Urban Cycling Developments

[M II A II R II K]

Recyclebank's Plan to Make London Residents More Physically Active


Read More: http://www.fastcompany.com/1787612/r...sically-active

The easiest way to convince people do most things in life is to offer rewards; recycling is no different. That's why Recyclebank has reached millions of people with its environmental social platform, which rewards participants for recycling and reducing household energy with points that can be exchanged for deals and discounts at nearby store. So when Transport for London, the organization that runs all of London's public and alternative transportation efforts, decided that it wanted to increase ridership in its bikeshare program (just launched in 2010) and get more pedestrians on walkways, it contacted Recyclebank for help.

Recylebank's solution: an app, of course. "It's a layer on top of Recyclebank's program with goals of reducing pollution and boosting overall health and fitness. It's important for London ahead of the 2012 Olympics," says Jonathan Hsu, CEO of Recyclebank.

The mobile phone app allows London-based users to log the distance of their journeys and receive points depending on the length. At the end of each journey, Recyclebank will reveal the number of points earned as well as health and environmental benefits (number of trees saved, miles saved by staying off the road, carbon emissions). The app can also show users nearby locations where they can redeem their points.

"The points will be redeemable throughout our rewards catalog," says Hsu. "Recyclebank is all about providing actual monetary financial rewards, but beyond that showing people the full context of their actions for the environment." Rewards currently on Recyclebank's website include discounts on products at Macy's, CleanWell, Brookstone, and UncommonGoods. The company has over 3,000 reward partners.

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[M II A II R II K]

No Room for Bicyclists in Small Wisconsin Town


Read More: http://thecityfix.com/blog/no-room-f...isconsin-town/

A small town in Wisconsin has been getting quite a bit of attention for considering a ban on bicyclists and pedestrian traffic from certain roads. A public safety committee in Hull, Wis., a town with a population of only about 6,000 people, drafted an ordinance that would require groups of bikers, runners and walkers to register travel plans with the town prior to traveling.

Hull’s example may not be totally relevant to the transport struggles of larger cities, where the interweaving of multiple road users is ever more present. However, this case can perhaps start a dialogue about the relationship of road users to one another and to public space.

The town attributes the reason behind its proposed law to complaints from private vehicle drivers, as well as to safety concerns for vulnerable road users. However misguided, it seems that the effort to pass the ordinance is coming from a good place. You can read the Public Safety Task Force Minutes from the September 15 meeting here to understand how the discussion led to the proposed law.

Town officials are well aware of the growing role of pedestrians and bicyclists in Hull. At one point, Chairman John Holdridge even says, “I think the key thing here is more and more pedestrians and bikers are using our roads so it’s a shared situation. Sometimes that’s a tough sell to drivers.”

Besides being potentially illegal, the proposed law wouldn’t address any public safety concerns, explains Cyclelicious. “Drivers in this city of 5,000 seem to be annoyed by the momentary delays posed by walkers, joggers, and cyclists. There are no sidewalks on the 80 miles of road in Hull and, according to Public Safety Committee meeting notes, the lanes within town limits are no more than 12 feet wide.”

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[electricron]

Originally Posted by M II A II R II K

No Room for Bicyclists in Small Wisconsin Town

Golly, it's a town with a population of just 6,000. You must have a wicked imagination to equate a small town to a large urban city.

[M II A II R II K]

A Gentle Push for Bikers, Not a Shove


Read More: http://www.nytimes.com/2011/10/16/ny....html?src=recg

NEXT summer, New York City plans to introduce its bike-share program, making two-wheeled travel possible for thousands more residents and tourists. Shared bikes, available at rental kiosks around the city, will have built-in safety features like a handlebar bell and front and rear lights that stay on all the time. But the bikes won’t come with one basic piece of protective gear: a helmet.

- Helmets, however, despite their ubiquity in the city’s advertisements to encourage bicycling, are not mandatory for adults in New York. And neither city officials nor cycling advocacy groups are proposing a law to require them. Making helmets compulsory, they contend, could actually make cycling less safe. The more bikes on the street, their thinking goes, the safer bike-riding is; and helmet laws discourage people from joining in, because of either the cost and inconvenience of buying a helmet or fears of fines.

