Bike Blender at the Bike Races in Urbana!

mmmmmm

Mormons on fixies!

Via Cyclelicio.us by way of Urban Velo:

tomorrow: ride of silence

Tomorrow night -- 19 May at 7pm to be precise! -- C-U will play host to the annual Ride of Silence.  The Ride of Silence aims both to honor cyclists who have been hurt or killed and to raise awareness that cyclists are by-right users of the roads, or, as the slogan goes, that "we are traffic!"

Here's some details from an email to The Bike Project's member listserv:

We start at the parking lot near the assembly hall at First and St. Mary's. The route will be N on first to Stadium Drive, then across 45 (Neil Street) to Randolph and through downtown Champaign, then South on First and then down Green Street, then a bit North on Busey to Main and through downtown Urbana, then South on Vine to ILlinois, then Goodwin, then Pennsylvania, Fourth and back to the lot. It's about 9 miles and we'll be going less than 12 MPH and regrouping whenever we get spread out.  (Note:  this is pending me looking at this on the map -- it's changed a tad from last year so we can ride a little on new bike lanes on Goodwin).

In the past we've had about 35 riders; if riders wear black armbands (a garbage bag cut into strips works) or have a sign on bikes indicating who they're riding for, then it communicates what we're doing to passersby.

The purpose of this ride is

• To HONOR those who have been injured or killed
• To RAISE AWARENESS that we are here
• To ask that we all SHARE THE ROAD; that drivers recognize that there’s room for all of us out here, and that a bicyclist may be around the next corner and has every right to be. 

We are looking for respect, not retaliation; for visibility, not vengeance. Let us show how to share the road by a positive example. Please follow the rules of the road. Ride as you would in a funeral procession; ride predictably.

Point out potholes and road hazards; signal turns and if you slow down. Momentary inattention is the number one cause of accidents -Be aware of what is in front of and BEHIND you, watch your line, and keep your hands near your brakes. 

We are riding as a group, silently but use your judgement regarding both. Allow for breaks in the group when it makes sense.

"building a better cycling culture"

Yesterday, Smile Politely posted an article about how communities across the U.S. have tried to encourage bicycling.  Dedicated bike lanes turn out to have a big impact, which is good news for Urbana since the city council just recommended implementing bike lanes on Main Street.

There's a lot of great stuff in the article, but this is my favorite (I'm still upset about my home state, Florida, getting impacted by BP's oil spill):

Creating bicycle infrastructure has been shown to have significant safety and economic benefits.  In addition to these benefits bicycling is the most efficient form of transportation in terms of fuel used and Green House Gases (GHG) produced.  About 50% of the average American households GHG emissions are for transportation.  Switching a few trips per week per household to walking/ bicycling/transit has more impact on reducing GHG emissions than replacing all household light bulbs with compact fluorescents, increasing insulation, replacing energy inefficient appliances, and replacing windows with energy efficient ones.  Any community that wants to reduce its carbon footprint has to provide infrastructure for walking, biking, and transit to give residents safe, easy, and accessible transportation choices.

 Here's the rest of it!

Bike Snob NYC on Focus this morning

Eben Weiss, the blogger better known as Bike Snob NYC, will be appearing on David Inge's program, Focus, this morning at 11 a.m.

Tune in to 580 AM or stream it online for the latest in colorways, crabon frames, and other hipster-skewering topics. 

next monday: the bike project's volunteer mixer

Have you been staffing at The Bike Project?  Are you interested in starting?  Then you should come out to The Bike Project's volunteer mixer next Monday, 17 May at 7:30pm at The Bike Project's shop at the U-C IMC in Urbana.

There will be food and great folks to chat with about volunteering. If you're interested in starting to volunteer, or if you want to continue volunteering this summer, come prepared to let us know when you'll be available. We'll also be redoing some staffing hours and volunteer schedules, so if you'd like or need to switch days, this will be a good chance to do so.

Please let us know if you plan to attend so that we can get a head count on food.

Hope to see you there!

online petition to support a bike-friendly downtown urbana

Tonight the Urbana City Council will meet and discuss their master bicycle plan.  If you can make it to the meeting, you should come out.  If you can't -- and even if you can -- but still want to show support for a bicycle-friendly downtown Urbana, Champaign County Bikes has developed an online petition you can sign to express your support for keeping Urbana bike-friendly.  Here's the details:

For all Champaign County residents - NOT just citizens of Urbana! As Urbana is the County Seat everyone in Champaign County should fill-in this petition.

BACKGROUND
Urbana has been recognized as a Bicycle Friendly Community by the League of American Bicyclists. Creating an active transportation system for Urbana will improve our residents health, add economic benefits, reduce our carbon footprint, and give our community more choices in transportation.

