Urban Cycling Developments

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Bike Lanes In Bangalore: Exploring Options for India

Read More: http://thecityfix.com/blog/bike-lane...ons-for-india/

With the initiation of the National Urban Transport Policy (NUTP), the government of India has shown a clear interest in promoting sustainable transport initiatives which include bicycles and non-motorized transport.

- Cities such as Delhi, Pune and Bangalore have created bike lanes without much success. Pune, has more than 80km (49.7 miles) of bicycle lanes,the lengthiest in India, and Jayangar, a neighborhood in Bangalore which has recently constructed around 40km of bicycle lanes. At a policy level both of these projects have identical goals – to promote as a viable alternative for commuting. Since they have not been very successful, where could they have gone wrong?

- Jayanagar is predominantly a residential neighborhood with many schools and a gridded street network. Both of these are positives for creating a bicycle network. In the Bicycle Friendly Streets Report, school children have been targeted as the intended users of the bicycle lanes This decision seems to be driven by the presence of many schools in the neighborhood rather than the number of children bicycling to school. Experience shows that insufficient demand (or, critical mass) on these lanes could lead to other uses such as increased car parking demand – which is indeed occuring in Jayanagar. Secondly, the bike lanes have been marked inconsistently, varying from half-a-meter to two meters into the streetway, causing a jarring switch for users, in addition to being too small for use at the narrow half-meter minimum.

- The other issue plaguing this network is street selection for the bike lanes: most are on main roads. Since Jayanagar has a gridded street network, it would have been better for parallel streets to be chosen for implementing bicycle lanes. This would have physically separated bicyclists from faster moving vehicles and provided a greater sense of safety. Of course, it would be possible to physically separate bicycle lanes from traffic, but that would be a costly affair (discussed later). Finally, the issue of parking – the picture below speaks for itself. It is necessary to remove existing parking symbols where the bicycle lanes have been implemented. Public education and a redux of system implementation, including outreach efforts, enforcement and overall better design are all potential solutions to these problems.

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Bicyclists hard to come by in South Africa

Read More: http://www.latimes.com/news/nationwo...,5065835.story

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The authors are animator Nic Grobler and photographer Stan Engelbrecht, who wanted to find out why so few people ride bikes in a country that has so much poverty, often unwalkable commuter distances, and poor public transportation.

- The cyclists they met often expressed a quiet joy that they could go where they liked, whenever they wanted to, while others were anchored in their villages and townships. "We both believe that bicycles could really empower people in South Africa, where so many people rely on poor public transport infrastructure," Engelbrecht said. "People have to travel great distances to work. People really struggle with movement here." Unfortunately, they said, there is a stigma attached to bicycles that may have originated in the apartheid era of racial segregation, when companies issued free bicycles to miners and other lowly black workers.

- The country's dangerous roads don't help. Bicycle lanes are unheard of and drivers are so unused to cyclists that they forget to look out for them. "People say it can't be done. In their minds, you can't ride on the roads because it's too dangerous," Grobler said. The pair rode around South Africa, seeking out wild, remote places, stopping every cyclist they met, and riding part of the road with them. When they didn't find a cyclist, they asked people to help them track one down. They collected hundreds of stories and portraits of bicyclists, gathered on a website, www.bicycleportraits.co.za, and in three photo books, all simply called "Bicycle Portraits."

- Like most Western countries, South Africa has an army of spandex-clad upscale recreational cyclists, who usually drive to a reserve to ride bikes worth thousands of dollars. Grobler and Engelbrecht weren't interested in them. They were looking for genuine bicycle commuters. In the sprawling township of Alexandra, near the upscale neighborhood of Sandton, they found only one cyclist. "As we went around the entire country, we found that cyclists are often eccentric, or a little bit outsiders. They're often flamboyant. They embrace eccentricity. They love their bikes. They're really proud of them," Engelbrecht said. "We felt we really wanted to celebrate these people."

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Sprawling Memphis Aims to Be a Friendlier Place for Cyclists

Read More: http://www.nytimes.com/2012/12/29/us...l?ref=us&_r=1&

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Bike-friendly behavior has never come naturally to Memphis, which has long been among the country’s most perilous places for cyclists. In recent years, though, riders have taken to the streets like never before, spurred by a mayor who has worked to change the way residents think about commuting.

