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fflint

Oct 19, 2012 10:59 PM

I've had mixed experiences bringing my Trek hybrid into different shops for repairs and small purchases. The closest shop to my place, a co-op on a very hipstery block, explicitly caters to bike snobs. They make a point of only selling steel-frame bikes, for example, and it was very clear to me that they didn't want to help me until they finally realized I was very local and would be a decent long-term customer. Other shops have been much friendlier.

vid	Oct 19, 2012 11:31 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Steely Dan (Post 5871039)

what an absurd statement. are car buyers intimidated away from buying chevy minivans because the chevy dealership also happens to have a corvette in the showroom?

That's not a practical comparison though. Many bike shops fancy themselves as selling something far above the average bike. In their eyes, it would be more like someone bringing a Toyota Tercel to a Bentley dealership for repair, or going to a Rolls Royce dealership and looking for a budget friendly mini-van.

Smaller towns aren't as bad because they have a very limited market but in a place like Chicago or San Francisco you're totally going to get places that will outright deny you service because they look down on what you have. They can afford to be very discriminate in what clientele they work for.

TedBell

Oct 20, 2012 1:41 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by vid (Post 5872744)

I took my Toyota Tercel (15 year-old Trek) into the Bentley dealership (local bike shop) yesterday. Uncomfortable. And ridiculously expensive.

M II A II R II K

Oct 20, 2012 3:58 PM

Shifting Gears

Read More: http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2...d-expand-focus

Quote:

.....

In the past, nearly all research and teaching on biking – most of which is incorporated into broader transportation courses – has focused on engineering and planning. But, even as more classes of that nature are taking an exclusively bike- and pedestrian-focused approach, a growing number of scholars, many of whom are younger and more plugged in to biking culture, are looking at bicycling through a sociological or anthropological lens.

- Rebecca Sanders, a University of California at Berkeley doctoral student in city and regional planning who helps teach a course on bicycle and pedestrian (“bike-ped”) transportation and its history, societal implications, planning and design, said that the rise of anthropological bicycle studies is largely being driven by a younger generation – and when the people who are graduate students now become faculty, it might be easier to get these courses institutionalized. “I do think there is a reluctance to embrace pedestrian and bike transportation among some in the profession as legitimate modes,” Sanders said. “The good news is, I guess, you have a lot of people really interested in these issues. The bad news is, if those people go away, so does the class.”

- Luis Vivanco, director of the Global and Regional Studies Program at the University of Vermont, demonstrates that. An environmental anthropologist, Vivanco has spent the last couple of years doing field research on how people think about bikes and developing courses on the social science of bicycles. “No one is really talking about the culture of the bicycle and the cultural impacts of bicycles on people’s lives,” said Vivanco, who teaches a course on bicycles, globalization and sustainability. “You do see it around the edges. You see it in cities that are maybe more progressive politically, environmentally conscious. When a city like New York starts getting serious about it, I think New York universities are going to start asking questions.”

- Chicago is a good case study, Vivanco said. Part of now-Mayor Rahm Emanuel’s election platform was turning Chicago into a world-class bike city. Why? Chicago has car-clogged streets. There are 650,000 people suffering from asthma and other respiratory illnesses linked to car fuels. The city (like many) has an obesity problem. “These are all big costs for the city,” Vivanco said. “When I think about, what’s an academic justification [for studying this], it’s more that I’m responding to the way changes in officials are thinking about transportation. They’re starting to shift the conversation so it isn’t always, how do we address cars. It’s more, how do we adjust transportation so we can address all these big social problems that we have.”

- Entire courses devoted to biking are still relatively uncommon, and in lots of cases, bike-ped material is part of other transportation-oriented or general policy planning classes, at least a dozen have been identified by the Transportation Research Board’s Joint Subcommittee on Pedestrian and Bicycle University Transportation. “Some of them are because you get one professor who is really passionate about expanding transportation knowledge,” or perhaps addressing health or the environment, said Bob Schneider, who teaches the Berkeley course with Sanders (the latter also chairs the subcommittee). “But a lot of the time it’s because students really have the fire and are advocating for this class.” While this sort of work, experts agree, is not totally confined to ultra-progressive liberal havens – one of the top bicycling researchers is in New Jersey, for instance, and courses have emerged in places like Georgia and Louisiana – it does help to be in a city willing to invest in it.

