Roody

We have that kind of parking in our main downtown shopping street. One time a guy in a truck backed right into me. The bike and I were fine. Of course he yelled at me. I told him that a piece of his truck fell off when he hit me. Then he got really mad. I had to laugh....cheap ass truck!

I-Like-To-Bike

From the pictures that you've posted on this thread, I would guess you like to ride on "streets" that are devoid of everything but scenery; no cars, no buildings, no people, but lots of pretty views.

Good "streets" for touring, not so much for daily transportation.

cooker

That part of Australia is greener than I expected.

I find diagonal parking like that somewhat hazardous, but the upside as you say, is that it is generally on a wide (and slow) street, where you can keep well out from the backs of the cars. It seems to be a very "new world" concept, based on the development of cities in the the early 20th century, as cars were catching on.

Roody

In my city, the main shopping street was a very wide boulevard with parallel parking on both sides, for carriages and then horseless carriages. In the 1950s it was made into a carfree outdoor "mall" with trees and benches and so forth. The cars were let back in about 15 years ago. Now it's two narrow lanes with the nose-in angle parking. The sidewalks are quite broad with trees, "furniture" and sidewalk restaurant seating in nice weather.

The traffic is real slow with frequent delays. I ride way to the left edge of the lane, almost in the center of the street. Even so, like I said,I got hit one time. Here's what Wikipedia has to say about this type of parking:

B. Carfree

For a number of years my commute involved roads similar to Machka's pictures (but with a coast range look; no granite). It all depends on where you choose to live and what your range is. I was fit enough to do the hundred mile commute four days per week. However, I had friends who lived only twenty miles from the same city (along my route home) who would have had a similar but shorter riding experience if they ever got out of their cars.

Not all transportational cyclists are restricted to ten miles a day. Some of us enjoy cycling enough to look for any excuse to get rolling. I think John Forrester calls us old-fashioned club cyclists.

Machka 

Absolutely!!

Several of the photos I posted here were of my commutes in those areas.

And we like to visit places ... locally and further afield. One way to visit places is to hop in the car and drive to a local tourist attraction, market, etc. Another way is to get on the bicycle and ride to those places. The car-free or car-light lifestyle would be pretty boring if all we did was to ride to and from work or the grocery store. Riding to all sorts of other places keeps things interesting and enjoyable.

Machka 

Much of Victoria and Tasmania have a climate similar to the Pacific Northwest, and the rainfall amounts in the first few years after I moved to Victoria were quite high ... especially in the winter. Our winters are very green, really quite bright green. It's a nice change from the black and white of Canadian winters. Our summers here tend to be a bit browner.

Although our native trees are eucalypts, which give a blue-ish hue to the hills (as seen in the Hobart photos in the Where We Live thread), the towns contain all sorts of imported trees and other vegetation which you would find in the Pacific Northwest. Several of my photos were taken in autumn and the non-native trees are the ones which are turning colours. The native trees remain blue-ish green year round. There are also a number of native temperate rainforest areas which are very green.


As for diagonal parking ... I like it. From a driving perspective, I've never been able to parallel park, so I find angle parking much easier to deal with. And from a cycling perspective, I just watch for the reverse lights ... as soon as they come on, I slow down and/or move over.

The towns that have angle parking here usually have streets wide enough for 4 lanes of traffic, or close to it. So the automobile that backs out, backs out into the lane closest to the parked cars. Meanwhile the through traffic is in the lane closest to the centre, and it usually crawls along at about 40 km/h, if that. There aren't always lines to mark lanes, but the traffic seems to understand that's how it works. Therefore, when you cycle down one of those streets, you position yourself in about the middle of the lane closest to the parked cars ... not right next to their bumpers. That way you can observe people coming out of the shops and getting into their cars, so you can anticipate what's going to happen next, and you can see the reverse lights, and since you're out in the middle of the lane, you've got time to react.

Roody

Well, we did get 99 pictures of the same type of road, and maybe two pictures of an actual street.

Machka 

You asked for streets and highways. If you don't approve of the photos of streets and highways people have posted here, post some photos of streets you like to ride on.

Roody

There's a small error in my posts about parking in my downtown area. It is perpendicular parking, not angle or diagonal parking. I think this might be a little worse for cyclists. The traffic lanes are narrower than they appear n this photo.