- In 2008, Memphis had a mile and a half of bike lanes. There are now about 50 miles of dedicated lanes, and about 160 miles when trails and shared roads are included. The bulk of the nearly $1 million investment came from stimulus money and other federal sources, and Shelby County, which includes Memphis, was recently awarded an additional $4.7 million for bike projects. In June, federal officials awarded Memphis $15 million to turn part of the steel truss Harahan Bridge, which spans the Mississippi River, into a bike and pedestrian crossing. Scheduled to open in about two years, the $30 million project will link downtown Memphis with West Memphis, Ark.

- City planners are using bike lanes as an economic development tool, setting the stage for new stores and enhanced urban vibrancy, said Kyle Wagenschutz, the city’s bike-pedestrian coordinator, a position the mayor created. “The cycling advocates have been vocal the past 10 years, but nothing ever happened,” Mr. Wagenschutz said. “It took a change of political will to catalyze the movement.” Memphis, with a population of 650,000, is often cited among the unhealthiest, most crime-ridden and most auto-centric cities in the country. Investments in bicycling are being viewed here as a way to promote healthy habits, community bonds and greater environmental stewardship.

- A clash between merchants and bike advocates flared last year after the mayor announced new bike lanes on Madison Avenue, a commercial artery, that would remove two traffic lanes. Many merchants, like Eric Vernon, who runs the Bar-B-Q Shop, feared that removing car lanes would hurt businesses and cause parking confusion. Mr. Vernon said that sales had not fallen significantly since the bike lanes were installed, but that he thought merchants were left out of the process. On McLean Boulevard, a narrow residential strip where roadside parking was replaced by bike paths, homeowners cried foul. The city reached a compromise with residents in which parking was outlawed during the day but permitted at night, when fewer cyclists were out. Mr. Wagenschutz called the nocturnal arrangement a “Cinderella lane.”

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The Best Bike-Sharing Program in the United States

Read More: http://www.slate.com/articles/life/d...c_leaders.html

If you had been handed, a decade ago, a map of the U.S. and asked to predict where the novel idea of bike sharing—then limited to a few small-scale projects in a handful of European cities, might first find its firmest footing, you probably would have laid your money on a progressive hub like Portland or Seattle or the regional poles of walkable urbanism, New York or San Francisco—all of which were scoring higher, those days, in surveys like Bicycling magazine’s list of most bikeable cities. But today, the nation’s largest, most successful bike-share program—in terms of size, ridership, and financial viability—is in Washington, D.C. How did D.C. accomplish this unlikely task?

The program was essentially born late one night, two decades ago, in a library. Paul DeMaio, an urban planning student at the University of Virginia, was doing Internet research (“pre-Google,” he notes) when he stumbled upon images of ByCyklen, a new “city bike” program launched by the city of Copenhagen. Enthralled by the idea, he visited the city, learned what he could about the system, and, eventually, distilled his findings into a master’s thesis on bike sharing. Which had about as much impact as the typical master’s thesis. “No one was picking it up,” he recalls over coffee at D.C.’s Union Station. “I was so upset. But as a 22-year-old, what are you going to do?” And so the idea, in the U.S. at least, lay dormant, as DeMaio left school and went to work on traffic-calming projects for the city of Alexandria, Va. But DeMaio nurtured the idea, one of a small band of enthusiasts in the world of bike advocacy and in the fringe of city transportation departments, as it rose to prominence in Europe with popular programs like Paris’ Velib and programs in Stockholm and Amsterdam, among others.

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Bike lanes being peddled for Richmond and Adelaide

Read More: http://www.thestar.com/news/gta/tran...d-and-adelaide

After more than a decade of spinning their wheels, Toronto cycling advocates say they’re excited because a protected, east-west cycling route through the busiest part of downtown is finally poised to take off this year. An environmental study of a Richmond-Adelaide bike corridor should finally be completed by the end of 2013, making a construction start next year a real possibility, says the chair of the city’s public works committee.

