Who thinks NYC has good bicycle routes, cause cyclists are getting tickets left and right (even in Central Park).

Cycling worth £3bn a year to UK economy, says LSE study

Read More: http://www.guardian.co.uk/lifeandsty...-economy-study

PDF Report: http://corporate.sky.com/documents/p...ycling_economy



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Bike sharing systems have traditionally been a point-to-point system: You can only drop your bike off at specific locations.

ViaCycle uses a phone-controlled lock, so that you can leave it anywhere.


http://www.viacycle.com/

Metro Vancouver wants bulging gas tax fund to aid cycling

Read More: http://www.mapleridgenews.com/news/172972621.html

http://media.bclocalnews.com/images/...train-7web.jpg




What are the benefits of bicycle helmets?

Read More: http://blogs.crikey.com.au/theurbani...cycle-helmets/

This article is more of a medical care discussion, but again, it's another example of what I was talking about in my earlier post. Whenever there is a bicycle accident, it doesn't matter if it is fatal or not, they never mention if the rider was wearing a helmet or not.

Anyway, this guy got a concussion from an accident on his new bike on the hike and bike trail in Austin. A passerby dialed 911 because the guy passed out and his elbow was bleeding.


Sky-high trauma fees stun some ER patients

This is a great vid about biking in the Netherlands showing delegations from Chicago, Washington and Miami (coincidence? :haha:) taking a look at how things are done here.

It also prominently features my city (5:00) (5:24) (5:29) (6:36) (7:24-7:44) (9:31) (12:18) (12:23)

Everyone should watch this! :tup: Tell me about your observations!


• Video Link

One thing I noticed is how people there seem to ride slower and more at their leisure. Which is fine. What did kind of bug me is how they aren't all paying attention to the road and seem to be sightseeing. If that were an American city I'd assume they were tourists. I'm not really a speed demon, but it can get to the point where there can be enough bicycle congestion that it slows down the flow of bike traffic maybe even to the point of making it less convenient/practical than it would be if there was less congestion. I'm surprised there isn't a bicycle fast lane, although, I suppose if you really needed to ride faster you could just join the cars on the street. Would that be legal there? I just look at that flat terrain and I know the weather is mild, and I know I'd be riding someone's tail. Bicycles for me are all about convenience and an escape from the normal traffic that Americans deal with, so I'd be wanting to make sure that it stays convenient and to work on ways to reduce bicycle congestion. Which is a wonderful thing really!

Other than that it looks amazing. I really love the idea of all the bike infrastructure besides just bike lanes/boulevards. The idea with the "bike track" on the stairs is brilliant. And the bicycle parking "garages" and vertical racks is also very ingenious. Urban cities in the US do ok with bike infrastructure when it comes to places to ride them, but what gets forgotten sometimes are parking facilities for them. American bicyclists also need to ditch the idea that it's ok to run stop signs and red lights. So I like the idea of the timed signals. It's just a bad idea to run a light. It's dangerous and creates a bad image for bicyclists. I've gotten into the habit of looking behind me whenever I get to a red light just to make sure there's not another bicycle behind me who isn't planning to stop at the light and who might run into me when I do stop at the light.

But the bike parking thing is a biggie for me. And I don't like the idea of bicycles locked up to every pole, tree, fence and everything else since that can be a nuisance with crowding sidewalks. Some people also don't know how to park and lock up their bikes so that the parking spaces are used as efficiently as possible. Also, we have a few bike corals in Austin, mostly in downtown, and I'm not crazy about them. I don't feel good about parking my bike so close to the street or in a place where a car might run into my bike even while they're parking their car next to it.