WHAT IS NEEDED
The Urbana City Council approved the Urbana Bicycle Master Plan and an Urbana Downtown Plan that both call for the redesign of Main Street in downtown Urbana implementing a road diet that would improve safety, reduce traffic speeds, create a more attractive environment for shoppers and diners and provide better access for pedestrians and bicyclists. The Urbana Bicycle and Pedestrian Advisory Commission also approved this plan as did the Officers and Steering Committee of Champaign County Bikes. Road diets have been shown to slow and calm vehicle traffic and encourage bicyclists and pedestrians to shop and enjoy the downtown. We encourage the city council to proceed with implementation of these plans.

WHY
The Urbana Bicycle Master Plan was created with the assistance of the best professional bicycle and transportation consultants in the state of Illinois along with the City of Urbana staff and extensive public input. It's implementation will provide safe, affordable, and healthy access for bicycling as a regular mode of transportation. In 2008 this plan won awards from both the Illinois Chapter of the American Planning Association and the Association of Metropolitan Planning Organizations, validating the very high level of expertise and the outstanding quality of Urbana's plan for bicycles in the city's future. Implementation of our excellent bike plan will benefit many generations to come and enhance the vitality of our downtown.

Thank You!
Champaign County Bikes

Please come to the Urbana City Council meeting this coming Monday evening, 5/10/2010.
Urbana City Building, 400 South Vine Street Urbana, IL 61801
Be there at 6:45. Meeting begins at 7:00PM

For more information about the street plan and for Urbana City Council contact information, please visit: http://UrbanaBikeLanes.notlong.com.

this monday: urbana city council holds public discussion on urbana's "master bicycle plan"

This upcoming Monday, 10 May, starting at 7pm in the Urbana City Council Chambers the Urbana City Council Meeting will include a public discussion about implementing Urbana's Master Bicycle Plan.  If you care about bike lanes in Urbana, come out and make your voice heard.  Here's some excerpts from an email to the Champaign County Bikes email list:

There will be an important Urbana City Council Meeting (of Committee of the Whole) next Monday, May 10 starting at 7pm in the Urbana City Council Chambers at 400 S. Vine St. in Urbana.  At this meeting, there will be a discussion about implementing Urbana's Master Bicycle Plan which calls for a road diet and bike lanes to be installed on Main St. in downtown Urbana. This plan is supported by Urbana City Staff, the Urbana Bicycle & Pedestrian Advisory Commission and the Officers and Steering Committee of Champaign County Bikes. It has also been endorsed by Ed Barsotti, Executive Director of the League of Illinois Bicyclists.

And yet there is strong opposition to the plan by some of the Downtown Urbana merchants would want to see more parking (angled) on Main Street and no bike lanes, despite the fact that there is an excess of parking space in the downtown area.

...we need people to support the plan to show up at Monday evening's meeting, especially Urbana residents and especially people from anywhere to shop and dine in downtown Urbana.

There are different ways for you to show your support of downtown bike lanes at the meeting, from the least involved and time-consuming to the most:

1. Leave a comment card with your support of the road-diet and bike lanes on Main Street in Downtown Urbana. You can then go home. Your name and comment will be read when the agenda item comes up.

2. Leave a comment card with your support of the road-diet and bike lanes on Main Street in Downtown Urbana. Stay through the discussion of the agenda item. I suggest wearing your bicycle helmet throughout the meeting as a very visible indication to the City Council of your support for bicycle infrastructure in Downtown Urbana (the helmet may also prove useful if an earthquake or tornado strikes Urbana during the meeting).

3. Leave a card requesting to speak as public input at the beginning of the meeting. And then speak. Comments are usually limited to 5 minutes, but may be shortened to 3 minutes of a lot of people want to speak. You can then go home.

4. Leave a card requesting to speak as public input when the item comes up on the agenda. Stick around (with your helmet on) and then speak. Comments are usually limited to 5 minutes, but may be shortened to 3 minutes of a lot of people want to speak.

All other things being equal, comments from those living in Urbana will have more impact on the City Council than comments those living outside Urbana. But comments from those who shop and dine in Downtown Urbana will have impact regardless of their place of residence.

In addition to encouraging bicyclists to come to the Urbana City Council meeting to show their support for the road diet and bike lanes in Downtown Urbana, Champaign County Bikes may be soon circulating a petition for signatures. More information will be provided about this soon.

But for now, put the Monday evening on your calendar and plan to be there if you possibly can. 

Google maps discovers where CBP is located!

We're no longer in East Urbana, says the world's most popular mapping site.

View Larger Map

tax credits for bicycle commuter

Now that you're biking to work, persuade your employer to offer the Bicycle Commuter Act tax credit!  A university in Pittsburgh, PA just made news when it began offering the credit.  From the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette:

The benefit is a $20-a-month credit for people who make a "substantial portion" of their commute by bicycle, to pay for purchases, repairs, storage, upgrades or helmets (padded shorts and tight shirt are excluded from the reimbursement). The employer can reimburse employees based on their expenses, offer regular monthly payments or devise some sort of voucher system.

