bikes of the rust belt

Hello, friends, from Pittsburgh, where you're always biking in the door-zone... and usually up or down a hill, around a pothole, whatever!  Be thankful for C-U's complete lack of topography and calm roads!

One thing that drew me here was the sense that Pittsburgh's made itself into a laboratory for innovation, both entrepreneurial and social.  Pittsburgh's early de-industrialization may have given the city a quicker start, but it turns out that other rust belt cities are now making a virtue of necessity, giving birth to many innovative undertakings to fill the gaps left by disappearing heavy industry and declining populations.

If you haven't seen it, this documentary about Detroit (presented by Johnny Knoxville) offers an introduction to such enterprise in the Motor City -- and a great counterpoint to the ruin-porn that's too often the media face of places like Detroit, Cleveland, Pittsburgh, and other rust belt cities.  Numerous great rust belt blogs present similar positive counterpoints: Rust Wire's a favorite.

Bikes repeatedly play a prominent role in these new rust belt enterprises.  For instance, detroitblog featured a great article about a new custom cycle club, the East Side Riders.  Closer to (my!) home, Pittsburgh just hosted an instance of Park(ing) Day, a worldwide holiday in which inventive people occupy and decorate parking spots around town.  Park(ing) Day in Pittsburgh included a slow-paced tour of all 25 spots throughout the city and showed off how older, denser cities can enable sustainable -- dare I say "green"? -- transit.

salon.com's globalization blogger offers "one more reason to ride a bike"

Andrew Leonard, author of a blog called "How the World Works" over at Salon.com, wrote a great piece Sunday in praise of one specific consequence of bike commuting: riding a bike shows other people how easy and fun it is to ride a bike, perhaps inspiring them to ride a bike in turn!  Here's my favorite part of Leonard's piece:

You may be wondering why I decided to share this tiny urban cycling vignette. In the big scheme of things it's not all that important. But it brightened up my day like a ray of afternoon sunshine breaking through a blanket of San Francisco Bay Area fog and I just had to share the glee. Real human contact with a complete stranger is much rarer in our lives than it should be. And any time someone decides to ride a bike instead of driving a car is good for them and does the world a favor. And might even be good for someone else too, who isn't riding a bike ... yet.

If you're a newcomer to Chambana looking for a great used bike, stop by one of our shops during open hours and check out what we've got!

"who pays for free parking? everyone but the motorist!"

In last Sunday's New York Times, Professor Tyler Cowen argued that ubiquitous free parking amounts to an immense subsidy for automobiles.  Most new commercial construction in the U.S. is required by law to include a generous number of free parking spaces, leading to the horrific seas of pavement likely coming soon to Olympian Drive in Urbana.  As with gasoline, drivers are insulated from paying the true costs of operating cars.  Open space gets paved and new commercial buildings usually look like the ugliest of Robert Venturi's fantasies.  Progressives like James Howard Kunstler have spent years advocating that we recognize the true costs of automobility.  Cowen's essay argues that we do so in prices:

Higher charges for parking spaces would limit our trips by car. That would cut emissions, alleviate congestion and, as a side effect, improve land use. Donald C. Shoup, professor of urban planning at the University of California, Los Angeles, has made this idea a cause, as presented in his 733-page book, “The High Cost of Free Parking.”

Many suburbanites take free parking for granted, whether it’s in the lot of a big-box store or at home in the driveway. Yet the presence of so many parking spaces is an artifact of regulation and serves as a powerful subsidy to cars and car trips. Legally mandated parking lowers the market price of parking spaces, often to zero. Zoning and development restrictions often require a large number of parking spaces attached to a store or a smaller number of spaces attached to a house or apartment block.

Pricing parking to reflect the true costs of driving would also encourage the growth of green modes of transit, like buses and bicycles. "Perhaps most important," Cowen adds, "if we’re going to wean ourselves away from excess use of fossil fuels, we need to remove current subsidies to energy-unfriendly ways of life."

The Bike Project's blog will soon be in new hands: I'm passing it off to the co-op's new Volunteer Coordinator.  We'll introduce her or him next week!

la mayor Antonio Villaraigosa finds out first hand how drivers generally treat cyclists

...and becomes an advocate for enforcing laws to protect cyclists and force drivers to share the road:

Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa is the new champion of cyclists' rights in the nation's second-largest city, a conversion that came after a bone-breaking fall from his own bicycle.

The mayor, who said little on the topic during five years in office, is campaigning to make streets safer for cyclists after a parked cab abruptly pulled out across a bike lane, causing him to shatter an elbow. The ill-fated ride was his first on city streets since taking office.

Since the July 17 accident, Villaraigosa has utilized the Huffington Post and YouTube to say that it's time to recognize that bicycles also belong on LA's streets, which were largely designed for autos. In the YouTube video, he announced plans to convene a bicycle safety summit.

saturday: c-u across the prarie!

This Saturday, 14 August, the Prairie Cycle Club will host C-U Across the Prairie, the group's annual metric century ride.  That's 100 kilometres... or 65 miles for those of you who prefer freedom fries.

