Jack Evans is the latest DC politician to have his bikes stolen (not nearly as big a story as when Fenty's were). "Lt. John Hedgecock of PSA 206 giving a Public Safety and Police Report. Hedgecock warned that that residential burglaries have risen 88%. “We need your help,” he said, and asked residents to report anything unusual they might see in their neighborhoods. Hedgecock also said that bike thieves were stealing bicycles and replacing them with other bicycles. Later, Jack Evans shared that two of his own bikes were stolen from his car last week."
What's up with stealing a bicycle and replacing it with another? What are they cowbirds? [I know, they ride up on a junky one and ride away on the better one. So the first bike is actually just abandoned. But for so long I've wanted to make an ornithology joke]
Below, DC's bike ambassador stands next to the 15th Street cycletrack asking pedestrians not to walk in it. A.K.A doing someone else's job.
If you guessed that the cyclist who attacked a schoolboy had something thrown at him, it looks like you're correct.
The owner of this bike is something of a hero. And Richard Layman is right - it's a sign that we need more bike parking and of diverse types.
Pleasonton, CA has smart intersections that use radar to detect cyclists and cars. "When the sensor detects a bicycle, it triggers the timing of traffic lights one way, and when it detects only cars, it triggers a different timing scheme. The better pacing of green lights provides a safer crossing, says Pleasanton Senior Transportation Engineer Joshua Pack. The city tested its first sensor in January 2010; six additional intersections should have the sensors by the end of November, Pack says."
Alex Baca at City Paper went to the Build it and they will Ride presentation at the Building Museum and reports that future cycling infrastructure in DC is going to be more likely to take space from drivers than in the past. Many bike lanes, up to now, have been built by taken a wide single lane and splitting it into a bike lane and all-traffic lane. "The next step for safe, dedicated bicycle infrastructure in D.C. will be more intrusive than simply throwing down some paint."
Meanwhile, Harry Jaffe at the Examiner is a believer in CaBi. "I thought the rent-a-bikes were goofy and the program was doomed to failure. How wrong I was. The system is a raging success." But he includes some bad news that I missed 'Gray reduced the bike and pedestrian budget by about 30 percent. "We can still do a lot of work for pedestrians and bicyclists," Sebastian says.'
A nice profile of a retiring bike messenger. "The twilight of the city’s once booming courier business is ironic and a little sad, because it comes amid a huge bicycle renaissance....Keefe joined the bike messenger scrum in its pre-fax, pre-e-mail glory days, when there were about 400 of them downtown, and they could easily pull down $100 for a couple hours’ work. (Today, they might not even break $75 in a 10-hour day.)...Keefe was a Vietnam War veteran who was studying physics while working on satellite projects for NASA." What is is with satellites and biking?
With increased cycling, there is concern with increased competition for space (Frankly I don't think it's true. 75-80% of my commute is spent on bike lanes, trails, shoulders or riding in the pulses between cars on quieter streets. Whereas when I drive, I'm always mixing it up with other drivers). 'Farrell has this take on the problem: "Beyond enforcement, beyond education, which, as important as those two things are, there's a long-term need to rebuild and restructure the infrastructure that we have."'
U-MD aerospace engineering students are trying to build a flying bicycle. Literally. But they call it a human powered helicopter. This is how I plan to commute in 2021, and I will blow every stop sign when I do. On a serious note, I'm surprised they have the cyclist in the recumbent position. I'd think you'd get more power standing, but the video says they studied that to get the ideal position. Maybe they're trying to keep it closer to the ground for more ground effect.
How to buy a bike advice in the Post. BTW, Complete Bike Maintenance by Fred Milson, which I'm currently perusing has some good bike shopping advice too. This weekend, I'm going to try some of the repairs and so we'll see how idiot-proof it is.
Tales from the sharrows has an interesting post on facilities and commuting. His workplace has the ideal set-up for bike commuters (indoor, secure bike parking; a secure locker room with showers; the bike commuter benefit and a CaBi station) yet few people bike commute. I wonder how much each of those items induces bike commuting. People always tell me they'd love to bike commute, but there's no shower. Are they all liars?
Laurel's new bike lanes are finished. "City Engineer Bryon White announced April 14 the completion of bikeways on Fourth and Fifth streets that connect Riverfront Park in historic Laurel to Gude Lake Park on the south side of Route 198....He said the next step in the bikeway master plan will begin this summer with road markings and signs from the Laurel Municipal Center to Montrose Avenue through West and Eighth streets. This bikeway will connect with the new ones on Fourth and Fifth streets."
DDOT is repaving East Capitol between Lincoln Park and RFK. Yesterday I noticed the prep lines for the street marking and it appears they're extending the bike lanes east from 17th to 19th. Delicious, low-hanging fruit.
