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BLUMENAUER TO ANNOUNCE "BIKE-PARTISAN" CAMPAIGN TO SUPPORT BIKE-SHARING AT CONVENTIONS

***MEDIA ALERT***

BLUMENAUER TO ANNOUNCE "BIKE-PARTISAN" CAMPAIGN TO SUPPORT BIKE-SHARING AT CONVENTIONS

Representatives Pedal Bike-Sharing Challenge to Delegates and Convention-Goers: 10,000 Rides and 25,000 Miles!

WHO: - Rep. Earl Blumenauer (D-OR)
- Rep. James Oberstar (D-MN)
- Rep. Thomas Petri (R-WI)
- Rep. Zach Wamp (R-TN)

WHAT: Reps. Blumenauer, Oberstar, Petri and Wamp will host a news conference to announce a "bike-partisan" challenge at the Democratic and Republican National Conventions as part of a new bike sharing program.

Humana Inc. and the not-for-profit Bikes Belong are bringing 1,000 free bikes to the political conventions as part of Freewheelin, a bike sharing initiative whereby bikes and bike stations are set up throughout the city for people to use for short trips. Bike sharing is a good for the body, the environment and the wallet.

As part of Freewheelin, the Congressmen are challenging delegates and all convention-goers to get on a bike and, collectively, participate in 10,000 bicycle rides and tally up 25,000 miles.

WHEN: Wednesday, July 30, 2008
10:00 a.m.

WHERE: U.S. Capitol (West Lawn)

WHY: Amassing 25,000 miles of cycling would burn more than one million calories and significantly reduce the carbon footprint in Denver and Minneapolis-Saint Paul. The challenge will also play a vital role in helping alleviate traffic congestion and transportation costs for the duration of the conventions.
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Want to become a true outlaw? Ride a bicycle

By BEN FISTLER, Mason City

I have always had an affinity for all things counter-culture and rebellious.

I would watch James Dean in “Rebel Without a Cause” with awe. The way he could put on his red jacket and scare the “squares” with his lawlessness has always been intriguing to me.

I bought an old and loud car, tried to race around, but instead of scaring elderly women I was waved to and given the thumbs up by people on the street.

I like motorcycles, too. I liked to read and watch shows about gangs like the Hell’s Angels, seeing parents hide their kids’ eyes from the outlaws in odd clothes as they turn the towns upside down speeding through the streets on their evil machines. I even bought a motorcycle, a real loud Harley-Davidson with a crazy paint job and load exhaust.

Once again I failed in my rebellious ways. I was waved to even more, no matter how loud my bike was. I couldn’t even get any attention from the law. I never received a single traffic ticket for loud pipes or otherwise on that motorcycle. It’s locked up in my shed.

I thought my dreams of being a real, scary rebel were over until I really crossed the line: I started riding a bicycle.

Immediately I was treated with the kind of disrespect from the general public and law enforcement I had been searching for.

Just this morning my wife and I were out riding our bicycles and a respectable citizen yelled obscenities at us from his pickup truck while his young son sat beside him. Yes, I have made the passage into true outlaw land: I am a cyclist.

Since I started riding a bike, the money I’ve spent on fuel has dropped enormously. I’ve lost 25 pounds and made other crazed, outlaw friends, as well. We do wild things like ride our bikes to work and to our children’s sporting events, and wear odd clothes. Sometimes, we ride just for fun.

I heard about another wild man out on a bicycle who was cited for riding his bike on the sidewalk of our fair city and riding his bike without a light. True trouble indeed, riding his bicycle on the sidewalk. I applaud him for his audacity in such an unlawful act.

Earlier this summer, I was riding my evil machine with my gang through the streets and stopped at a red light, looked both ways and went ahead through that red light when I saw no cars were coming. A man sitting at the light on a Harley and full leather regalia cursed us “damned bikers” for our unlawfulness. If you don’t see the irony in that, you have missed my point.

Instead of cursing people on bicycles, thank them. For every bicycle on the road there is one less car. Besides the obvious environmental impact that brings — the shorter wait at the stop light, the slight drop in demand for oil — think about your children on their bicycles and the first time you learned to ride.

Think about the countless people whose health has been positively impacted by cycling.

You might even want to give us a thumbs-up.

But for goodness sake please just look out for us. After all, we don’t have loud exhaust pipes or scare your grandmother, do we?

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“Get On The $#@&ing Sidewalk!”

I am almost constantly amazed at the situations that cause people to blow a gasket at a cyclists. Here a woman who is trying to park her car finds [horrors] a cyclists in the road creating an "unsafe" situation by delaying her parking by maybe a second.

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10 cycling tips for surviving London's streets

[This has some great advice for this side of the pond as well. Remember the UK equivalent of a left turn is our right hand turn. Explanations are in the read more link.]

1. Always assume motorists will turn left without indicating
2. Watch out for other cyclists
3. Never undertake lorries and other HGVs
4. Keep your tyres pumped up
5. Report pot holes
6. Take the back roads
7. On narrow London streets, occupy the middle
8. Don't give the finger
9. Ignore the cycle lane if it looks dangerous
10. Get a helmet already

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Task Force releases recommendations for advancing Safe Routes to School

CHAPEL HILL, NC — The National Safe Routes to School Task Force has released its final report, Safe Routes to School: A Transportation Legacy - A National Strategy to Increase Safety and Physical Activity among American Youth. To access the full report, please visit <a href="http://www.saferoutesinfo.org/task_force">www.saferoutesinfo.org/task_force</a>;.

