It's hard to write about the new bicycling tool at Google maps without prefacing the term "bicycle route finder" with such adjectives as "amazing," "cool," or "way cool," but I'll try.
Sweepstakes
First, Google maps made the official announcement of the biking directions tool with a Google Share Your Ride Sweepstakes complete with a $2,500 voucher for American Cyclery. Win by simply posting links your routes to Twitter.
Here's what Google says about the project at The Official Google blog and the Google LatLong blog..... more»
The long wait is over for bicyclists who want to use Google maps to find the quickest, safest way from Point A to Point B.
Google maps launched a Beta version of its direction finder for bicycle routes on Wednesday. (See the "How to" video on the jump.)
The biking directons release comes in conjuction with the opening day of the National Bike Summit in Washington DC.
Folks who use their bicycles for commuting and running errands have been advocating for Google to add a layer for bicycles to its "Get Directions" function for cars, public transit and walking.
A petition started by Peter Smith at Google Maps 'BikeThere' received more than 50,000 signatures from bicyclists who wanted the service.
Google had hinted that the project was underway back in October 2009 when it announced that it had added 12,000 miles of bike paths .... more»
Some of Washington's state legislators must have been distracted when they were told that cellphone use delays a driver's reaction time as much as having a blood alcohol content of .08 percent, which can earn you a DUI.
The State House legislators voted to ban texting and cellphone use by 16- and 17-year-olds and make texting a primary offense for adult motorists. But adult handheld cellphone use is still a secondary offense, meaning you've got to be breaking some other law to be pulled over.
As a vulnerable road user when I'm on my bicycle, it constantly worries me that the motorist behind me might be more concerned with the cellphone call than what's in the road in front of him, namely me. I've read too many news reports of bicyclists killed or injured ..... more»
Los Angeles Police Chief Charlie Beck made news yesterday when he vowed his department would do a better job to protect bike riders, "our most vulnerable commuters."
Sadly, that kind of statement by a police chief would make news just about anywhere. Bicyclists commonly feel that they're treated as second-class citizens on the road by other drivers, police and the entire criminal justice system.
The chief made his remarks to bicyclists who showed up at a Los Angeles Transportation Committee meeting after a protest bike ride called by the Los Angeles County Bicycle Coalition.
The cyclists were protesting a Jan. 6 anti-bicycling outrage:
Bicyclist Ed Magos was struck from behind on a downtown street while he was bicycling to work. The driver of the Porsche got out, looked at Magos lying injured in the street, got back in her car ... more»
"I don't believe a bicycle is a transportation device. I think it's a recreation device. The big problem is people don't want to ride their bike in the rain or get sweaty before work."
The drive to make bicycling safer hit severe roadblocks in three state legislatures last week.
The bad week started in Virginia where a bill to require cars to give bicycles 3 feet of clearance failed on Monday in the House of Delegates by a 54-43 vote.
Then on Tuesday, Washington's state's "vulnerable user" bill died when it failed to meet a Senate deadline for transfer to the House. On Thursday, the South Dakota Senate rejected a 3-foot passing law by a 10-24 vote.
It makes us wonder what bicyclists have to do to protect our safety out on the road. Keep demanding changes in the laws, I suppose .... more»
We might not like all the projects that the federal stimulus grants are funding, but it's cool to see some of the money going to build projects for bicycles.
Just today, the US Department of Transportation announced $1.5 billion in Transportation Investment Generating Economic Recovery (TIGER) grants. About $43 million of that, or 3%, will go directly to bicycle and pedestrian path networks in Philadelphia-Camden and Indianapolis.
In addition, portions of grants to rebuild bridges and create rail-transit hubs in other cities will be used for bicycle facilities. See all the projects.
The biggest TIGER grant to bicycling announced Wednesday was the $23 million that Philadelphia and Camden will share for a 16.3-mile network of biking and hiking paths to connect the two cities. ... more»
Every Sunday and holiday, some 70 miles of streets in Bogota, Colombia, are closed to motor vehicles, allowing bicycle riders, skaters and pedestrians to roam free.
That ciclovia-style celebration has been catching on in some U.S. cities, where a thoroughfare or city park is ruled car-free for one or more weekend days in the spring and summer.
Now, more U.S. cities are ready to join those that already make their streets more liveable for at least one day a year.
Planning its first ciclovia is Spokane, Washington. Among cities that have a history of ciclovia-style events are Seattle, Portland, San Francisco, New York City, San Jose, Kansas City and Chicago ... more»
A law requiring motorists to give 3 feet when passing bicycle riders on Mississippi roads appears headed to passage.
Nearly identical House and Senate bills -- entitled the John Paul Frerer Bicycle Safety Act -- have passed their respective houses and are headed to the other chambers for action.
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.
Five other states, Maryland, Missouri, Ohio, South Dakota and Virginia ..... more»
If a far-reaching plan to enhance bicycling can be enacted anywhere, it's in Portland.
Although members of the City Council delayed the vote on the Portland Bicycle Plan for a week back on Feb. 4, they unanimously approved it on Thursday.
According to BikePortland.org, Mayor Sam Adams will return next week with a proposal to inject $20 million into the bike plan to get some improvements on the ground right away.
The entire 20-year plan would cost an estimated $600 million to create 700 miles of bikeways and make other improvements to encourage commuters to choose bicycles instead of their cars.
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»
The long wait is over for bicyclists who want to use Google maps to find the quickest, safest way from Point A to Point B.
We might not like all the projects that the federal stimulus grants are funding, but it's cool to see some of the money going to build projects for bicycles.
A law requiring motorists to give 3 feet when passing bicycle riders on Mississippi roads appears headed to passage.
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?
