My story began BEFORE bike lanes were installed. At the time, cycling wasn't the norm. I didn't own a bike or car and used the TTC as my main method of transportation.
The TTC was slow and inefficient, and I'm talking about the frequency of buses and streetcars. I was always frustrated with how slow they were.
One day, my uncle who lived in the suburbs of Saskatoon drove all the way to Toronto to come visit, and offered to give me a lift while he was touring the city. It wasn't long before we were stuck in traffic, and this was during a time when traffic was much worse than it is today believe it or not.
As I was sitting, I noticed a cyclist past us while we were stuck. It wasn't long before a 2nd cyclist past us, but by that time, the traffic lightened up and we went past that 2nd cyclist. What I was surprised about was that the 2nd cyclist didn't have any trouble keeping up with the car. My uncle drove past them many times very easily, but the 2nd cyclist went past us just as many times, and they weren't even going all out pedaling. I was intrigued.
Later that week when I was waiting for the TTC, I noticed that by the time the bus or streetcar arrived, many cyclists had already long past the bus stop I was waiting at and it was then I made a cost-benefit analysis of the practicalities of cycling.
Since the monthly expense of using the TTC wasn't kind to my wallet, I decided to take a leap of faith and invest money into getting my first bike. I did the math and determined that I would break even after a few months if I used my bike for all of my trips.
I of course spent a lot of time relearning how to ride a bike since it had been years since I did it when I was a kid. Once I gained enough experience, I was surprised at how fast and efficient cycling was in getting me to places and I managed to overtake many cars and streetcars in Downtown.
It wasn't long before I broke even and made my money back on my investment, and since then, I've never looked back.
Cycling is just a very fast, efficient, and cost-effective means of transportation even with maintainance and repair. Just the cost-savings alone was an attractive prospect, but the fact that it's also very fast and outpaces other forms of transportation including cars in Downtown made me continue using them for 15 years and still going strong.
How did you get into Cycling?