The Task Force was called for in law and established by the U.S. Department of Transportation to study and develop a strategy for advancing programs that enable and encourage children to walk and bicycle to school. Among the recommendations made by the Task Force are to effectively spend current Federal SRTS funds, initiate innovative solutions to advance SRTS and encourage support from SRTS stakeholders at the local, state and national level. The Task Force also recommends an increase in funding for the program at the Federal level.

“The demand for Safe Routes to School programs in communities across the US exceeds the available amount available,” said Lauren Marchetti, director of the National Center for Safe Routes to School and Task Force member. “In nearly every state that has awarded program funding so far, there were more applications than what the states could fund.”

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Move over SUV for the SUB

The apocalypse seems inevitable when you're stuck in summer traffic. Sitting in a long line of idling cars, shimmering in waves of heat rising off the pavement, you think about how every year it gets hotter, and the traffic gets worse and pumps tons more carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. You pull yourself up by the steering wheel to see ahead. Your thighs stick with sweat to the driver's seat. You are beyond frustration and feel an existential loathing closer to panic. You are part of the global warming problem. And now you're going to be late for work.

Three years ago, I opted out. Since then I've been commuting four miles to my Washington, D.C., office by bicycle just about every day, rain or shine, in an effort to help save the environment and myself along with it. Of course, there are obvious limitations to a bicycle. What about when you need to pick up groceries for a family of four? And unless your kid is Peter Pan, he can't just fly over traffic to get to school. Wouldn't it be great to commute and run those entire errands by bike?

Bikes designed to haul freight or passengers have been around for a long time. Picture the massive rickshaw or those bikes you see pulling a brightly colored trailer, two kids nestled in the back, helmets bobbing. It's not exactly handy, however, to pull a trailer behind your bike, and not many of us are about to dump our nimble bicycle for a heaving rickshaw.

Enter the sport utility bicycle, a long bike nearly as dexterous as a conventional bike but with a remarkable capacity for cargo, whether that means lots of stuff or people. I recently turned my mountain bike (a Specialized Rock Hopper) into an SUB with a frame extension called the FreeRadical (&amp;#36;490), made by Xtracycle, a small, quirky and ingenious company based in Oakland, Calif.
...

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With Gas Above $4 A Gallon, More And More People Are Trading In Four Wheels For Two

(CBS) &quot;Pedal Power&quot; is coming into its own these days, as Americans of all ages are coming to realize biking can be practical, economical, and good clean fun - or should we say, good GREEN fun? Our Cover Story takes us from California to Cambridge, and is reported by Serena Altschul:

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Edwards to bike 190 miles

Scenic Route: Edwards Bikes It From Hometown to Gateway

Carl Edwards doesn’t handle down time well. So this open week on the NASCAR Sprint Cup Series schedule affords the always-active Edwards time to fit in activities he normally wouldn’t.

Carl EdwardsAhead of Saturday night’s race at Gateway, he plans on riding his bike along the Katy Trail from his hometown in Columbia, Mo., to St. Louis, the headquarters for his car sponsor, Save-A-Lot.

Edwards is scheduled to finish off the estimated 190-mile, five-day trek at the Madison, Ill.-based track where he’ll begin preparations for the Missouri-Illinois Dodge Dealers 250.

He’ll be joined by his trainer, his motor coach driver Tom Giacchi and a few hometown friends on the ride that, according to Edwards, “Is organic. It doesn’t have an itinerary.”

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Too many traffic rules and the tragedy of the commons

There is a stretch of North Glebe Road, in Arlington, Virginia, that epitomizes the American approach to road safety. It’s a sloping curve, beginning on a four-lane divided highway and running down to Chain Bridge, on the Potomac River. Most drivers, absent a speed limit, would probably take the curve at 30 or 35 mph in good weather. But it has a 25-mph speed limit, vigorously enforced. As you approach the curve, a sign with flashing lights suggests slowing further, to 15 mph. A little later, another sign makes the same suggestion. Great! the neighborhood’s more cautious residents might think. »

We’re being protected. But I believe policies like this in fact make us all less safe.

I grew up in Great Britain, and over the past five years I’ve split my time between England and the United States. I’ve long found driving in the U.S. to be both annoying and boring. Annoying because of lots of unnecessary waits at stop signs and stoplights, and because of the need to obsess over speed when not waiting. Boring, scenery apart, because to avoid speeding tickets, I feel compelled to set the cruise control on long trips, driving at the same mind-numbing rate, regardless of road conditions.

Relatively recently—these things take a remarkably long time to sink in—I began to notice something else. Often when I return to the U.S. (usually to a suburban area in North Carolina’s Research Triangle), I see a fender bender or two within a few days. Yet I almost never see accidents in the U.K.

This surprised me, since the roads I drive here are generally wider, better marked, and less crowded than in the parts of England that I know best. And so I came to reflect on the mundane details of traffic-control policies in Great Britain and the United States. And I began to think that the American system of traffic control, with its many signs and stops, and with its specific rules tailored to every bend in the road, has had the unintended consequence of causing more accidents than it prevents. Paradoxically, almost every new sign put up in the U.S. probably makes drivers a little safer on the stretch of road it guards. But collectively, the forests of signs along American roadways, and the multitude of rules to look out for, are quite deadly.

Economists and ecologists sometimes speak of the “tragedy of the commons”—the way rational individual actions can collectively reduce the common good when resources are limited. How this applies to traffic safety may not be obvious. It’s easy to understand that although it pays the selfish herdsman to add one more sheep to common grazing land, the result may be overgrazing, and less for everyone. But what is the limited resource, the commons, in the case of driving? It’s attention. Attending to a sign competes with attending to the road. The more you look for signs, for police, and at your speedometer, the less attentive you will be to traffic conditions. The limits on attention are much more severe than most people imagine. And it takes only a momentary lapse, at the wrong time, to cause a serious accident.

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