Have you ordered your gear?!

Just a reminder that the Bike Cochrane web shop is only open until December 19th to order your cycling kit or jersey. These items are only available for pre-order and will not be available in stores. You can shop on line by visiting this link. If you have any questions about sizing, please reach out to Robert, the Rogelli Canada rep by emailing robert@rogelli.ca. You can find sizing info by visiting this link These items will arrive sometime in February.

2022 Memberships are on sale now!

You can renew or purchase your membership for 2022 online now!
In 2021 we had a whopping 402 members (THANK YOU EACH AND EVERY ONE OF YOU!!!). Can we beat that for 2022?! Can we get half way there BEFORE 2022?! Most grant applications are due in the first two months of the year, and most grant applications are more successful when you have larger membership, showing funders that you are working for a larger group. Help us help Cochrane become more cycling friendly by renewing early. We are currently sitting at 81 amazing members for 2022.

Why buy a membership?!

By purchasing a membership you help us be more credible with funders and stakeholders. You support a cause that’s important to you by allowing us to have a better chance at raising the funds required to take on more projects as well as give us a bigger voice and help us achieve our mission and goals more efficiently. You also get voting rights at our AGMs. Membership fees help us pay for our insurance and operating costs. Each Family member counts as a member of Bike Cochrane, which boosts our numbers.

Other Member Benefits:

• Big Hill Cycle - 10% off Accessories, Clothing and Parts

• Access to our Member Only Events (kids camps, adult camps, group rides + more)

• Support trail maintenance, remediation, construction and cycling advocacy as a whole within the town of Cochrane

• Keep the Launchpad Bike Park (and future bike parks) insured

• Participate in Bike Cochrane events

• Voting Rights at our AGM

Membership Pricing:

Individual 1 year membership - $40
Family 1 year membership - $80

You can pair your membership with swag and save. This can be purchased online, or in store atBig Hill CycleorBike Bros.

A big Bike Cochrane thank you

An extra special thank you to the following business that are 2021 Corporate Members. Don't forget to shop local this Christmas. Local businesses invest back into their communities.

Garmin
Big Hill Cycle
Bike Bros
Cochrane Physiotherapy Group
Two Pharmacy
4iiii
Coffee Traders
Wildcat Coffee Company (2022 Member)
Bow River Chiropractic Clinic
Kids Bikes Canada
Kelso's Bikes

Thank you to everyone who's supported us over the years, we are grateful for each and every one of you. Wishing you and your families a warm and joyful holiday season. We can not wait to see what 2022 holds for cycling in Cochrane.

Merry Christmas,
The Bike Cochrane Team

Danish research (20,000 kids) has shown that kids who cycle or walk to school (rather than by car or public transportation) perform measurably better on tasks demanding concentration and this effect lasts for up to four hours (stronger effect than making sure they eat breakfast!). Other research around active school transport has shown better way-finding skills, superior school grades, and kids who are more physically active among the groups who wheel and walk to school.

Inspired by this research, along with our own biking traffic study (ongoing), we surveyed parents in Cochrane (N=269 in May/June 2021), and came back with pretty rich data around what the barriers are to actively transporting kids to school. This survey was sent out from almost all of the schools in their weekly newsletters, along with posts to social media, and a notice in the newspaper as well.

A summary of our findings is shown below.

Bike Cochrane’s Bike to School Survey 2021 Findings

While the slope of our pathways is a challenge (we’ve measured as high as 26% in both Sunset and Gleneagles), there isn’t a pathway spec in Cochrane. So not surprisingly, our developers build pathways as cheaply as they can, and these are steep. We would like to see the Town write a pathway specification to keep our pathways less than 8% (as Canmore and Calgary and Vancouver and many others have), but let’s leave that topic for now.

Further to the basic findings that 91% of parents WANT their kids to be able to wheel and walk to school, we dove quite a bit deeper into the safety barriers that parents cited. Having ‘open text’ survey questions meant that we got very rich data into where parents felt unsafe with their kids on bikes, scooters, or by foot. These types of responses are harder to classify, but Bike Cochrane’s active transportation committee tried a few different ways of pulling this data into actionable pieces. See an attempt below at classifying the safety concerns of parents:

Summary of Specific Issues in Cochrane that make parents feel unsafe about wheeling and walking

Another way to try to illustrate these challenges is with a word cloud as shown below, capturing the raw text from or survey respondents around ‘safety issues’.

Word Cloud of ‘Safety Issues’ for Cochrane parents around ‘Wheeling and Walking’ to school

Trying to take a deeper look into the infrastructure-related issues in Cochrane helps us to better prioritize future active transportation investments. Taking every comment from the survey along with understanding the school (destination) and the neighbourhood (origin) of the respondent allowed us to place their comments on a map of Cochrane, and then work back a set of ‘clusters of concern’ within the Town. The top 5 of those concerns are listed below, along with the painstaking work to place the red/orange pins accurately along the map.

