Photo © Bill Cunningham, New York Times

On the Street with New York Times photographer Bill Cunningham, covering New York City’s “Summer Streets” street-closure event.

View the slideshow (with audio) →

In Tokyo, robotic arms park bicycles, speeding commuters to the office.

Today marks one year since Paris’ Vélib bike-sharing system was introduced. Vélib is the largest bike-sharing system in the world with 1,451 stations, 20,600 bicycles, and over 3 million subscribers generating $10 million in revenues for the city. In its first year, Vélib users took over 25 million bike trips, with an estimated 10% replacing car trips. Improved air quality, reduced congestion, and a generally better quality of life for the city’s residents are all benefits resulting from the bike-sharing system. However you look at it, Vélib has been a stunning success.

[via Streetfilms]

Photo © Evening Standard

A group of enterprising parents, working with their local schools in the London suburb of Richmond and supported by a grant from Transport for London, have developed a bike sharing program for transporting their children to-and-from school. The bikes, all Dutch cargo bikes, are left at one of the schools and can be borrowed for short trips by participating parents. According to organizers, the bikes have been in constant use since the program’s inception.

The program, called “Parents for Pedal Power”, has been so successful that it won the Cycling Community Award from Transport for London. The award “recognises the vital role these initiatives play in making cycling open and accessible to all Londoners.”

See the MSNBC video coverage here.

Streetfilms’ Clarence Eckerson, Jr. was recently in Portland, OR to cover the city’s first Sunday Parkways event. The Portland event is patterned after Bogatá, Columbia’s Ciclovía “street opening” festivals, where cars are periodically banned from the streets to make way for pedestrians, cyclists, bladers, joggers, and all manner of happy people. From all reports, Portland’s event was a resounding success and a grand time was had by all.

From Portland Car-Free Day:

From the California Bicycle Coalition:

I’m glad to see this bill make it through the Assembly. The elephant in the room is the shocking 20% statistic; obviously we need to address cyclist and pedestrian safety in a big way in California.

• Read AB2971
• Read Analysis

When I was riding predominately for sport and fitness, I had the freedom to choose when and where to ride. Consequently, I mostly rode during off-peak times on relatively low travelled roads or bike paths, avoiding those areas I knew to be congested and dangerous.

Now that nearly all of my riding is for transportation, I don’t always have the option to pick and choose my routes, and I often find myself riding during peak hours. This new exposure to intense, and sometimes dangerous traffic has forced a rethinking of my approach to urban/suburban cycling.

For the longest time I was an advocate of John Forester’s “vehicular cycling” principles. Vehicular cycling is described as “the practice of driving bicycles on roads in a manner that is visible, predictable, and in accordance with the principles for driving a vehicle in traffic.” That sounds good and reasonable, and in some situations I still use a vehicular approach. But there are times, while encountering difficult and complex traffic situations, that adherence to strict vehicular cycling techniques no longer works for me.

For example, on some of our 6-lane suburban “parkways”, it is nearly impossible to ride a bicycle in a manner that is “in accordance with the principles for driving a vehicle in traffic.” Cars on these roads travel 3 abreast at 50-60mph; because the speed differential between cars and bicycles is so great, and the distance from the right shoulder to the left turn lane is so far, it’s not realistic to “drive” a bicycle on these roads as a part of the normal flow of traffic.

One alternative in these dangerous conditions is to ride on the sidewalk and behave as a pedestrian at intersections, using crosswalks and pedestrian traffic signals to navigate. A majority of the sidewalks on the major parkways in our area are completely under-used by pedestrians, and are separated from the road by a grass median (see main photo at top). In every way, they closely resemble what other cities might label “separated bikeways”. For the longest time, due to the stigma associated with riding on sidewalks, I avoided these pseudo bikeways, choosing instead to ride out in the traffic lane at all costs. But over time, I’ve come to the conclusion that given the option of a 40mph speed differential with cars, or a 10mph speed differential with pedestrians, the sidewalk option can be a wise choice if the conditions warrant it. (Of course, in a dense urban environment, where sidewalks are full of pedestrians, and business store fronts face the sidewalk, cycling on sidewalks is ill-advised.) This is an example of a change in tactics I should have made sooner, but didn’t, due to my overly strict adherence to a particular school of thought.

As my cycling habits have evolved, so has my overall approach to cycling tactics. Now, whatever the difficult traffic situation, whether it be a 6-lane parkway, a narrow shoulder, a vanishing bike lane, or something else, I try to use a little more pragmatism and little less dogma. This more flexible approach has made my cycling experience safer and more enjoyable.

To help alleviate the bike rack overcrowding that often causes cyclists to be left at bus stops, Santa Cruz County, CA, in conjunction with three area bike shops, is offering up to $200 off on folding bikes for multi-modal commuters (folding bikes are allowed on board all Metro buses, even during peak hours). All Santa Cruz County residents are eligible; the only requirement is attendance at a free, 2-hour bicycle safety training class. Now that’s my kind of subsidy (if only I lived in Santa Cruz)! Visit Ecology Action for more information.

Dr. John Pucher, Rutgers University Professor of Planning and Public Policy and bicycle advocate extraordinaire, recently gave a presentation at Simon Fraser University in Vancouver, B.C. titled, Cycling for Everyone: Lessons for Vancouver from the Netherlands, Denmark, and Germany. This is the best presentation I’ve seen on the benefits of increasing cycling in our cities and how to go about doing it. The video is over an hour long, but if you’re at all interested in the subject, it’s a must see.

Click here to view the video.

Further Pucher resources:

• Pucher @ Rutgers
• Cycling Safety on Bikeways vs. Roads
• Promoting Safe Walking and Cycling to Improve Public Health
• Making Cycling Irresistible: Lessons from the Netherlands, Denmark, and Germany
• Momentum Magazine Interview

Photo © idogu

Bicycle production has skyrocketed in recent years, with output increasing each of the last six years and nearly quadrupling since 1970. Yet, while overall bicycle usage has increased in many parts of the world, bicycle usage in the United States has decreased overall, and bicycle usage for transportation remains dismal, with just 0.4% of commute trips taken by bike. Even so, the Earth Policy Institute sees reason for optimism due to increasing advocacy and investment in cycling infrastructure nationwide.

From the Earth Policy Institute, J. Matthew Roney, 05.12.08:

and

Read the full story here.

A video on the Bay Area Rapid Transit (BART) website highlights their policy of allowing folding bikes on their trains at any hour of the day, including peak commute times (full size bikes are not allowed on BART trains during rush hour due to overcrowding). Of course, I’d prefer an increase in service to accommodate all cyclists at all hours, but it’s nice to see folders promoted as an alternative.

• View the video

In this fun video, Bike Friday’s irrepressible “Gal From Down Under”, Lynette Chiang, and Bicycle Victoria’s David Larson, take her Tikit on one of Melbourne’s trams to test out the City’s new policy of allowing folding-bikes-in-bags on all forms of public transit.