The Derailleurs featured in the Leader Post, Monday, June 9th, 2008

The Derailleurs: Cycling’s Voice of Reason on Regina City Streets
By Allen Warren

Sometimes cyclists can feel like a pretty lonely breed in the City of Regina. Not that companionship always matter to the cyclist when they’re whizzing carefree in the sun down the street propelled only by their own enthusiasm for two wheels, handlebars, a thin frame, one chain and maybe a derailleur.

When a cyclist is negotiating rush hour traffic as a commuter, however, they often feel like the odd vehicle out.

Despite recent city initiatives to better integrate cycling into the normal flow of motorized traffic, such as bike racks on city buses to carry cyclists in and out of downtown and plans to create more dedicated lane ways for bicycles, commuter cycling still seems to face an uphill struggle for legitimacy in Regina.

Do city motorists need an attitude adjustment when it comes to sharing the road with city cyclists, or are cyclists the ones who need to smarten up?

According to the Derailleurs cycling club, a big-hearted and “ever-expanding group of cycling enthusiasts” who advocate for safe cycling in Regina, it is, for their sake, most-immediately the latter.

By mastering the elements of cycling that they can control, such as respecting the rules of the road, cycling defensively and remaining visible to motorists while signaling their intentions at all times, the Derailleurs believe they really can influence how drivers and cyclists interact with each other on City of Regina roads.

“Sometimes I go days without seeing without seeing a cyclist following the rules,” said good-natured Derailleur Jennifer Baetz. “But it’s good for drivers to see cyclists out there who do, who care and who aren’t just out there to cause trouble, and that’s what we do.”

Originally from southern Ontario, Baetz moved to Regina two years ago from the Canadian biking capital of Vancouver, British Columbia. Besides the warmer winters, there’s something else she misses about the west coast.

“I miss seeing people biking and walking,” said Baetz, who lives and works in downtown Regina. “I just find everyone is in their cars here and it gets me down.”

To help change that, Baetz co-founded the Derailleurs and organizes weekly Sunday bike rides whose goals are many. Besides promoting fun, fitness and green transportation, the group strives to increase the visibility of bicycles in the downtown and core communities, while promoting good road etiquette among cyclists.

“That’s the point of our Sunday rides,” said Baetz, who also organized the Regina Critical Mass ride in 2007 to raise the profile of cycling in the city.“Going out as a group is for visibility, for drivers to not only see and become aware of cyclists on city roads, but for drivers to see cyclists that are following the rules so they themselves can adjust.”

Common complaints from motorists against cyclists include grievances about not properly signaling their intentions to turn, biking on the sidewalk, going the wrong way down one-way streets and just generally obstructing traffic. In a city without a lot of dedicated bike lanes, however, many cyclists do not feel safe sharing the road with motorists and often succumb to the anarchical position they find themselves in.

For instance, in its 2004 Green Ribbon Community Green House Gases Reduction Plan, the City of Regina’s Green Ribbon Committee (GRC) estimated that single passenger commuters make 181,600 vehicle trips per day into downtown Regina. That’s a lot of traffic to contend with.

To reduce emissions, the GRC advocated for a 10 per cent reduction in the number of vehicular commuter trips into Regina’s downtown, replaced by alternative forms of transportation methods, such as cycling (in the City of Regina much like in every other major municipality in Canada, cyclists enjoy the same privileges and duties as all other traffic.)

That would suit Baetz just fine, but she also has some suggestions of her own for improving cycling in the Regina downtown–reducing the posted speed limits to 40 km/h.

“Bikes can actually keep up with 30-to-40 km/h speeds,” she explained. Currently, she thinks Regina motorists drive far too quickly through the downtown area, usually for nothing. “They’re not going to get anywhere any faster,” she said. “They’re just putting people, bikers and other drivers at risk.”

The Derailleurs meet every Sunday at the Victoria Park Cenotaph at 3 p.m. Their rides usually last until 4 p.m. and normally end with ice cream. People interested in cycling can get in touch with the group through Facebook or their blog at: http://thederailleurs.blogspot.com/.