Tomorrow morning (Tuesday, October 18), hundreds of cyclists and allies (non-cyclists are welcome to walk with the group) will be meeting at Bronson and Queen for a tribute ride for Danielle Naçu, the cyclist who was killed last week on Queen Street. Christ Church Cathedral, at Bronson and Queen, will be serving coffee and muffins from 8:00 AM, and supplying shelter in case of rain. Anyone participating is encouraged to wear yellow if possible, as a symbol of the ‘ray of sunshine’ that Danielle was to ...

[caption id="" align="alignnone" width="600" caption=""If you build it they will come" - bike trips tripled on Laurier since launch of lanes"][/caption] This summer, the city of Los Angeles passed a law making it illegal to harass or threaten cyclists. I was amazed and pleased when it happened, even if a law like that is practically unenforceable – I mean, how would you prove it, or even track down the perpetrator, once he or she had sped off? And in subtle cases, such as when it feels to the cyclist like the drivers are deliberately passing them too closely, it’s even harder to prove. But it seems to me as though that’s not the point – or the benefit – of the law. Perhaps there’s a very faint chance that anyone would be charged, but there’s value in just knowing that the officials of the city have encoded protection for cyclists in the laws. Sometimes a law is written and passed, not because you can enforce it, but because its very existence says, “we as a people have declared that you can’t behave like that.” I thought of the LA cyclist harassment law when a friend asked me, a week or two ago, whether I thought segregated bike lanes ‘work.’ The Laurier segregated bike lanes are a bit over two months old, officially, and they were opened amid a huge furor – heated arguments for and against on both sides. But with a half season under their belts, can we say they ‘work?’

Editor's note: 'Clickshift' is a new cycling feature on Spacing Ottawa authored by Kathryn Hunt. Kathryn is a writer and editor who started cycling as her main mode of transportation in early 2007. Now a year-round, all-weather cyclist, she has a hard time remembering life without two wheels. She maintains a cycling blog at theincidentalcyclist.blogspot.com. ___________ Spring is finally here: the roads are clear of snow and ice, the temperatures have crept up above zero while we weren’t looking, and a lot of people are getting their bikes out of storage, tuning them up, and getting them back on the road. Most cyclists, actually: while something like 2-3% of Ottawa’s population commutes by bicycle in the summer months, winter riders are far fewer. I find that as a winter rider, when spring comes back, I readjust my relationship to the rules of the road. Conditions are different. I’m moving faster. I’m more relaxed. There’s more space. I can bike off-road again, hop more easily onto bike paths, cut through parking lots. But I also find that I roll my eyes when I go by someone riding on the sidewalk (unless that someone is a child.) In other words, in spring it becomes much more clear to me that we cyclists cherry-pick the traffic laws we follow: some of us knowingly and, maybe, some of us unknowingly. The rules of the road are a shifty grey area for cyclists, many of whom seem to feel that a) the rules are car-centric, b) cyclists are by nature anarchic, and c) they have the right to choose how they relate to cars. I see this in myself, as I execute a rolling stop at a four-way but grumble at the cyclist I see heading the wrong way up the sidewalk, or pedaling down Bank Street after dark with no lights.

Editor's note: This post originally appeared on Spacing Ottawa contributor Kathryn Hunt's blog, The Incidental Cyclist I encountered a bit of a traffic jam on the way to work this morning. I thought they'd all have been gone by now: by the time I need to buy a toque for under the helmet and break out the gloves, I sort of expect the migratory birds to have left. But, apparently, no. These folks are just one of the road hazards of November. There's their poop - it's gross - and the fact that a bird this size feels no need to flee before an oncoming bike. They just gaze at you sideways, like they're daring you to violate their personal space. But there are other hazards on the roads this time of year. . . for one thing, I also notice more roadkill in the late fall. I'm not sure why: maybe animals like squirrels are slower at this time of year. And it's mostly squirrels. (There are more disgusting things to accidentally roll over with your tires than one of those sad flattened patches of fur in the bike lane, but not many.) But it's also birds - seagulls, mostly, although there are pigeons too.

Editor's note: The following piece originally appeared in the author's own blog,"The Incidental Cyclist" Somehow, even though I know it's been a growing focus for the local media, I'm still pleasantly surprised when I hear a story on cycling pop up on the radio or in the paper. Hey, I think, they're talking about me! Which is what I thought when I heard Kathleen Petty talking to an urban planning expert from Copenhagen this week on CBC's Ottawa Morning about bike facilities in the city. Not that either of them said much that I didn't already know. "Your bike paths are beautiful," said the woman from Copenhagen, "but crossing the Portage Bridge was the scariest thing I've done in my life." There was the usual conversation about how healthy biking is - every dollar spent on cycling infrastructure gains back something like $1.80 in saved health care expenses, or so they claim - and how good for the city, with businesses along bike routes gaining something like 10% profits (tell that to the Somerset Street BIA, who put the kibosh on the proposed test route that would have run east/west along Somerset.)

Editor's note: As the video above will show, cycling the winter streets in Ottawa is clearly not for everyone. It helps to be young, male, and a little bit aggressive about claiming your space on the road. In fact, as this article from Scientific American suggests, those descriptors are associated with the majority of urban cyclists across North America, in any season. The article makes the case that if authorities wish to measure the success of safe cycling initiatives, they need only look to see if women make up an equal share of cyclists on the road. Female cyclists are "indicator species", it is argued, and when we see them represented equally we are looking at streets and pathways that are safer not only for women, but for everyone on two wheels. With this context in mind, we join Spacing Ottawa contributor Kathyrn Hunt of the Incidental Cyclist blog as she discusses her experience going against the statistical trend to become a four-season "vehicular" cyclist. A reader commented on a recent post on my blog, saying that danger spots like the Queen Elizabeth/Queen Elizabeth intersection — where the city path and NCC path don't meet — are what keeps her off her bike. Awkwardness — that's what really bothers me about such intersections. There's a learning/acclimatization curve to urban biking. I grew up in rural New Brunswick. When I moved to Ottawa for college I brought my bike and I used it a lot — but only on the sidewalks. It was way too scary just trying to cross major intersections with the bike, let alone ride in the street. I slowly learned how to use the side streets, but I would do anything not to have to be on Bank Street dodging the #1 bus. And eventually I gave up on riding for the most part. The bike in question was lost in the shuffle when I moved out of the country for a couple of years.

On my way from the bus to the Rideau Centre doors one morning last month, just after the first real snowfall of the year, I passed a bike that had been left locked to the railing. It was up to the pedals in snow, half buried, and had clearly been there since before the snow came down. To me at least, it looked as though the basket still had some things in it – but then maybe it was just that passing pedestrians had been sticking coffee cups and flyers and other trash in the basket. I had no way of knowing how long that bike had been there, but I kept an eye out for it, and when I passed a few days later, there it still was. And I started wondering. Whose bike was it? Why had it been left on the bridge? Why hadn’t its owner returned for it? How long had it been there, and how long was it going to stay there before someone removed it… and for that matter, whose responsibility was it to move the thing? What would happen to it?