A Tale of Two (Cities’) Websites
For today’s post I’m going to let you folks do the observing and commentary. I’d like you to take some time and check out two websites.
I’ve been going back and forth between the two for more than a week now and I’m curious to see if you folks out there get the same vibes from the two sites.
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On first glance, I don’t know how you spent a week going back and forth between the two, one is just straight information and little reporting and the other is a passion!
If I was a cyclist either recreational or a commuter I could make BikePortland my home page. Maybe our mayor should fly to Portland to see how its done, with only $250,000 a year being spent on bike lanes/paths this city, it isn’t really encouraging other means of viable transportation.
Fair enough. Most of my time was spent on the Portland website - there is some very cool stuff there.
What strikes me most about the Windsor site is that most of its content is devoted to RULES. Sure we should obey traffic laws but based on the Portland site there is much more to bicycles and their impact on culture and economy than our city’s site indicates.
I noticed that Bike Portland actually wants to know about ‘close calls” between cyclists and motorists, nothing even close to being concerned about this issue is on Cycle Windsor. As a commuter who spends more than 2 hours in the saddle every day, it would be nice if the Bike Committee actually gave a shit about the conditions we encounter on our ride to work.
I’ve had one really close call in the last year of cycling to work. A city truck passed me and then made a right turn in front of me. A call to 311 and a conversation with a supervisor made me feel better.
Fortunately for me I haven’t had too many close calls. I ride pretty aggressively when I feel I have to, it may piss people off a bit behind me but, I know they have to slow down to get around me or until I feel its safe for me to move over.
Although, I must be getting older because I’ve changed my commute route to use more back streets and bike/walking paths. I’ve eliminated Dougal from Eugine to Grand Marais.
I commute by bike on Howard Avenue from the mall all the way down to Shepherd and back every weekday. It is a mnd bending experience. I’m totally going to use the side streets from now on due to people’s total disregard for my safety and for the safety of other people who ride bikes down that treacherous causeway. It’s really a shame though, I’ll have to leave a lot earlier from now on, but what the heck, there’s no bike lanes to speak of on that street and people drive down it like it’s the straight away at Daytona.
Brendan,
I use the bike path in front of the mall and on the north side of the expressway there is a bike path that runs along Grand Marais Drain to Parent Avenue. Parent would get you to Sheppard without too much hassle.
Ahh, great idea James! I never even thought of that. Thanks for saving me a lot of hassle.
As an aside, the control of the City of Windsor’s website was recently wrested away from the volunteer Windsor Bicycing Commitee. The site sucked pretty bad before that as well, but you know that an administration who predominanty lives in LaSalle and Tecumseh (hense using the excuse “I live in LaSalle and Tecumseh!” for their lack of saddle time) really won’t put much emphasis on utilitarian cycling in the city.
BTW - have we ever investigated the idea of residency requirements in this city?
We had a requirement. It was recently repealed under King Eddie’s watch.
Just checked the Portland website, and theres an HTTP 500 internal server error message, lol. We crashed it!! just kidding… or am I…….
Chris, residency requirements for city councillors? the mayor? or something else, please clarify if you will….
Basically - if you work for the city and collect a tax-payer supported paycheque, you must live in the city and pay local property taxes back.
There’s other communities that do it, not just with city administration but also with police and fire services. We aready know that all of our local politicians live in this city (we’d give them the boot if they didn’t), but the percentage of administration? Who knows?
There was a member of administration who was pushing a bike-lite agenda wth the municipal bicycling committee a few years back. She was a LaSalle resident who didn’t even own a bike. How is she going to act in the best interest of Windsor cyclists?
She just wants them out of her way as she motors her way back to the ‘burbs!
I completely understand. I’ve never heard of such requirements. I knew city councillors had to live in the city (Alan Halberstadt used to live across the street from my parents) in a nice modest home. I always liked that about him, he was a nice quiet neighbour.
It would be an interesting to see how many police, firefighters, city administrators, etc actually lived in the city proper.
