The KCC Forums

As per Glen Cheetham: "Visit us at the celebration bike valet station on the west plaza of Sandman Centre each day of GoByBike Week and enter to win a $50 daily prize and a $500 grand prize. Whether you walk, roll, or ride, come say hello to our Bike Valet Ambassadors who are providing free, secure bike parking all summer long! "

At 10:30ish this morning I was the first entry in the box at the bike valet. I've got a pretty good chance of winning so far!

I hope the weather's not scaring people off today!

While you're at it - please join the KCC GoByBike team if you're not already part of a team (or if you'd like to switch!), it's at: https://logmyride.gobybikebc.ca/teams/join/31f04a81-15a2-4d44-8e92-b24b5b757ec1

@RobHiggins Thanks, Rob!

All of the event details including the prizes that are being given away are at: https://gobybikebc.ca/event-info/provincial-prizes/

KCC has a GBB team here, you should join!

KCC's next meeting is Tuesday, May 20th at the Big Little Science Centre @ 6:30pm!

Look forward to seeing you there!

Due to the city's AT update engagement session on May 13th, we're postponing the KCC monthly meeting.

Please come and attend the AT update engagement session to be able to take in the changes they're proposing and provide feedback.

When: Tues. May 13th, 5:30-7:30pm.
Where: Kia Lounge, Sandman Centre (300 Lorne Street)

Park your bike at the Bike Valet located on the Sandman Centre Plaza!

nmt-tdm.pdf

I love it when this work gets done. I was hunting around for studies and stories relating to economic benefits of bike lanes and came across this today which is much more broad information-wise. I haven't given it a full read yet, but the executive summary is awesome.

There are 23 pages of References and Information Resources alone. wow.

This document is just awesome.

HI there Skye, thanks for dropping in!

Yes, we were on a slow ramp-up plan even internally in regards to the forum. Now that it's been posted in the newsletter, we'll get a link up on the website and yes I agree it should be more prominent than the Facebook link.

You're right on the buy & sell aspect, too... I don't think that's what we want to take on at this point in time.

Are you a KCC Member, by the way?

Hi everyone,

Having a look at what the city's been engineering AT-wise lately, and some recent feedback from some of the elected officials, it seems we have some work to do. It would be excellent if we could start collecting news articles that come up, details and conversation about the AT master plan, and figuring out what we need to do with city staff & elected officials to try and get some positives moving forward - at the very least getting some recognition that cycling is not just a summer pastime, separated bike infrastructure is not only necessary but oh-my-god-why-can't-anyone-get-this saves a town big money for every buck that's put in to it: https://grist.org/cities/bike-lanes-save-lives-and-money/

Of course, if you build a bridge for 50 billion dollars but don't connect the ends of the bridge to anything, you still wind up with a waste of money.... until the ends are connected. (Thanks to Trent for the analogy)

Here's an article from Castanet covering some of the recent AT discussion: https://www.castanetkamloops.net/news/Kamloops/534788/City_of_Kamloops_eyes_bike_friendly_changes_on_Seymour_Street

AT Plan Update from Feb. 11: https://kamloops.civicweb.net/document/198073/REP_CTW AT Plan Update v3_REP.pdf

What are your thoughts?

Hmm, I wonder why this is such a frustrating game...

@RobHiggins The data you posted seemed familiar to me. It looks like it was reported here:

https://www.bikeradar.com/features/long-reads/cycling-environmental-impact

What I find interesting about European data of this sort is that as soon as you start comparing fossil fuel burning vehicles, they're likely going to miss fair comparisons for North America, where fair here would mean adding pickup trucks in to the list, which would create a new line item (or change the range of 'gas powered vehicle') that is up in the 370's. I think this is important data for us, as I don't believe we tax or treat pickup trucks appropriately on many factors, including their weight, how dangerous they are, and how much they pollute.

Source: https://www.co2everything.com/co2e-of/ford-f-150-awd-2020

This may not be too terribly surprising to some, but it's becoming clearer and clearer that, while the move to electric cars has some benefit, it's still part of a wider problem that doesn't solve transportation problems in general, and isn't enough to tackle climate change.

When we compared the life cycle of each travel mode, taking into account the carbon generated by making the vehicle, fuelling it and disposing of it, we found that emissions from cycling can be more than 30 times lower for each trip than driving a fossil fuel car, and about ten times lower than driving an electric one.

https://theconversation.com/cycling-is-ten-times-more-important-than-electric-cars-for-reaching-net-zero-cities-157163

I thought I would start building out some tips on making the most of these forums. There's a few simple things everyone should do once you've created an account:

1. Add your full name (or a full-name-alike) to your Profile so we have a better idea who you are, instead of just your username showing on all your posts & comments.
2. Set a profile picture that works for you.
3. Add anything else to your profile details that you'd like to share, or not, but it can be helpful for others to get a tiny sense about who you are.
4. Have a quick look at the settings page to get a sense of what's there and what options are available.

• These forums have reputation management built in. It's not hugely necessary, but if you see a post or comment that you like in the sense that it fits well with the community, and possibly because you agree with it, please upvote it. (There is a downvote as well.)

• Contrarily, if there is something posted that is quite objectionable, please flag the post for the moderation team.

• Invite others to come to the forum via the Users page

I look forward to adding more as time goes on.

Hey Aaron!

That's a pretty good start to things - I have a few thoughts.

I think initially we can probably condense all of the KCC Member-restricted forums in to one Discussion forum and utilize tags for highlighting meeting minute posts. We could also utilize locking those posts so they are simply informational posts, and if people want to reply/discuss they could do so as separate topics.

Similar condensing could be done on the Executive discussion group?

I suggest condensing a bit just so on a brand new forum things don't appear too unused/dead and instead encourage activity without being spread too thin. More categories could certainly be added in any time it appeared we could utilize some separation.

On the Buy & Sell piece specifically, I feel like that is a great idea but maybe we should hold off for a bit (to a phase 2 of 'launching' the forum?) until some people (like moderators) are settled in to the forum, we've dealt with migrating away from the email communications to a degree, etc?

Just my thoughts on trying to KISS at the moment, and move it all forward in simple small stages?

Edit: I didn't say anything about the photos... personally, I don't mind either way and I don't think I would suggest anyone should feel like they have to use a photo of themselves or not. If one was happy having their photo put on the KCC website, I suspect it wouldn't be an issue here as well. Or, one might want to just use an avatar of the moon or a cheeseburger, which is fine in my opinion, too.