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http://www.insidehighered.com/sites/...18731Large.jpg

A $32,000 Carbon-Fiber Fixed-Gear Bike, Designed By A Formula 1 Firm

Website: http://www.ubc-coren.com/?lang=en

Quote:

In the world of motor sports, UBC is a well-known brand. The German company specializes in carbon fiber, manufacturing extremely high-performance parts for Toyota’s Formula 1 cars and luxury rides like the Porsche GT2. The problem was, while those gorgeous machines relied on UBC parts, they never bore the UBC name. So a few years back, Ulf Bräutigam, the company’s CEO, had an idea to raise his company’s profile: UBC would build a vehicle of its own. In 2010, he enlisted industrial designer Christian Zanzotti to design a carbon-fiber bike that the masses simply couldn’t ignore.

- In designing the Coren, Zanzotti worked closely with UBC’s engineers, who had a bit of summer downtime between Formula 1 seasons--they "liked the challenge of pushing the material to the limits," he says. After a few months of prototypes, the final design called for a parallelogram-shaped frame built from a type of carbon fiber typically reserved for racecar chassis. Overkill? Perhaps. But the frame does cut a striking figure--and helps the Coren weigh in at a relatively light (though not really crazy light?) 17 pounds. Rather than a conventional chain, the bike employs a carbon-drive belt system, though the company said that single-speed and electric versions are also in the works.

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http://www.fastcodesign.com/multisit...io-lampekl.jpg

http://www.fastcodesign.com/multisit...-mg-1690kl.jpg http://www.fastcodesign.com/multisit...-mg-1757kl.jpg

Steely Dan

Oct 22, 2012 4:56 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by vid (Post 5872744)

That's not a practical comparison though. Many bike shops fancy themselves as selling something far above the average bike.

in my experience, those bike shops are few and far between. the bike shops i've dealt with my entire life here in chicagoland want people to buy bicycles. ANY kind of bicycle.

Quote:

Originally Posted by vid (Post 5872744)

In their eyes, it would be more like someone bringing a Toyota Tercel to a Bentley dealership for repair, or going to a Rolls Royce dealership and looking for a budget friendly mini-van.

that's exactly my point. only an idiot goes to a ferrari dealer to look for a pick-up. likewise, someone looking for an all-purpose commuter bike shouldn't waste their time going to a bike shop that only caters triathletes. once again, it all comes down to being an informed consumer. the consumer has the responsibility to inform himself when making a major purchase.

M II A II R II K

Oct 22, 2012 7:10 PM

Study: Protected Bike Lanes Reduce Injury Risk Up to 90 Percent

Read More: http://dc.streetsblog.org/2012/10/22...to-90-percent/

Quote:

.....

The study, published in the American Journal of Public Health, examined the circumstances around the injuries of 690 cyclists who wound up in emergency rooms in Vancouver and Toronto during a six month span in 2008 and 2009. Based on interviews with the cyclists, the authors plotted where the injuries occurred on each cyclist’s route. Then for each route, the injury site and a randomly-selected control site were categorized in one of 14 different street types. The authors used this method to measure the safety of each street type while controlling for other factors.

- They found that wide streets with parked cars and no bike infrastructure were by far the most dangerous for cyclists. Compared to that type of road, streets with bike lanes had injury rates 50 percent lower, while the risk of injury on protected bike lanes was a whopping 90 percent lower. Interestingly, multi-use paths — or off-street trails where cyclists, pedestrians, skaters, and other non-motorized mix — were found to reduce injury by a comparatively modest 60 percent. The study also isolated street conditions that increase injury risk for cyclists, including downhill inclines, road construction, and streetcar tracks. These conditions were found to ratchet up the chance of injury by as much as 200 percent.

- The results fly in the face of the once-influential philosophy of vehicular cycling, promoted most famously by activist John Forester beginning the 1970s. This school of thought held that cyclists were safest when they acted like vehicles, and that bike lanes made cyclists less safe. Foresterites successfully fought against the implementation of bike infrastructure in many American cities and held sway over bike treatments in highly influential engineering guides. This research bolsters the case for bike lanes — especially protected bike lanes — in American cities.

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http://dc.streetsblog.org/wp-content...rredSafest.png

M II A II R II K

Oct 26, 2012 4:36 PM

Perfect Match: Metro Vancouver Melds Bikes and Transit

Video Link

M II A II R II K

Nov 1, 2012 6:13 PM

Can America Embrace Biking Like Denmark Has?

