WFB: Safe

👋 If you’re a new follower, this account is about showing how far WFB has to go on being a safe place to raise kids, grow old in, and everything in between. All the tropes are deserved and this account has no shame. We have a history of racial covenants, and recognize zoning is a choice. Welcome!

This was the bike parking at a large park/event centre/market area in Ottawa that was great for parking cargo bikes (and would work for strollers too).

Need some help here! Looking for examples of cargo bike and/or stroller parking at a public place like a park. Need some visual examples of how to cater to these groups, who are often ignored in public works. Doesn’t need to handle both simultaneously, though. North American is a bonus. Whatcha got?

The recent bike crash on SM/Hampton (near the BP gas station) has been marked as a fatality. wfbsafe.org

Its important to always park a cargobike in a considerate and safe manner.

This silver suv was probably doing 60mph down HC past the middle school, swerving all over the road. Ran a stop sign and the next stoplight. WFB leaders think this is fine and believe they’re powerless to fix anything.

You’d have a hard time finding a worse place for bike racks that are predominantly used, year-round, by children. Directly next to a traffic lane with no parked cars providing safety. Incredibly thoughtless.

If WFB had been slowly adding incrementally better bike lanes and other traffic calming for the last 5 years, how many more people would be driving and not causing parking problems on SS, at Sendiks, at school dropoff? Who owns that colossal fuck-up? This glacial progress punishes drivers too!

"At some point in life, you stop counting how many years have passed since you were born, and start counting instead how many years you might have left, and that shift of perspective also coincides with when you truly start living the life you want to live." Buy that bike you've been eyeing.

They said it couldn't be done, but WFB found a way to give drivers, and not bicyclists and pedestrians, a comically absurd detour route! Probably truck route related, but let's just revel in the small wins.

French bicycle shop in 1920 🚲📷

Yesterday a reckless biker was going dangerously fast, AT LEAST 12 mph as we met at an intersection. It was almost a violent collision but we both looked each other in the eye, waved, smiled, slowed a bit, and went on our way without giving each other the finger and honking our horns. Terrifying.

What does safe, secure bike parking look like on a college campus? Join us next Tuesday, Sept. 8 at 3 p.m. ET to hear from Bicycle Friendly Universities and industry experts about what’s working. Register: action.bikeleague.org/page/101608/...

Kids spend too much time on screens ok cool they should play outside lol no Jesus Christ man what are you stupid I’m driving out here

The approach to street safety in WFB matches our sand management for toddlers protocol: a useless sign that most will never read, where a barricade would have been far more effective. Many people got patted on the back for this playground too!

Oh nice! Guy in a big pickup driving a very cautious and safe speed through the school zone! Good on you! .... Oh, he's holding his phone up in front of him typing something out 🤦🏻‍♂️

We're incredibly fortunate to get small glimpses of what's possible in WFB in the morning as kids bike to school like this. Unfortunately other parents blast their way between them, park illegally, and speed in school zones. We could have better things if our leaders weren't cowards.

Cities aren't loud. Cars are loud. Your city doesn't have too much traffic. Your city has too many cars. #Utrecht rush hour 🚲❤️ Steden maken geen lawaai. Auto's maken lawaai. Er is niet te veel verkeer in jouw stad. Er zijn te veel auto's in jouw stad. #Utrecht spits 🚲❤️

This bus lane in Seattle started as an executive order from Mayor Katie Wilson in January, and is operational in August. Just like that. Look at it go! Meanwhile we helped pass a motion for 8 bus lanes 2 years ago and we're still deep into endless consultation. Our leaders are not serious.

This raised intersection is @leniann.bsky.social’s magnum opus I watched multiple families on their way to the park cross here, and drivers fully complied with the law. Something shockingly rare at stop signs.

The more you talk to people in WFB the more you learn that it’s a diminishing possibility that all our bike and ped hostilities aren’t intentional. It’s starting to seem like leaders are aggressively grinding people down to just make them go away. They think this stuff isn’t important.

Ice cream and cocktails on the streets of Ottawa.

Optimist: The cup is half full. Pessimist: The cup is half empty. Cargo Biker: Both spilled all over the bike and I didn’t bring multiple changes of kid clothes so now I have 3 grumpy kids and I need to get home asap

The Sendiks project is aggressively hostile to anyone but drivers. The construction staff doesn’t have the most basic understanding of the issues and they owe us back every last cent for “managing” this.

chronically ill non-driver here, yup. also no one wants to take cars away from rural folks and the disabled people who need them. nor is there a remotely politically viable program to take cars away from folks in general. but there are a hell of a lot of car trips that could be bike or transit trips

You create safety, calm traffic and command attention through design like this. Narrowing the lanes, raising the level for the conflict zone, pavement that give audible and tactile feedback, surface color change, and vertical friction with bollards. Design does the work that signs never could.

Another successful Sunday for the pedestrianized Water Street in Gastown today. It’s only been on Sundays again this summer. Next year it should be all week over the full summer again, building on what we’ve learned about successful people-streets this year.

Incredible restraint tonight, merely waved at a fellow cargo biker with three kids, and went on – didn’t even try to ask them a litany of questions and exchange contact info. Passenger noted the other kids said something like “hey another one like us!” Feels like holding in a sneeze though.

This is once again underscored by all the people chiming in to complain about things which were ALREADY ILLEGAL (like 45 mph emotos, kids riding on the freeway without helmets etc..) before the de facto ban on ebikes. The law just punishes responsible riders who were actually following the old laws

"The law also unfairly affects people with medical issues who buy low-speed e-bikes with a throttle instead of a pedal-assist for use as transportation, Connor said. 'There are disabled people losing jobs or who can’t get to school because of this dumb bill,' she said."

“Explaining an eclipse to a dog” is about the best summary of trying to get local leaders to understand street safety yet

In WFB and a lot of the region, the vast majority of bicyclists are not dudes training for a race. Which makes it ever more weird that our leaders seem to think safe bicycling doesn’t need attention. Maybe they actually don’t care about all these riders! Or they don’t even know they exist! Seems bad

The visual definition of a "cyclist" completely changes the second you stop designing infrastructure exclusively for middle-aged men riding for sport.