How nice would it be to have this in CDA?

What Is Capital Bikeshare?

Capital Bikeshare puts over 1,200 bicycles at your fingertips. You can choose any of the 140 stations across Washington, D.C. and Arlington, VA and return it to any station near your destination. Check out a bike for your trip to work, Metro, run errands, go shopping, or visit friends and family. Join Capital Bikeshare for 24 hours, 3 days, 30 days, or a year, and have access to our fleet of bikes 24 hours a day, 365 days a year. The first 30 minutes of each trip are free. Each additional 30 minutes incurs an additional fee.

Happy Bike to Work Month!

Safe Riding Video....this is in New Zealand they ride on the opposite side of the road. Not ok here!

A Picture is Worth a Thousand Words

Pure Awesomeness

Bicycle-Safety Tips

Warm weather is just around the corner, and soon it will be time to dust off those bicycles. Here are some tips for safe riding:


Bicycle-Safety Tips

• Always use hand signals when turning at intersections. There's nothing motorists pay more attention to than hand signals from bicyclists.
• Leaving your bike out in the ice and cold all winter may cause serious damage. But it makes a nice subject for the cover illustration of a short-fiction quarterly.
• Always wear a helmet. If this makes you uncomfortable, think of the helmet as a crown and yourself as King Dorko.
• Placing your feet firmly on the pedals of the bike will help reduce the "Wheee" sound emitted from your mouth while going downhill.
• Insist on a bicycle made of solid matter. Liquid and vapor bikes are a passing fancy; argon frames are particularly shoddy.
• Taking your bike in for a professional tune-up is a great way to waste $25.
• Be sure to wear your seatbelt, even if just biking down to the corner store.
• Fat-bottomed girls may be riding today, so look out for those beauties, oh, yeah.
• Visibility is crucial when biking. Ride with a lit highway flare in each hand.
• Every three to four weeks, lightly oil the chain. Then dip it in flour and fry it for a real taste treat.
• As soon as you buy a bike, talk to your friends about how great Shimano crank sets and STX hubs are.
• Does your city have adequate bike paths? If not, consider complaining about it to your local government for the next 40 years.
• If rich, spoiled Francis Buxton steals your bike, go on a hilarious and heartwarming journey through the American Southwest to get it back.
• Bike safety can never be stressed enough. If you doubt this, try stressing it as much as you possibly can. It won't be enough–guaranteed.

Please Watch This Video...It may Save Your Life!

Another reason to ride bikes!
Please take the time to watch this video...it is an report on the dangers of old car tires...that you thought were new!

I Love It!

A "Green" Bike

The Crisis in American Walking

A few years ago, at a highway safety conference in Savannah, Ga., I drifted into a conference room where a sign told me a “Pedestrian Safety” panel was being held.

The speaker was Michael Ronkin, a French-born, Swiss-raised, Oregon-based transportation planner whose firm, as his website notes, “specializes in creating walkable and bikeable streets.” Ronkin began with a simple observation that has stayed with me since. Taking stock of the event—one of the few focused on walking, which gets scant attention at traffic safety conferences—he wondered about that inescapable word: pedestrian. If we were to find ourselves out hiking on a forest trail and spied someone approaching at a distance, he wanted to know, would we think to ourselves, “Here comes a pedestrian”?

Of course we wouldn’t. That approaching figure would simply be a person. Pedestrian is a word born from opposition to other modes of travel; the Latin pedester, on foot, gained currency by its semantic tension with equester, on horse. But there is an implied—indeed, synonymous—pejorative. This dates from Ancient Greece. As the Oxford English Dictionary notes, the Greek πεζός meant “prosaic, plain, commonplace, uninspired (sometimes contrasted with the winged flight of Pegasus).” Or, in the Latin, pedester could refer to foot soldiers (e.g, peons), “rather than cavalry.”

Click here for the entire article

The Man Who Lived On His Bike

One mile on a bike is a $.42 economic gain to society, one mile driving is a $.20 loss

 

Photo by Mikael Colville-Andersen.

Copenhagen, the bicycle-friendliest place on the planet, publishes a biannual Bicycle Account, and buried in its pages is a rather astonishing fact, reports Andy Clarke, president of the league of American Bicyclists:

“When all these factors are added together the net social gain is DKK 1.22 per cycled kilometer. For purposes of comparison there is a net social loss of DKK 0.69 per kilometer driven by car.” 1.22 Danish crowns is about 25 cents and a kilometer is 6/10 of a mile, so we are talking about a net economic gain to society of 42 cents for every bicycle mile traveled. That’s a good number to have in your back pocket.

And what are all the “social gains” that bicycling grants the city of Copenhagen?

A number of factors are included in the equation such as transport costs, security, comfort, branding/tourism, transport times and health.

Considering that both sitting and car exhaust kill you, it’s a safe bet a lot of the net benefit to society is simply that cycling makes you less of a drag on health insurance and the safety net.

Since the total health benefit of Copenhagen residents’ healthy cycling habits is DKK 5.51 per km, the annual benefit is worth the equivalent of approx. DKK 2.0 billion.

Which means that Copenhagen, a city of 1.2 million people, saves $357 million a year on health costs because something like 80 percent of its population commutes by bicycle, even in winter. That’s $300 per person per year. Clearly, the reason the new Danish minister of the interior said she’d “rather invest in cycle tracks than freeways,” is that only one of those has a positive return.

From the Netherlands to America

From the Netherlands to America: Translating the World's Best Bikeway Designs from Streetfilms on Vimeo.