Read More: http://www.slate.com/articles/health...nmark_has.html

Quote:

.....

Ninety percent of Copenhageners own a bike. Only 53 percent of Copenhagen households own a car. Fifty-eight percent of Copenhageners use a bike on a daily basis for at least small trips, and 37 percent make their daily commute on bikes. (The city’s target is 50 percent by 2015.) Many government service providers now use bicycles, like postal workers and police officers. With a robust public transportation network to complement the biking routes, only 31 percent need to commute by car.

- The destination I was aiming for on my rental bike was the apartment of Mikael Colville-Andersen, known to many as Denmark’s unofficial ambassador of bicycle culture. In addition to being a journalist, filmmaker, and photographer, Colville-Andersen is a frequent consultant to the Copenhagen government on bicycle issues and author of the internationally famous bicycle blogs Copenhagenize.com and Cyclechic.com (the latter of which spawned an international movement of blogs documenting fashionably dressed people on bikes). He explained to me that biking in Copenhagen is just a natural part of everyday life, not something people do to burn calories or make a statement. “When I lecture I have four rules for promoting urban cycling. And rule No. 1 is what I call ‘A to B-ism,’ and that is, if you make it the quickest way to get around town, everyone and their dog will do it. Men in suits, mothers with children.

- Biking in Copenhagen is easy and fast partly because of the city’s amazing investment in bicycle infrastructure. With more than $10 million in annual investments (20 to 25 percent of the road budget), the results are stunning. In addition to 397 kilometers of combined cycle tracks, lanes, and greenways and almost 35,000 bike parking spaces on roads as of 2008, the city has implemented some innovations for bikes, such as the so-called “green wave,” in which traffic lights on several main arteries into the city center are synchronized during rush hours for the benefit of bikes. This means that bikers can maintain a comfortable 20-km-per-hour cruising speed without putting a foot down to stop for a light for up to 6 kilometers. And on one of the busiest of those routes, they’ve closed down the road to car traffic. Another perk for bicyclists is the “pre-green” signalization in which bicycle traffic lights turn green a few seconds before car traffic lights do, giving cyclists time to avoid traffic while in intersections.

- No matter how safe, fast, convenient, and inexpensive bike commuting can be made, however, it won’t be adopted if it can’t at least partially out-compete cars. So, beyond the “carrot” of incentivizing bicycle commuting, Copenhagen (and many other European cycling cities) also employs the “stick” of policies designed to discourage car use. Some of these policies are actually national—for instance, Denmark imposes a tax of 180 percent on car sales (which is not as bad as it sounds, given the $20-per-hour minimum wage), and gas costs almost $10 per gallon. Every year 2 to 3 percent of parking spaces are removed to gradually wean residents from auto-dependency. In addition to being scarce, parking is expensive—about $5 an hour in the city center. And as the inconvenience and cost of parking increase, so, too, does the rate of bicycling.

- The success of cycling in Denmark raises the question of why America, with all its massive resources, lags so far behind on something that could be so beneficial to cities and inexpensive to implement. In the United States as a whole, only 0.4 percent commute by bicycle. The highest rate in the country is found in Portland, Ore.—but at about 6 percent, it’s nowhere near Copenhagen’s 37 percent. This question of why cycling is not more common is particularly vexing for the American Sunbelt, where biking weather is often ideal for much of the year. Copenhagen, which is near the same latitude as Moscow, manages to keep 80 percent of the biking population during its long and difficult winters (even during snowstorms, that level only drops to 50 percent, thanks in part to the active plowing of bike lanes). Yet cities like Los Angeles or San Diego, with their minimal precipitation and moderate temperatures, can barely manage to break a 2 percent bicycle mode share.

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Video Link

S.F. getting 'green lanes' for bikes

Read More: http://www.sfgate.com/outdoors/bikea...es-3998065.php

Quote:

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In May, San Francisco was chosen as one of six cities to take part in the Green Lane Project, a campaign that aims to "build a world-class cycling network" in cities across the country. Over the next two years, the Green Lane Project, an initiative of Bikes Belong Foundation, will work closely with San Francisco and the other focus sites - Chicago; Austin; Portland, Ore.; Memphis; and Washington, D.C. - to install cycle tracks, or "green lanes," throughout the cities.

