If a far-reaching plan to enhance bicycling can be enacted anywhere, it's in Portland.
That might not be solace to supporters of the $600 million 2030 Portland Bicycle Plan who learned on Thursday that city commissioners put off a vote for a week.
Some 200 bicyclists showed up at a rally at City Hall to show their support for the plan, whose goal is to make it possible for Portland commuters to take 25% of their trips by bicycle in 20 years. One way of doing this is to make bicycling more safe by creating 700 miles of bikeways.
Portland Mayor Sam Adams told supporters anxious to hear the results of the vote: "This is going to pass ..... more»
Expect to see a lot of these bicycles on the streets of Minneapolis this coming summer.
The non-profit formed to bring public bike-sharing to the city chose Public Bike System, the developer of Montreal's BIXI, to provide bikes and kiosks to the project.
The bike-sharing project, Nice Ride Minnesota, is aiming to put 65 kiosks around downtown, college campuses and surrounding commerial areas by June. In all 80 kiosks and 1,000 bikes are projected in Phase 1.
Currently, there are about 160 bike-sharing systems in the world. The highest profile is the Paris Velib .... more»
Bicycle advocates in state legislatures are once again promoting bills that require motorists to give bicyclists 3 feet of clearance when passing.
Currently, 14 states require a 3-foot gap for bicycle riders. They are Arizona, Arkansas, Colorado, Connecticut, Florida, Illinois, Louisiana, Maine, Minnesota, New Hampshire, Oklahoma, Tennessee, Utah and Wisconsin.
This year, lawmakers in Maryland, Missouri, Ohio, South Dakota and Virginia are considering 3-foot laws. At least two other states, Iowa an Washington, have 3-foot passing laws in committee from last year.
Here are some details about the laws so you can follow along at home .... more»
More than 2,000 south Florida cyclists gathered in Key Biscayne on Sunday morning for a memorial ride to honor hit-and-run victim Christophe LeCanne.
It was an amazing outpouring of support to demonstrate to elected officials and the motoring public that bike riders are tired of second-class citizenship on the road.
LeCanne, 44, was struck by an allegedly drunken motorist as he rode his bike in the bicycle lane on the Rickenbacher Causeway a week ago Sunday.
He lay bleeding to death in the road for over 15 minutes because the closest fire-rescue station was closed due to a reduction in hours ..... more»
If bicycling were the only factor, what would be the 10 best cities in the world in which to live?
The website AskMen.com set out to name the Top 10 Bicycle-Friendly Cities in its quest for naming the Top 10 in dozens of categories -- prescription drugs, to motorbikes, to hottest women.
The list has undergone some modifications since I first stumbled across it in 2007. Amsterdam is still No. 1, but Portland, Oregon, fell from No. 2 to No. 6.
The website doesn't explain this sudden loss of prestige for Portland, but I doubt if it has anything to do with the 5% to 6% decrease in bike traffic in the past year, as revealed in a recent study by the city.
BikePortland saysthat the city attributed that first bike traffic decrease since 1995 to the poor economy (car traffic was down, too) and to people returning to cars as the price of gasoline dropped a bit.
Here's the Top 10, as reported by AskMen:
1. Amsterdam, The Netherlands -- Cars are almost secondary .. more»
Prompted by the deaths of three bicyclists on city streets last year, Boise, Idaho, is the latest locale to require motorists to give bicyclists a 3 feet of space when passing.
Usually this is a statewide law. Although the Idaho state legislature hasn't approved such a law, it is the only state that allows bicyclists to make the "Idaho stop" -- treating stop signs as yield signs and stop lights as stop signs.
Currently 14 states require that motorists give bicycle riders the 3-foot margin of safety.
The Boise City Council took the action this week based on the recommendations in a final report by the Cycling Safety Task Force ... more»
While last week's 5-year sentence of a Los Angeles doctor for a road rage attack that injured two cyclists got big headlines, rage on the road involving bicyclists isn't uncommon.