- The bike lanes would connect Sherbourne St. in the east to Bathurst in the west. The study will determine the best configuration and route, says Toronto’s Cycling Infrastructure manager Daniel Egan. But he expects that the high traffic volume of those streets will favour physically separated cycling lanes similar to those recently created on Sherbourne. What’s not known is how traffic would be affected, depending on whether the design study recommends a single lane on each of the two one-way streets, running in the same direction as vehicular traffic, or whether one street, Richmond or Adelaide, would be selected for a bi-directional bike route.

- “If it’s uni-directional, you’re going to take out one (car) lane on Richmond and one lane on Adelaide,” Minnan-Wong said. “Whereas, if it’s bi-directional, you’re only dealing with one street, which is an advantage. The other implication is the cost, because when you put in a bi-directional lane you’ve got to put in a signalized intersection.” Cycling advocates have been calling for an east-west route since 2001, when there were 15,000 weekday cyclists downtown. That number has more than doubled in the years since, according to Cycle Toronto. “It’s a crucial part of the network. In the southern part of the downtown there’s no way to travel east-west on a safe piece of infrastructure.

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[fflint]

We can only hope Toronto's war on bikes is over, now that Rob Ford has been deposed.

[Jacob]

Originally Posted by fflint

We can only hope Toronto's war on bikes is over, now that Rob Ford has been deposed.

You should try biking in car cit- I mean Windsor. The city painted a few bike lanes several years ago, some of which go about a ruler's distance off the curb. They are so small, their bike painting stencil didn't fit. Also, the road in this particular area is so narrow, you can not fit a cyclist and a vehicle at the same time, so they serve absolutely no purpose.

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Transport for London abandons 'shared use' pavements at Lambeth Bridge North; trials Dutch-style track

Read More: http://www.cycling-embassy.org.uk/ne...h-trials-dutch

Transport for London has announced today that it is no longer proceeding with its intended safety improvements at the Lambeth Bridge (North) roundabout. Their plans, which involved converting the pavements around the roundabout to 'shared use' and allowing cyclists to use the existing zebra crossings, while making slight alterations to the carriageway, were almost unanimously opposed by respondents to the consultation.

93% of respondents did not approve of converting the pavements to shared use, while 98% requested a Dutch-style segregated track around the perimeter of the roundabout. Many other responses - including those from the London Cycling Campaign and the Cycling Embassy - also took issue with the 'two tier' approach to cycle provision, providing for cyclists both on and off the carriageway.

In response Transport for London have decided not to proceed with their planned initial improvements, and will concentrate now on 'developing more substantial improvments.' In the light of the overwhelming support for a segregated cycle track around the perimeter with cyclist priority, TfL have started building a trial model of this design at the Transport Research Laboratory in Berkshire.

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A Sticky Tire, For People Crazy Enough To Bike In The Winter

Read More: http://www.fastcoexist.com/1681184/a...-in-the-winter

Bike Spikes (or, Sneeuwketting, in adorable Dutch) are the creation of 24-year-old designer Cesar van Rongen. They’re rubber casings fitted with iron teeth to provide a bit of extra traction to bike wheels traveling over snow and ice. According to the creator, they’re versatile enough to comfortably traverse asphalt as well as ice and easily attach to any road bike.

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[Steely Dan]

^ neat concept, though i'd imagine that the increased rolling resistance those would have on dry pavement would be severe. buying conventional studded tires seems like the better option to me.

[M II A II R II K]

Seems to slow the ride down a bit too.

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Toronto Physicians Call for More Bike Lanes, More Quickly

Read More: http://torontoist.com/2013/01/physic...-more-quickly/

A group of physicians from St Michael’s Hospital are calling for more progress on the City’s bike plan—and, as part of that push, they’re standing in solidarity with Dr. Tomislav Svoboda, a colleague who was arrested in November for obstructing the now-infamous removal of the Jarvis Street bike lanes.

