Share the Road - Buses and Bicycles

Share the Road - Buses and Bicycles from Chicago Bicycle Program on Vimeo.

The Chicago Department of Transportation and the Chicago Transit Authority partnered to create this training video for bus operators and bicyclists on how to safely share the road. With an overall theme of shared responsibility, the program provides guidelines for avoiding crashes at key conflict points such as intersections and service stops. CTA is using the video to train bus operators, and CDOT urges all Chicago cyclists to view the program and practice safe cycling. This project was funded in part with a grant from the Illinois Department of Transportation, Division of Traffic Safety.
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Low-tech Magazine - Cars: out of the way

Low-tech Magazine refuses to assume that every problem has a high-tech solution. A simple, sensible, but nevertheless controversial message; high-tech has become the idol of our society.

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The solution

While all these ideas are substantially better than many other inventions that are being designed these days (carbon capture technology, algal fuel and nanotech batteries spring to mind) this is not the way to go.

Cloverleaf found at plan59.comThe problem is not that there is a lack of good roads - enough of these exist to bike from here to Mars and beyond. The main problem is that these are occupied by automobiles that are not only dangerous but also very inefficient both in terms of energy use and floor space.

We don't need any new infrastructure, what we need is to clear the existing infrastructure of inefficient vehicles and replace them with efficient ones. In other words: give all streets, highways, cloverleaves and motorways exclusively to bicycles and all other human powered wheeled vehicles. Get rid of cars. Why make things so complicated if the solution is so simple?
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Loch Raven biking debate shifts into high gear

A meeting this week at Baltimore’s City Hall worked to ease tensions between city officials and bicyclists over trail restrictions around Loch Raven Reservoir.

“It was a productive meeting,” said Penny Troutner, owner of Light Street Cycles in Federal Hill and a cycling enthusiast at Loch Raven.

Troutner and other representatives of the biking community met with Mayor Sheila Dixon and other officials Dec. 14 and vowed to work toward revamping a 1998 agreement on trail usage — which bikers say only recently has been enforced.

“The problem is … that there is a sudden enforcement of a policy from 10 years ago,” said Jim Miller, of Anneslie, noting that the city has been more insistent in recent weeks that bikers stick to “two-track” fire roads — those trails large enough for four-wheel vehicles.
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Risky cycling rarely to blame for bike accidents, study finds

A tiny proportion of accidents involving cyclists are caused by riders jumping red lights or stop signs, or failing to wear high-visibility clothing and use lights, a government-commissioned study has discovered.

The findings appear to contradict a spate of recent reports speculating that risky behaviour by riders, such as listening to music players while cycling, could be behind a near 20% rise in cyclist deaths and serious injuries in the second quarter of this year.

The study, carried out for the Department for Transport, found that in 2% of cases where cyclists were seriously injured in collisions with other road users police said that the rider disobeying a stop sign or traffic light was a likely contributing factor. Wearing dark clothing at night was seen as a potential cause in about 2.5% of cases, and failure to use lights was mentioned 2% of the time.

The figures were slightly higher when the cyclist was killed, but in such cases only the driver's account is available.

The data, which was analysed by the Transport Research Laboratory (TRL), showed that more than a quarter of all cycling deaths in 2005-07 happened when a vehicle ran into the rear of a bike. This rose to more than one-third in rural areas and to 40% in collisions that took place away from junctions.
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The cyclists' lobby group CTC said the report showed that the government needed to focus more on driver behaviour rather than on issues such as cyclists wearing helmets...

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Bike Symphony of Lights - December 30, 2009

Please pass the word on this event to your clubs and let’s see if we can get a great turnout of our bicyclists – and family’s - to celebrate the Holidays at Symphony Woods. Thanks to Trevor Miller who organized and got permission for this bike event. Note that proceeds go to Howard County General Hospital and cost for cars is $20 so this is also a cost effective way to see the Lights.

More Info/Directions at: <a href="http://www.hcgh.org/content/symphonyoflights.htm">http://www.hcgh.org/content/symphonyoflights.htm</a>;

Howard County’s Symphony of Lights BY BICYCLE!!!!!

