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Alina Rehkopf

@arehkopf.bsky.social
2.2K followers 1.2K following 993 posts

Anti-capitalist leftist, powerlifter, environmentalist, recovering overachiever, ebike commuter, KI grad, trying to figure out how to apply urbanism in rural Ontario. I stick needles in people for a living. Ontario 🇨🇦

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Alina Rehkopf @arehkopf.bsky.social · 28/09/2026
I was downtown this weekend while visiting the city and was thinking about how big the pedestrian crowds were compared to the number of cars going by.
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Reposted by Alina Rehkopf
How-Sen Chong @how-sen.com · 27/09/2026
This tool from @observingthecity.ca is fantastic. It shows the traffic mode share by intersection using City data. Many downtown areas are dominated by pedestrians (in green). Yet *we still give most of the space to cars on almost every street.* www.observingthecity.ca/intersection...
Map of downtown area of Toronto. Pie charts show the mode share at every intersection.
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Alina Rehkopf @arehkopf.bsky.social · 18/07/2026
I count how many seconds it takes for drivers to look in my direction. Sometimes they don't at all by the time I've passed in front of them. Once when that happened, they actually started to move and clipped by bike. They didn't look even once.
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Alina Rehkopf @arehkopf.bsky.social · 18/07/2026
The way that ppl not only dramatically underestimate the number of people biking because they take up a fraction of the space of cars, but then also don't believe it when you put up an automated counter?! Just sit there one day and count them yourself. Being proven wrong doesn't hurt that much.
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Alina Rehkopf @arehkopf.bsky.social · 15/07/2026
Wearing a mask on my cycle commute into work today because the wildfire smoke is exceptionally bad in Ontario. It's hard to tell because my phone camera is doing some hefty color correction but everything is tinted orange.
A woman is short, brown, curly hair and stripped green and white shirt is wearing a lavender purple KN95 mask.
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Alina Rehkopf @arehkopf.bsky.social · 15/07/2026
Tuesday seems to be the night when the Dudes With Painfully Loud Trucks™ stay home and I can enjoy my balcony in relative peace. #ruralapartmentlife
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Alina Rehkopf @arehkopf.bsky.social · 12/07/2026
I'm having nostalgia for one in Waterloo. But it's good to know that there are other grilled cheese places that stay open super late. 😆
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Alina Rehkopf @arehkopf.bsky.social · 12/07/2026
Why do I suddenly have a craving for a 2am drunken Cheeses Murphy grilled cheese sandwich with a group of 12 pp sitting on a curb?
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Alina Rehkopf @arehkopf.bsky.social · 12/07/2026
I guess I should've qualified that better *craziest thing I've seen in North America* because you're right, they're on another level.
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Alina Rehkopf @arehkopf.bsky.social · 12/07/2026
Okay now that's the craziest one I've ever seen. A CHEST FREEZER ARE YOU KIDDING ME. 🙌🏼 I don't ever want to hear about bikes not being about to carry enough again.
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Alina Rehkopf @arehkopf.bsky.social · 12/07/2026
😂
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Alina Rehkopf @arehkopf.bsky.social · 12/07/2026
How dare she not be spending every waking hour doing her job. Actually she shouldn't be sleeping in order to do her job more. MOAR JOB MOAR BETTER.
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Alina Rehkopf @arehkopf.bsky.social · 12/07/2026
I need someone to take a survey of the percentage of business owners that do this. How close to 100% do you think it is?
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Alina Rehkopf @arehkopf.bsky.social · 12/07/2026
Up until recently, the only cafe in town closed at 3:00 and isn't open on Sundays.
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Alina Rehkopf @arehkopf.bsky.social · 12/07/2026
Do you think people get mad at me if I put a sign on my bike that just says: WHAT GAS PRICES?
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Alina Rehkopf @arehkopf.bsky.social · 11/07/2026
Hey authors, new romance plot just dropped ⬆️
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Alina Rehkopf @arehkopf.bsky.social · 11/07/2026
change 👏🏼 is 👏🏼 possible 👏🏼 wooooo 🙌🏼
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Alina Rehkopf @arehkopf.bsky.social · 11/07/2026
*hypnotic stare* Come. Join us. Get a cargo bike. You'll love it. Look at the options. Why not test ride one? Just try it. 👀 Brb while I forward this on to my family and every other person to whom I've said: What about getting a cargo bike...?