Similar benefits are allowed for transit and parking, but they allow up to $230 a month. The bicycle benefit can be applied only in those months during which an employee does not file for transit or parking benefits.

Some members of the United States Congress have started to call for equity in tax credits offered to bike commuters:

To that end, U.S. Rep. Earl Blumenauer, D-Ore., who had pushed for the benefit to be a much higher amount, has introduced legislation called the Green Routes to Work Bill, or H.R. 3271.

The bill calls for equity in the benefits, so that biking, transit and parking would have the same cap, which would make it easier for bike commuters to afford a new helmet or pay for fenders. It also would allow for workers to use the credit for multimodal transportation. For example, taking the bus part way and the bike the rest of the ride might qualify both up to the total cap.

Anybody know of employers in C-U that offer these credits?  If so, props to them!

diy panniers

I just got a new bike... and, then, a new rear rack.  So now I'm looking for some panniers and realizing that I don't like much of what's out there.  Since it's an Axiom rack, I figured I'd check out some of the Axiom bags other bike co-op members seem to like.  These Monsoons looked great on our recent Tour de Kickapoo, but I don't know if I like them enough to drop one of those newfangled hundred dollar bills on them.  I'm into these grocery bags on Etsy.com, but like a lot of stuff on Etsy my second thought was "I could make that."

So I'm gonna try!  I'm reading up on plans for diy panniers found through everybody's favorite subject supposed to know, google.com, and lucky for you I'm sharing what I've found so far:

Here's the primary source, from a research scientist who presents the plans for his panniers exactly like you'd expect a research scientist would: using LATEX and featuring an abstract!  (When and if I perfect mine, I'll present the plans using the stupid conventional humanities-speak-title.)  From there, I discovered some other plans:

• This link features another set of conventional plans -- in an intelligible writing style!
• Here are two links about recycling old army bags into panniers.  I think I'm modeling mine on the second.
• Just for fun, here's one about recycling kitty litter buckets into panniers.  Virtue: it's waterproof!
• Another, from instructables.com!

Updates on my panniers coming soon.

tonight: women and trans in transit night

Tonight, 4 May, from 6 to 9pm at The Bike Project shop in the U-C IMC, we'll be having "Women and Trans in Transit Night."

This is The Bike Project's monthly womens' night, with primarily female volunteers and an atmosphere devoid of know-it-all men!

(I kid.) 

And speaking of kids: childcare will be available if needed.

Stop by!

"if you love oil spills, keep driving your car..."

"...and if you care about the future of human beings on the planet, please kiss your car goodbye."  So argues Jason Henderson in an article for alternet.org about the irresolvable contradiction between caring for the environment and owning and operating an automobile.  Some exemplary paragraphs:

We need oil to make the "shift" to other energy paths. Yet the vast majority of oil that Americans consume is squandered for short drive-thru trips. We are seeking to expand drilling offshore and in remote areas to keep this system of automobility afloat. At the same time we as a nation expect to make a great leap to new energy systems but that will require lots of oil to build them. We cannot do both.

To any rational thinking person this should be an alarming state of affairs. But to people who identify themselves as political progressives and yet continue to own and drive cars on a routine basis, this should be an embarrassment. Any progressive-leftist-liberal-"green"-environmentalist cannot, with a clear conscience, drive his or her children to school and expect those children to find a planet they'll thrive on. He or she cannot smugly shrug that the transit system does not go where he or she wants to go, or that the distances are too far to ride a bicycle. Any able-bodied progressive who regularly exclaims "But I need to drive!" is in need of some deep reflection on his or her values and especially the idea of a green car.

The "green car" movement has been around since the rise in environmental awareness and recognition of resource scarcity. It reflects how American progressives have held a great discomfort in trying to balance the convenient automobile lifestyle enabled by oil against the messy work of extracting and refining oil. The Prius will not cut it. Engaging in some sort of medieval offset-indulgence scheme won't either. You are driving an oil-consuming machine made from polymers derived from oil and designed to carry you under 30 miles a day in an urban configuration.

According to Henderson, by driving a car you could be complicit in destroying the beaches in my home state, Florida.

want to bike to work but can't imagine how?

Then you should check out this comic about bike commuting, created by Bike PGH!  It's kind of Pittsburgh-PA-centric (note the Pennsylvania keystone logos on page 12 & 13!) but the lessons in it are good for anywhere.

The obnoxious driver who yelled at me to "get on the *&%$ing sidewalk!" on University yesterday afternoon should check out page 14 on Taking the Lane and Sharing the Lane.  And everybody should learn about vehicular cycling.

Don't forget that tomorrow's C-U's Bike to Work Day!

congratulations to the bike project's half-marathoners!

Congratulations to The Bike Project volunteers Emma, Barry, Emily, and Todd for completing yesterday's Illinois Half-Marathon!  Thanks, too, to volunteers Carl and Phil for volunteering with the marathon's bike patrol!