Sometimes bicycle riders are the target, sometimes they're the aggressors, and sometimes they're in the wrong place at the wrong time. It makes me wonder if there's a way to avoid road rage.
In Naperville, Illinois, a 67-year-old woman is charged with four felony counts of aggravated battery. Last July, witnesses told police she rammed a 17-year-old bicyclist on a BMX bike from behind .... more»
A Los Angeles judge sentenced an emergency room doctor to 5 years in prison on Friday for assaulting a group of cyclists with his car on a winding road near his home in 2008.
It's good to see justice handed down in this case against Christopher Thompson, 60. The incident caught the attention of bicycle riders worldwide; more than 270 e-mailed or wrote the Los Angeles court in support of a stiff sentence.
In November, a jury convicted Thompson of mayhem, assault with a deadly weapon, battery with serious injury and reckless driving causing injury.
According to the Los Angeles Times, Superior Court Judge Scott T. Millington said he did not take the correspondence from bicyclists into account in making his sentence. The Times said the judge:
"...called the case a "wake-up call" to motorists and cyclists and urged local government to provide riders with more bike lanes. He said he believed that Thompson had shown a lack of remorse .... more»
It's good to have a friend in the federal government who sounds like he's looking out for bicyclists and pedestrians.
Granted, most federal transportation projects are road-building exercises that support our car culture. But DOT Secretary Ray LaHood appears to understand that bicycles are one of the solutions to the traffic congestion that's stifling our cities.
It's a refreshing change from his predecessor, Bush-appointee Mary Peters, who complained in 2007 that spending on bike paths and trails was taking away money from upgrading the nation's transportation infrastructure.
I just saw recently where LaHood came to the defense of bike paths that a couple of Republican senators attacked last month because they got funding in the economic stimulus package .... more»
It may have started innocently enough by someone who had to slow down one day to share a narrow stretch of road with a bicyclist, but it has devolved into hate-mongering and harassment of cyclists fulfilling their rights to the road.
The statements do more damage than reflect poorly on the authors. They turn cyclists into objects who may be considered rightful targets by some drunken, drug-addled driver whose grip on sanity is looser than his grasp on the steering wheel ...... more»
A new year means new laws in many states, although there are only a few that affect bicycling.
A ban on texting while driving in three states went into effect on Friday, promising to make the roads a little bit safer by protecting bicyclists and others from distracted drivers. That makes 19 states that prohibit the practice (see the list below).
About the only law addressing bicycles specifically is a strange one in California that allows a person to ride a bicycle without a seat if the bicycle was designed by the manufacturer to be ridden without a seat.
After reading that one over a couple of times, I searched high and low for an explanation and finally ran across one in the Sacramento Bee .... more»
It's being worn by a guy who is riding the greatest invention of all time -- the bicycle.
Emblazoned across the back is a message. More like a slogan.
"SHARE THE DAMN ROAD"
The motorist is confused. Is it meant to humor him or taunt him? Is he having a good day or a lousy day? What happens next?
The "Share the Damn Road" jersey and some others, such as "Don't Run Me Over" and "Don't Honk At Me," are ideas that sprang from the mind of pro cyclist Phil Gaimon .... more»
Didn't Bob Dylan sing "...the signs, they are a-changin'"?
Maybe not, but I couldn't get that song out of my head when I read at Bike Portland that the feds were establishing new guidelines for signs and road markings that included changes that effect bike riders.
While some of the improvements deal with freeway signs and traffic signals, many changes involved making bike lane markings more uniform and establishing common signs for bike routes and paths.
The ones at left caught my attention at first.
The U.S. Bicycle Route signs will be used on the 50,000-mile bike route corridor network being established by Adventure Cycling Association and the American Association of State Highway and Transportation officials.
Those bike route designations are already being used for USBR 1 and 76 in Virginia. ... more»
A bicycling buddy saw this beer truck blocking a bike lane while he was visiting in New York recently and sent me the picture, entitling it, "An Incentive to Ride a Bike."
I'll agree there have been times on a long, hot bike ride that the mirage of a truck carrying ice-cold beers dancing before my eyes would have willed me ahead.