It's a supported ride, which means there'll be a sag-wagon in case you, um, can't find potable water for four hours during the century and then try to get some from a public park near Monticello but then it's probably not potable anyway and you have to do the last twenty miles thinking you've ingested a parasite.  Not that that happened.

Anyway, C-U Across the Prairie also features 35- and 17-mile rides for those who'd like to bike it but don't want to do the full 65.

The ride departs from Mahomet this Saturday morning and breakfast and lunch will be provided.

You can register here.

"bike lanes are a commie plot!"

...according to Dan Maes, a Republican candidate for Colorado's governorship.  Acknowledging that some might find his theories "kooky," Maes went ahead and offered some kooky theories about how Denver's increasing bike-friendliness is a surreptitious means to turn the city into a "United Nations community" (n.b. he didn't use the word "surreptitious"):

"At first, I thought, 'Gosh, public transportation, what's wrong with that, and what's wrong with people parking their cars and riding their bikes? And what's wrong with incentives for green cars?' But if you do your homework and research, you realize ICLEI is part of a greater strategy to rein in American cities under a United Nations treaty," Maes said.

Look out for the Dan Maes stage on the upcoming Mustache Ride 2.

dero fixit

Last Friday in Iowa City, we spotted this great outdoor mini "bike shop" outside the New Pioneer Food Co-op.  Placed near their bike racks, the "shop" includes a bike stand, a pump, and all the necessary tools for most repairs.  The pump and tools attach to the stand by cables, making sure they'll always be there when necessary.

The stand looks sturdy and well-made.  "It looks pre-fab," we said.  As it turns out, it is: it's a Dero Fixit stand, made by a Minnesota-based company that produces many other different bike racks for municipalities, businesses, et al.  Here's an image of the stand in action:

photo credit: dero.com

These stands would look very nice placed strategically throughout Champaign-Urbana.

(One quick blog note: for the rest of the week, Bike Project volunteer Emily will be guest posting between rides at Ragbrai, assuming her solar iphone charger works.  And I'll be taking the week off.)

subsidizing bicycles

Yesterday, hippie-wesbsite alternet.org featured an article about how the rise in bicycle ownership worldwide helps reduce carbon emissions.  Lots of interesting facts in it, including this:

World bicycle production, averaging 94 million per year from 1990 to 2002, climbed to 130 million in 2007, far outstripping automobile production of 70 million. Bicycle sales in some markets are surging as governments devise a myriad of incentives to encourage bicycle use. For example, in 2009 the Italian government began a hefty incentive programme to encourage the purchase of bicycles or electric bikes in order to improve urban air quality and reduce the number of cars on the road. The direct payments will cover up to 30 percent of the cost of the bicycle.

It turns out that cycling-friendly countries generally subsidize bikes -- in a variety of ways -- while also implementing policies to make driving more difficult and expensive, such as "taxes on car ownership, use, and parking."  Meanwhile, the U.S. and U.K. don't, although the Obama administration's floated-then-retracted plan to tax drivers for the miles they drive rather than for the gas they use might have been a step in this direction.

next wednesday: bicycle infrastructure webinar

From an email to the Champaign County Bikes discussion listserv:

On Wednesday, July 21 at 2pm CT, the Association of Pedestrian and Bicycle Professionals (APBP) will present a webinar on Bicycle Boulevards and Neighborhood Greenways. Morgan Johnston of Facilities and Services at the University of Illinois has graciously arranged for access to the webinar in the conference room of Public Safety Building on campus at 1110 W. Springfield Ave in Urbana (NE corner of Goodwin and Springfield). The webinar is free and open to all that are interested.

I have used bicycle boulevards in Portland and Berkeley and I believe that they would make a great addition to the bicycle infrastructure we have already started to build in Champaign-Urbana. They are particularly attractive to people who do not want to bicycle on busier streets and they allow side-by-side bicycling that is so useful for families bicycling an essential for introducing young bicyclists to on-street bicycling.

saturday: health and wellness bike ride

This Saturday, 17 July, join other families in Urbana on the Health and Wellness Bike Ride, organized by Champaign County Bikes. 

It's a self-paced, self-guided tour of Urbana beginning at 9am from Urbana's Farmers' Market and supported by organizations like the Urbana Free Library and Common Ground Food Co-op.  The ride aims to show just how easy it is to get around by bicycle in Urbana.

A drawing for prizes will be held after the ride on the porch of Common Ground Food Coop at Market at the Square. Prizes include gift certificates, pool passes, a bike helmet,  and t-shirts.  You can preregister for the ride at: www.champaigncountybikes.org.

smile politely investigates hit and run crash involving cyclists

Today, Smile Politely featured a long article about a couple of hit and run crashes involving cyclists that have taken place around C-U over the past year:

Dornick was riding near the back of the pack, and immediately noted how quickly the honking car was approaching, close to 100 mph in his estimation. By the time a rider had called “Car back!“ the vehicle — a blue Chevy Impala with heavily tinted windows — had reached the cyclists, slowed to around 35 mph, and was rapidly moving through the group.

