Category: Biking Elsewhere

Via The Washcycle
… Congress wanted to ban in-flight calls on airplanes for reasons of comfort.
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“Simply put, the flying experience in the United States would be forever changed for the worse if voice calls are allowed on flights,” added Rep. Steve Cohen (D-Tenn.)
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So, banning in-flight phone calls for reasons of comfort is important, but banning phone calls by drivers is not. Because we all know what is really important.
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https://www.thewashcycle.com/2013/12/you-can-run-over-a-pedestrian-but-dont-disturb-my-flight.html

Via The Washcycle

McCartney for the win

Jimmy Fallon was a great choice to host Saturday Night Live’s Christmas episode, mostly because he loves to sing and was obviously going to do a whole lot of it. In his monologue, the late-night star explained that he was supposed to perform with three of his idols — David Bowie, Bob Dylan and Paul McCartney — but they were all stuck in traffic and couldn’t make it. Knowing that the show must go on, however, Fallon busted out some of his famous musical impersonations to sing their parts.

But then, a twist: as Fallon began to impersonate Paul McCartney, the legend himself appeared on stage. (He beat the traffic by hopping on a Citi Bike.)

by Tanya Snyder, Streets Blog

Link to video.

In the ineffable way of all TED talkers, urban planner Jeff Speck, author of “The Walkable City,” has made a concise, urgent, and oddly charming argument for walkability. In just under 17 minutes, Speck has articulated the economic, epidemiological, and environmental arguments to end automobile dependency and start using our feet again. It’s worth a watch (and a re-tweet). A few highlights:

• The worst idea America has ever had is suburban sprawl, and it’s being emulated — like many American values, both good and bad — around the world.
• We’ve doubled the number of roads in America since the 1970s — and the proportion of our household income we spend on transportation.
• Portland went against the grain of suburban sprawl and highway expansion and has been a magnet for college-educated young people who want to live in a city that prizes biking and walking. Portland’s VMT peaked in 1996, with each person driving 11 minutes less per day now.
• One out of three Americans is obese, a second third is overweight. “We have the first generation of children in America that are predicted to live shorter lives than their parents,” Speck said. “I believe that this American health care crisis that we’ve all heard about is an urban design crisis and that the design of our cities lies at the cure.” Studies show that obesity correlates more strongly to inactivity than to diet.

• Urban VMT is a good predictor of asthma problems in your city.
• We take car crashes for granted as a necessary evil. But walkable cities have far lower crash fatality rates. It’s not whether you’re in the city or not, it’s whether your city was designed around cars or people.
• “The environmental movement in America has historically been an anti-city movement,” Speck said. “‘Move into the country, commune with nature, build suburbs.’” Carbon maps of CO2 emissions per square mile makes cities look like polluting cesspools, but if you look at a map of emissions per household, the heat map flips.
• Sustainable home accessories and gadgets, which Speck admits he has a weakness for, aren’t nearly as important as living near transit in a walkable neighborhood. “Changing all your lightbulbs to energy savers saves as much energy in a year as moving to a walkable neighborhood does in a week.”
• The lifestyle choice — walkability — that no one wants to tell Americans to make is actually one that will make them happier. Walkability correlates to higher quality of life.

https://dc.streetsblog.org/2013/10/15/jeff-speck-america-has-so-many-problems-walkability-solves-most-of-them/

Via BBC News
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Make drivers cycle
"What about requiring that in order to get a driving licence, every driver has to cycle for three miles along a dual carriageway. This seems to me the best way to make drivers realise that cyclists have a right to use the road and not to be squeezed into the gutter. Most cyclists are drivers too or have been at one time but most drivers have no experience of what it’s like to cycle in traffic and don’t seem to believe that cyclists have any right to be on the road." Pedal Pusher, London
"A real radical solution? Any person sitting a driving test should have to sit a practical test on a bike. In traffic, in an urban area and also on a country road (the problems are very different), at night, in bad weather. It might not convert them to cycling, but at least they’ll appreciate the other point of view a bit better." Graeme Allan, Keith, Scotland
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https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-25043437

The following was probably written in jest but all humor is based on some truth. It would not hurt the advocates to have some rebuttals for these kind of arguments.
https://www.collegehumor.com/post/6943325/5-reasons-bicyclists-are-the-worst-people-alive