- Sometimes called cycle tracks, protected bike lanes or buffered bike lanes, green lanes are designated spaces for people on bicycles, spaces in the road that are separated from sidewalks and protected from cars, according to the Green Lane Project's website. In short, these lanes are separated from cars, offering a safe, protected ride. The lanes are inspired by lanes in European cities, like Copenhagen, where more than half of trips are reportedly done by bike. Some green lanes, though not all, are painted green. And while they vary in design, the goal is to create safe and efficient bike lanes that are comfortable for users of all ages.

- Expect to see more bicycle-friendly changes to streets across San Francisco in the coming months. In early October, safe-hit posts - plastic posts that create a physical separation from vehicle traffic - were added to the bike lanes on eastern Cesar Chavez Street between Vermont and Pennsylvania streets. The Embarcadero hosted a pilot project during Fleet Week that allowed the city to test out ideas - like the physically separated bikeway on northbound Embarcadero from Washington Street to Bay Street - for better biking and walking along the popular waterfront route before making permanent changes.

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http://ww1.hdnux.com/photos/15/72/66.../3/628x471.jpg

Cirrus

Nov 1, 2012 6:50 PM

It annoys me that the cycle track group named itself the "Green Lane Project," because cycle tracks and green-painted bike lanes are totally different things. Now when we want to discuss green-painted lanes, we have to add the suffix "-painted". They're doing great work and I love Gabe Klein, but I wish they hadn't preempted that term.

Anyway, in news from DC that's both cycle track related and green-painted lane related, DDOT is about 1/2 finished installing the new L Street cycle track, which includes green at key locations. They had to stop because of the hurricane, but will pick up again shortly (if they haven't already).

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/A6KRokMCYAANnLm.jpg

http://farm9.staticflickr.com/8327/8...eeef7df2_c.jpg
The cars at right are in what used to be the parking lane, but what will soon become the left turn lane onto Connecticut Ave. This segment of the cycle track is painted green because it's where cars cross over into the turn lane.

PLANSIT

Nov 1, 2012 8:22 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Cirrus (Post 5887183)

Cirrus, couple of quick questions about protected bike lanes/cycletracks:

How is long-term maintenance handled? Repainting/Replacing Flexiposts/Etc?

How is DC handling snow removal? Street sweeping?

Cirrus

Nov 2, 2012 6:22 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by me

A “bike sneak” helps bicyclists cross streetcar tracks

Streetcar tracks can sometimes be dangerous for bicyclists to cross. A new type of intersection design called a “bike sneak” may reduce the risk, by directing cyclists to cross at the safest angle.

Streetcars and bicycles both promote livable urban communities. They can and do coexist in many cities around the world, most notably Amsterdam, which is a global leader for both bike and streetcar infrastructure. Nonetheless, the grooves of streetcar tracks are a potential danger to bicyclists, so careful planning is necessary where the two mix.

One possible solution is a so-called “bike sneak”. The safest way to cross streetcar tracks on a bike is to cross at a 90º angle, with the bike tires perpendicular to the tracks. A bike sneak is a special ramp that directs bicyclists onto a path that will take them across streetcar tracks in exactly the right perpendicular angle.

Seattle is experimenting with its first bike sneak now. They opened their first streetcar line in 2007, and have a 2nd under construction.

At one point along that 2nd line, the streetcar turns off of Seattle’s Yesler Way and on to 14th Avenue, jutting in the way of a bike lane on Yesler that continues straight without turning. Without some sort of special intersection design, the straight bike lane would cross the curving streetcar tracks at a dangerous angle that would be likely to snare many bike tires. Thus Seattle has installed a bike sneak, which directs bike riders to turn slightly in order to cross at a safe angle.

Seattle Bike Blog describes how it will work, and includes another picture:

“The bike lane will feed you up this curb for a couple feet, then let you back down to street level where the cone is on the far side. Paint will direct you across the tracks at a safe angle so you can carry on up Yesler.”

Seattle Bike Blog notes that good signage and street markings will be necessary so bicyclists clearly understand what they’re supposed to do. That’s a good suggestion. Hopefully Seattle will add that, and the bike sneak will work.

Obviously this solution isn’t right everywhere. It doesn’t address places where bikes and streetcars run parallel to each other, for example. For those situations something else will be necessary. Seattle is putting in a cycle track, which is one solution. Another is bike boulevards on parallel streets, which is what Arlington is considering for Columbia Pike.