- “It’s a balancing act,” said Jon Orcutt, a policy director for the city’s Transportation Department who is overseeing the development of the rental program. “You don’t want to impose a regulation. You don’t want to be working at cross-purposes with a heavy-handed rule that depresses or reduces cycling.” Bicycle helmets have long been an emotionally charged issue in New York. A recent commercial for Anderson Cooper’s new talk show that had him riding helmetless through the city’s streets led to a round of online condemnation.

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[llamaorama]

is it possible to develop some kind of folding helmet?

apparently they exist

[M II A II R II K]

with the competition quickly heating up nationwide to see which city can become the nation's best bike city, minneapolis has plenty going for it. After all, they have been anointed the "mantle" by bicycling magazine who chose minneapolis its #1 bike city in 2010. One of the biggest reasons is thanks to the minneapolis-st. Paul region having nearly 100 miles of greenways and off-street paths so residents can safely and quickly commute.

and by far the most well known of those paths is the 5.7 mile long midtown greenway, which cuts thru the heart of minneapolis from east to west, giving city denizens and easy way to travel. The path has not just been good for cyclists, runners, and families, but business and real estate. Thanks goes to the bikes belong foundation for this third in a series of streetfilms we were able to produce this summer from minneapolis. Check out the nice ride mn & sabo bridge streetfilms if you haven't already!

Video Link

[M II A II R II K]

Making Bikes a Part of the Neighborhood


Read More: http://www.gothamgazette.com/article...111025/16/3625

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It took New York City a lot longer than many other big cities to get to bikeshare, but it would not have been possible at all if there hadn’t been decades of advocacy both from outside and within government. While there was cycling in New York before there were cars, as street space became monopolized by motor vehicles, cycling became dangerous and difficult. Transportation Alternatives Transportation Alternatives, the city’s largest advocacy group, was founded by bicycle advocates in 1973 and has grown dramatically both in size (with 8,000 members today) and scope (it now works for pedestrian safety, better mass transit, and in general for “reclaiming streets” as public spaces).

- In the 1990s, partly as a result of pressure from advocates like Transportation Alternatives, the city’s Department of Transportation openly debated the agency’s standard orthodoxy – shared by many traffic managers around the country – that gave priority to the movement of motorized traffic as quickly as possible throughout the city. This engineering dogma actually contributed to congestion because it only encouraged more people to get in cars, and turned major roads like Queens Boulevard and Eastern Parkway into dangerous highways. DOT considered using a different approach that is widely used around the world: traffic calming – which slows car traffic to make streets safer for other forms of transportation like pedestrians and bicyclists. Research clearly shows that slow streets save lives and reduce crashes just as slow food is healthier for you.

- Community boards Community boards are the closest thing we have to neighborhood-level government. Since community boards have limited authority, city agencies tend to ignore them and the first slight is in the city budget. The average community board has a (declining) budget of about $1.42 per capita each year (compared to $7,500 that goes into the city’s big budget pot). Their staff is small and even though the City Charter calls for each to have a professional planner, the city has never appropriated the money. Most boards have transportation committees, but there’s no training and support for the volunteer members. Community boards routinely review proposals for bicycle lanes and even though they have no veto power it can take only a few disgruntled speakers angry at losing a parking space to kill a proposal.

- The problem with this system of neighborhood governance is that it could lead to the creation of a more sharply divided city, one for cyclists and pedestrians and another for the car culture. Community boards open to more bike lanes have usually gotten them. They usually have more cyclists who attend board meetings and get appointed to the boards. Those community boards opposed – especially in areas far from Manhattan with higher rates of car ownership – have not. Some of the boards – appointed by the borough presidents in consultation with city council members – are dominated by car owners and leave out cyclists entirely. There are no citywide standards that require all street users be represented. This is why the existing bicycle lanes tend to be concentrated in Manhattan and parts of Brooklyn nearest downtown – the very areas to be covered by bikeshare.