At a press conference this morning, Svoboda released an open letter signed by 22 physicians. It asks city council to “change lanes and save lives,” by speeding up the installation of bike lanes throughout the city. Svoboda will appear in court tomorrow afternoon to face criminal charges of mischief and obstructing a peace officer for his act of civil disobedience. He’s hoping to avoid a criminal record by offering to perform 50 hours of community service—fittingly, with local advocacy group Cycle Toronto.

Svoboda, at his press conference, scolded city council for falling behind its own targets for bike-lane expansion (set in the 2001 bike plan), and for removing lanes even as major cities like Montreal, New York, and Chicago add dozens of kilometers of new bike thoroughfares each year. Citing the six cycling fatalities and thousands of injuries that have occurred in Toronto in 2012 alone, Svoboda said that what we usually describe as accidents “could also be described as a failure by the City to protect its residents and to build a healthy city.” He urged councillors to consider the preventative benefits of cycling and active living in general. “Cardiovascular health, mental health, insomnia—all these things are treated with exercise…this is a public health issue, and an issue of primary care,” said Svoboda.

Ritika Goel, Svoboda’s colleague at St. Michael’s, echoed his concerns. “We know that when people are asked why they do not cycle, safety is widely cited as the main reason,” she said. She cited a study on cycling accidents in Vancouver and Toronto that found car-on-bike collisions to be less likely on roadways with bike lanes than on those without. “This is not new information,” said Goel, “injuries and deaths could have been prevented if there was more bike infrastructure in the city.” The City is, in fact, planning to build some cycling infrastructure in the near future. Mayor Rob Ford tweeted earlier this week that the 2013 budget contains funding for “100 km of off-street bike trails, 80 km of on-street bike path connections,” and several thousand new bike parking spaces over the next ten years.

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Nobody Would See You Coming on This Beautiful Transparent Bike

Read More: http://gizmodo.com/5978226/nobody-wo...ansparent-bike

From certain angles you can barely see this beautiful bicycle—because it's made from the same strong, lightweight and transparent plastic used in fighter jet canopies. It's the perfect stealth bike.

A concept put together by Designaffairs, this bicycle—aptly called Clarity Bike—is built from a polymer called Trivex. First used in helicopter windscreens and then in fighter jet canopies, the material is incredibly light but can withstand major shocks. It's also resistant to extremes of heat and cold, and can be injection moulded—so it would be perfect for making a bicycle. We believe that the Clarity Bike could be a giant leap forward in bicycle frame engineering and production. The design takes advantage of an advanced polymer which combines high impact resistance, lightweight properties and a gentle flexibility that usually would only be expected on an old Italian steel frame.

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Seattle “Bikelash” Largely Invented, Poll Finds

Read More: http://dc.streetsblog.org/2013/01/24...ed-poll-finds/

Like a lot of cities, Seattle has seen a much-hyped “bikelash” against efforts to make the city safer for cycling. But it turns out that this bikelash might be just that: hype.

- The poll, conducted by local opinion survey group FM3 and commissioned by the Cascade Bicycle Club, found that 79 percent of voters have a favorable opinion of cyclists. Almost 60 percent of voters support devoting more road space to bike facilities. Another 78 percent said they ride a bike at least once a year. A slight majority, 51 percent, reported disagreeing with the notion that Seattle is waging a “war on cars.” Only 31 percent agreed.

- Local alt weekly The Stranger said high-pitched, anti-bike rhetoric from the Seattle Times has been a factor in the upcoming mayoral race. Some critics have taken shots at Mayor Mike McGinn for his efforts to make cycling safer, and have taken to calling him Mayor McSchwinn. But that might not be such a good strategy, The Stranger’s Dominic Holden writes. “The problem is that this is a losing wedge issue,” he said. “Anti-bicycle advocates speak for less than one-third of Seattle residents. These holdouts, the polling shows, are largely older, white, conservative men.

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Cycling in Britain: government to get serious with all-party inquiry

Read More: http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2...iry?CMP=twt_gu

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Exclude racing or tourism and Britons are near the bottom of just about every European cycling ranking. Just 2.2% of people use a bike as their main means of transport, lower than all but a handful of EU nations such as Bulgaria, Malta and Cyprus. Other statistics are equally damning. About 2% of British children ride to school, compared with 40% in Denmark and 20% in Sweden. Almost three-quarters of British cyclists are men, a statistic that speaks of a macho, gung-ho cycling culture where riders are expected to mix it with speeding cars, buses and trucks.