But surely as streetcar and bike lane installation both become more common, there will be cases in the Washington area where a bike sneak may be a good solution. When that day comes, maybe DC can use this idea.

http://images.greatergreaterwashingt...211/011721.png
Yesler Way bike sneak. Rendering by Alta Planning & Design.

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/A6o5u48CcAAf4pm.jpg
Yesler Way bike sneak. Photo by Toole Design Group.

http://images.greatergreaterwashingt...211/011725.jpg
Yesler Way bike sneak. Photo by Seattle Bike Blog.

Cirrus

Nov 2, 2012 6:49 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by PLANSIT (Post 5887296)

Cirrus, couple of quick questions about protected bike lanes/cycletracks:

>> How is long-term maintenance handled? Repainting/Replacing Flexiposts/Etc?
Repainting and repaving as necessary is handled by city crews under the normal street maintenance budget, just like crosswalks and such. There is a slight extra cost for more paint and bollards, but there's a money savings for repaving, because asphalt on bike lanes doesn't get worn down as fast as on car lanes. It's all pretty marginal as far as the street maintenance budget is concerned.

The first cycle tracks in the US were more heavily engineered, and more expensive to both build and maintain. For example, early ones in New York and Florida had curbs. It all kind of depends on what your state DOT traffic engineer will let you get away with. But as we do more and more, I think most agree that it's better to do them as cheaply as possible, so that you can do more of them.

>> How is DC handling snow removal? Street sweeping?
Since the bollards can be snapped off we can remove them and sweep with a regular truck if necessary. But more often I think they just use a Bobcat for snow removal, and one of these for cleaning.

M II A II R II K

Nov 4, 2012 3:20 PM

Is Berlin the safest city to be a cyclist?

Read More: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-20068083

Quote:

Berlin is enjoying a cycling boom, with miles of new cycle paths and more than half a million bike journeys made every day - but controverisally, a helmet is rarely seen.

- Berlin makes getting around on two wheels a pleasure. I have cycled in London but gave it up after too-many rants at a white van. But in Berlin, it is a joy. Firstly, the city is pretty flat, and secondly, there are endless cycle tracks. Thirdly, everybody has a bike - so car-drivers are probably also cyclists in their other lives and so keep their eyes wide open. The test of whether cycling has really taken off in a city is who does it. In New York, it is urban warriors, young men usually, who zip aggressively between lanes.

- In London, it's a bit of that, but also, I suspect, eco-zealots who are asserting their credentials - though the Boris bike scheme may be taking it more mainstream. In Berlin, it is the people. Old ladies cycle in stately and elegant fashion, old men pedal so slowly that it's a wonder the bike doesn't fall over. Young mothers tow toddlers in trailers - I followed one on a crisp autumn morning down Bernauerstrasse.

- The rise of the bike follows a decision by the city senate in 2005 to promote it. So Berlin now has about 400 miles, or 600km, of bike lane. Woe betide any tourist who strays from the walking bit of the pavement to the red cycling bit. The city is also integrating bikes into the whole transport system - you can take a bike on a train or tram, though you need a special ticket for the bike.

- The state railway, Deutsche Bahn, operates what it calls - using the English that infuriates language purists - a Call a Bike scheme. There is a bank of red bikes outside the station. On the bike, there's a telephone number which you call, and the voice at the other end gives you a code to unlock the bike. When you've finished, you lock it to something fixed and call the number with a code and somebody picks it up. You will be charged eight cents a minute.

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http://news.bbcimg.co.uk/media/image...eit_afp624.jpg

M II A II R II K

Nov 6, 2012 11:31 PM

How to build a Seattle for bicyclists

Read More: http://seattletimes.com/html/opinion...yguestxml.html

Quote:

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Around the U.S. and Canada, and in most European cities, urban bike riding has become downright mainstream: riding a bike has become safer, faster and a permanent piece of comprehensive urban transportation systems. Prudent investments such as separated cycle tracks in Vancouver and Portland’s bicycle boulevards, non-arterial streets optimized for bike travel, are among the most cost-effective in the transportation-policy toolbox.

- Our city’s last push at integrating bike riding into its transportation system was 2007’s original Bicycle Master Plan, whose centerpieces are unprotected bike lanes adjacent to car lanes and “sharrows” that encourage bikes and cars to share roadways. At the time it seemed progressive. Now it’s like dial-up Internet. Progress since then? A two-page update to the 2007 plan. Annual investment in Seattle bike infrastructure has been stuck below $7 million annually since 2007, just 2 percent of the city transportation budget. Annual counts of riders show the city could fail to reach its goal of tripling ridership by 2017.