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Alina Rehkopf @arehkopf.bsky.social · 11/07/2026
The more audacity the better. Also, how do we convert the ego-mods car ppl over to frankenbikes instead? There's gotta be a way.
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Alina Rehkopf @arehkopf.bsky.social · 11/07/2026
It slows proliferation of these kinds of projects when media does this bc it makes ppl in other places think the opinions are 50/50 split. It creates a vibe that to replicate it where we live it's going to be a fight, when really most ppl will get behind once they see leaders taking the initiative.
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Alina Rehkopf @arehkopf.bsky.social · 11/07/2026
Guess that means making friends with the people across the hall.
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Alina Rehkopf @arehkopf.bsky.social · 11/07/2026
A (very) significant benefit of living in an apartment building is getting an absolutely incredible view of the sky.
A sunset sky in deep oranges and blues with the wisps of clouds looking like they were swiped and smeared all to the left.
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Alina Rehkopf @arehkopf.bsky.social · 10/07/2026
The purposes of each being very different: 1. For enhancing my ability to stay on a dance floor for 5 hours while ignoring how my feet felt about that. 2. For enhancing my ability to lift extremely heavy things one time. In other news, I hit a record deadlift PR of 330 lb last week. ✌🏼
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Alina Rehkopf @arehkopf.bsky.social · 10/07/2026
The hype drink of my twenties was Jager and Red Bull. The hype drink of my thirties is a Blender Bottle half filled with Gatorade + 10-15g of creatine, topped with a can of a vitamin-enhanced energy drink.
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Reposted by Alina Rehkopf
Jay Pitter @jaypitter.bsky.social · 06/07/2026
A first car is not a universal 16-year-old rite of passage. Its meaning is shaped by race, class, geography, and gender. Whether mobility advocates like it or not, for many people a first car genuinely represents freedom. Here are examples drawn from my research and direct community engagement…
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Alina Rehkopf @arehkopf.bsky.social · 06/07/2026
The quintessential cycling experience: 1 person taking up (likely) 6-8 people's worth of space gets mad at 4 people taking up 4 people's worth of space.
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Alina Rehkopf @arehkopf.bsky.social · 01/07/2026
I get more comments IRL about the danger of riding a bike around than I ever have about the dangers of driving.
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Alina Rehkopf @arehkopf.bsky.social · 01/07/2026
Let's not forget trains and transit things too. There are a ton of job opportunities in manufacturing for trains, busses, streetcars, and micromobility that we can move those people into from car manufacturing. Cars, like AI, weren't inevitable. They just had a massive lobbying push behind them.
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Alina Rehkopf @arehkopf.bsky.social · 01/07/2026
If only they were available everywhere 😭. I emailed Communauto about getting a car for the new 100+ unit apartment building in town but it's unlikely we'll get that kind of thing for many years.
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Alina Rehkopf @arehkopf.bsky.social · 01/07/2026
I gotta say, with all the street lights out, all of the drivers are behaving much more cautiously than normal. Maybe we should turn the street lights off more often lol.
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Alina Rehkopf @arehkopf.bsky.social · 01/07/2026
As it turns out the power being out is the bat signal for People With Loud Trucks™ to start driving around. Please let me enjoy my power outage in peace.
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Alina Rehkopf @arehkopf.bsky.social · 01/07/2026
The power has been out in my entire town for over an hour and now that most of the buzzing and background noise of air conditioners and other things isn't happening, it is horribly apparent how loud all the cars driving around are.
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Alina Rehkopf @arehkopf.bsky.social · 30/06/2026
Let's also take all of those auto workers and retrain them for e-bike manufacturing, bike maintenance and repair, and cycling + pedestrian infrastructure construction, and native urban landscaping with the same pay rates, benefits, and pensions. Everyone deserves to make enough to live.
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Alina Rehkopf @arehkopf.bsky.social · 30/06/2026
I'm amending this since I just looked up the cost of cars in Canada: avg is $63k new $35k used 😭 Hey fellow Millenials, remember how we got told to stop buying avocados in order to buy a house? Well it looks like we're going to have to stop buying cars instead (let's do it and tank the industry).