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[M II A II R II K]

Bicycles roll into fashion in Mexico City


Read More: http://www.usatoday.com/news/world/s...ity/50897802/1

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Mexico's attempts to promote bicycle riding as an alternative to cars may explain why biking has surged in popularity and public acceptance in recent years, Mexico City's Federal District says. Local government officials say they hope increased bicycle use will curb pollution and traffic woes in a city deemed in a recent IBM survey to have the worst commutes in the world. Areli Carreón, director of the bicyclist-advocacy organization Bicitekas, describes Mexico City as ideal for cycling with its flat terrain and favorable climate. She says attitudes have changed since Bicitekas members began staging nighttime rides years ago to demand respect from motorists known for their inattentive driving.

- Mexico City has been an unlikely place for cycling to catch on. Owning a motor vehicle shows status and some residents — mainly those with money — consider public transit uncool, uncomfortable and unsafe. Local cycling initiatives began in 2006 with the administration of Mayor Marcelo Ebrard. He unveiled measures for improving life in the city, such as building urban beaches and bike paths, and setting up the world's biggest skating rink every December — initiatives derided as publicity stunts by critics pointing to his presidential aspirations.

- The measures have proved popular, however, especially establishing a Sunday bike route on the grand Paseo de la Reforma, a wide avenue where many monuments to Mexico's history are placed. A bike-sharing program known as Ecobici launched 18 months ago in the trendy Condesa neighborhood and has attracted more than 30,000 users. It now has a six-week waiting period for new members. The local environment secretariat estimates there are 100,000 cycling trips made daily in Mexico City, which is home to nearly 9 million residents. An additional 11million people live in suburbs around the city.

- "They don't share lanes with you, they'll yell at you, tell you to get out of the way," department store employee José Rueda says of local drivers. The city government has installed some bicycle lanes, which — in the case of the open lanes — motorists frequently wander into, in addition to blocking crosswalks and parking on sidewalks, Rueda says. "We have to let motorists know that we're here," says martial arts instructor, Juan José González, 30. "We've asked too politely to be allowed to use the roads."

- Motorists have complaints, too. "People riding bikes don't have any road etiquette," says Vanessa Hernández, who commutes an hour each way to her government job. Tensions boiled over in August when radio host Ángel Verdugo called cyclists "a new plague" and encouraged drivers to run them over. The comments drew rebukes but illustrated how important driving is to people here and how bad habits have taken hold. Mexico City is notorious for traffic and pollution (the latter having been reduced greatly in the past 20 years), and local Environment Secretary Martha Delgado says a preference for owning vehicles took hold as incomes increased.

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[hammersklavier]

Originally Posted by electricron

Golly, it's a town with a population of just 6,000. You must have a wicked imagination to equate a small town to a large urban city.

"Town" and "city" seem to be fairly interchangeable words up there...

[M II A II R II K]

City's 10-year bike plan obsolete after 4 years?


Read More: http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/htm...keplan02m.html

Just four years after Seattle published its $300,000 Bicycle Master Plan, city officials are considering spending an additional $400,000 to revise it. The 2007 bike plan, a 174-page document produced for then-Mayor Greg Nickels, was supposed to be a 10-year blueprint to help Seattle build a $240 million cycling network as good or better than Portland's. Now the plan apparently is reaching obsolescence.

Urban bicycle networks are changing quickly: the development of safe walking and cycling routes called "greenways" on the side streets of Portland; a growing commuter-trail network in Minneapolis; parts of streets becoming protected "cycle tracks" in New York City. "It's really interesting to see the public getting out ahead of us on this, clamoring for greenways," said Craig Benjamin, policy and government-affairs manager for Cascade Bicycle Club. He also is co-chair of Streets for All Seattle, the pro-Proposition 1 campaign.

Mayor Mike McGinn proposes to pay for the bike-plan update with a small piece of the city's proposed $60 car-tab fee, which appears on the November ballot as Prop. 1. The measure would raise $204 million over 10 years for transit, street, bike, pedestrian and freight improvements. If it fails, the City Council will face some tough decisions about how and whether to improve the bike plan, McGinn said Tuesday.

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[M II A II R II K]

Mo, a new startup in Munich, is trying to combine the city's bike shares, car shares, and public transportation system. Pay a yearly fee, use your phone to take whatever kind of transportation you need.