The experience of leading bike-riding cities suggest three city steps:

• The city should fully fund the recommendations in the 2007 Bicycle Master Plan, updated to include safety improvements such as the dedicated, protected bicycle lanes known as cycle tracks. The 2007 plan calls for $25 million per year; expenditures now run less than $7 million annually and have been shrinking.

• Create and fund a visible “bicycle czar” within the Seattle Department of Transportation with authority to work across divisions to truly integrate bike riding into the system. This is a position filled by strong, dynamic leaders in virtually every city that has made real progress. Seattle has no such leader.

• How about building a contiguous cycle track through downtown, connecting the heavily used Dexter Avenue bike route with the Chinatown-International District? About 5,000 people ride bikes to downtown workplaces every day, according to a 2010 study by Commute Seattle; providing safer roadways benefits riders and drivers alike and would demonstrate the effectiveness of this sensible improvement.

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Amsterdam to add 38,000 bicycle parking places by 2020

Read More: http://www.iamexpat.nl/read-and-disc...places-by-2020

Quote:

To accommodate rapid growth in the number of cyclists, the municipality of Amsterdam will add 38.000 bicycle parking places and lay down 15 kilometers of red bicycle lanes along dangerous routes by 2020.

Bicycle usage in the city has grown more than 40 percent over the past 20 years, from 340.000 to 490.000 daily cycling journeys in 2012, and the growth will continue. By 2020 the number of bike journeys to and from Amsterdam train stations is expected to grow 25 percent. The bicycle lanes along the busiest routes in the center are too small to accommodate the ever-increasing stream of daily bike traffic. Also, the nuisance caused by abandoned bicycles and overly full parking racks around train stations is turning into an accessibility problem.

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http://www.iamexpat.nl/app/webroot/u...0amsterdam.jpg

M II A II R II K

Nov 13, 2012 10:43 PM

Making the Bike as Logical a Choice for Commuters as the Car, Bus, Train or Metro

Read More: http://rendezvous.blogs.nytimes.com/...orld&seid=auto

Quote:

What do you give the bike city that has it all? Better bicycle highways and parking lots, obviously. In fact, the capital of European biking — in a bike-obsessed Europe — is investing nearly €120 million, or about $150 million, in cycling infrastructure over the next eight years, with almost half of that sum be spent in just the next four years.

“Amsterdam wants to remain a clean and accessible city and the city administration had to ensure the conditions are set for people to be able to choose their bike as a means of transportation,” Tahira Limon of the City of Amsterdam in a telephone interview. Amsterdam is not the first European city to make headlines for improved bike infrastructure this year. Even during Europe-wide belt tightening, some cities are spending heavily on two-wheeled transportation infrastructure. My colleague Sally McGrane reported on a new bicycle superhighway in Copenhagen, which officially opened in spring.

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http://graphics8.nytimes.com/images/...es-blog480.jpg

Dutch cycling utopia threatened by own success

Read More: http://www.themalaysianinsider.com/t...y-own-success/

Quote:

Problems all-too familiar to car drivers the world over, from traffic jams to road-rage and lack of parking, are now also threatening to turn the Dutch dream of bicycling bliss into a daily hell.

In a small country where bicycles outnumber people by 1.2 million, the Dutch have simply run out of space to accommodate the five million cyclists who take to the road every day, turning commuting in major cities into a nightmare. In Amsterdam alone 490,000 freewheeling “fietsers” take to the road to cycle a staggering two million kilometres every day, according to statistics released by the city council this week.

“Bicycles are an integral mode of transport in our city,” Amsterdam’s council said, but, in a worrying trend, “the busiest bicycle paths are too small for the growing stream of daily cyclists.” “Cyclists have increased dramatically over the last few years,” Wim Bot of the Dutch Cycling Association (Fietsersbond) agreed. “In a small country like the Netherlands where almost every square metre is accounted for, we’ve run out of space,” added Bot, whose “cyclists’ union” was founded in 1975 and today represents 35,000 paid-up members. “It’s become a headache,” he told AFP.