I'm not sure how they could put bicycles under ground as the video talked about. That's a neat idea, but I would imagine that gets costly. And of course then there is the security issue. I love my bike (I really do) and I cringe at the idea of someone riding off with it because they were able to simply saw through the locks undercover "underground". So it would be nice to have some kind of safeguard against that. The video did mention the bike parking there is gated and secure. I couldn't tell if they had an attendant there or not. Hey, if we can have parking attendants walking around in parking lots taking your money for a spot for a few hours or one in a booth in a parking garage taking your money, I don't see a problem with having one for a bike garage.

that stuck out to me as well, but probably because i have to haul-ass on my daily 30 miles of bike commuting. if i lollygagged my way along on some 40 pound dutch beast struggling to make 10mph, it would take me 2 hours to get to work in the morning once stop lights are factored into the equation. i don't have that kinda time.

americans tend to be way more spread out than europeans (afterall, we did invent car culture), which is perhaps one reason why we're more obsessed with speed when it comes to cycling.

also, going really freaking fast on a bike is really freaking fun, so there's that. going slow is for housewives and little girls. :D

It's entirely possible that average speeds are lower if the biking population is 50% of traffic and aged 4-88 vs a biking population of 1% of traffic comprised of people aged 20-40 who treat biking primarily as a sport. But realize you are looking at city biking here, our cities are small in area and streets are narrow and crowded. Be sure we also have our share of race/speed bikers but they mostly use the trails (and bike superhighways) outside of the cities. There's a vast network of those too.

It's also not necessary to have "bicycle fast lanes", there's already dedicated bike lanes on almost every street, overtaking slower bikes is not a problem. If there is a dedicated lane however bikes must use it, they cannot use the car lanes (although there are unwritten rules that bikes can do anything, including running red lights and ride on the sidewalk provided they do not hinder anyone else).

As for underground bike parkings, most cities have them. My city has 3 (they're free and open till 4 AM) and in the vid they're discussing building a big one next to the main train station (they're redeveloping this entire area and getting rid of the 1000s of bikes there would be a great improvement.)

I actually took JMan and Lipani to a very nice underground bike parking in the nearby city of Eindhoven when they were here (on seperate occasions). That one also has a nice archeological exhibition in it containing finds they unearthed when building the thing.


Main bike parking in my city (1100 bike capacity):

http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2706/...d56632a8fe.jpg

Entrance
http://imageshack.us/a/img233/9394/imag0217rv.jpg


Eindhoven bike parking (1250 bike capacity):

http://farm6.static.flickr.com/5286/...f4bf137db7.jpg

http://www.cycleup.nl/bestanden/afbe...oven-2-web.jpg


http://www.cycleup.nl/nieuws/gemeent...septemberplein

The SF MTA counted 4,046 bicycles (one way) at Fell and Scott Streets this past Saturday, the highest count for any day since the meter was installed in January 2011. This section of road is part of the main east-west crosstown bicycle route in residential San Francisco.

http://sf.streetsblog.org/wp-content...ellcounter.jpg
http://sf.streetsblog.org/2012/10/09...#disqus_thread

Interesting things going in Memphis, of all places. Cool.

http://greenlaneproject.org/blog/view/194

This explains a lot after you showed me around the Netherlands. I can't think of a single city we went to that didn't have incredible infrastructure for cyclists. I hear that Danish cities are also impressive, but I haven't ventured outside of Copenhagen.

Why aren't bicycle helmets mandatory?


October 8, 2012

By Marilyn Linton

Read More: http://www.nugget.ca/Lifestyle/2012/09/19/20213461.html




http://www.hovding.com/img/cykelhjalm_airbag_on.jpg

The Bicycle Movement Builds Momentum

Read More: http://www.baconsrebellion.com/2012/...-momentum.html

http://www.baconsrebellion.com/wp-co...0/cyclists.jpg




More Bikes Sold Than Cars In Italy For The First Time Since WW2

Read More: http://www.businessinsider.com/more-...ce-ww2-2012-10

http://static2.businessinsider.com/i...le-thieves.jpg

I don't think American cyclists are more obsessed with speed than Euros. I think the particular subset of hardcore cyclists to which Steely Dan belongs is obsessed with speed, but as more and more people pick up riding simply because it's convenient, rather than because they're religious about it, the less true that is of the population in general.

At this point that subset is probably still the majority, except in a few of the more cycling-friendly cities like Portland. And I think that's because for a long time those people were the only ones cycling in the US at all. But the US is clearly moving in a more European direction, so what was once the majority is now moving towards minority.