But the photo also records a much more dangerous problem, motor vehicles that force bicyclists into traffic by blocking the bike lanes.
It's a common problem in New York City. The Hunter College of the City University of New York recently set out to see how frequently it happens. Their results:
"During a 10-minute span of time, a New York City cyclist traveling in a bike lane will encounter a vehicle during a stretch of just five or six city blocks more than 60 percent of the time. .... more»
Where and when are you most likely to find bicycle riders in Bellevue, Washington? It's the I-90 bike trail in the Enatai neighborhood.
According to the Pedestrian and Bicycle Count Report taken on Sept. 29, bicycle commuters come through there at the rate of 2 per minute between 4 and 6 p.m., and at about 1 per minute between 7 and 9 a.m.
If you commute between the Eastside and Seattle, that I-90 bridge trail is the only way across Lake Washington. The only alternatives are riding through Renton south of the lake or the Burke-Gilman Trail through Bothell north of the lake. [The photo shows bike commuters at that location on a bike-to-work day ..... more»
As the UN Climate Change Conference in Copenhagen draws to a close, some journalists took advantage of a bike tour through the city on Thursday offered by the Cycling Embassy of Denmark.
The description by one reporter at the Telegraph makes the city sound like bicycling heaven:
"Despite the drizzle and cold, for someone who bikes in London it was sheer bliss. There are bike lanes everywhere, with enough room for two or three cyclists. Cycle routes are closed to traffic and there are shortcuts by lakesides and through pretty parks. There is no weaving through traffic, running over pedestrians or throwing hand signals because you simply don’t have to, there is room for everyone."
Apparently bicycling in Denmark in the '70s was destined to go the way of the dodo bird .... more»
You pedal your bicycle up to a traffic light and sit there waiting for it to change. If it uses a trigger mechanism installed in the blacktop, you could sit there a very long time -- maybe forever if you're riding an aluminum or carbon bike.
Eventually you meekly roll over to the crosswalk and hit the pedestrian crossing button, or take matters into your own hands and just blow the traffic light when no cross-traffic is coming.
Bicyclists in Santa Clarita, California, might not get to play out that drama much longer on two roads. The city has requested $390,000 from the state Bicycle Transportation Account to install cameras mounted on traffic lights to detect bicyclists waiting at traffic signals ..... more»
It's always gratifying to learn that your hometown is making progress toward bicycle friendliness.
That's why I was happy to learn that Bellevue, Washington, has joined Seattle and Redmond by opening a bike station. It's housed inside Bellevue's Commute Connection at the Transit Center on Sixth Street.
That Commute Connection "store" is where commuters can learn about options to driving solo to work or errands. Staff is on-site from 11 a.m. to 1 p.m. daily through the winter to assist in planning commute trips by bike, bus, and car- or van-pool.
The highlight for me is the secure indoor parking at the site for 27 bicycles .... more»
While researchers say that risk is a big issue that keeps women off bicycles on the road, a documentary comes to grips with another problem of perception -- it's just not cool.
Says one of the subjects in a UK documentary about young women on bikes: "I thought it was just a little kid's thing."
A study published in Scientific American in October noted that, in general, women are more averse to risk than men. In bicycling, that reluctance is overcome with good bike infrastructure, such as bike lanes, bike paths and a bike friendly atmosphere.
A project in Darlington, UK, finds there's more to it than that in Beauty and the Bike: Why do British girls stop cycling?" more»
Bronze level bicycle-friendly Philadelphia is in the throes of a bike-riders vs. everybody-else controversy.
After two pedestrians were struck and killed by bicycle riders in Philadelphia in October, the police launched a crackdown last month against cyclists on sidewalks as well as those who don't make full stops at stop signs or traffic lights. (As you can see in this video at left, [spoiler alert!] most cars, buses, taxis don't stop either.)
Then, a state legislator introduced a bill -- HB 2096 -- that would require all bikes in Philadelphia to be registered and be equipped with lights and turn signals. A similar law has been proposed by City Council. There's also a proposal that all bikes have brakes, a law that would target fixies.