Video Link

Video Link

[M II A II R II K]

Streetless in Seattle


Read More: http://www.city-journal.org/2011/21_...portation.html

Mike McGinn, the mayor of Seattle, won office in 2009 after making transportation policy a centerpiece of his campaign. He catapulted himself over his establishment-friendly opponents, including the incumbent, by vigorously opposing the construction of a multibillion-dollar highway tunnel beneath the city’s waterfront. McGinn also gained fame for bicycling to and from campaign events. And he promised to put Seattle on a “road diet” in which car lanes on many busy multilane roads would be converted into bike lanes. The city’s paper of record, the Seattle Times, has called McGinn “philosophically anti-car.” A former Washington State Sierra Club chairman, McGinn likens autos to in-laws: “You want to have good relations with them, but you don’t want them to run your lives.”

- The plan has generated fierce resistance, with civic organizations springing up in opposition, posting signs and circulating petitions. McGinn, meanwhile, has courted controversy for his cozy relationship with local cycling groups. In May, he bestowed a $95,000-a-year city hall job on his friend David Hiller, who heads the Cascade Bicycle Club, an advocacy group. The perceived cronyism has spurred a campaign, led by Seattle activist and businessman Michael Cornell, to recall the mayor. It’s clear, however, that the recall campaign is about more than McGinn’s relationship with Hiller. McGinn’s policy, Cornell says, “is a war waged on people who drive cars.”

- Factors both meteorological and topographical make Seattleites unlikely to forgo cars as their primary means of transportation. Rain falls more than 150 days a year in this famously gloomy city, rendering cycling both unpleasant and unsafe. And Seattle’s ubiquitous steep hills make San Francisco look like Des Moines. It’s hardly surprising that, according to the Seattle Department of Transportation, a mere 2,600 people—out of a total downtown workforce of 230,000—commuted downtown by bicycle in 2009. McGinn is correct that Seattle’s transportation infrastructure needs an overhaul. The city’s traffic congestion is horrendous. The GPS manufacturer TomTom conducted a 2009 study that measured the speed with which automobiles navigated streets in cities nationwide; it found Seattle’s roads the most congested in the country, with Los Angeles taking second place.

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[Cirrus]

Originally Posted by BeyondDC

Details of Baltimore’s bikesharing deal
http://beyonddc.com/log/?p=2981

Baltimore is planning to launch its bikesharing system next summer, and is moving forward ironing out the details.

According to The Bike-sharing Blog, Baltimore is shooting for a 30-station, 250-bike system focused around downtown and Fells Point. They are planning on calling the system Charm City Bikeshare, to compliment the branding of the Charm City Circulator bus system.

Earlier today the city announced that they have officially selected Bcycle to build and operate the system. Bcycle operates Denver’s extensive bikesharing network, as well as smaller networks in nine other US cities. They are the primary US competitor to Bixi, which operates four networks in the US, including Capital Bikeshare.

It’s unfortunate that Baltimore and DC will be using different systems, and therefore won’t be able to cross-honor memberships. Nonetheless, bikesharing has proven to be an effective and affordable form of urban transportation, so it’s exciting to see more and more cities taking it up.

Bcycle bikes in Boulder. Photo by Mr T in DC.

[M II A II R II K]

Indonesia’s Biggest City Gets its First Bicycle Lane


Read More: http://thisbigcity.net/indonesias-bi...-bicycle-lane/

On May 22, 2011, Jakarta set a new milestone towards a healthier and more livable city. The Jakarta administration inaugurated the city’s first dedicated bicycle lane, stretching 1.5 kilometers from Ayodia Park to Blok M in South Jakarta. Jakarta is late in promoting bicycle lanes, having focused on promoting the use of cars by building more elevated inner city toll roads and ignoring the importance of non-motorist trips in the city. Many metropolitans in the world have developed dedicated bicycles lanes for years. Cities in developed countries, particularly in Europe, have integrated bicycle lanes into their transportation network systems. Those cities such as Amsterdam, Paris, Berlin, Copenhagen and Barcelona have been developed as bike-friendly cities.

- If the Jakarta city administration could encourage more motorists to shift to using bicycle to work, the city’s chronic traffic woes could be eventually reduced. The first dedicated bike lane in Jakarta is only a small step in developing Jakarta as a bike-friendly city. There are many challenges for the city to become bike-friendly. The city administration needs to have a strong commitment to build more dedicated bike lanes and integrate them with the city transportation network system. Dedicated bike lanes should be part of the city transportation network system and designed to accommodate the needs of residents’ mobility in the city. It is essential to connect dedicated bike lanes with mass transportation.

