Move over, MAMILS

Jeff Davies

Those Middle Aged Men in Lycra with their sleek road bikes and fancy, form-fitting togs are sharing Victoria roads with a cycling community that’s increasingly diverse. There are more women on the road, but also more families, more workers heading to and from job sites and offices, and more people making deliveries and hauling loads.

Just check out the scene at the end the Johnson Street Bridge in the afternoon rush hour. Three road workers cycle by wearing safety vests. There’s a couple on a bicycle built for two; the woman in front does the hand signals. There’s another woman in patterned tights with a shoulder bag strapped to her carrier who looks like she’s been browsing the boutiques. Then there are other folks in rumpled street clothes who look new to the game of urban cycling.

Zoltan Szoges pulls up at the light on a cargo e-bike hauling construction material, a plastic tote, suitcases, a bulging cardboard box fastened with duct tape, and even a cookie tin.

“I’m just going to bring some stuff to a friend’s place because we don’t have room to store all our tools at our condo,” he says. “I’ve got some drywall and painting to do so I’m going to give them these tools and go pick up my drywall and painting stuff.” The cargo bike has plenty of carrying capacity: “I’ve had eight and ten foot lengths of lumber strapped to the side. As long as you have the same amount of weight on each side it’s nice and balanced.”

Down at the north end of the Switch Bridge on the Galloping Goose Trail, Ryan Harris manages Recyclistas bike shop. In recent years, with the construction of new cycling infrastructure, he’s seeing a lot of changes. “I guess the most obvious one is electric bikes. From what I’m seeing on the trail, it’s getting way more popular. I’ve also noticed a lot more families, because I would imagine feeling safe has a big thing to do with it.” Harris says he’s seeing plumbers on bikes, coffee salesmen, and more bicycle campers stopping in for gear before setting out on overnight expeditions.

Head out on the weekend on any of the trails around Victoria and you’ll see families cycling, sometimes with little ones tucked into carriers while older kids

Move over, MAMILS... ... make room for the increasingly diverse cycling community

have their own bikes. On a Saturday afternoon, Carolyn Filiatrault, her partner, and four children pull off the Galloping Goose Trail and head for the small strip mall in Vic West that has become cycling central, with Trek bike shop, Caffe Fantastico, and Fol Epi bakery.

“It’s a big thing cycling with the kids and staying safe,” Filiatrault says. On the street, they might have trouble staying in their lane: “Having them separated from the cars has made a really huge difference.”

Two of the children, stepsisters Ella and Alexis, clad in helmets and bright cycling gear, step up to say they’re enjoying the outing. “I like it because I have company,” says Ella. “I like it because it’s fun and I have people to talk to,” Alexis adds.

Fun, exercise, social connections in a safe environment. All the ingredients for a successful outing.

Move over MAMILs Photos, from opposite page, top: Dad on the Goose with child in trailer; Zoltan on his cargo bike; a family cycling with their daughter all the way from Port Hardy to Victoria; Ryan at work in Recyclistas. By Jeff Davies Researchers at Simon Fraser University have hard numbers to back up the anecdotal evidence of a shift in cycling patterns since the start of the pandemic in 2020.

Meghan Winters is a professor in the Faculty of Health Sciences and holds the CIHR Applied Public Health Chair in Gender and Sex in Healthy Cities. Her team has studied the impact of the pandemic on cycling by conducting telephone surveys as well as analyzing data from the Strava fitness app, which measures distances cycled by recreational users.

“Strava had a huge bump in usership during the pandemic, in cities everywhere,” Prof. Winters says.

The telephone surveys show more people are walking in Victoria, but fewer are driving and far fewer are taking transit. Slightly more are cycling; 17% say they’re cycling more since the pandemic while 16% say they’re cycling less. That’s similar to the data collected by the bike counters in Victoria; the numbers are up on some counters but down on others. That likely reflects the fact that more people have been working from home during the pandemic while others were less likely to venture downtown to dine out or go to theatres or bars.

But that doesn’t tell the whole story. While the pandemic disrupted commuting and socializing downtown, outdoor recreation has surged. Cyclists headed for the trails.

A report on the SFU team’s findings in both Victoria and Vancouver says research indicates that, “bicycling for recreation increased dramatically when cities went into lockdown during the first wave of the pandemic.”

“Strava shows a trend that recreational routes had high use (seaside, regional trails, Dallas Road) and that some routes downtown dipped,” says Prof. Winters. The data also shows the number of trips in Victoria logged to Strava increased by 27% between 2019 and 2020.

Her colleague, Jaimy Fischer, a PhD candidate, says the numbers also show a big increase — 111% — in activities logged by women in Victoria between 2016 and 2020.

So while most of us may just want to get a little fresh air and exercise when we saddle up, we’re also part of a significant societal trend.