- "When it comes to cycling as everyday transport the UK is so far down the table it's almost scary," said Kevin Mayne, director of development at the Brussels-based European Cyclists' Federation. "With all these Olympic medals people maybe have this idea that the UK is doing OK in cycling. But it's not." And yet cycling advocates hope things could be about to change. This week is the start of a pioneering parliamentary inquiry into how best to get Britons on their bikes, building on the momentum from last summer's sporting triumphs and an energetic cycle safety campaign by the Times. All three main party leaders have signed up. Expectations are growing that Downing Street could be on the verge of making a significant commitment.

- The first of the inquiry's six evidence sessions starts on Wednesday, taking the views of experts, government departments, cycling luminaries such as the Olympic champion-turned bike builder Chris Boardman and members of the media, including the Guardian. It is hoped David Cameron or Nick Clegg will appear. Ian Austin, the Labour MP for Dudley North who co-chairs the APPCG, said the plan was to turn 2012's generalised rhetorical enthusiasm into definite commitments. "We want a detailed report with some very clear recommendations, which we can then ask all the political parties to sign up to. If we can get the party leaders to commit to cycling in advance of the election we can make some real progress."

- To get cycling mainstream, experts agree, you need wholesale investment in infrastructure, most obviously well-designed and continuous cycle lanes, separated from faster traffic by a kerb or other barrier and with cyclists offered protection at junctions. The philosophy was summed up by Enrique Peñalosa, who as mayor of Bogotá revolutionised transport in the Colombian capital: "A bicycle way that is not safe for an eight-year-old is not a bicycle way." Without this, according to Mayne, cycling never expands beyond an intrepid core of mainly young, predominantly male riders.

- Such a commitment has been beyond the imagination, let alone daring, of successive British governments faced by a powerful and aggressive motoring lobby and a wider public who, studies show, still largely see cycling as a leisure pursuit or worse, see a bike as a child's toy. It would require considerable investment. In a paper submitted to the inquiry, Rachel Aldred, a London academic specialising in cycling, estimated a cost of just over £1.1bn a year for cycling to even begin the process of catching up with other nations, seemingly a lot but marginal set against the £16bn cost of just one rail project, Crossrail. "Relatively, cycling is extraordinarily cheap," said Mayne. "Cycling schemes routinely pay back their investment in one to three years.

- While Britain is littered with bike lanes they are almost universally piecemeal and substandard, often just a narrow strip of paint inches from speeding traffic. London and a handful of other places, notably Brighton and Southampton, are now proposing limited Dutch-style segregated schemes. More of the same is vital, according to Mayne: "If you're given a fixed amount of money do you do one thing well or lots of things badly? You do the one thing well. If you spend every penny you've got on a high-quality segregated lane it will attract people and you can build confidence on that route." Geffen, however, argues that even poorly designed lanes have a purpose in gradually building up cyclist levels to a point where the momentum of opinion is sufficient to begin making bold choices.

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Blog: http://letsgorideabike.com/blog/


• Video Link

[MNMike]

An expansion or an ordinance already in place downtown.

Proposed ordinance would require showers, bicycle stalls for Minneapolis developments

http://www.journalmpls.com/news/news...s-developments

There’s already a rule in Minneapolis that if developers want to construct large commercial buildings downtown, they have to include bicycle parking spaces, showers and lockers.

City Council Member Gary Schiff (Ward 9) wants to extend that ordinance to developments outside of downtown.

“We want to make sure they are built in a way to accommodate bike commuters,” said Schiff, who noted that surveys show people who often want to bike to work are dissuaded by not having a place to change clothes.

Schiff will introduce the issue at tomorrow’s City Council meeting, but said most of the details still need to be worked out. The idea, he said, came from the Minneapolis Bicycle Advisory Committee.

The ordinance for downtown development only kicks in when a building tops 500,000 square feet. As developments get bigger, they need more bike parking stalls, lockers and showers. The minimum is 30 stalls, four showers and 15 lockers....