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http://www.themalaysianinsider.com/i...1amsterdam.jpg

M II A II R II K

Nov 13, 2012 10:46 PM

Toronto Protesters Meet Bike Lane Removal Crew Head On

Read More: http://streetsblog.net/2012/11/13/ph...crews-head-on/

Quote:

Yesterday was supposed to be the day that Toronto Mayor Rob Ford removed the Jarvis Street bike lane. But things didn’t go exactly according to plan. As Streetsblog NYC reported, protesters physically blocked the pavement-scraping machine as crews set about erasing those painted lines.

Shawn Micallef at Streetsblog Network member Spacing Toronto was on hand yesterday and snapped these photos that pretty much speak for themselves. Both the bike lane scraper and the bike lane supporters are set to return to the scene this morning. No matter what happens, these protesters made a pretty strong statement and gave Ford the type of press coverage that mayors dread.

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http://streetsblog.net/wp-content/up...gi9to1_500.jpg

http://streetsblog.net/wp-content/up...gi9to1_500.jpg

http://streetsblog.net/wp-content/up...gi9to1_500.jpg

http://streetsblog.net/wp-content/up...gi9to1_500.jpg

zilfondel

Nov 14, 2012 4:03 AM

Go Canada!

KevinFromTexas

Nov 16, 2012 10:56 PM

This weekend is the first US Grand Prix Formula 1 race to be held in Austin. Besides bicycles, about 300 helicopter ferries a day are expected to help alleviate traffic problems.

http://www.statesman.com/news/news/l...gridloc/nS8SS/

Quote:

Posted: 4:42 p.m. Friday, Nov. 16, 2012
Biking to F1 offers reprieve from expected gridlock for some

By Farzad Mashhood
American-Statesman Staff

At Richard Moya Park on Friday, there was a different sound than at Circuit of the Americas 3 miles to the east, where earplugs and 145-decibel engines dominated.

At the park, the light metal clanking of bicycles meandering for a parking spot prevailed and the preferred headgear was a helmet.

On the first day of the Formula One Grand Prix in nearby Elroy, hundreds of cyclists converged at the park. Some parked on streets nearby and rode a few miles to the park, while about 20 people joined an organized 11-mile ride from downtown.

With officials promising heavy traffic around Circuit of the Americas, a bike to Richard Moya Park and a free shuttle ride proved a powerful lure. By 10 a.m. about 200 bikes had already parked at the valet lot that can hold up to 2,000 said Al Hinton, the service coordinator for Bicycle Sport Shop, which provided the parking.

Photos:

Biking to Formula One, 11.16.12
http://www.statesman.com/gallery/spo.../g6T3/#2880485

Video:

Biking to Circuit of the Americas
http://www.austin360.com/videos/news...mericas/vhb59/

M II A II R II K

Nov 16, 2012 11:07 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by zilfondel (Post 5900825)

Go Canada!

Some disagree.....

http://wx.toronto.ca/inter/it/newsre...a?OpenDocument

Jarvis Street opens Saturday for extra lane of traffic

Quote:

The centre reversible lane on Jarvis Street, from Queen Street to Isabella Street, will be activated on Saturday, November 17 at 9 a.m.

"Congestion costs Toronto's economy billions of dollars every year," said Mayor Rob Ford. "Jarvis is a key arterial route. Returning it to full capacity will help us fight gridlock."

"The reopening of this lane for traffic on Jarvis Street will improve traffic flow and ease congestion in this corridor," said Councillor Denzil Minnan-Wong (Ward 34 Don Valley East), Chair of the Public Works and Infrastructure Committee.

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KevinFromTexas

Nov 18, 2012 11:06 PM

So the total for the weekend for bicycle trips to the Formula 1 US Grand Prix at Circuit of the Americas was 1,120.

It's still a tiny amount since 117,429 people were at the race today. Still, it's not too bad since the race is taking place in an area of Austin's metro that is mostly rural. And of course they can learn from this year and hopefully build on it to accommodate more bicycle trips.

http://www.statesman.com/blogs/conte..._grand_p.html/

Quote:

360 fans ride bikes to Grand Prix

Over the three-day Formula One weekend, 1,120 people have biked to the park and taken the shuttles from there.

“For Year One, honestly I didn’t expect this much,” said Andrew Andress, with Bicycle Sport shop, which is running the so-called Bicycle Valet to the circuit.

For any F1 fans, here is the American-Statesman's F1 coverage page:

F1/Austin Racing

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