The piling on doesn't stop at government ..... more»
Visitors to the 2010 Winter Olympics based in Vancouver next February should certainly consider riding bicycles as the easiest way to get around town.
Of course, people might want to think twice about riding their bicycles to the mountaintop skiing slopes, but bikes should be an ideal choice for accessing the sports complexes, athlete residences and other Olympic venues in the Vancouver area.
Vancouver is one of North America's most bike-friendly cities with 250 miles of bicycle lanes on city streets. [Interactive bike route planner.]
Some of those routes will be closed or altered during the Olympics because of security around the venues or increased numbers of people on foot. But I agree with the Dutch government that the bicycle will be the best form of transportation during the Winter Games; the Netherlands is sending 450 bikes to Vancouver for use by its citizens and officials ... more»
Although they provide package and bakery deliveries and intercity moving, I guess you could say their bread-and-butter is composting and recycling .... more»
Many bicyclists are seeking to influence a political agreement at the UN Climate Change Conference that begins next week in Copenhagen.
A global bike commute challenge is underway and cyclists are joining climate-change bike rides in selected cities this coming weekend for Ride Planet Earth. Meanwhile, activists in The Bike Bloc Project who are planning to take to the streets in Copenhagen are designing a method of civil disobedience that will use recycled bikes.
Of course those who use their bikes to commute or run errands regularly make a statement about the bicycle as a sustainable form of transportation every day.
Calling attention to the bicycle as a no-emission form of transportation and travel is Ride Planet Earth, a bike tour from Australia to Denmark led by Kim Nguyen. There are a couple of spin-offs of this ride that bicyclists can participate in .... more»
When two girls, aged 11 and 10, on bicycles were struck and killed by a van driver in October 1987, the people of Davie resolved to make the small south Florida city safer for bicyclists.
By the end of the year the town council budgeted $150,000 for its first bike trail. Within six months work began on a 3-mile bike trail adjacent to the street where the girls were killed.
Twenty-two years later, Davie boasts a network of 135 miles of bike paths and horse trails that connect the two dozen parks in the town with a population of 90,000.
When you consider the reputation of Florida among bicyclists, the feat of building so many bike trails in the town is remarkable. .... more»
Update: Nov. 16 -- More than 500 bicyclists showed up to honor David Vincent Sherman on the "Today We Ride for Dave" bike ride around High Point, North Carolina.
Sherman was killed by a hit and run motorist last month. The cyclists in the 25- and 50-mile rides were there to pay tribute to Sherman, bring more awareness that bicyclists have a right to the road, and seek justice. According to WXII website:
"We rode a great deal with Dave,” Don Shaw said. “We could think of no better way to pay tribute to him than have a bike ride and invite hundreds of our closest friends to participate.” ..... more»
It's a deadly mistake to design streets and roads with only cars in mind, especially as more commuters are turning to walking and bicycling.
That's no surprise to those of us on bikes. But it's always welcome to see groups like the Transportation for America and the Surface Transportation Policy Partnership reach that conclusion in their report issued this week.
In fact, the most dangerous cities for walking in the US are in the South -- car-centric areas that have undergone rapid growth in recent decades. The worst cities in the US for walking, based on the report's pedestrian danger index, are the metro areas of Orlando, Tampa, Miami, Jacksonville and Memphis.
Four of those cities that lead the pedestrian danger list are in Florida, a state that always ranks near the top for the rate of bicycling fatalities as well... more»
The scales of justice tipped in favor of bicyclists in a Los Angeles County courtroom on Monday.
A jury convicted an LA-area emergency room doctor with a handful of felony counts for slamming on his brakes in front of a pair of cyclists on a hilly road in 2008. His actions sent one bicyclist into the rear window of the doctor's car and another one sprawling to an adjacent sidewalk. Both suffered serious injuries.
The judge ordered Dr. Christopher Thompson held without bail until sentencing.