BikeArlington has teamed up with goDCgo to expand the forum to also include Washington DC. Members will now see a few new logos on the site and some minor wording changes to the forum headers.
The forum has grown into a useful tool with an online community of cyclists who come together to discuss all topics related to biking. Everything from recommendations on gear and equipment, to trail detours due to scheduled maintenance or snow has been fair game for discussion.
Maillot Jaune: Apple applied for a patent that describes Apple's vision for using the iPhone, iPod, or other
electronic device as an interface for a multi-feature bicycle computer.
Podium - Someone bought an $8000 bike that once belonged to Floyd Landis for $5. It had been found on the side of the interstate in Kentucky.
Podium - Levi Leipheimer won the race that Lance Armstrong pulled out of. He won, despite crashing, and beat Lance's record. Next goal for Levi: Eight straight Tour de France victories.
Maillot Vert: A cyclist going too fast down a bridge ATL in Clearwater, FL, with a passenger on the handlebar - at night - hit and killed a pedestrian.
Maillot a
Pois Rouge: Our mayoral candidates are better than Toronto's. One candidate said of cyclists that in the end he feels that it is "their fault" for being hit. And slgihtly related another round of Transportation recissions are coming and these may hit bike/ped funding especially hard.
Maillot Blanc: A town in England turned off it's traffic lights, and the intersections became faster and safer. Cyclists don't cause traffic, traffic lights do.
Lanterne Rouge: Even the conservative Denver Post thinks Dan Maes of "bike sharing is a U.N. Conspiracy" is crazy. "This man must not be governor." they write.
And even though I'm out of entries: The railroad trestle featured on the cover of the R.E.M. album* "Murmur" might become part of a rails to trails project - if it can be saved.
*For the young out there, albums were like CDs** except that they were bigger, would break and/or scratch if you looked at them funny, and had to flipped half way.
** For the very young, CDs were like DVDs but they only had music on them.
Ride the City expanded their iPhone app from just covering NYC to covering several cities including DC. Ride the City is bike mapping program designed for cyclists.
"Women of normal body weight can certainly benefit from biking," she
noted. "But specifically for overweight and obese premenopausal women,
bicycling just two to three hours per week makes them 46 percent less
likely to gain more than 5 percent of their initial body weight over the
long run."
Some NYC garages are charging cyclists $200 a month to park their bike (well they would, but none will pay that). Via GGW.
As we passed the curved glass of the Frank Gehry-designed IAC building
and entered Hudson River Park, Alex noted that this used to be a "seedy
landfill," not gardens overflowing with flowers and gazebos where you
can rest in the shade.
Staring at a 1951 police cruiser in mint condition, I realized that this
was one of those unique New York moments one stumbles upon in a city
brimming with nonstop entertainment. As Greg noted, "We never would have
found this unless we were biking."
A London article on bait bikes. I don't care for bike thieves, but leaving unlocked bikes as bait bikes does make me uncomfortable (though taking an unlocked bike is still stealing). Via GGW.
Adam Voiland has twoposts on Lost Cyclist the story of Frank Lenz
If it wasn't the valuables from his bike his killers wanted, then it's
possible he died simply because of the strangeness of his chosen mode of
transportation. According to one account, the natives in the region
were arguing about whether the interloper was a man or a devil. To
resolve the question, one of them shot him repeatedly to see if hew
would die, and he did.
They should have weighed him to see if he weighed as much as a duck.
CommuterPageBlog has more information about Arlington's trail counting technology and the results. The spike is Bike to Work Day and the lowest days all coincide with bad weather.
For the month of May there were 40,499 bicycle trips past this section
of the Custis Trail and 13,322 pedestrian trips.
I can't wait to see year to year data. But then, I'm something of a nerd.
The increased use of high-tech sensors
supplements a push for expanded counts by the National Bicycle and
Pedestrian Documentation Project, which this September is overseeing
censuses in about 150 cities, including Kansas City, San Francisco and
New York City, Michael Jones says.
Jones, a planner and principal with the Portland,
Ore.-based Alta Planning and Design, says he founded the count in 2004
after growing frustrated by the lack of consistently collected
pedestrian and bicycle use data. He says about 10 groups conducted
counts that first year.
Under the project's census, trained volunteers
record the direction of each passing biker and pedestrian for two hours
each on a weekday and weekend day in multiple locations, and then use
around-the-clock tallies from automated devices placed on other nearby
trails and roads to account for seasonal and daily weather variations,
Jones says. He says it's easy to find volunteers to monitor riders on
sunny days, but hard to find people willing to stand in the rain at
night, even though cyclists are still out.