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In Minneapolis, Reducing Bike Crashes by Studying Them in Detail

Read More: http://www.theatlanticcities.com/com...m-detail/4503/

Complete Bicyclist-Motorist Crash Data PDF: http://www.minneapolismn.gov/www/gro...s1p-102351.pdf

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Among the goals of the city's latest master bicycle plan is to reduce bike crashes by 10 percent. By doing that, Minneapolis hopes to convert a lot of hesitant riders into habitual ones. As a first step toward this goal, the city recently conducted its first "comprehensive crash analysis": a thorough look at nearly 3,000 bike-car accidents that occurred between 2000 and 2010.

- Bicyclists played a role in 59 percent of recorded bike/car collisions: the most common problems being a failure to yield (13 percent) and disregarding a traffic signal (13 percent). Drivers, meanwhile, contributed to 64 percent of accidents, most commonly (32 percent) through a failure to yield themselves. (The figures exceed 100 percent because each party can have some blame in a collision.)

- Environmental factors — such as poor street designs or bad weather — can play a critical role. Sometimes the car culture that dominates city transportation modes can lead to a "windshield perspective" among traffic officers. In any event, a safer bike network that begins with better infrastructure must continue with programs to educate drivers about sharing the road and to warn bikers about hazardous riding.

- What's very clear from the Minneapolis data is that while riders and motorists may share in the fault for collisions, they don't come close to sharing equal suffering. Bicyclists sustained some type of injury in nearly 9 out of 10 car-bike accidents, while the city found no record of motorists being injured at all.

- What's also very clear from the study is that bicycle safety seems to improve as a city adds more riders. Even as bike commuting became more popular and the number of trips increased from 2000 to 2010, the average number of accidents has held steady around 270 a year. From 1993 to 1999 that figure was closer to 320. Knowing they'll find some safety in numbers should be comforting to the "interested but concerned" potential riders that Minneapolis wants to encourage.

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[CityKid]

The Gazettes published results from study that analyzed the effects of the cycletracks placed on Broadway and Third Streets between the 710 freeway and Alamitos in Downtown Long Beach a year after installation.

The highlights are:

- Bicycle ridership has increased by 33% over the past year
- Pedestrian traffic is up 13%
- Bicycle accidents are down 80%
- Vehicle accidents (none bike related) are down 44%
- Traffic speeds have slowed by about 5 mph (from 30+ mph to just over 25mph)
- Traffic volumes are down about 10%
- The time it takes to drive the one mile from the 710 freeway to Alamitos has gone up by about 30 seconds
- The number of bicyclists on the sidewalk has dropped significantly

Downtown Bike Lane Results Are In



—Gazette photo by Jonathan Van Dyke
ROLLING ALONG. A cyclist uses the Third Street separated bike lane in downtown Long Beach.

Posted: Monday, January 28, 2013 3:00 am | Updated: 4:46 pm, Thu Jan 24, 2013.

By Jonathan Van Dyke
Staff Writer

Bicycle officials in Long Beach say that the city is getting a good return on most of recently installed bicycle infrastructure — including the separated bicycle lanes downtown, which just finished a federal one-year test study.

“The whole idea behind the Long Beach bike program is really to allow people to comfortably and safely use their bike wherever they want to go,” said Allan Crawford, Long Beach’s bicycle coordinator.

Infrastructure changes have aimed to accomplish that task, he added, with the green sharrows on Second Street, roundabouts along Vista Avenue, separated bike lanes on Broadway and Third Street and new sharrows for Fourth Street.

“It turns out when you look nationally, about 40% of trips tend to be a mile or less, and that’s really what we are focusing on,” he said.

The biggest cosmetic change came with the Broadway and Third Street (between Alamitos Avenue and Golden Avenue) separated bike lanes — which were funded by the federal Department of Transportation. City staff turned in a 12-month report toward the end of last year.

