Pirate Question and Answer

Q1. I read the Bike Pirates mission statement. Would you say that Bike Pirates is an anti-car culture movement? Would you say that car culture is the common "enemy" of Bike Pirates?

A: No one that comes into pirates can afford a car. We make betting around town easier for people who cannot afford public transit or a private automobile. Cars are my enemy; I will not stop until they are illegal in the streets of Toronto and other cities worldwide. It's a common anti-car movement. But there are pirates that are not harsh critics of cars because they want to bring drivers over to the idea of biking. In my view, less cars and more bikes on the street, the safer the streets will be. Car culture cannot be the enemy because it’s so big and everywhere, it will win at every turn.

Q2. When was Bike Pirates established?
A: July 2006 was the Pirates established

Q3. Bike Pirates is volunteer-run and organized. Does the organization have a defined structure? Is it centralized and hierarchical or decentralized and egalitarian? Do members have defined roles?

A: There is one defined role in Pirates, the pirate treasurer. The treasure takes care of finances. The Bike Pirates is ruled by consensus decision-making. You can call us a dis-organization. We can be considered an egalitarian system because we are trying to create a working system that functions outside the capital oriented system. We believe a better world is possible and we are not alone.

Q4. From where does Bike Pirates receive funding?

A: The sale of recycled bikes, the donations offered by people that come in and work on their bikes. By used parts sales, by fundraising events.

Q5. What tactics does Bike Pirates employ to achieve these goals?

A: We teach people how to function and maintain their own form of transportation. People are relying too much on professional expertise to run their life. They become specialized and lose touch with reality thus are reliant on a system of domination. Domination of the mechanic under unfair wages, dominated by the money needed to maintain their bicycle and the reality of being powerless.

Q6. Does Bike Pirates have alliances with other bicycle activists groups or other social movements?

A: Our allies are; Bike Chain, UofT's bike collective, paid for by the students, George that operates Parts Unknown in Kensington Market. We also owe allot to the Community Bicycle Network. ‘Volunteer only’ allows us to receive help from any and every source in the city.

Q7. What, if any, opposition has Bike Pirates encountered?

A: Other bike shops have seen us as a threat. They see us as debunking their business with teaching people how to do it them selves. I have talked it over to them, I approach them and say, the people that come to us can't pay for repairs on their bikes, so they come to us and work on it them self. The bike market is far from saturated; it’s hard to run a business because the money is unfair to labour practices. MORE BIKES HAVE BEEN SOLD IN AMERICA THEN CARS...FIVE YEARS IN A ROW. This stat does not tally recycled bikes.

Q8. What successes can Bike Pirates report?

A: Our accomplishments would be different to every pirate volunteer; we donate bikes to shelters, we give out free food, we sell bikes at the price of stolen bikes combating bike theft, we get people riding bikes for the first time, we are an active carbon sink, we are redefining the definition of a none profit organization.

Poor Cyclists

I have done some research in this field. I have used Stat Can to show ridership in the suburbs. The social economic requirements of riders is evident. Its ten percent all around my city of Toronto, not faulting or fluctuating. The suburban populous ride their bikes not because they want to, but because they need to. Transit is three bucks a ride. People are forced to ride their bikes without bicycle infrastructure. It becomes evident with bike on car casualties in the suburbs and poor and migrant people riding their bikes in winter.

Toronto has a huge migrant population, they know bikes better then anyone, they speak the universal language of bike. We work with them, they help us with bikes and we help them with English skills.

One reason that boost bike theft is the level of impoverished ridership, the demand for used bikes on the part of the impoverished class boost bike theft. Our recycle bike groups try to under price stolen bikes for sale.

We give poor people money to volunteer in our shop, we give bikes to shelters and employment resource centers. We try to understand the poor commuter and work to meet their needs. They can teach us allot about how the city works. Relying on public transit us madness.

Give me shout if i can help you more. Im with the www.communitybicyclenetwork.org. I worked with BIKESHARE, the yellow bike program that lends bikes out to people in need. We scrapped the program just to focus on recycling used bikes and mechanical skill sharing. We also give out free cooked food cause people think and ride better on a full tank. Hehe.

Bicycle History Lesson

Ivan Illich gives a set of very interesting facts and figures when he discusses his concept of convivial transport:

• The United States puts between 25 and 45 per cent of its total energy (depending upon how one calculates this) into vehicles: to make them, run them, and clear a right of way for them when they roll, when they fly, and when they park. For the sole purpose of transporting people, 250 million Americans allocate more fuel than is used by 1.3 billion Chinese and Indians for all purposes.
• The model American male devotes more than 1,600 hours a year to his car. He sits in it while it goes and while it stands idling. He parks it and searches for it. He earns the money to put down on it and to meet the monthly installments. He works to pay for gasoline, tolls, insurance, taxes, and tickets. He spends four of his sixteen waking hours on the road or gathering his resources for it. And this figure does not take into account the time consumed by other activities dictated by transport: time spent in hospitals, traffic courts, and garages; time spent watching automobile commercials or attending consumer education meetings to improve the quality of the next buy.
• The model American puts in 1,600 hours to get 7,500 miles: less than five miles per hour. In countries deprived of a transportation industry, people manage to do the same, walking wherever they want to go, and they allocate only 3 to 8 per cent of their society's time budget to traffic instead of 28 per cent. What distinguishes the traffic in rich countries from the traffic in poor countries is not more mileage per hour of life-time for the majority, but more hours of compulsory consumption of high doses of energy, packaged and unequally distributed by the transportation industry.
• Man, unaided by any tool, gets around quite efficiently. He carries one gram of his weight over a kilometer in ten minutes by expending 0.75 calories. Man on his feet is thermodynamically more efficient than any motorized vehicle and most animals. For his weight, he performs more work in locomotion than rats or oxen, less than horses or sturgeon. At this rate of efficiency man settled the world and made its history. At this rate peasant societies spend less than 5 per cent and nomads less than 8 per cent of their respective social time budgets outside the home or the encampment.
• Man on a bicycle can go three or four times faster than the pedestrian, but uses five times less energy in the process. He carries one gram of his weight over a kilometer of flat road at an expense of only 0.15 calories. The bicycle is the perfect transducer to match man's metabolic energy to the impedance of locomotion. Equipped with this tool, man outstrips the efficiency of not only all machines but all other animals as well.
• Bicycles are not only thermodynamically efficient, they are also cheap. With his much lower salary, the Chinese acquires his durable bicycle in a fraction of the working hours an American devotes to the purchase of his obsolescent car. The cost of public utilities needed to facilitate bicycle traffic versus the price of an infrastructure tailored to high speeds is proportionately even less than the price differential of the vehicles used in the two systems. In the bicycle system, engineered roads are necessary only at certain points of dense traffic, and people who live far from the surfaced path are not thereby automatically isolated as they would be if they depended on cars or trains. The bicycle has extended man's radius without shunting him onto roads he cannot walk. Where he cannot ride his bike, he can usually push it.
• The bicycle also uses little space. Eighteen bikes can be parked in the place of one car, thirty of them can move along in the space devoured by a single automobile. It takes three lanes of a given size to move 40,000 people across a bridge in one hour by using automated trains, four to move them on buses, twelve to move them in their cars, and only two lanes for them to pedal across on bicycles. Of all these vehicles, only the bicycle really allows people to go from door to door without walking. The cyclist can reach new destinations of his choice without his tool creating new locations from which he is barred.
• Bicycles let people move with greater speed without taking up significant amounts of scarce space, energy, or time. They can spend fewer hours on each mile and still travel more miles in a year. They can get the benefit of technological breakthroughs without putting undue claims on the schedules, energy, or space of others. They become masters of their own movements without blocking those of their fellows. Their new tool creates only those demands which it can also satisfy. Every increase in motorized speed creates new demands on space and time. The use of the bicycle is self-limiting. It allows people to create a new relationship between their life-space and their life-time, between their territory and the pulse of their being, without destroying their inherited balance. The advantages of modern self-powered traffic are obvious, and ignored. That better traffic runs faster is asserted, but never proved. Before they ask people to pay for it, those who propose acceleration should try to display the evidence for their claim.

[from: Energy and Equity. In Ivan Illich: Toward a History of Needs. New York: Pantheon, 1978.]

Cycling from Pirate Point of View

Name / Occupation / Age
Geoffrey Bercarich/ Student / 23

What do you use your bike for?
I bike to and fro between York University and my home at Queen and Shaw.

How often do you ride?
Every chance I get I ride my bicycle.

How long have you been commuting by bicycle?
Since 2001. I started riding a Bike Share bike to and fro between home and high school.

What would you say to convince someone who is considering commuting by bicycle to go for it?
It’s cheap and effective. It brings speed, liberty and freedom to persons in transit. You’re not trapped in a tunnel or encased in a car’s cage.

When did you start commuting in winter and why?
Since 2001. I never saw a problem with riding in winter.

What are the biggest challenges for winter bikers in Toronto?
The disappearance of poor city street infrastructure under plowed snow, like bike lanes and much needed curbside. You must take your place as a cyclist in the lane-way, sometimes blocking the cars.

What could the City do to make winter biking better?
Plow the roads to the curb. Plow the bike trails that are not connected by roadways.

What reaction do you get from co-workers?
Same as in summer; disbelief that I ride a bike. More so in winter than summer. People at York University do not ride bikes, and I am taking environmental studies.

What’s the best thing about commuting by bicycle in winter?
The speed of getting through slow, bogged down cars in traffic. Every car in winter
is slower and on alert for snow and ice that can brake their car’s… paint.

Do you use a different bike for winter riding?
I constructed a special bike for winter. I constructed it from a donated frame from Bike Pirates. I built new wheels with a fixed gear for added breaking power, and used special touring tires for good traction. It’s my winter bike so I clean it every night after my daily ride.

Can you give a brief description of your route?
It’s 20 miles. I try to avoid hills as much as possible. Biking up to York I go up Caledonia, until the 401. Then I’m stumped by car traffic. I get by.