Good message....

Excellent Video on Bike Theft....
Remember.....thieves won't be caught if you don't report them.
Also....it was interesting to note that it took 9 minutes to cut through the tougher U-shaped locks.
http://video.nytimes.com/video/2012/03/12/opinion/100000001423494/bike-thief.html

Cher the Road

Cher the Road....because bikes are out there all the time....not only when it's Sonny ;)

Our poll asking what kind of cyclist you are has closed and the results are:

#1 I have a bike for every occasion                   44%
#2 I don't know....as long as it has wheels         27%
#3 Road Bikes and Spandex all the way!          16%
#4 I believe bikes are for mountains                  11%

Participate in our new poll...Which type of bicycle facility would you prefer?

Bikes Belong

Would you prefer to live in a community where you had to drive everywhere for everything, or would you prefer to live in a community where you could walk, ride a bicycle, take public transportation, or drive to get to where you want to go?
This question is at the heart of the current debate over how transportation funds will be spent over the next few years. The U.S. House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee voted on February 2 to eliminate funding for nonmotorized transportation (e.g., bike paths and sidewalks) from the federal transportation bill working its way through Congress. The “wildly imbalanced transportation bill” also imperils federal support for public transportation systems.

Click here for the complete article

BIKE TO WORK WEEK IS COMING....GET INVOLVED!

The Ped/Bike Workshop with the Coeur d’Alene Mayor and City Council will be on Thursday, February 23rd in the Old City Council Chambers at City Hall. (710 Mullan Ave., CdA) It’s being held at noon.

This is a great opportunity to show our City Leaders just how important Ped/Bike infrastructure is to our community. So walk, pedal, or roll to this workshop and come be a part!!!

Not Every City Can Be the Most Bicycle-Friendly

A couple of weeks ago, Chicago transportation commissioner Gabe Klein mentioned to us that Mayor Rahm Emanuel had set a goal for his hometown to become the bike-friendliest city in America. This was right around the time Nate Berg reported on Long Beach, California, which is awkwardly planning to do the same.

A quick Internet search reveals that this is more than just a two-town contest. Portland, Oregon, and Minneapolis didn’t even realize other cities seriously thought they were in the running. Davis, California, already has the official motto on lock-down as “most bicycle friendly town in the world” (not to mention the most bicycle-friendly municipal logo). Boston is aiming for the slightly less measurable promise of becoming “the leading bike-friendly city.” Meanwhile, New Orleans also has its eye on the mantle. As do bike advocates in Buffalo, New York, Columbus, Ohio and Flagstaff, Arizona.

This is a great development for the U.S. bike scene. Nothing motivates Americans (and our elected officials) quite like the race to appear in a magazine as the “best” at something. Unfortunately, we can’t all be superlative at the exact same thing at the same time. And so as a public service to the collective imaginations of these and other cities out there, we thought we’d propose a couple of civic distinctions they could aspire to instead. In a world where it will hopefully soon no longer be so notable to befriend cyclists, who wants to fight for these titles?

1. Most Aging Baby-Boomer Friendly City in America. We imagine this would be a place where the public transit is extensive, the walkable one-bedroom housing is ample, the hospitals are superb and no one ever has to shovel the sidewalk.

2. Least Car-Friendly City. It’s one thing to embrace bikes. But are you willing to go all the way and shun cars? Jack up your meter rates, put all your downtown parking garages to more productive use and then accept the political fallout from publicly stating that your city is not meant for cars.

3. Most Solo-Friendly City. More and more Americans are living alone, and those who do don’t want to live in a place where people will look at them funny. In this city, single women don’t fear walking alone at night, there are more Trader Joe's than Costcos, and indoor stroller bans are socially acceptable.

4. Most Transparent City. This town would set national records for the fastest turn-around on FOIA requests, the deepest open-data website and the toughest protections for public access to government business.

5. Least Wasteful City. This title could be awarded to the town that produces the least trash per capita, with bonus points for the maximum use of innovative recycling.

6. Most Edible City. This would be the urban center that produces the largest share of its own food (and has the friendliest laws for doing so) – from rooftop gardens to public fruit trees to backyard chicken farms and bee hives.

7. America’s Best Prepared City for Climate Change. Obviously, the people in this city would first need to admit that climate change exists. Then they would invest actual resources and planning to make sure vulnerable infrastructure and local communities can withstand oddball weather, rising sea levels and strange migrating insects.

8. Least Unequal City. This motto would probably work better on a bumper sticker than “Most Equal City,” which we suspect would confuse folks. This is where the gulf between the highest and lowest earners (and the neighborhoods in which they live) is the smallest. It also may be where 100 percent of the people are in the 99 percent.

9. Hardest City in America To Find and Have a Smoke. We wanted to suggest a public-health honor, but "least obese city" seemed tacky. So this town is one where smokers are least welcome in public places, and where cigarettes are the most expensive to buy where you can find them.

10. America’s Safest City to Cross a Street on Foot. More than just a reflection of walkability, this superlative would also factor in degrees of locally specific aggressive driving behavior and relative ratios of car-on-pedestrian collisions.

Aspiring cities are invited to steal any of these (just please don't all reach for the same one).

by Emily Badger


Emily Badger is a contributing writer to The Atlantic Cities. She also writes for Miller-McCune, and her work has appeared in GOOD, The Christian Science Monitor, and The New York Times. She lives in Washington, D.C. All posts »

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