Leader-Post: Sharing the road is all about ‘respect’

If Chris Bikula could ask Regina’s drivers one thing, it would be this: “Please use your signal lights.” The avid bicyclist was one of about 100 Regina bicyclists who took to the streets on Friday, as part of an event to raise awareness about bicycle traffic and foster friendly relations between vehicles of all kinds. “It’s all about respect,” said Bikula, who bikes about 8,000 kilometres a year. “Most people are pretty good about it, but there’s bad apples everywhere.”

Friday’s Critical Mass ride saw bicycles, tricycles, unicycles, and even a tandem bicycle take over a lane of Victoria Avenue at about 5:30 p.m., and then proceed en masse down Albert Street, Saskatchewan Drive, Broad Street, and College Avenue before ending up back at the downtown park.

Organizer Jennifer Baetz said the event was part of a global Critical Mass movement, where bicyclists across the world gather to take back the street, advocating safe cycling and promoting cyclists’ right to share the road.

Baetz said the event is intended to raise drivers’ awareness of cyclists, but cyclists have to do their part too, by signalling, obeying traffic rules and wearing helmets.

Critical Mass events range in size from 50 participants in Saskatoon last month, to an estimated 50,000 cyclists who turned out for an event in Budapest.

Baetz said she believes Regina is becoming more bicycle-friendly — including with the addition of new bicycle lanes downtown — but there is still a long way to go to make Regina roads safe for cyclists.

The event is intended as a demonstration, but Baetz said the participants weren’t trying to make vehicle drivers mad.

“We don’t want to annoy people,” she said. “That’s not the point of the event.”

Indeed, as the group proceeded down Victoria Avenue, vehicle traffic appeared content to share the road, and the group even evoked a few honks of support.

Bicyclist Kyle Laskowski said part of the problem may be a lack of understanding between motorized and non-motorized vehicles on the road.

“Everyone understands how to treat another car … but they don’t know how to treat a cyclist,” he said. “(Vehicle drivers) aren’t thinking the same way you are.”

It’s a way of thinking he hopes more and more people will come to appreciate. Since choosing a bicycle as his only means of transportation when he moved to Regina three years ago, Laskowski had been sold on the appeal of two wheels.

“They’re really cheap, and you can get anywhere in the city in a pretty reasonable amount of time,” he says. “I support people on bikes because I’ve never seen anyone on a bike do anything bad. The more people on bikes the better.”

Donna Nelson agrees.

But Nelson admits she ends up driving her car more than she’d like because she’s intimidated by vehicle traffic downtown. She said she attended Friday’s Critical Mass ride to show the importance of alternative transportation, and support the city’s move to a more bicycle-friendly environment.

“I think it’s important that there are safe streets, so that I do feel safe when I’m biking downtown,” she said. “The bike lanes are a positive step. It’s still far away from where it needs to be, but it’s getting better.”