When: Wednesday, December 30th from 4 PM until 6 PM

Where: You can start at the gate or meet at the Savage Ram’s Head Tavern at 3:45 for a trail/road ride to the event!

Details: To ride the 1.7 mile route you must sign a waiver and the cost is $5 per person. All ages are welcome! Please bring your training wheels, trail a bikes, and trailers! This is a family event!
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An idea with legs

'Not anti-car, just pro-choice'

A quarter of households in Britain – more in the larger cities, and a majority in some inner cities – live without a car. Imagine how quality of life would improve for cyclists and everyone else if traffic were removed from areas where people could practically choose to live without cars. Does this sound unrealistic, utopian? Did you know many European cities are already doing it?

Vauban in Germany is one of the largest car-free neighbourhoods in Europe, home to more than 5,000 people. If you live in the district, you are required to confirm once a year that you do not own a car – or, if you do own one, you must buy a space in a multi-storey car park on the edge of the district. One space was initially provided for every two households, but car ownership has fallen over time, and many of these spaces are now empty.

Vehicles are allowed down the residential streets at walking pace to pick up and deliver, but not to park. In practice, vehicles are rarely seen moving here. It has been taken over by kids as young as four or five, playing, skating and unicycling without direct supervision. The adults, too, tend to socialise outdoors far more than they would on conventional streets open to traffic (behaviour that's echoed in the UK, too).

Most of the European car-free areas are smaller and &quot;purer&quot; than Vauban: vehicles are physically prevented from entering the streets where people live. Exceptions are made for emergency vehicles and removals vans but not for normal deliveries, which are made on foot, trolley or cycle trailer. A few peripheral parking spaces are available to buy (usually around one space for every five homes) and a few are reserved for car club vehicles. In all the examples I have studied, cycling is a vital means of transport.

Car-free areas of this kind, with anything from a couple of hundred to more than a thousand residents, exist in Amsterdam, Vienna, Cologne, Hamburg and Nuremberg, among others. There is even a small one in Edinburgh.

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The Mobile Wrench .com

A new service for Northern Maryland and Southern Pennsylvania cyclists, the Mobile Wrench is here to provide the ultimate in personal and professional bicycle service at your home or office, at a price you can't beat!

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Look how far we have come in 72 years

&quot;If the sociologist wrinkles his brow over the why of this new interest in pushing the pedal instead of the accelerator, his furrows are as nothing compared to those of park and safety commissioners.

In Europe, where bicycles are economically important as a means of transportation, special cycle lanes have long been in use. In the Victorian heyday of the American bike, the &quot;high-wheeler&quot; or &quot;safety&quot; could turn down any lane at no greater risk than frightening a horse and arousing the blasphemy of its driver.

But America's billion-dollar highways, many of them barely wide enough to accommodate two lanes of two-ton machines hurtling at 40 to 60 mph in either direction, are death traps to the cyclists. Pedestrians don't want bicycles on the sidewalks; they are barred in many parks.

Where then, ask 4 or 5 million young Americans, can we ride? Build cycle paths of gravel or rolled-grass on the shoulders of highways, say the growing number of adult cyclists. We bought our children bicycles, say parents, because riding is a healthful sport. But approximately 700 cyclists were killed by automobiles in 1937, 300 of them between the ages of 5 and 14. More than 35,000 riders were injured in 1937. Construct bicycle paths in public parks!

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Walkscore innovators turn to improving public transportation

Front Seat, the civic software company responsible for the massively popular Walkscore service, launched a new project today aimed at encouraging public transportation ridership. The project makes transit agency schedule data available, accessible, and open to developers so they can create applications to make it easier to ride. CityGoRound.org is a new portal where you can find the many applications developers have created to ease and increase the convenience of riding transit. Their mission, outlined on a newly launched site today, is very simple:

Our mission is to help make public transit more convenient. For example, an app that lets you know when your bus will arrive is way better than standing outside waiting for 20 minutes. If we can make public transit more convenient, more people will ride public transit. More people riding public transit equals less driving. Less driving equals a healthier planet.

To accomplish that, they’re doing three things: cataloging the hundreds of smartphone/web applications people have created to make riding public transit easier, putting pressure on agencies across the country that have not released their public data, and raising awareness of the need for government agencies to open up their data.

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