Clusters of concern for active transportation in Cochrane per Bike to School Survey 2021

The first item here is being worked on through the recent 1A construction (thank you to our Town for driving this work!). The second item (Highway 22 at Quigley/Glenbow) has been raised with Alberta Transportation since Hwy 22 (and Hwy 1A) are provincial highways. Intersection safety is very important though and Bike Cochrane will continue to work with the Town to advocate for improvements to this corridor sooner than later. At the very least, painting proper zebra stripes annually needs to be done at this intersection. Bike Cochrane placed a bike counter for June and showed almost 6000 bikes on the SIDEWALK of Quigley Drive and it correlated strongly with school hour commuting, so that’s a LOT of kids crossing this intersection. While (thankfully) there haven’t been many actual collisions, there have been a LOT of near misses, mostly from left/right turns across the crosswalk.

The 3rd item (a proper pathway through the Ranche) has been called out by the many plans that have looked at the Town’s infrastructure (Bike Network Plan 2012, Connecting Cochrane 2017), but it simply hasn’t been done yet. With the amount of discussions about pathways and sidewalks and non-vehicular transportation this recent election, we’re hopeful that our new Town Council will make this a priority sooner than later and address the active transportation deficit in Cochrane.

The 4th item (Heritage/Heartland can’t directly get to downtown) will be addressed in the 1A/22 intersection plans with a pathway on the south side of the 1A. See those plans (from April 2021) HERE although the Town will need to connect into this new pathway underpass.

The last item (Quigley Drive being unsafe for kids presently) is coming up for a redesign/rework in 2023’s capital budget, and Bike Cochrane looks forward to working with the Town on better solutions than simply painting bike lanes on roads. While a dorky spandex-clad road biker (like me) is fine with this, I’m only ~2% of cyclists, and neither my wife, my kids, nor my Mom feel safe on bike lanes with traffic zipping by me.

If you’re still reading, then you clearly want to see our complete ‘Bike to School 2021’ survey results HERE.

WORKSHOP!

Armed with our excellent survey results, along with a presentation from Subha from Share The Road, and an AMAZING guest speaker in Andy from the Town of Canmore (note that Canmore recently received a silver award from Bike Friendly Communities), on Oct 5th, Bike Cochrane hosted our first annual ‘Bike to School’ Workshop. We had excellent representation from the Town, along with Urban Systems, and worked through various routes on Town maps that fictitious students would take from their homes to a specific school. See our attendees working on routing/safe maps below:

Angie and Simon from the Town’s Parks and Open Spaces Team

We followed their routes using e-bikes and got a chance to see on the ground some of the barriers that schoolchildren in Cochrane face every day as they try to wheel and walk to school. See our team on e-bikes crossing highway 1A at the crosswalk heading up to the Tri-schools area

Bike Cochrane’s ‘Bike to School’ Workshop crossing Highway 1A on their bikes

The feedback from the workshop was very positive and the actions and outcomes will be measured over the course of the incoming Council and our ability to get these projects into capital budget planning cycles.

Bike Cochrane and our workshop attendees will be advocating for improvements to our active transportation network. The goal is that any child in any community in Cochrane should be able to safely wheel and walk to any school. Bike-Friendly Communities encouraged our workshop team to start a Task Force towards applying for Cochrane to become a ‘Bike Friendly Community’, and this and other actions will come out of this workshop.

If you’re passionate about active transportation and want to see Cochrane ‘grow up’ as a community, please reach out to Bike Cochrane to join our active transportation committee. Email Paul at paul@bikecochrane.com and let’s help Cochrane get better at connecting our communities along with helping our kids have a better future!

Since our 2021 municipal election comes fast on the heels of our federal election, many members have asked us “I haven’t had time to research the NINETEEN candidates for council? How should I vote?”. While it’s not our goal for Bike Cochrane to become a pressure or political society, it is our goal to advocate on behalf of cyclists to have meaningful change in our community for better active transportation.

As such, we reached out (and followed up) with all of the council candidates asking them to answer a few questions about their position and platforms around funding active transportation. In order to help our members make an educated decision, we are publishing their answers (slightly edited to fit for space) and our questions here. I will say that I’m pleased that 17 of 19 of our candidates responded to our questions and many reached out for more information and to chat about Bike Cochrane. I’m also pleased that almost all of the candidates indicated a desire to begin investing in Cochrane as a ‘Complete Community’ rather than simply putting more money into highways/roads/vehicle investments! This is already a win in our eyes!

If you have any follow-up questions, please email Paul (chair of active transportation committee) at paul@bikecochrane.com. The most important obligation you have as a citizen is to engage during an election cycle, research your options and VOTE! Early voting starts Oct 12 with our election on Oct 18th.