- It’s not easy to build more dedicated bike lanes if the Jakarta city administration focuses on building elevated inner-city toll roads as the solution of addressing the city’s chronic traffic woes. It is also important to note that the first dedicated bike lane was not initiated by the Jakarta city administration but the Indonesian Bicycle Community (Komite Sepeda Indonesia) that donated as much as 500 million rupiahs (US$56,000) to build it. Another big challenge for bike lanes in Jakarta is the lack of law enforcement. The Jakarta city administration should strictly enforce the dedicated bike lanes for cyclists. Bike lanes cannot be used as parking spots and a lane for motorcyclists.

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[M II A II R II K]

WikiLane – How Citizens Built their own Bicycle Network


Read More: http://thisbigcity.net/wikilane-how-...cycle-network/

Mexico City’s government pledged in 2007 that it would build 300 km of bike lanes around the city by 2012. However, the city still only has 22.2 km because most money is allocated to car infrastructure, leaving aside non-motorized mobility. That’s why the Institute for Transportation and Development Policy and the National Network for Urban Cycling (BiciRed) launched a campaign called ’5% for bicycles and pedestrians’, which asks national legislators to assign at least that percentage of the transportation budget to non-motorized infrastructure.

- To promote that campaign and pressure legislators into action, several cycling and pedestrian organizations decided to paint their own bike lane in front of Congress on October 20th. This was our way of showing how little money and time is required to create quality infrastructure. We wanted to show that governments just need the will to promote non-motorized transport. However, that bike lane was efficiently erased just two days after it was painted, and no city official claimed responsibility.

- When we finally arrived to Congress, we got to repaint our efforts that had been erased. At that point, the police arrived for the first time. We talked to them for a bit, but, like every time we have have done this, we tell them we are just doing what government should be doing themselves. After the police left us alone, we threw ourselves to paint the last priority triangle of the day. Of course, we were extremely tired in the end, but it was completely worth it.

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[M II A II R II K]

Sharing time: Tracking the ‘sharrow’ on city streets


Read More: http://www.grist.org/biking/2011-11-...n-city-streets

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Sharrows have been increasing in popularity nationwide, and got a boost in 2009 when they were officially entered into the federal transportation engineering canon. Seattle got a head start, writing them into its 2007 Bike Master Plan. Other cities began earlier, but I've never seen such a profusion as in the Emerald City. Like many experts on transportation bicycling, Fucoloro wasn't enthusiastic about them. Sharrows are spread so indiscriminately on Seattle streets, he said, that "they mean nothing now." He has noticed that there seems to be "slightly less aggression" from drivers when they're in place. "But does that mean all the streets without sharrows are worse?" In other words, with sharrows everywhere, do drivers assume that cyclists don't belong on streets without them?

- Fucoloro is not the only one to express that concern, but he and others seem to be watching and waiting as cities feel out how best to use them. Some early adopters, including Sacramento and Baltimore, initially put sharrows on busy roads all the way to the right, where riders would be squeezed between fast car traffic and parked cars -- right in the dreaded "door zone." Federal regs now say that sharrows must be at least four feet from the curb if there's no parking, 11 feet from the curb if there is. Seattle has its own brand of sharrow growing pains. Riding and walking around town, it's hard to see a logic to the streets chosen for sharrow treatment. Some are on relatively quiet back streets, others are on breathtakingly fast arterials where the symbols are worn and rutted by the daily flow of cars and trucks speeding over them.

- Sharrows are popular because they are politically easy -- you can almost hear city officials sigh with relief when sharrows are mentioned. On the surface, they seem like a way to please the increasingly vocal bike lobby without ruffling feathers by putting in a bike lane at the expense of car parking or traffic lanes, which are often perceived as being for cars only. And they're cheap: Sharrows cost only $229 each to install, including labor and materials, while a full-blown bike lane can cost between $5,000 and $60,000 per mile. But do sharrows work? One recent study says sharrows slow car traffic slightly, and make bicyclists a little safer. But they are even better at keeping drivers at a distance from parked cars -- once again, bike infrastructure benefits more than just people on bikes.

