Wednesday Morning Commute - Non-economic

The first post here reminds me of a TFTS moment I had once biking to work. A woman in a robe came running over to me and asked me to stop. She had come outside to wave goodbye to her husband and after he drove away, she realized she'd accidentally locked herself out of the house. She said she recognized me because I rode by her house all the time, and she asked if I could call her husband to ask him to come back and let her in. I did, and after he got to work, he got my message and came back. Anyway...

• A Virginia cyclist and city planner wants to know how to help people who want to bike to work, but don't now, to do so.
• Mayor Gray in the state of the District speech "WHILE WE CONTINUE OUR INVESTMENTS IN TRANSIT THROUGH EXPANSION OF THE CAPITAL CITY BIKESHARE PROGRAM AND THE LAUNCHING OF A STREETCAR SYSTEM, WE ALSO ARE EXPLORING OPPORTUNITIES IN RENEWABLE ENERGY, ESPECIALLY SOLAR ENERGY."
• MoBike testifies in favor of the Met Branch Trail and bike funding in general.
• Meanwhile, the Met Branch Trail got over 11,000 users per day month in 2011 up from 4765 users in 2010.
• "The drip of damning evidence against Armstrong looks like a slow-moving version of the sexual assault allegations last year against international banker Dominique Strauss-Kahn or the rape accusations in 2006 against members of the Duke lacrosse team. In both of those cases, prosecutors withdrew their charges, concluding that the widely reported accusations were untrue or wouldn’t stand up in court. (In the Duke case, the prosecutor was disbarred for his misconduct.)"
• Another bike t-shirt. 
• Road diets, which often include bike lanes, are now a Proven Safety Countermeasure according to the FHWA. 
• Bike league goes after Beohner for blaming bikepaths for taking up 25% of the Highway Trust Fund spending (it's more like 1.6%). But my bigger problem is with him calling bikepaths "non-economic projects." Millions of people use bike paths to get to work, to shop and to carry out commerce. They play a large role in tourism in some places. Then, there is the sale of bicycles themselves that trails encourage. How is that non-economic exactly?

Comments

[twk]

You need to make a correction. The TBD story says 11,000 per month. :^)

[Crickey7]

Great lead-in story.

[oboe]

re: Lance...

Meanwhile, http://www.cyclingnews.com/news/did-u-s-attorneys-disagree-on-whether-to-close-armstrong-u-s-postal-case

[charlie]

I don't think the Armstrong case would have had so much media traction if wasn't for Hamilton going on 60 minutes.

But that being said, I'd like to see that AUSA investigated for wasting goverments funds. Really -- sponsor fraud?

[Shawn]

That's Gray's only mention of biking? What about bike lanes? Something BikeShare members, bike owners and runners can all use?