Friday night Mayor Lisa Helps emerged from a film screening of Al Gore's Inconvenient Sequel at the of launch of the cities Climate Leadership plan to find that someone had tampered with her bicycle. After unlocking her bike she rolled it a few feet and hear an awful clanking. She looked down and noticed that a padlock had been attached to the front and rear tire on the spokes. Mayor Helps said that if she had got on to ride her bike without noticing the pad locks they would have become lodged in the brakes with the potential to throw her off her bike and into traffic. When asked if she believed it was a random act she said no. Something happened to her bike a year ago where all the parts were stripped in front of city hall, the Mayor believes this initial act was random as. But because this incident made it into the paper along with a picture of her bicycle, the public now knew what her bike looked like. The event she attended last night was advertised with a poster stating she was a guest speaker, and she believes this was a targeted incident.
Mayor Helps went on to say that she felt there was a real misunderstanding about the so-called bike lane project. "Yes we are making transportation improvements that benefit people who want to ride bicycles, particularly those who want to ride bikes but currently don't because it is not safe. But we are also adding new cross walks, new sidewalks, new street trees, improved public realm and in the next round there will be improved roadways for motorists."