Nanaimo GoByBike Week starts on Sunday

Fall GoByBike week encourages cyclists of all ages in Nanaimo to bike to work, school, or wherever you need to go between Oct. 16 and 29. File photo provided by the City of Nanaimo.

October 16 to 29 is fall GoByBike week in communities across British Columbia where people are encouraged to cycle as much as possible to improve their mental and physical health and help the environment.

In Nanaimo, the kick off event is planned for Sunday, October 15 from 3 p.m. to 5 p.m in Maffeo Sutton Park. There will also be “celebration stations” at different locations across the city throughout fall GoByBike, wraps up with the Bicycle Film Festival on November 9th in Vancouver Island University’s Malaspina Theatre.

Jamie Rose, manager of transportation at City of Nanaimo, says that GoByBike has expanded from its original scope of biking to work.

“Go by Bike Week is a provincewide campaign to encourage people to travel to their daily needs by bike,” he said. “Whether it's to work, to school, to the grocery store, or coffee shops, or if they're going to movies.”

Rose said that he wants to help remind people about how fun biking was as a kid.

“Biking can be a fun and healthy way to get around and I think it's what most of us did growing up,” he said. “We didn't just do it because we had to, we did it because it was fun.”

Nanaimo Mayor Lenoard Krog says that while he supports GoByBike week, commuting by bike just isn’t feasible for him personally.

“I'm not going to be cute about this. The reality is, I'm 70 years old, I have a three speed bicycle that I ride very, very, very rarely,” he said, noting that he is often going to different locations in the community during his workday. Krog says that he encourages everyone in the city with a consistent workplace who is physically able to bike more.

One thing Krog says the city is working on is reducing barriers to cycling in the city.

“One of the barriers that I see and I have raised this and I know that staff are looking at it, is the lack of safe storage at the end of the route,” he said. “In other words, if you're cycling to work downtown, is there a safe, secure place where you can store your bike without it being stolen?”

Rose says that one thing the city has done is help set up bike valets for special events in the downtown area.

“It can give some peace of mind knowing that you've got a safe and secure place to leave your bike while you attend and attend an event,” he said. “The night market also had that all summer long and the reports we've gotten back from that are that it was quite well utilized.”

Rose says the city is also working with the school district to encourage kids to continue to ride their bikes to school and not become dependent on cars.

Krog says city staff are working on implementing the active transportation plan, but people need to be patient, “these things take time to implement. As they say, Rome wasn't built in a day.”

Krog says that part of the challenge in building cycling infrastructure is decades of city sprawl.

“People say why can't we be like Amsterdam? Well, we're spread over 91.3 square kilometers,” he said. “Amsterdam I think is 209 square kilometers. They have 975,000 people. It's a lot easier to build and maintain that infrastructure [there], where we are catching up.”

Krog says that the city is working to increase participation in GoByBike with cycling welcome stations that will pop up throughout the city during the event as well as contests people can enter by tracking the number of kilometers they cycle.

“Heck, we're even going to give a prize of a brand new ebike from Pedego electric bike,” he said.

For more information on GoByBike week in Nanaimo go to www.gobybikebc.ca/nanaimo

Funding Note: This story was produced with funding support from the Local Journalism Initiative, administered by the Community Radio Fund of Canada.