Here's a graphic that displays what I'm talking about. The speed obsessed riders are in the red and green groups, but most people are in orange. It used to be that the only people in the US who actually picked up a bike were those red and green riders, but recently the orange group has started doing it as well, which is changing the culture.

http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-hUqNSuUAlg...f+cyclists.jpg

^ for the record, i'm obsessed with speed because i have no other freaking choice. 15 miles is a long way to ride each morning (and again each afternoon). fast is the only way i can reasonably be a bike commuter. if i lived 3 miles from work, i too wouldn't give too much of a shit about how fast i ride, but i don't have that luxury.

i live in an absolutely mind-bogglingly sprawling city; distances are huge in chicago. if i lived in some hyper-comapct euro city where 2 million people live within 25 sq. kilometers of space, i'd obviously have a different perspective on distance and cycling, but chicagoland now gobbles up something like 11,000 sq miles of land! when i ride up to my sister's house in the northern suburbs, it's a 65 mile bike ride. you can't roll a ride that long at 7mph, it'd take forever to get anywhere.

you can't live a bicycle-centric life in a city this freaking sprawling and be slow. speed simply becomes a necessity of life. because americans tend to live WAY more spread out than europeans, we're always going to have greater distances to cover to get to places compared to our euro cousins. speed is more necessary on this side of the pond.

I agree with Steely Dan on this. Although it is certainly fun to go fast and on my road-bike in the evenings or weekends, I might be speed-obessed, when I commute to work I ride at a reasonable speed (12-17 mph) because I want to get to work or some other destination at some convenient time. Additionally, DC is hilly and with gravity, you're simply going to go fast in some locations. Yesterday I biked to the gym and I went perhaps 20-25 mph, not because I was speed-obsessed, but because there was a decent hill I was riding down.

You are choosing to be a bike commuter. Most people, faced with a 15 mile commute, would opt for a different mode. You're especially dedicated.

1. I don't get the sense that you're upset w/ me for using the term "speed obsessed", but just in case you are: Steely used it first; I was just responding. I'm not saying it's bad.

2. With all due respect, you're in the red/green group too (as am I), so our opinions sort of don't count.

3. I suspect, with no evidence at all, that Europeans also ride fast when they're going downhill being pulled by gravity.

don't we want as many people as possible to choose to be bike commuters?

15 miles is a pretty common distance to live from work in an american city.

europeans live way more compactly, hence why so many more of them ride bikes, and have the luxury to do so slowly.

we'll never see anything remotely close to euro bike numbers in this country. never.

in america you either have to bike fast, drive a car, or wait for the bus.

slow biking isn't practical for VAST swaths of the american population because we pulled our cities way too far apart.

It would be ideal to take your bike onto commuter trains at least, since subways are too crowded during rush hour. And of course have decent commuter service available.

Steely, we're saying very similar things. Here is what I'm saying:

1. Because America is so spread out, most of Americans are faced with the option to either bike fast, drive a car, or take transit. I agree.
2. Thus, for those who choose to bike, biking fast has been the only option. I agree.
3. Because of this, we will never see anything close to European bike numbers in American metro areas. I agree. In my terms, I would say that faced with the choice of biking fast for long distances or using other modes, only people in the red group and some of the greens will opt to bike. The grays, oranges, and some greens (together forming the vast majority of the population) will opt for cars or transit. And that's why the entire American cycling culture has historically been made up of reds and greens, and why Americans are more "speed obsessed" than Europeans.
4. Now here's where I seem to be saying something that you're not: As American cities get healthier, and their cores become densely populated and more like European cities, that orange group is beginning to notice that cycling is often the most convenient way to get around, and so they are starting to use bikes in large numbers. Those people will only choose cycling when it's easier than driving or transit. Since the number of potential oranges is so much larger than the number of potential reds, we are reaching the point in some cities where there are more orange cyclists than red, which is making American cycling more like European cycling in those places.
5. However, the areas of the country where orange people are really taking up cycling is generally confined to the close-in sections of cities, where cycling can be done slowly/easily. In the other parts of the country, where you still have to be a red/green cyclist in order to use a bike, the cycling rate is still low.

Tell me which part you disagree with.