Where are your favourite places to bike in Toronto? Least favourite?
The Martin Goodman Trail. I learned to ride a bike on that stretch of pavement. It’s unfortunate that there are extra poles that are designed to catch cyclists in their ride and cripple them. I have had friends hit hard by these traffic calming instruments near the Queen/King bridge that links to the lake shore. The Martin Goodman Trail has been, and is, my least favourite and also best place to ride.

What do you like about biking in Toronto in winter? And dislike?
The feeling of a simple life. There are greater opportunities to be the only vehicle on the road during the dead of winter. It’s my dream to ride on a car-less road.

Have you ever combined transit and biking or used a bus bike rack?
No, I don’t trust bike racks. Subway travel is hard to handle with the bike.

What’s your favourite piece of winter cycling clothing?
A proper shirt is key. Wool it up over winter, it can save your life.

Any bike gadget/gear winter cyclists should not go out without?
Gloves. Some people get desperate and use cooking mitts — and they do the trick to stop wind chill. Always were tights or long underwear to help keep your knees warm and in proper rotation.

Are you a member of any cycling organizations/clubs? If so, which ones?
Bike Pirates. I got a good winter bike there. The Community Bicycle Network helps me stay informed with bike mechanics.

Favourite winter bike stories?
The winter storm before Christmas that stopped all cars in their tracks. I used their tracks as a bike plow system to do my “Holiday Shopping”.

Scary winter bike stories?
Every time you fall (you fall a lot more in winter then in summer) it’s no good, but it’s easier to fall on ice and snow then asphalt, I think.

Anything else?
Look into the Martin Goodman Trail traffic calming posts in front of the Boulevard Club (page 2, item 2) on Lakeshore. Cyclists are the only real traffic calming tool.

Make it safe for bicycles and you will calm car traffic to a safe pace.

Permalink for Winter cyclist profile - Geoffrey, Bike Pirate

Categories Weather, People, Environment, Traffic, Cycling

THANK YOU FOR ALL YOUR INPUT.

The first questions...i do not use racks, i use gas mains, there everywhere and there sudden death to bike thieves...
Second...i never ride in Cars. Never! I get sick being in the controlled alien climate of a car cabin. MY father years back gave up his License protesting the Spidina Expressway, i still hold true to his convictions. Oh ya, I CAN"T AFFORD the time, space and money to maintain an automobile.

I ride my bike all year round; rain, snow, haul and black ice. Nothing has stopped me from riding my bike. NO accidents yet, i use valley trial routes but most of the York School year they are washed out and frozen.

I think renovating the Hydro corridor that stretches across all of North Toronto will link the rural cyclists from North, there are rural cyclists i see them all the time at York. They ride because they must due to social economical circumstances. Cyclist deaths are known in rural cities like Vaughn and Aura.

There are still many options in the city to construct cyclists paths away from traffic corridors. Trails can parallel rail lines. It all a matter of will power. Ottawa has lights on their bike trails.

It takes me one hour to bike to York from Queen. IT takes me an hour to take the TTC. WTF?!

Thank you Mr Dave McD. You are the typ of people that give us cyclists clarity and realism in our cause to promote cycling. I lived on the Kingsway and Queensway,(cyclist died there four years back, made me start my cause towards cycling) using Runnymede is stupid, i use friendly side roads where lanes are only two cars wide and the community will help you if you need it.

Come down to Bike Pirates and CBN (http://www.communitybicyclenetwork.org/), help us all contribute to Toronto's cycling scene by vocalizing all your beautiful comments. We all winning with every new cyclist on the road. I win when i see you people in real life.

Ciao
Geoff

Bicyclist Beware

Bicyclist Question

• I was wondering if I could pick your brains:
• 1. Are there specific streets I can't ride on?
• 2. I assume traffic rules are the same for bike riders as well, including the left turn and right turns?
• 3. Which lock would be a good one?
• 4. I have heard that it is compulsory to have a light and a bell on the bike as well as reflectors. Is there is a specific make one buys?
• 5. Are lights and bells and reflectors prone to theft also?
• 6. Are bikes not allowed on sidewalks?

Pirate Answer

• 1. There is a free cycling map given to anyone in the city, go get one at any bike shop
• 2. its called vehiculer traffic, we obey there rules. I dont but who cares. I stay alive, major one rule
• 3. anything Kryptonite, anything above thirty...but there cheap u locks to buy on Spidina general stores.
• 4. its the law for bell and light, able to fine you 170$ I dont but i have no drivers license so i dont pay the fine.??!
• 5. Take your lighgts with you or hide them, your seat and wheels are the things that will be jacked
• 6. Most bike accidnets in Toronto happen when cyclist cross from sidewalk corners. Cars cannot respond...they don't see you...take the lane from the car, they will not run you down. Have faith in your cycling abilities and lack faith in their driving.
• P>S> Come to bikepirates.com....or come out to Crirtical Mass, street party at SPidina and Bloor, last friday of the month at 6pm