The doctor was convicted of assault with a deadly weapon, reckless driving causing specified bodily injury, battery with serious bodily injury and mayhem. ... more»
The Velib bike-sharing program in Paris has caught the attention of many urban transportation planners in the US. Let's hope they don't lose their nerve when they learn about the wanton and wholesale destruction of that Parisian bicycle fleet.
Nearly 8,000 of the Velib bikes, costing $3,500 apiece, have been stolen. Another 8,000 have been damaged to such an extent that they're unusable. That's 80% of the original 20,000 bikes the French put on the streets.
Still, according to a New York Times article, the bike-sharing program is considered a success as 50,000 to 150,000 trips are logged on the bikes everyday. This as 1,500 bikes are repaired a day, some in a workshop that floats up and down the Seine.
Without the commitment of the JCDecaux outdoor advertising agency and the Paris city government ... more»
A former church pastor from Washington will be heading to prison soon to serve his sentence stemming from the 2003 death of a college coed who was riding with a friend along the roadside.
Randall Foos maintained in court that he didn't see the bicyclist, Sara Casey, because the sun was in his eyes. The prosecution maintained Foos had been diagnosed with three eye diseases that hampered his eyesight in the year before the crash.
The Tacoma News Tribune quoted the victim's mother:
"Our goal all along has been to raise awareness that people with severe medical impairments need to be held accountable when they choose to drive and put others at risk .... more»
A 32-year-old Florida woman with a history of alcohol abuse was sentenced to 20 years in prison in the death of a Pensacola man who was riding his bicycle to his night shift job in June.
Michael Steele, 25, was killed when the woman driving a GMC Yukon hit his bike from behind while she texted on her cellphone. Police said he rolled over the hood and landed about 40 feet away.
He was riding his bike to his job stocking shelves at the local Winn-Dixie so his wife could use the couple's only car to drive to her job in the morning .... more»
The League of American Bicyclists named 15 more cities to its Bicycle-Friendly Community list this week, bringing the grand total to 124.
While cities named to the list over the past 14 years are predominantly from western states, the League trumpeted the fact that 10 of the 15 newest communities came from midwestern or eastern states.
The addition of the new communities means that 35 million of us live in Bicycle-Friendly Communities. And figures in the American Community Survey released recently by the US Census Bureau show that workers in bike-friendly communities commute by bicycle at more than double the national average..... more»
While a lot of attention is focused on making big cities more bicycle friendly, the next battle is being waged in the suburbs.
In South Jersey suburbs around Philadelphia, for instance, planners are going up against road networks built solely for the automobile, and bicyclists are facing motorists who don't look out for them. A regular bike commuter between Philadelphia and Cherry Hill, New Jersey, told the Philadelphia Inquirer:
"In Philadelphia there's a lot of volume, but maybe because [drivers] see more cyclists, they are more aware. Here (Cherry Hill) you really got to watch them, because they're not watching for you. ... more»
Expect to see a lot of these bicycles on the streets of Minneapolis this coming summer.
Bicycle advocates in state legislatures are once again promoting bills that require motorists to give bicyclists 3 feet of clearance when passing.
Prompted by the deaths of three bicyclists on city streets last year, Boise, Idaho, is the latest locale to require motorists to give bicyclists a 3 feet of space when passing.
As a former newspaperman I take dim view of censorship, but this Facebook page has no redeeming value and espouses violence against bike riders.
A new year means new laws in many states, although there are only a few that affect bicycling.
There's a jersey up ahead. 
Where and when are you most likely to find bicycle riders in Bellevue, Washington? It's the I-90 bike trail in the Enatai neighborhood.
Does this annoyance sound familiar to you?
When two girls, aged 11 and 10, on bicycles were struck and killed by a van driver in October 1987, the people of Davie resolved to make the small south Florida city safer for bicyclists.
It's a deadly mistake to design streets and roads with only cars in mind, especially as more commuters are turning to walking and bicycling.
The League of American Bicyclists named 15 more cities to its Bicycle-Friendly Community list this week, bringing the grand total to 124.
