Thursday, August 23, 2012

Parking in Vancouver

 Sonja and Bob both say that Vancouver is not a friendly place to park powered two-wheelers.

I was in Vancouver, staying across the street from the Vancouver Art Gallery.

I stole an hour from my duties at the Canadian Society of Corporate Secretaries Annual Governance Conference to visit the Matisse exhibit at the museum.

Strolling across the street, I couldn't help but notice a few motorcycles and scooters parked on the museum's grounds.  Protected by the museum, the PTWs seemed immune from Vancouver parking demons.

I couldn't manage a picture on the way to the museum, when there were four or five bikes parked. When I stopped to snap a picture on the way back, there were only two PTWs left, including this nice Vespa S.

During a discussion with my colleagues, several people mentioned that Vancouver city hall was very focused on making Vancouver bicycle-friendly.

Why not adopt the Montreal BIXI system, Mr. Mayor?

Montreal and Toronto have seen their bicycle scene grow amazingly with the BIXI system acting like a catalyst.

Mr. Mayor, if you do that, not only will you be joining Washington D.C. and London, as world-class cities with BIXI bikes, you'll also do the city's motorcycle and scooter commuters a big favour!

So come on, Vancouver, two-wheels all the way!!

3 comments:

SonjaM said...

David, at any given moment a tow truck might show up and the bikes will be taken away to the compound.

Unknown said...

David:

Vancouver is only friendly towards bicycles or electric powered bikes. The city is willing to block traffic lanes, and take away car lanes on bridges for bicycles, they will install bicycle racks most everywhere to show the world that Vancouver is Green, but there is a hatred towards anything that uses a gasoline motor.

As Sonja said, they can be towed away at any time. Notice that there are few motorcycles downtown, and some scooters look like gas but may be electric

bob
Riding the Wet Coast
My Flickr // My YouTube

David Masse said...

Sonja, Bob, those electric scooters with pedals are strange. They would lose in a race with a bicycle, yet from a certain distance they appear to be like regular motor scooters. Yet there they are in the bike lane, rolling silently along. They are really, really popular with the old folks here, who go marauding in packs like bad-ass bikers on the parkland bicycle paths.

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