"It's a great relief to have robots out there
counting … rain or shine," Patton says
Klein is selling an urban lifestyle that depends less than ever on cars
and more on trains, buses, bicycles and walking. He is following the
credo of like-minded transportation planners in Portland, Seattle and
New York that public transit can revive ailing cities.
Klein is expanding the city's red, dollar-a-ride Circulator bus
system beyond tourist destinations and into more neighborhoods. He's
promoting car sharing and, with Tregoning's office, said he hopes to
build on a bike-sharing pilot program with 1,000 new bicycles and 100
stations.
Klein drives his own Smart Car two or three times a week, calling the
silver two-seater a "lazy asset." He prefers to walk the eight blocks
to the office from his condo in Columbia Heights or ride one of his
five bikes, which include a Vespa scooter.
A Vespa Scooter is a bike?
Lon Anderson of AAA doesn't like the new sheriff.
Among his beefs with Klein are higher parking meter rates, extending
meter enforcement to Saturdays and evenings and a new lane along a
portion of 15th Street NW devoted to bicyclists.
So he doesn't like paying to use public space or sharing space with cyclists. Why do cyclists always get stuck with the "sense of entitlement" label?
About the website
A new, more transparent Web site was launched Wednesday, with budgets
and schedules for every road, bridge and transit project, including
those that veer off schedule, along with explanations why. There's a
YouTube primer on how to pay the new, high-tech parking meters on U
Street, featuring Klein himself.
The website is a big improvement (even if all my links don't work anymore. Where are the bike laws?). You can check out the Bicycle Programs page here. The DDOT projects page isn't up yet as of the time of this writing, but if they really keep it up to date that would be fantastic; if not it can look bad. Arlington doesn't always do a great job of keeping CapTrack up to date, and that doesn't look good - even though I'd rather have staff actually building and maintaining facilities than updating a web database. The DDOT website is cleaner and I like it. Now if only the rest of dc.gov can follow suit.
At the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas this month, Sanyo, the Japanese electronics maker and a major producer of car batteries, showed off a sleek, lightweight e-bike called the Eneloop Hybrid Bicycle.
The
Eneloop, priced at $2,300, came to stores in the United States late
last year. It operates like any normal bike and, save for the black lithium-ion
battery strapped to the frame beneath the seat, looks exactly like one
as well. But when you press a button on the left handlebar, a 250-watt
motor gently kicks in, providing about twice the power as your own
pedaling — and making you feel like Lance Armstrong on even the steepest slopes.
Q. The Tour de Georgia, billed as North America's premier
cycling event, has been canceled two straight years. What does this say
about the state of cycling? (Dan O'Neil; Carmel, Ind.)
A. I don't know what it says about the state of cycling, but it
tells me the state of Georgia doesn't want to clog its roads with
bicyclists and discarded bottles of water for a full week.
Already know as the “tweeting police
department” they have created a way for owners to report stolen bikes so that
local security and followers can keep their eyes out for the missing
two-wheelers.
A video on biking in Paris (via GGW). Does it help to know that the French don't respect bike lanes either? I didn't think so. Reminds me of this movie.
A couple of bike sharing entrepreneurs went from knowing nothing about the business to writing software for the market.
UCLA student cyclists are dissatisfied with the rate at which the bike plan is being implemented.
Bikes Belong (the bicycle retailers org) and New Belgium Brewing gave Adventure Cycling Association grants to support the organization’s work to establish an official United States Bicycle
Route System (USBRS)
With [Miniwiz's] wind charger, you can hook it up to the handle-bars of your
bike... to capture the breeze, which
then powers your cellphone's battery.
It now is legal in California to ride a bicycle without a seat.
However, this doesn't mean you can rip the saddle off the post and
throw it away. Seatless bikes must have been made that way. And, yes,
there are such animals.
LAB has more statistics from the National Household Travel Survey
Half of all trips are three miles or less, but fewer than 2 percent of
those trips are made by bicycle, while 72 percent of them are driven.
Private vehicles like cars, pick-up trucks, and SUVs, account for 60 percent of trips of a mile or less.
Among the allegations, he said, were that the train operator took his
eyes off the track in the crucial seconds before the accident and had
no satisfactory explanation for his actions. In addition, Miller said,
the plaintiffs were prepared to show that MTA operators did not report
the sighting of the boys on the tracks and that the agency had no
procedure for notifying operators to take added precautions when trains
were being operated on alternate tracks.
While Maryland law generally precludes plaintiffs whose negligence
contributes to their injury from collecting damages, Miller said that
doctrine was trumped by a provision in the law holding the party with
the "last clear chance" to prevent an accident responsible. He said
that in such cases, plaintiffs have to show the defendant had a period
of time in which to avert the accident.
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