Message to candidates:

<<

Bike Cochrane (www.bikecochrane.com) is Cochrane’s non-profit cycling advocacy society committed to making our Town more bike friendly.  In the last 12 months, we have collectively volunteered over 1,500 hours of our time to making Cochrane a more bike-friendly community!  With a fast-growing paid membership of over 350 members, we represent cyclists and advocate for our Town and province to improve our pathways and trail network in the spirit of making it better for all to enjoy themselves on bikes and by foot, since every dollar put into pathways and trails helps cyclists, but also helps walkers, parents with strollers, people in wheelchairs and mobility scooters, along with people recreating with pets. 

We have fundraised (~$100K), built, and actively maintain the Launchpad Bike Park (at 30 Bow St if you haven’t visited it).  We actively maintain, build, and repair trails in town (see recent boardwalk built near the Grandfather Tree).  We have a data-sharing agreement with the Town and actively count cyclists and analyze traffic on our pathways today, as we jointly write grants with the Town to increase the funding available to improve our pathways and bike paths in Cochrane.  We look forward to working with you to improve cycling in Cochrane if you are successful in your bid to join (or be re-elected to) Cochrane’s Town Council.

Since more than 60% of our most recent 2020 Active Transportation survey in Cochrane told us that CONNECTIVITY is their biggest issue, Bike Cochrane would like you to take a few minutes to talk to our members and answer the following questions to be shared with our membership in our next newsletter and blog prior to the election.  While we are not a political group and won’t be endorsing candidates, consider this an easy opportunity to share your thoughts with 350+ physically active and community-minded voters in Cochrane.

1. While the last council listed as a strategic priority “focus on multi-modal transportation solutions”, the amount of actual funding that went into pathways and non-vehicular connectivity was relatively small. From a recent analysis that Bike Cochrane did of the Town of Cochrane’s budget relative to other similar-sized towns, this is how Cochrane fared (see below). How would you ensure that council’s priorities like active transportation and connectivity is actually funded?

Capital Budget Analysis for Cochrane 2021-23 and comparison to similar Towns

2. Do you ride a bike for pleasure or for transportation today? If so, where is your favourite place to ride a bike in the Cochrane area?

3. What do you think are the biggest barriers to increasing Cochrane’s proportion of trips taken by foot/bike/scooter (known as ‘mode share’ in active transportation circles and presently around 4% in Cochrane per the 2011 census)? This can have a HUGE effect in reducing vehicular traffic if it’s a well-designed piece of the transportation plan for Cochrane. Specifically, in the work Bike Cochrane has done with encouraging ‘wheeling and walking to school’, we’ve heard from many parents with 91% of the respondents in our 2021 survey (~300 parents) telling us they WANT to bike/walk to school. How would you reduce those barriers if you are successful in being elected to Council? To help your thoughts here, I’ve included a word cloud from our recent ‘Bike to School’ survey where parents answered questions about what makes them feel unsafe when biking/walking in Cochrane:

Word cloud of responses when parents answer “What makes them feel unsafe when Wheeling and Walking in Cochrane”

COUNCIL CANDIDATES ANSWERS HERE

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If you’re still reading here (I applaud you), but also, I’d offer one last thought. To those who think Cochrane is profligate or ‘spends way too much’, the active transportation committee found a striking example of how incredibly underfunded our Town is relative to the next 17 municipalities in Alberta (CFIB Municipal Spending 2021 report). This results in not having enough people at the Town to do things like write grants to bring in more money for projects (and why Bike Cochrane is doing that), or maintain our trails (which is why Bike Cochrane has been stepping in to fix trails). Our Town administration is an incredible example of people who care for the Town stepping up and ‘just trying to keep the lights on’. But, we need to give them the tools and the resources to complete the tasks of implementing plans like our recent Corridor Plan, Connecting Cochrane (2017), and our Bike Network Plan (2012). See a chart from here that shows how under-funded the Town is. It’s awkward for Bike Cochrane to say ‘we need to raise taxes’, but the data doesn’t lie here. You wouldn’t ask a plumber in your home to fix your leaking pipes and then not give him/her a pipe wrench. Our Town NEEDS the tools and staff to bring our Town into this century and start building Cochrane for the future of our kids.

CFIB report highlighting Cochrane’s incredible 'operating efficiency’ but highlighting a major gap in funding

With that, thanks for reading, VOTE on Oct 18th, and please consider volunteering with the Active Transportation Committee if you’re passionate about this topic. Reach out to paul@bikecochrane.com and attend our regular meetings to see how you can help!

Yours in cycling,

-Paul

‘Where can I ride my MTB in Cochrane?’

This is one of the most common questions we hear from our members and non-members and we thought we’d provide a bit of information as the Bike Cochrane Trails Team makes progress this season towards more legal, official, sustainable trails for Cochrane.

