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Getting involved

I love cycling. Ever since I learned to ride a bike 8 years ago, my love for this mode of transportation has not stopped growing. I ride to work, ride to events, ride to get groceries and even go on long trips on my bike. For the past few months, I looked for ways to channel my passion for cycling into new ways to break down barriers people have about cycling as a viable alternative to the automobile. Luckily I found just the place...

Cyclehack

Just over a week ago, I found out about this event called CycleHack, http://www.cyclehack.com. The premise: 48 hours to meet with kindred spirits of all backgrounds to discuss and invent ways to promote cycling. CycleHack happens simultaneously in over 30 cities around the world and has been growing since 2014. As a friend put it, there's nothing that sounds more Alrex than this. I had reservations about going but my wife convinced me that I should, if for no other reasons than to “stop moping around the house trying to find a way I can change the world”.

Friday

The evening started off with some networking over some delicious salads, snacks and beers, generously provided by various sponsors of the event. It was highlighted by presentations from multiple Vancouver cycling advocates and enthusiasts, including HUB’s Laura Jane, City of Vancouver’s Paul Krueger and Spokesmama’s Lisa Corriveau. Following the presentations, “barrier cards” that were submitted by everyday people, describing challenges that prevent them from riding their bikes were posted up. These had been collected by CycleHack and posted for all to read and get inspired from. I was surprised at just how many of those barriers were things that I run into daily, or have run through in the past few years. So many of them had to do with stigmas around cycling being a culture, or friction between cyclists and users of the infrastructure. It felt good to re-affirm that these problems affected others.

MotivateYourLanes

Saturday morning, everyone came in with some ideas they had been putting together overnight. From ways to improve communication between drivers and cyclists, to ways of giving the city better feedback on new cycling infrastructure, I was pumped. My original suggestion was to provide some sort of scavenger hunt-like experience to people in the city, to discover new bike lanes they may not know existed. Another idea was suggested around providing a way to make cycling a sensory and relaxing experience. More and more ideas were tossed around and our project started looking like an ambitious let’s add public art, and geo-caches, and make an app, and go all around the city and involve businesses was slowly getting out of hands. But someone eventually said, alright, what can we do in a short period of time to test this out. The idea we settled on, was to take existing free bike maps, add points of interests to send people on a fun ride to visit public art, experience gardens and eat delicious treats, and share the experience with their friends. We wanted to provide the framework to sharing similar experiences, to allow people to discover things to see and do along bike routes, and encourage local businesses. This is where http://motivateyourlanes.com came from. After making a few of these maps, we tested the ride ourselves.

Learnings

The first thing we learned on the ride was that cycling does have challenges even for experienced cyclists. Before we had even started the ride, a punctured tube caused us to find a bike shop to address the issue. We decided the split up and use the hashtag #molanes on instagram to find each other on the ride, this lead us to the second thing we learned, that we could turn this into a fun game or a way finding system. The third bit we learned, was something all cyclist run into at some point if they forget their locks, that it’s really hard to find a place where you can hang outside with your bike and enjoy a beer in Vancouver. All in all, it was a great learning experience.

It’s really energizing to meet people trying to change the world. On that note I want to thank everyone that was at the event, but particularly Rachelle, Michelle, Meghan, Misha and Ed for being such a great team to work with. It’s also amazing what a few people from different backgrounds with a shared passion can accomplish in a really short period of time and am really glad to see organizations like CycleHack bring this kind of event to life. Without them, I wouldn't have jumped in and tried this out.

Next steps

I must’ve jotted down at least a half a dozen ideas from the original Friday sessions and discussions, and another half a dozen over the rest of the weekend. I really look forward to spending more time implementing small testable prototypes that I can share with real people, and less time fantasizing about the perfect solution to ALL the problems at once. I’d like to see if I can get a few people to test out our prototype, gather more feedback, and iterate. You can find more details about our hack here: http://www.cyclehack.com/catalogue/motivate-your-lane/ or the landing page here: http://motivateyourlanes.com

One more quick note, I just want to give a shoutout to Mauricio Lozano of Faculty brewing, http://www.facultybrewing.com. His presentation on how he persevered and creatively overcame obstacles to provide as cycle friendly of a place as possible was awesome. I’m definitely stopping by the brewery when it opens!