As Hand describes it, “Almost immediately the car was already up in the middle of the group.  We had already tried to start moving over and were probably halfway over.  I saw the car moving into the group.  It sounded like he was driving in the grass for a second, and then that sound went away and it looked like he was moving toward us.“

As the pace line tried to move to the right to clear room for the driver, riders at the back of the pack saw the car pass less than a foot to the left of their bikes.  Cyclist Sean Walker watched the passenger side mirror pass over his handlebars, narrowly avoiding a hit.  The driver then hit Dornick’s left elbow with his passenger side mirror, knocking him off-balance.  Dornick was able to remain upright, and the driver continued forward.

At this point the driver had reached the middle of the pack. Nangle was riding near the back of the pack and had an unobstructed view of the vehicle as it approached the center of the pace line.  Nangle watched the driver reach the middle of the pack before “clearly, deliberately turning to the right and moving the car into the pace line of riders, clearly making an attempt to hit one or more of the riders.“  The other cyclists confirmed this unmistakable display of intent.  Rob Raguet-Schofield observed “a good four feet of pavement and at least one or two feet of solid grass shoulder to the left of the car.  It was absolutely, unmistakably clear this was no accident.  This was intentional.“

 Incidents like these spurred Governor Quinn to sign an anti-harassment law compelling drivers to give cyclists at least three feet of space on the road.

urbana & champaign producing a bicycle safety video

At Smile Politely, Joel splogged (it's a special form of blogging) about a News-Gazette article about a bicycle safety video our fair twin cities are jointly producing:

The cities of Champaign and Urbana are collaborating on a bicycle safety video that will provide information to both cyclists and drivers on the proper ways to deal with various traffic scenarios.

They are working with a bicycle safety consultant with the League of Illinois Bicyclists, Donnie Miller, who has done bicycle safety training in Champaign-Urbana before. The cost of making the video is about $1,200.

Let's hope it includes something capable of teaching grumpy men in the passenger seats of Toyota Corollas not to curse at me for taking the lane beneath a bridge on Springfield as their young daughters watch everything from the backseat!  We are traffic, &c....

how can employers encourage bike commuting?

This article from Inc. magazine offers some answers, along with check-lists to decide how best to incentivize bike commuting.  Bikes aren't just good for the environment; they promote employee wellness (and happiness) too!  As the article puts it

There may be several reasons to encourage your employees to seek alternate transportation to work. Whether it's carpooling, taking public transportation, walking or biking, the benefits of not driving a car everyday are substantial. The most notable benefit is the reduced strain on the environment. Cutting back on driving not only reduces our countries dependence on crude oil, but also reduces our carbon footprint. However, by taking an extra step—and asking your employees to ride a bike to work—your company will have pride knowing that its also contributing to the physical health and well-being of the employees that participate.

Besides the checklists, the piece also offers some helpful links like this "Employer's Bike to Work Guide" from Bike Iowa.  The lessons in it are good for here, too.  We're fortunate to live in a place where commuting by bicycle is just as easy (or even easier!) than commuting by car.

If you run a bike-based business in C-U, we'd love to hear from you -- and perhaps to write about you.  Get in touch!

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!

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. 

"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.

tuesday, 4 may: c-u's very own bike to work day

If you're not already biking to work -- and, really, it's been so nice out that you should be -- next week's C-U Bike to Work Day might be just the motivation you need to get started.  Next Tuesday, 4 May, a generous group of sponsors (including The Bike Project) will hold our micro-urban shangri-la's celebration of car- and carbon-free commuting.

From 7-10am, C-U Bike to Work Day will have four stations set up around town featuring coffee and other treats for old and new bike commuters.  The stations will be located at

• Downtown Champaign - Neil Street & Main Street
• Downtown Urbana - Main Street & Vine Street
• University of Illinois - Engineering Plaza (Green Street across from the Illini Union)
• Savoy - Savoy Recreation Center (Prospect Avenue and Graham)

You can register for C-U Bike to Work Day here.  You can find out about the third and last in a series of classes on Bike Commuting 101 here.  And if you'd like to volunteer to help staff one of the Bike to Work Day stations, you can sign-up here.

...and you can click here for a great website all about commuting by bicycle!

the u.s. transportation department's new bike-friendly road policies:

(Via the drudgereport, ergo the siren!)  The New York Times' Green Inc. blog reported Friday that the U.S. Transportation Department's encouraging state and local transport agencies to include consideration for non-motorized transportation (e.g. bikes!) in the planning and design of new roadways:

The new policy, which was introduced a few days after Mr. LaHood gave a well-received speech from atop a table at the National Bike Summit, is said to reflect the Transportation Department’s support for the development of fully integrated transportation networks.

It calls on state and local governments to go beyond minimum planning and maintenance requirements to provide convenient and safe amenities for bikers and walkers. “Walking and biking should not be an afterthought in roadway design,” the policy states.
Transportation agencies are urged to take action on a number of fronts, including the creation of pathways for bike riders and pedestrians on bridges, and providing children with safe biking and walking routes to schools.

They are also encouraged to find ways to make such improvements in concert with road maintenance projects and to protect sidewalks and bike lanes in the same manner as roads (by clearing them of snow, for example).