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[M II A II R II K]

First Street merging areas and bus zones greened


Read More: http://ladotbikeblog.wordpress.com/2...zones-greened/

This past weekend, First Street in Boyle Heights got the distinct honor of having L.A.’s first completed green bike lanes. Merging areas and bus zones along First Street were colorized using green thermoplastic. The green colorization was applied on select areas along the 1.6 mile long bike lanes that stretch between Boyle Avenue to Lorena Street. Colorization has been shown to be affective in other jurisdictions at increasing motorist’s yielding behavior, improving bicyclist visibility, and increasing perceived safety for bicyclists. More on the lanes below the fold.

LADOT Bicycle Coordinator Nate Baird rode the new bike lanes on Saturday. He took some great photos (viewable on our flickr stream), and even captured some video. The video very nicely shows how well the colorization highlights bus zones, driveways, alleyways, and intersections. It begins with Boyle Heights resident Jose riding through a green bike lane symbol denoting the start of a new block.

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Flickr Video: http://www.flickr.com/photos/ladotbikeblog/6365849939/







Green bike lane symbol denoting the start of a new block






A greened segment denoting an alley, followed by a dashed segment denoting an intersection approach.






The dashed segments provide a very effective visual cue to both motorists and bicyclists, highlighting the shared characteristics of the space. It tells both motorists and bicyclists to expect to see each other and to watch out for one another.

[LosAngelesSportsFan]

and Downtown LA's Spring Street, got one the next day and Main street will get a northbound lane in a couple months!

[M II A II R II K]

How London Tried (and Failed) to Become a Cycling City


Read More: http://thisbigcity.net/how-london-tr...-cycling-city/

While centuries of urban development in Amsterdam prior to the bicycle’s invention resulted in a city ideal for both bicycle use and a bicycle network, the same cannot be said for London. As a busier centre of trade bound less by geographical restrictions than Amsterdam, sprawl has been a continuous part of London’s urban form. However, there are some similarities between these cities. Both are relatively flat (or almost completely flat, in Amsterdam’s case) and have a predominantly historic road network. And despite London being a larger city, half of all journeys by car are under two miles.

- Occupying Germans stole thousands of bicycles from the Dutch when they seized the Netherlands, leaving them unable to transport themselves in the manner they were used to. In Britain, however, strict petrol rationing meant bicycle use rose considerably as, for many, it was the only way to get around. The actions of war meant that the Dutch lost their bicycles, but the British were forced on to them. As soon as the Brits had the opportunity to get off their bicycles they did, with car ownership increasing rapidly in the post-war years, and continuing to remain high. This despite the fact that, as in the Netherlands, campaigns to improve London’s bicycle provisions and encourage a return to bicycle use have been happening since the 1970s.

- Viewing the London Cycle Network on a map could lead to a conclusion that the Dutch approach to infrastructure was being replicated. A web of ‘cycle routes’ span central and inner London, supposedly offering direct and attractive routes to destinations. However, whilst the London Cycle Network appears comprehensive in map-form, this is an illusion. Certain sections are segregated and others avoid main roads entirely, but the majority of the network is shared with roads. Features such as on-road marked bike lanes and bike boxes may be present, but much of the London Cycle Network is simply London’s road network, plus a little paint.

- The small, mixed-use developments typical of Amsterdam are practical for both bicycle networks and developing sustainable communities. Important amenities are more likely to be within a walkable or cyclable distance, and people are actually on the street, rather than locked up in their cars. But London’s urban form and culture are different to Amsterdam’s, and the challenge of introducing a bicycle network capable of developing sustainable communities is greater. On the most basic level, London’s size means constructing a bicycle network is inevitably going to be a bigger task. However, the economics of the city arguably create a bigger problem than its form. Central London is home to one-third of the city’s jobs, despite only taking up 2% of its land space and housing only 300,000 of its residents. As a result, commuting is standard practice for most Londoners.

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[J. Will]

St. Louis County: We Don’t Build Bike Lanes Because No One Bikes

http://streetsblog.net/2011/11/23/st...-no-one-bikes/

You “salute” cyclists, they just aren’t worth any “ground” or “money” because all of that is reserved for the folks who really count: motorists. How forward thinking!