"You want to steal my stuff, please. You can't do anything with it anyways. I dismantle them. "
Igor Kenk, bike shop operator, Toronto
"just because you're sharing, you’re not going to be poor, you're going to be much richer."
Eric Britton, New Mobility Agenda, Paris
"The plan was to stop the car, the destruction of the town, the pollution, by leaving cars outside the town, and give a new instrument
for people to use when they want to travel around: free bikes, for everybody. "
Luud Schimmelpennink, social inventor, Amsterdam
"These days the real cycling radical in New York City is the 40-year-old mom whose taking her kids to school on a bike."
Aaron Naparstek, Streetsblog, New York
"If a cyclist gets hit by a motorist, you can pretty
much be guaranteed there will be no consequences for the motorist. Normally
there's not even a summons issued, and there's virtually never a severe penalty.
John Pucher, Prof Urban Planning, Rutgers University, New Jersey
From bicycle-mad Paris to rush-hour New York and the back alleys of Toronto, take a ride through the changing world of bike culture.
The bicycle, a humble nineteenth century invention, is challenging the fossil-fuel automobile as the conveyance of the future. It’s the ideal city machine, light, portable, and cheap. Non-polluting. Good exercise too. Urban dwellers around the world are turning to bikes as the car turns them off.
But with bicycles coming of age as a serious mode of transportation there are a few problems. Bicycles and automobiles have to share the same roads, a recipe for conflict, and many potential cyclists just won’t ride in the city because they see it as too dangerous. Add in the plague of bike theft and a lot of cyclists are simply leaving their bikes at home.
Pedal Power from Cogent Benger on Vimeo.