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Federal funds pave way for Chicago-area bike paths, walking trails

Read More: http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/l...,6995013.story

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A sampling of projects follows:

• The Calumet-Sag Trail, $3.6 million awarded for the segments between Illinois Route 83 and 104th Avenue, and 104th and 86th avenues. The trail will be built along the banks of the Calumet-Sag Channel and the Calumet River, from Lemont in the west to Burnham in the east. Construction on the proposed 33-mile trail is expected to begin this year, and it is slated to open in stages starting in 2014, according to Friends of the Calumet-Sag Trail. The trail will link 14 communities in the southwest suburbs and connect to other trails, Metra stations, downtown business districts and recreational areas, officials said.

• The Millennium Trail in Lake County, $1.9 million awarded to construct a pedestrian and bike underpass at Rollins Road. The first segment of the planned 35-mile trail opened in 2002 at Lakewood Forest Preserve in Wauconda. The trail will eventually connect communities and forest preserves in the central, western and northern sections of the county.

• The North Shore Channel Trail, $979,600 awarded for construction of a pedestrian bridge near the Lincoln Village shopping center and Hood Avenue. Future improvements are also planned on the trail, which extends from Evanston to the Northwest Side of Chicago. Most of the trail runs alongside the North Shore Channel, a drainage canal built in 1909.

The Thorn Creek Bicycle Trail in southern Cook County, $1.1 million awarded to help pay for completion. One section of the trail runs through the Sauk Trail Lake area and another through Lansing Woods and North Creek Meadow. A planned extension will link the two segments and bring the total trail length to 17.5 miles.

"These grants are really make-it-or-break-it for many of these projects," said Dan Persky, a spokesman for the Rails-to-Trails Conservancy. He noted that the grants are important because federal funding for bike paths, walking trails and other transportation-related enhancement projects has been cut by about 30 percent in MAP-21, the new federal transportation bill that runs through September 2014.

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San Francisco lays out $200 million in bike projects in next 5 years

Read More: http://www.sfexaminer.com/local/tran...s-next-5-years

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Building 12 new miles of bike lanes, upgrading 50 miles of existing paths and installing more than 20,000 new racks are all part of the plan.

- As part of its five-year strategic plan, the agency proposes to upgrade 50 intersections to accommodate bicycles and deploy and maintain 2,750 bikes as part of a grab-and-go bike-sharing network. Along with the plans to upgrade 50 miles of the existing network and add 12 new miles of bike facilities, the total cost of the project could be $200 million. If completed, the agency hopes the share of bike trips in San Francisco increases from its current level of 3.5 percent of all travel to 8 to 10 percent by 2018; a separate goal of 20 percent has been set by the Board of Supervisors for 2020.

- The funding and implementation of the network face questions, however. Currently, the transit agency is only able to afford to install 6 miles of bike lanes each year, falling short of its 10-mile goal. Of the $200 million needed for the five-year project, only $30 million has been identified. Still, Leah Shahum, executive director of the San Francisco Bicycle Coalition, said the strategic plan goals are achievable. Possible sources for the $200 million project include revenue from a potential vehicle license fee increase, which could go on the 2014 ballot.

- Shahum also said the transit agency could do a better job of funding projects, noting that bike projects account for only 0.46 percent of its capital budget plan. Bike usage is at 15 percent in some neighborhoods, and investing to increase The City’s network is relatively cheap, Shahum said. “Investing in better biking is one of the most cost-effective and quick ways for The City to address its transportation challenges,” Shahum said.

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New bike share plan suitably cautious

Read More: http://thegreatermarin.wordpress.com...ably-cautious/

PDF Report: http://thegreatermarin.files.wordpre...e.pdf#page=113

Last Thursday, TAM released a cautiously optimistic report (PDF) on implementing bike sharing in Marin. The preliminary report’s caution is well-warranted, as the county’s infrastructure and urban form are far different from bike share pioneers Paris and Washington, DC. If Marin can thread the needle and create a quality bike share program, it could be a pioneer for other suburbs.