I for one believe that people who live in LaSalle or Tecumseh should have absloutely no say in Windsor issues or politics. I don’t care if they work here or if they claim they support local businesses, they dont live here, so we don’t want people from the outlying reaches lobbying any committee or politician.
It should be law, (heck I’ll even take a by law) that if you LIVE in Windsor, then you have all the right to contact your ward’s councillor or to lobby a committee and have a dialogue all you want, however, if you don’t bother living in our city, then don’t bother our committees, councillors or the mayor, not even if you pass him in on the way to the lunchroom every day at city hall.
I’m so sick and tired of people’s horrible attitude towards bicyclists in this city. Sorry, that LaSalle administrator story made me very mad lol.
Here’s a thought. If I was a municipal employee and I payed property taxes on my Windsor home and those tax dollars helped to pay my salary wouldn’t I, in effect, be getting my property taxes back?
Really, how can a manager in the solid waste collection department - for example - make decisions to improve collection services or whatever if he/she lives in a neighbouring community? Who cares how good the service is in Windsor, as long as its really good at my house.
I asked a city manager I know about that. My manager friend lives in a county town but does own a house in Windsor. I give my friend a hard time about it times but if it came down to it my friend says he/she’d move back to the city no problem. Anyway, according to my friend they’ve tried it before but people have made human-rights cases out of it in the past so now they just have to let it go.
All day nobody’s commented on it. Suzanne noticed the “pull-down” on the Portland site for Near Misses but, there is another “pull-down” marked JOBS.
There is a part of that website that lists jobs in the Portland area related to cycling. Jobs like Design Engineers for bike component makers. Purchasers, sales reps - real professional jobs!
How many mechanical engineering jobs are advertised for local companies in Windsor/Essex?
There it is proof that the bicycle can be an economic driver. Anyone from the economic development commission out there secretly reading this blog - look into it, get on it.
The residency law is not truly enforceable according to The City of Windsor. In fact Windsor was but one of the last 3 municipalities in Ontario that still had it.
I am not sure who the two other cities are but I am quite sure Windsor was the only municipality left that didnt’ have amalgamation and therefore has one of the biggest reasons for actually having a residency law…we are ringed with suburbs without any room to grow!
The reason it was repealed is that our illustrious lawyer/mayor thought that it would be litigious if they kept in on the books. Once again, his excellency’s paranoia comes into play and we suffer for it.
Interesting that Eddie has not problem repealing this law because of possible lawsuits but has no problem NOT putting in proper bike lanes and the results could be death. Just ask the surgeon who was awarded over $800,000 for a sewer grate issue when he crashed his bike.
Once again his excellence and his micro-management style of politics leaves the electorate shaking their heads….sad.
JOBS, JOBS, JOBS.
There are jobs posted on the Portland site for people to work in real professional fields related to the bicycle.
Problem # 1 is that most of Windsor websites look like “nephew art” and don’t portray a professional image, even if the business/organization is professional.
Problem #2 is that many of these sites barely take care of the needs of the local citizen, let alone the tourist (especially if English isn’t their first language!).
So…set the site up into sections: Biking Info (general info and rules, blah, blah), Biking to Work (bus info, routes, suggestions for safety), Touring by Bike (bike-friendly businesses, suggested routes, lengths, repair shops, maps), Helping Cyclists (info for businesses to help employees who bike or how to welcome cycling tourists), blog (sharing routes, tips, day trips, etc.).
We need easy to use and accessible websites if we want people to use them.
Here’s an offer: if any tourism-related business/service out there wants me to look at their website and offer a sitemap or some comments on how to make it more user friendly, I will do that for free (or for a drink or something :D).
Be careful what you wish for, Vicky. You may be getting a lot of work in the very near future that you now cannot say no to!
If it gets rid of some of the crap out there then I’m willing to do it! For Windsor-Essex County only of course.
Besides, it doesn’t take long to look at a site and say, “I can’t find your phone number, these links are broken, and you didn’t answer the basic questions that people are asking you on the phone.”