Signage at NEW PRIVATE Buffalo Bean Trail

 

Buffalo Bean Trail (PRIVATE to Bike Cochrane members)

We are really excited to announce that our first official MTB trail in the Town of Cochrane is ‘almost open’!  We have installed signs marking the trail at the entrance (see attached map) and we have a ~2.5km loop built (with ~120m elevation gain) called ‘Buffalo Bean’ (named after this beautiful wildflower that populates this area in the early spring), and a smaller loop called ‘Buffalo Junior’ (see linked map).  The present ‘fast time’ for the Buffalo Bean loop is around 12 minutes, but it rides really well and has amazing views (when we don’t have wildfire smoke)!  The trail still needs a bit more work to fully open (our Trails Crew has already invested ~200 person-hours into this trail to date) but we do have preliminary land approval from the Ag Society to start riding bikes already to pack the trail in better!  However, we have a pair of pretty aggressive hawks that are patrolling the area until their fledglings are gone (Fish and Wildlife now tell us to expect them to start backing off soon and then migrate south).  Think ‘Top Gun’ style strafing/dive bombing or Alfred Hitchcock’s ‘The Birds’, so until these hawks are gone, we’d ask people to be really careful in the area and if you’re going to ride the trails, please make a lot of noise and report to trails@bikecochrane.com any interactions you have with the hawks.  The Ag Society has asked us to park vehicles along the west side of the property on the grass if you’re going to drive there (see linked map), or bike via Heritage Hills or Heartland to avoid riding on the highway.  This trail is presently open for ‘Bike Cochrane Members Only’.  We would ask you to stop at Big Hill Cycle or Bike Bros, show your membership card, and they will give you 2 small Bike Cochrane stickers to place on your helmet or bike to self-identify as a Bike Cochrane member.  Please follow all of the rules posted on the signs, respect the land, and remember that this is private land and we’re here as guests of the Cochrane Ag Society.  If you want to be a part of building our trail system, please email Kevin at trails@bikecochrane.com to be added to the ‘Trail Crew’ and be the first to know what we’re working on and help Cochrane have MTB trails we can ride! 

Riding on Town of Cochrane land and Cochrane Foodfest ‘Bike Valet’

As part of our cycling advocacy, Bike Cochrane volunteered with Big Hill Cycle this August at the Cochrane FoodFest to help operate the ‘Bike Valet’ service – see linked photo where we had ~100+ bikes parked over the course of the day!  We also took the opportunity to show some maps of the trails we’re working on, and got overwhelming feedback to share more of these maps more widely, even though they’re in draft form.  See a photo below of board member Andra talking with people at the Cochrane Foodfest.  We will also be bringing the Bike Valet service future events in town and if you’re interested in volunteering, please email Paul at paul@bikecochrane.com. 

It does appear that more of you want to see ‘where can I bike RIGHT NOW’.  See a small summary map of the trails in the Cochrane Ranche and Sunset areas that people are biking on today (from our Draft Trails Plan with the Town), with the caveat that Bike Cochrane is working with the Town to become the Trail Steward for the Town of Cochrane and make these more permanent.  The intention is to have these trails actively managed, signed, mapped, and maintained.  If you see a downed tree, or damage to the trails, please email Kevin at trails@bikecochrane.com so that we can either remediate it, or work with the Town to get it fixed.  Also, if you’re interested in being a part of our Trails Crew, please email Kevin at trails@bikecochrane.com to be added to our regular Trails Crew activities emails.  We can’t do anything without volunteers, and if you think ‘Somebody should do something about this trail’, then remember YOU’RE SOMEBODY!

Mt St Francis land

If you look at our ‘Unofficial Trails Map’, you’ll see the BCPS/Mt St Francis trail being ridden along the Bighill Creek.  A significant portion of this trail is on private Mt St Francis land.  It’s important to know that the Mt St Francis friars operate a ‘silent retreat’ on this land, so screaming downhill on a bike through their quiet space is strongly discouraged.  In that spirit, Bike Cochrane has worked with both Strava and Trailforks to remove trails marked on these apps that are in the middle of Mt St Francis’ silent retreat space.  We’ve also made signage to show where to avoid when biking. See that preliminary signage HERE with the intention for our cycling community to be respectful. It’s our hope that through being good neighbours and stewards that we’ll be able to have Mt St Francis’ blessing to continue biking on their creekside trail along with other future trails too that don’t interrupt their quiet spaces.

Okay, that’s it for now, but hopefully you can see that Bike Cochrane is actively working to give you more trails to ride locally.  Think about volunteering for the Trails Crew, our events operations (like the upcoming Ag Fair), our active transportation committee, or for a leadership position when we announce our AGM in the fall.

Thanks and happy riding!