Saturday 26 May 2012

Republican Congressman Supports Scooters!

Hurray! Even in the U.S. House of Representatives they're talking about scooters and motorcycles as transportation options for commuting at a time when President Obama is calling for alternatives that ease traffic congestion and reduce oil consumption. A Republican congressman promoting scooters and motorcycles.... Another sign (of the beginning) of a transportation shift in North America?

http://capitolwords.org/date/2012/05/18/E874_motorcycles-and-scooters-as-transportation-options/

Thursday 24 May 2012

That Expanding Indian market

India remains the battleground for makers of two-wheeled motorized vehicles. They big companies are using Bollywood stars, coming up with new models all the time and analyzing the country to get to niches before others do.  Each day there are stories about Honda, Yamaha and Piaggio's attempts to grab as much of the growing market as they can. Suzuki has decided that the rural market is key.

Here are two stories of late:

http://www.thehindubusinessline.com/opinion/article3432852.ece
http://www.thehindubusinessline.com/companies/article3429367.ece?homepage=true&ref=wl_home

Monday 21 May 2012

A Place To Park

One of the things I love about my scooter is free parking. I can make stops all over the city... simply get off, do my errands and continue on with little hassle. Because my scooter is small I can park it on wide sidewalks between trees and far enough away from bicycle stands to leave cyclists happy. And because I live in Toronto I can park on streets for free. I don't do that very often because I worry about drivers not seeing my scooter before it's too late. I only park on streets when I have no other choice or I see a gathering (a bunch? a flock?) of motorcycles and scooters parked together and facing out into the street, taking less space and making their presence obvious to motorists.

The parking situation for scooters and motorcycles in Toronto has been a happy one. Several years ago a scooter rider named Michelle Calvert started a campaign to fight city hall over parking and won. Riders had been buying the Pay & Display tickets only to have them stolen or blown away by the wind. Luckily, at the time. city council agreed that riders were getting tickets unfairly and swiftly amended the parking laws.

But now, under Mayor Rob Ford, free parking on Pay & Display streets is threatened. In the late fall, city budget chief, Mike Del Grande, described the current situaion as  another freebie that is costing the city money. In local newspapers he was quoted as saying, "they burn gas just like everybody else." (Really? I burn gas.) "You take a parking spot, you pay what you pay for cars." According to The National Post the mayor agrees with his budget chief. But that's not surprising from a mayor who loves the car.

The fact that other Canadian cities are having to face similar parking questions just shows that scooters and motorcycles are gaining ground as a clement weather commuter choice. In Ottawa, city hall offers half-price parking for motorcycles and scooters and at the busy By-Ward market there's a seasonal half-price lot.  The city is trying to get around the problem of Pay&Display tickets with PayByPhone service which registered riders can use to avoid displaying the ticket. And in Vancouver, the city came up with a similar plan two years ago but only for about 230 designated spots. Before that riders had parked free in unofficial spots and the advocacy group, MC Parking wants a return to free parking. City staffers suggested giving motorcyclists an 80 percent reduction fee compared to cars but their attempts to change the parking laws were shut down last week when city councillors passed an amendment to keep the status quo and get tougher with bikers who don't pay. The battle is not over though. MC Parking leader Ian Tootill say motocyclists may jam city streets to protest the "idealogue council" who are "not interested in anything that has a tailpipe"
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Last week's story from The Province.
http://www.theprovince.com/news/Motorcyclists+pushback+over+parking+against+idealogue+Vision+Vancouver/6640072/story.html

Website for Vancouver advocacy group, MC Parking:

http://www.mcparking.ca/

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Canadian cities may be entering a new shift, the kind of shift that city councils had to face to accommodate cyclists. Parking experts could do worse than look at how parking is handled in Vietnam where the vast majority of vehicles clogging city streets are scooters and small motorcyles. They'd see some brilliant ideas such as using corner lots for parking lots in the day and restaurants at night or government agencies and big companies turning land around their building into huge lots. In front of cafes and restaurants there is always an employee who lines up the scooters to maximize the use of space. For the most part, parking is not free though. There are "lots" at beaches and spots along streets and lanes where attendants charge a small fee to park and watch the bike. And parking is still a problem in cities where two-wheeled motorists traffic has exploded. While sidewalk parking remains an option, it can cause huge problems for pedestrians who have often to walk out on the street because there's no room left on the sidewalk for them.



A smart solution in Ho Chi Ming City... corners that's are parking lots by day, restaurants by night.




A street in old Hanoi. Scooter parking makes it treacherous for pedestrians.


Scooter line the sidewalks in Hanoi.


Scooters in a Hanoi alley. Wherever there are scooters parked you'll see minders who make a little money with the spaces in front of their businesses.



Workers in Vietnam can often park on concrete lots in front of their buildings.

All pictures: Copyright by Debi Goodwin

Sunday 13 May 2012

Marketing to Scooter Girl

Here's an interesting article from India about the marketing of scooters to girls. While this article relates to my post last week about increased mobility and independence for women, it also hints at the sexism in the two-wheeled market: scooters are for girls, motorcycles are for boys. Too bad.

http://www.hindustantimes.com/Brunch/Brunch-Stories/Woman-Power-Goes-Zip-Zap-Zoom/Article1-854199.aspx


By the way, it was impossible to detect a gender bias towards scooters or motorcyles in Vietnam. The ratio of scooters to motorcyles seemed to have more to do with whether a region was hilly or flat. These two young women were riding to school on a bike in Dalat, Vietnam, the mountainous city established by the French in the interior of the country.