By The Onion
WASHINGTON—In a landmark report experts say fundamentally reshapes our understanding of the global warming crisis, new data published this week by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change has found that the phenomenon is caused primarily by the actions of 7 billion key individuals.
These several billion individuals, who IPCC officials confirmed are currently operating in 195 countries worldwide, are together responsible for what experts called the “lion’s share” of the devastating consequences of global warming affecting the entire planet.
“Our research has proved conclusively that, year after year, the acceleration of the rate of global warming and the damage caused by this man-made acceleration can be clearly linked to 7 billion main culprits,” explained lead author Dr. John Bartlett, noting that many of these individuals have links to climate change going back nearly a century. “Worse, the significant majority of damage was done within the past two decades, when the consequences of climate change were widely known and yet these specific individuals did nothing to curb or amend their practices.”
“Now that we’ve done the hard work of identifying the key players responsible for this crisis, we can move forward with holding them accountable,” Bartlett added. “And it is my opinion that we need to regulate these individuals swiftly and decisively before they do any more damage.”
According to policy analysts, urgent regulation is needed in order to monitor and govern the behavior of these targeted individuals, who experts say collectively commit as much as 100 percent of violations to the environment each year.
Researchers have isolated numerous instances of environmentally harmful activity committed by these 7 billion perpetrators in the past few decades alone, identifying practices such as using electric lights, shipping packages, traveling by car, traveling by air, buying clothes, washing clothes, using heat, using air conditioning, buying food, buying water, eating meat, commuting to work, shopping, exercising at the gym, disposing of waste, operating computers, operating televisions, operating other household electronic appliances, and showering—alarming activities that experts say show no signs of remitting.
In addition, IPCC officials confirmed that billions of pounds per year in waste products can be traced to these 7 billion individuals alone.
“We’re actually looking at a situation where a select group of individuals—7,125,985,886 of them, to be exact—are singlehandedly responsible for global warming and are refusing to do anything about it,” author and activist Dan Cregmann told reporters, noting that these culprits have a horrible track record of following recommended environmental guidelines and disclosing their total energy consumption. “Many of these offenders have of course pledged goals for fighting climate change and going green in their daily operations, but statistics show these proclamations have been largely ineffective and halfhearted at best.”
At press time, IPCC officials confirmed that, since their report was released this morning, 153,007 more individuals had been added to the list of top contributors to global warming.
https://www.theonion.com/articles/new-report-finds-climate-change-caused-by-7-billio,34658/?ref=auto

[B’ Spokes: It would be nice if we could start something like this here,]
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by ALEX SCHMIDT, NPR
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Enter L.A. Bike Trains — an organization that arranges commutes by bike in groups. Each Bike Train route has an experienced conductor who serves as a guide. Insua especially likes that these volunteer conductors offer new riders door-to-door service from their homes to the train.
"He came and picked me up from my house," Insua says. "[He] went out of his way to get me to bike for two or three weeks. Then I was conditioned. Then I was brainwashed."
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https://www.npr.org/2013/12/01/248063342/shifting-gears-commuting-aboard-the-l-a-bike-trains

BY RESONANCE
Cycling is much more than an amenity or a status symbol or a reason to buy, although it can be all those things. It’s wellness on two wheels. And wellness is, as the New York Post recently reported, the new cronut of travel and recreation. Compared to that, golf is child’s play.
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For us, the message was clear: increasingly, the future of recreational development – and, in the bigger picture, tourism – will be happening on two wheels, not in a golf cart.
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So while cycling fitness is edging out golf’s technical finesse as a status symbol amongst the leisure elite, cycling is also gaining ground as a lifestyle. The news is full of stories about bike lanes, bike sharing and Bike to Work. According to the League of American Bicyclists, commuting by bicycle increased nearly 50% between 2000 and 2011 – the time frame in which the oldest Millennials entered the work force. In the past five years, the number of golfers in the U.S. has dropped by 13%, according to the National Golf Foundation and there are a million fewer private golf club members today than there were in the early 1990s.
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https://www.resonanceco.com/blog/is-cycling-the-new-golf/

Via Light, Sharpness, and Song