- Bike share, the system examined by TAM, is a bicycle rental/transit hybrid. Bikes are stored in stations, like the one pictured at right, which are scattered through the area. Users purchase a membership for a certain amount of time, usually just a day, week, month, or year. While a member, users can pick up a bike from any station and drop it off at any other station. If done within a certain time, like 30 minutes, the trip is free. If the trip goes over that time limit, a fee is levied for every subsequent half-hour. The point isn’t to check out a bike for a round-trip but rather for each short leg of a short journey. Want to get from downtown MillValley to Whole Foods? Check out a bike, ride it to Whole Foods, dock it there and do your shopping. After you’re done, check out another bike from the station and ride it back downtown or wherever you want to go next.

- TAM wants a bike share system to serve primarily the commuting public, to solve what transit planners call the Last Mile Problem. When a rider hops off a bus, they’re at a location that might a ways away from their final destination. To get to the final destination, riders typically walk, though bikes are a common sight on Marin’s bus fleet. With bike share, a rider doesn’t need to bring their own bike. With that in mind, the first stations would be focused on moving people from downtowns to ferry terminals and transit centers. Twelve stations, one in most of the downtowns and one at the two ferry terminals, would provide a way to get commuters around the county. Subsequent phases would make more stations around activity centers, which would make the system more like CaBi. Total cost would be around $720,000 for the first phase and $2.2 million for full build-out.

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Tempe, Arizona Struggles to Provide Vast Bicycle Infrastructure

Read More: http://www.cnu.org/cnu-salons/2013/0...infrastructure

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Urban planning officials in Tempe, Arizona are striving to keep pace with cyclists in town. According to a report by the League of American Bicyclists, an advocacy group that grants communities the title of Bicycle Friendly Community, the city is trailing behind neighboring Scottsdale in bicycle friendliness.

- Scottsdale’s bicycle element of its Transportation Master Plan highlights its 440 miles of bikeways, which are often multi-use paths along the edge of Central Arizona Project canals. Tempe’s Comprehensive Transportation Plan, on the other hand, points out that there are only 165 miles of bikeways in Tempe. Meanwhile, Phoenix is nowhere to be found on either list, despite their 500 miles of bikeways, which is perhaps to be blamed on their sprawling urban design. As a student at Arizona State University, I can say that Tempe is much easier to bike in than Phoenix or even Scottsdale, but Tempe may need a more comprehensive branding solution (as in Portland, Oregon), or even more online visibility through rating websites.

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The Problem with Icy Trails

Read More: http://urbanmilwaukee.com/2013/02/01...th-icy-trails/

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While the roads have been salted and are 95% dry pavement, the entire Oak Leaf Trail and Hank Aaron State Trail are like frozen rivers snaking around Milwaukee. I don’t remember the trails being so completely iced over in the 17 years I have been biking to work through the winter. Yes, I could choose to ride the roads to work, but I like the trails so much more. They are more direct than the roads, and I love the solitude and scenic views through the parks and prairies along the Menomonee River.

- For the last five years or so I have run Nokian A10s carbide studded tires on my commuter bike as soon as we get the first hard freeze, and I have not fallen since I started using them. Schwalbe Marathon Winters are also excellent, as they have carbide studs too. I would not waste my money on cheap, non-carbide, studded tires. They wear out quickly. Sure good studded tires are a bit pricey, but I consider them cheap insurance against broken collar bones and sprained wrists.

- While it is not any further out of his way to ride Canal Street, and Canal is not very busy, even during rush hour, it is a drag that he can’t ride the trail. It just makes us feel like second class citizens. We both pay the same snow and ice removal fee that our car driving friends do, but we don’t get much for our money. The City does a very good job of salting and plowing all 7,000 lane miles of city streets (that includes multi-lane roads and parking lanes). But I don’t need the city to plow the parking spots for about 8 cars around my house (I live on a corner lot). I would prefer for them to plow and salt the trails with my money, as they and the county are best equipped to do so.

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Bicycling.com came out with a ranking of the top US cities for bicycling. I took their top ten cities and dot mapped every commuter in and around them, colored by their method of commute, to get a visual sense of the density and dispersion of biking and walking commuters around those cities. A more topically specific and geographically general look at commuting data than these maps of Seattle. So blue people-dots show bikers, green people-dots show walkers, and gray people-dots show all other commuters whatever that method of locomotion may be.

Larger: http://www.flickr.com/photos/idvsolu...n/photostream/