Roody

The photos are lovely but the quantity was overwhelming. As for topic, I was going more for "What streets do you like that you ride on regularly". I was wondering what kind of streets people do their transportation cycling on, like commuting, shopping, etc.--maybe with some indication of why they choose to ride often on a certain street.

Looking back, I now realize that I should have been more specific in the OP, so in no way do I blame anybody beside myself.

cooker

I felt a bit snowed with images too, but I liked the last few, which showed how Aussie towns in some ways resemble rural and midwestern North American ones.

(Actually it's probably the imported trees.)

Roody

I notice in my last picture of a Midwestern town, the trees are imported too. Why can't anybody be happy with the trees they already have?

Machka 

Well ... what about starting a new thread with those specific criteria?


See for me, being car-free or car-light is not all about transportational cycling. That's part of it, of course, but I think a very important part of being car-free or car-light is being able to do all the recreational things we love to do without a car, or with limited car use. Being car-free or car-light should not limit us to a life within a 10 mile radius of home where we only venture out to work, school, or on specific errands. We should be able to cycle to all sorts of things ... to parks, mountains, lakes ... to outdoor concerts and plays put on during the summer ... to museums and ice cream shops in neighbouring towns ... to sporting events ... to whatever we happen to enjoy.



There are many reasons why trees are imported. One reason here is that Australia was settled predominantly by people from the UK who wanted to create a feeling of home. But, of course, that's not the only reason.

Machka 

It might have been quicker to ask what kind of streets, roads, and highways we don't like.

I don't like busy narrow roads.

They can be busy and wide ... that's OK.
They can be quiet and narrow ... that's OK.

But busy and narrow is stressful.

And that goes for rural or urban roads.

I-Like-To-Bike

Horticultural sprawl, an objectively evil scheme devised by money grubbing botanists?

Roody

Yes, money is the root of all those roots!

cooker

Hope the imported plants don't cause as much trouble as the imported rabbits.

Machka 

Many of the non-native plants have been beneficial. Some have not (blackberries and willows spring to mind).

But these days, most non-native plants are propogated from existing non-native plants. It is very difficult to bring any sort of plant/animal product into Australia.

Zedoo

Windsor, Ontario is a small, clean city. After travelling through Detroit and across the border, I did not have time left for getting beyond the city to rural riding, but it looks like a great place to live on a bike. Here's a shot of a garden on a pedestrian bridge.

enigmaT120

If I took 99 pictures of my commute (don't worry, I won't!), it would be at least as rural as hers. Not as much pavement, though.

Roody

it does seem that Windsor would be a great location to be carfree. The countryside is flat and mucky with some of the old French strip farms along the river.

From Detroit, we used to walk across the Ambassador Bridge to Windsor. (Going south to get to Canada!) There was a little pub by the bridge for fish & chips and Molson on tap. Then we'd either walk back or take the bridge bus.

Machka 

If you can, post a few photos.


Rowan's commute for several years was rural too ... some of the photos I posted were of his commuting route. It was also the route he used to go shopping, to collect the mail, and to run errands.


[HR][/HR]

I don't have many photos of city cycling because I try to avoid city cycling as much as possible. When I was car-free, I did live in a city, but in a suburb right on the edge ... 5 cycling minutes and I was in the country. My commute was from my suburb to the next suburb, but there were a few sections of it which would have looked fairly rural if I had taken photos. And most places I needed to go for transportational cycling were right on the edges of one of those two suburbs, so I might combine picking up a few groceries with a long ride in the country.

Since then, I've lived in smaller towns/cities. One year Rowan and I lived right out in the middle of nowhere, so any errand cycling was completely rural. Then we moved into a town with a population of about 2500. With a town that size, even the route home from the grocery store (in the photo where Rowan has the pizza on top of his pannier) looks somewhat rural.

We're just not city people, and our cycling routes are not particularly urban.

enigmaT120

I did, or at least links. I cheated, as most of my pictures are from a day I rode all the way home from Salem rather than ride the bus a lot of the way. I don't have any pictures of my morning commute, as I have a bus to catch when I ride that and I don't stop.

Roody

That's probably the reason most of us, including Machka, didn't post commute pictures. When we're hurrying to work, or eager to get home, the last thing on our minds is to stop and snap pictures.

When I worked second shift, I often did a lot of extra miles on my commute in, some of it on off-road bike trails. Now I just walk seveN minutes to work, so not much to photograph...