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Alina Rehkopf @arehkopf.bsky.social · 30/06/2026
Yeeeeesh. I've got a workhorse e-bike (Tern HSD) which runs about 10k new, but that's still way less for 95% of the same daily functionality as a new car. For the price of one new car, a family could get 4 of those + all the fancy accessories.
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Alina Rehkopf @arehkopf.bsky.social · 30/06/2026
I am excited for some of the new, smaller electric trucks coming out like the Slate or Telo. We want efficient functionality without all of the downsides of the current market's status quo (aka massive trucks/SUVs).
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Alina Rehkopf @arehkopf.bsky.social · 30/06/2026
I've also never owned a car and have three bikes! Thankfully I can borrow a car easily when I do *need* one to leave town (rural life woohoo), but I cannot imagine how much more money I'd have to spend if that wasn't the case.
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Alina Rehkopf @arehkopf.bsky.social · 30/06/2026
I'll add that we've also normalized the debt load having two large vehicles gives people. Not that cargo bikes are cheap, but they're half the price or less than a new car, the ongoing maintenance costs are MUCH less, and many of them retain their values better than a car.
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Alina Rehkopf @arehkopf.bsky.social · 30/06/2026
❤️❤️❤️
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Alina Rehkopf @arehkopf.bsky.social · 29/06/2026
We live in an era of SO MUCH data, and most of it re: transportation shows that improving cycling and pedestrian infrastructure = better for everyone. It is a combination of ignorance and pure unwillingness on the part of weak political leadership to push for change.
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Alina Rehkopf @arehkopf.bsky.social · 29/06/2026
Sounds like the lesson here is *ride bikes get chicks* 👍🏼😆
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Alina Rehkopf @arehkopf.bsky.social · 29/06/2026
I'm so happy you made these 😆
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Alina Rehkopf @arehkopf.bsky.social · 29/06/2026
Places I had to park my bike this week because there was nowhere to lock it up properly:
A cargo bike parked in an accessibility parking space in order to lock it up to the only available post.A cargo bike parked in an accessibility parking space in order to lock it up to the only available post. Shows How much of the parking space the bike is taking up - about 1/6.A cargo bike parked up on a sidewalk against a plastic bollard.
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Alina Rehkopf @arehkopf.bsky.social · 18/06/2026
I really need to stop going to the grocery store when I'm hungry.
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Reposted by Alina Rehkopf
Alex Bozikovic @alexbozikovic.bsky.social · 10/06/2026
As someone who teaches the history of Toronto’s urban form, I think this might be the single worst decision in its 250-year evolution. Number two would be the railroads cutting off the city from the lake, but at least the railroads were useful.
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Alina Rehkopf @arehkopf.bsky.social · 09/06/2026
Some photos I managed to get. Sparrows are quite the resilient bird.
Sparrow hovering in front of the grill of a white car getting ready to eat bugs off of it.Sparrow hovering in front of the grill of a white car getting ready to eat bugs off of it.Sparrow hovering in front of the grill of a white car getting ready to eat bugs off of it.
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Alina Rehkopf @arehkopf.bsky.social · 06/06/2026
Sitting and watching single ppl drive by in cars that take up 4-5 people's worth of space will radicalize you.
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Reposted by Alina Rehkopf
Shawn Micallef @shawnmicallef.bsky.social · 06/06/2026
We did it to ourselves, we did And that's what really hurts Us and no one else We do it to ourselves We do it to ourselves My @thestar.com column on the possible closure of Sneaky Dees. One councillor said it was the province’s fault. It isn’t Doug Ford here. It’s Toronto.
thestar.com
Shawn Micallef: Toronto has nobody to blame but itself with the possible closure of this cultural landmark
A bar like Sneaky Dee's defines a social scene. Now, we could lose it
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Alina Rehkopf @arehkopf.bsky.social · 06/06/2026
I'm also surprised by the number of families that are using huge pickup trucks to drop kids off. Why are we convincing people that these are family vehicles?
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Alina Rehkopf @arehkopf.bsky.social · 06/06/2026
It's interesting to see how many people drop somebody off and then sit and wait in their car. I think it speaks to how unpleasant it is to just walk around it downtown.
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