Photo by: Debi Goodwin. Taken in Dalat, Vietnam

Scooters Are Small, Cars Are Big


May is safety month for scooters and motorcycles in many provinces and states across North America.  Every time I ride my scooter I remember two basic facts: 1/scooters are small, cars are big 2/ there is no metal framing around me to protect me in a crash or if I’m thrown.

It’s not that I dwell on those facts. If I did I would not ride with any confidence. But they are there, at the back of my mind, when I see a car about to cut me off.

Part of the goal of these safety campaigns is to make motorists more aware of the two-wheeled vehicles that share the roads. Scooters are becoming more popular around the world.  If we follow the trend here there’s going to be a lot more acclimatizing needed for cars and scooter to co-exist. Will we ever match the situation in Vietnam where scooters so outnumber cars they can control the flow or the situation in Italy where drivers, who likely rode scooters at one point in their lives, don’t object to sharing a lane? Hard to imagine. Yet.

When I ride I keep hearing the safety instructor who told me I had to “own the road.” I try to ride to demonstrate to cars that I will keep up with the speed of traffic and follow the same rules as them. When I encounter a driver who is aggressive and clearly annoyed to be behind a scooter, “own the road,” sometimes give way to “scooters are small, cars are big,” and I just get out of the way. I never engage in the kind of battle for position that cars often do and I let it go as soon as the rude driver is past me. I also remember a motorcycle safety trainer saying: “never ride a motorcycle (or a scooter, I imagine) angry.” You need your wits about you.

But there are drivers who just annoy me enough that I try to show them “I own the road.” They are the pushy ones who don’t bother waiting for the gap two cars behind me but decide, “Oh, it’s just a scooter I’ll pull out fast in front of it.” This happens again and again and because a scooter has more wiggle room than a car I can usually pull around the vehicle trying to butt in. One time I did this on a busy evening on a major artery in Toronto. There was a gap behind me; the driver had no excuse. So I went past him. He yelled out his window,” Why?” and I had a feeling he wouldn’t let it go. Sure enough, after he got into the flow of traffic, he made a point of getting past me and slowing down in front of me.  I just ignored him, matching his speed. My safety is more important than playing games.  It was a clear summer evening, but he squirted washer onto his windshield, which, of course, flew over the car and onto me. I guess if we’d been on a beach and I’d ticked him off he would have kicked sand in my face.  I had glasses on; none of the fluid went in my eyes. So I could laugh off the incident. But I was relieved he was just a jerk and not one of those urban psychos.

I don’t mean to pretend that all scooter riders are saints and drivers in North America are out to get them. I encounter lots of courteous drivers. And I’m sorry to say I witness a lot of scooter riders doing stupid things. I saw one simply ride up on the sidewalk to pass a gnarled bit of traffic. And when I was I the left-turn lane a week ago, I expected the scooter rider in front of me to turn as well. Instead, when the light turned green, he sped up and pulled in front of the car moving through the intersection. Scooters may be small and accelerate fast, but if riders pull tricks like that it doesn’t help motorists understand us any better.

Add to that the electric bikes and the mopeds moving along near the curb because the riders can’t match the speed limit and it’s no wonder that drivers are totally confused.  

Motorized two-wheeled vehicles sense in our cities. They save on gas and valuable parking land. We’ve rethought our streets for cyclists with special lanes; maybe it’s time to rethink the roads for a greater mix of vehicles.
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Here's an interesting link from Der Speigel that supports the idea that more scooters will be on roads soon...at least in Europe....and hopefully in North America. In this case they are talking about introducing an e-scooter.

http://www.spiegel.de/international/business/e-scooters-make-a-comeback-among-major-auto-companies-a-832688.html

Monday 7 May 2012

Scooters as Art



What to do with old scooters. Make art!

Photo taken in Dalat, Vietnam by Debi Goodwin

Sexism and Scooters

Years ago I did a television profile of a Canadian aboriginal woman artist who used a lot of images of horses in her work. She claimed that the horse changed everything for Native women on the plains by freeing them from dragging heavy loads.

Although I know little about the history of Plains aboriginal women, her words stayed with me, resonated with my own thinking about women and mobility. It has always seemed to me that my grandmother and my mother were strong women in part because they drove automobiles. My grandmother, in particular, came from a generation when the first women got behind the wheel. She drove everywhere on her own until cataracts stopped her in old age. There were many things she couldn't accomplish as a women of her era, but driving gave her the independence of managing her own time and the desire to see her daughters move into the wider world.

If you have any doubt that scooters and motorcycles are a feminist issue today read these stories. The first two are from Pakistan where women on two-wheeled vehicles are seen as ridiculous. The Tribune story contains an interesting fact about a bicycle-riding skills training program carried out in a region of Tamil Nadu in the 1990s. Done as part of a literacy campaign it increased women's mobility and independence.

http://blogs.tribune.com.pk/story/8149/why-can%E2%80%99t-women-ride-motorbikes/

http://tribune.com.pk/story/367104/motorcycle-diaries/

The following story's not on point but it says much about perceptions of women on motorcycles. It's the story of the only female superbike rider in Manila. A great story. But the writer couldn't resist stressing the woman's long hair, red lips and fine body, and pointing out how "the idea of the feminine embracing the ruggedness of two-wheels gets the imagination flowing."

http://www.mb.com.ph/articles/358490/a-woman-on-the-tracks


How a Vietnamese mother gets her children to school.


Photo taken In Ho Chi Minh City by Debi Goodwin