Category: Biking Elsewhere

Continue reading “Study of the Day: Biking to Work Could Save 1,100 Midwesterners”

[B’ Spokes: Just some highlights:]
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By Martin Austermuhle
Can you legislate a culture shift, using the law to change the way drivers perceive cyclists?
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Opponents of the law claim that it would unfairly put cyclists in a protected class offered to few other groups. But according to the law’s supporters, that’s the point. Councilmember Tommy Wells (D-Ward 6) said that cyclists regularly face vehicular hostility on the District’s roads, criminal charges are rarely sought when accidents do happen and civil penalties are too low to encourage lawsuits as a means of seeking justice.
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"Until injuries to bicyclists and pedestrians are taken seriously by MPD and drivers are held accountable, the streets are not safe for our children, our husbands, our sisters," Rowan said in her testimony.
As a means to make police better understand the challenges faced by cyclists, Rowan proposed that they become cyclists themselves.
"I’d like to see every police officer spend three months on a bicycle…because they’re going to come back and say, ‘Oh my God, this is really terrible,’" she said.
Continue reading “D.C. Advocates Seek Cultural Shift in View of Cyclists”

Study Shows Physical Activity Can Reduce the Effects of a Genetic Predisposition for Obesity
By Denise Mann – Web MD
Nov. 2, 2011 — Obesity may be in your genes, but that is no excuse not to exercise.
In fact, physical activity can reduce the effects of the ‘fat mass and obesity-associated’ (FTO) or obesity gene in adults.
Previous research has shown that about 74% of all people in the U.S. with European ancestry have a genetic variation associated with the FTO gene that can lead to weight gain that raises the risk for becoming obese.
According to the study, the obesity-causing effects of the obesity gene are weakened by 30% when adults are physically active.
The study is published in PLoS Medicine.
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Continue reading “Exercise Can Overpower the ‘Obesity Gene’”

by NANCY SHUTE – NPR
What would you say to a cheap, easy way to stay slim, one that would help avoid serious illness and early death? How about if it made your neighbors healthier, too? It could be as simple as biking to the store.
Researchers at the University of Wisconsin were wondering if getting people out of their cars just a wee bit would create measurable improvements in health. health. So they gathered up data sets on obesity, health effects of pollution, and air pollution caused by automobiles in 11 Midwestern cities, and did a mashup.
They found that if the Midwesterners ran half of their short-distance errands by bike rather than by car, 1,100 deaths would be avoided each year, and $7 billion would be saved in reduced health-care costs. The trips were 2.5 miles one way; less than a 25-minute bike ride, the researchers figure.
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Continue reading “Secret To A Long, Healthy Life: Bike To The Store”

by tony_farrelly
Commuting by car or public transport is bad for your health, that’s the not very shocking conclusion of a Swedish public health survey in to the commuting habits of 21,000 people which has been published in the journal BMC Public Health
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https://road.cc/content/news/47210-cycle-commuters-healthier-those-drive-or-take-bus-say-health-researchers

[B’Spokes: Let me pull this out for emphases: "stakeholders should or must be consulted due to ethical, legal or social obligations."]
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By Michael Hooper
Over the past two years, a growing number of voices have criticized the role of public participation in urban planning. These voices include Andrés Duany, the architect and New Urbanist, who has decried America’s “absolute orgy of public process.1 They also include Tom Campanella, who argues in essays in Planning magazine and the journal Places that, “it’s a fool’s errand to rely upon citizens to guide the planning process.”2, 3 A position justified, Campanella claims, because, “most folks lack the knowledge to make intelligent decisions about the future of our cities.” Criticism of participation is not new, but the increasingly strident tone of anti-participation sentiment should worry citizens and policy makers alike. In fact, there are good reasons to encourage participation in public processes, perhaps now more than ever.
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In their comments on participation as process, critics seldom mention the well-established instrumental benefits of participation. These are the benefits of participation that go beyond the idea that stakeholders should or must be consulted due to ethical, legal or social obligations. While there are powerful arguments for participation on these terms, there is also strong evidence that participation actually improves project outcomes and the likelihood of project success. These outcome-oriented aspects of participation are seldom mentioned by critics and so are worth reiterating. Before doing so, it should be noted that participation is also important as an outcome in its own right. Participation not only has the potential to improve project outcomes, but is itself an outcome. Participation has been shown to have positive spillovers through fostering democratic norms and development of social capital, both of which are important societal objectives.
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Based on data collected from 1965 onwards, they examined 105 wastewater projects and found that participation and project outcomes were positively correlated. A 2000 study by Beierle, of 239 environmental projects, showed that stakeholder participation improved decisions and outcomes.
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This is not to say that participation is a panacea or that the participatory processes currently in use are ideal. But, it is a mistake to broadly criticize participation as an impediment to progress, without recognizing that it also is one of the most important elements in ensuring the success of both the projects that architects and planners want so badly to build and of our cities over the long-term.
Continue reading “Public Participation: More than an “Orgy of Public Process””

by JULIE IRWIN ZIMMERMAN
With budget crises a reality for local governments all over the country, recreation amenities like bike trails are often the first places to look for cuts. But according to research coming out of the University of Cincinnati, proximity to trails in urban areas increases property values, which in turn boosts the amount of property taxes filling government coffers.
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Continue reading “How Much is a Bike Trail Worth?”

More than 5,200 of you signatures were delivered to the Solicitor’s office. Unfortunately, Solicitor General Barry Morgan refused to take a few moments to meet with the group that delivered the petition.
Read the full story: https://feedproxy.google.com/~r/transportationforamerica/~3/EnzbHgY1uBA/

by Gary Toth

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Both engineers and citizens participated in the evaluation, and the experiment was judged a resounding success at all levels. Crashes for all modes went down. Most notable was a 34 percent decline in crashes that resulted in injuries requiring a trip to the hospital. Surprisingly, crash rates even went down for motor vehicles, which is attributable to elimination of speeding by the 15 percent of the motorists who used the extra lane to dangerously weave in and out at well above the speed limit.

Cycling rates on the street increased, riding on the sidewalks decreased, pedestrians felt safer — and all of this was accomplished without reducing travel times and traffic volumes.

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BEFORE:

Spruce Street before. Photo: City of Philadelphia

AFTER:

Spruce Street after. Photo: City of Philadelphia

Continue reading “Philadelphia Streets”

So reads the headline from the Onion, can you imagine the outcry against Ferris Wheels if that was true? But the number of deaths is reminiscent of the number of annual highway deaths which somehow people find acceptable. A lot of people are dying yet enforcement of traffic laws are a low priority or worse have strong public opposition as if their battle cry was "We have a right to put others peoples life at risk just for a little fun of playing bumper cars."
Onion: "…and 17 fell victim to the Ferris Wheel Slasher, who is evidently still at large."
I wounder if this alludes to drunk drivers who get off easy even after multiple convictions, if so the number would be closer to 8000.
Onion: "Approximately 18,000 riders slipped out of their safety restraints and fell, suffering repeated traumas as they hit each spoke of the moving wheel on their way to the ground,"
This description stands in sharp contrast to our white-washing the description of crash types. Can you imagine if we changed "Distracted driving" to "Texted "LOL" while sending a human body flying like a rag doll across the road to be flattened by a two ton personal conveyance favored by the obese and lazy."
Continue reading “Report: 40,000 People Died On Ferris Wheels This Summer”