Drive. Until you do that, all your comments will be traced back to an emotional response to a misunderstood plan. That, or ulterior motives.
The meeting of which is you speak, at this point in this discussion, is irrelevant, as we are discussing the current RDVIP project being argued before the OMB and not the wishlist and lobbying efforts of a special interest group. For my own personal interest, however, I would appreciate you posting a link to the aformentioned minutes.
Riverside Drive from end to end is not a very good road and in some places is very dangerous as a result of poor design, high traffic volumes and/or lack of traffic calming measures. (much like E.C. Row)
I have seen the RDVIP documents. Did the residents’ group submit design alternatives? Could we see them?
James, I lived in one of those late ’60s apartment towers out there for three years and boy you aren’t kidding! With all the bends and blind spots combined with aggressive drivers who haven’t seen a stop sign since they launched at Pillette, getting in/out of the parking lot or even just crossing the street at an uncontrolled section could be a death defying stunt of Super Dave proportions. My wife’s family hails from Riverside and the older folks talk about playing street hockey on Riverside drive (!!) in the old days. Try that now.
doorsopenwindsor.com
has a more complete list of sites, with a map.