Month: December 2008

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Bicycles & the Proposed Red Line – Take Action for Bicycling

Your comments needed – Deadline Jan 5th

The proposed east-west Red Line is arguably the biggest opportunity in a generation to improve Baltimore’s transportation network, but we need input from Bicyclists!

With any project, from a simple resurfacing to the $1.6 billion Red Line transit proposal, it is important for bicyclists to have a voice in the process. When bicyclists are not at the table, details are overlooked. To those ends, your Mayor’s Bicycle Advisory Committee has poured over the (400 page) Red Line Draft Environmental Impact Statement and consulted with red line ‘insiders’ to review the proposal from a bicyclist perspective. The comments adopted by the MBAC are included below.

12 options are being studied for the Red Line, the task now is to find consensus on a “locally preferred alternative,” then move forward toward funding (or not funding) the project. Details on the project and the options under consideration are available online, links are below.

Please take a moment to comment formally on the red line! Your comments can be as simple as two sentences ‘for the record’:
– I support construction of the Red Line as part of a high quality transit system.
– The Red Line should be designed to accommodate bicycling.

Please do this today!

Comments MUST include your full name and address or they will not be considered.

Send comments to:
redline@mtamaryland.com with “DEIS Comment” as the subject line
by using the online comment form
or by mail to: Red Line, c/o MTA Office of Planning, 6 St. Paul St. 9th Floor, Baltimore, MD 21202

Formal comments are an important part of the DEIS process. Public comments will be accepted until January 5th.
Continue reading “Bicycles & the Proposed Red Line – Take Action for Bicycling”

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Solution not a problem

…
"Accommodating cyclists in your community is a solution not a problem," Peel told the group, which included Hernando Mayor Chip Johnson, Alderman Gary Higdon, Hernando’s bicycle police officers, several civil engineers and a handful of biking enthusiasts.
Peel presented several statistics to support his case including that 40 percent of trips made are 2 miles or less and 89 percent of those trips are made by car.
"Motorists think bicyclists are in the way, but really it’s one less motorist in a car in front of you at the stoplight," Peel said.
…
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Vulnerable Roadway Users

The 2007 Oregon Legislature passed HB 3314, creating an enhanced penalty for careless diving if it contributes to serious physical injury or death to a “vulnerable user of a public way,” and will go into effect January 1, 2008. The purpose of this article is to discuss the Vulnerable User legal concept and its potential for improvement in safety for non-motorized roadway users such as bicyclists and pedestrians. Earlier this year, I wrote about the need for enhanced protection for vulnerable roadway users. See Cycling Injuries & Law Change, from the Winter 2007 issue.
“Vulnerable Roadway User”: A European Safety Concept
The concept of “vulnerable roadway user” has been used by planners and safety organizations in Europe to categorize and describe non-motorized roadway users. The label is a nice one because it incorporates the inherent vulnerability of humans who use the roads without being encased in a protective steel shell. Inclusion of the concept of vulnerability evokes a more sympathetic image and focuses on the shared vulnerability of these different user groups. By including vulnerable users within a single term, the requirement for protection is brought to mind to counterbalance the somewhat natural reaction some people have to improving safety by restricting access, such as by restricting bicycle access to freeways or pedestrian crossings or road access.
No state has ever used the Vulnerable Roadway User concept as a legal term, but for the reasons above stated, the members of the Bicycle Transportation Alliance (BTA) Legislative Committee felt it could focus the need for enhanced protection of vulnerable user groups (who are reducing energy consumption and pollution, while improving their own good health and fitness). Since people need to get out of their cars and walk or roll under their own power, some enhanced protection is necessary to get law enforcement and the court system participating in protecting and encouraging kids to walk to school, commuters to ride a bike, and the use of a skateboard or scooter instead of getting a ride or driving a car to run an errand.
It was our view that Oregon law was far too lenient in punishing careless drivers who receive merely a fine and are not even required to make a court appearance after a horrific collision. Some police officers and medical personnel have even been heard to argue that people who choose not to ride in a car should expect to have bad things happen because the roadways are so dangerous. To us, tolerating the status quo was not acceptable – it was time to change the law and create a zone of protection instead of indifference toward those people brave enough to use their bodies to get around.
Continue reading “Vulnerable Roadway Users”

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Annual Awards for Excellence in Bicycling and Walking Advocacy

The Thunderhead Alliance for Biking and Walking is launching our new annual Awards for excellence in bicycling and walking advocacy. We invite you to nominate a person or organization for any of the awards below. The deadline for nominations is January 31st, 2009.
Awards:
“Advocate of the Year”
“Advocacy Organization of the Year”
"Innovation Award"
“Winning Campaign of the Year”
“Business Advocate of the Year”
"Best Practices Award"
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“‘Cross my Heart” and the SUPERBOWL of SINGLESPEED CX

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“‘Cross my Heart” and the SUPERBOWL of SINGLESPEED CX

Presented by
Proteus Bicycles

College Park, MD

Sunday, February 01, 2009

Online Registration Will Open
Thursday, January 01, 2009 at 8:00 AM ET

  CATEGORY DISTANCE START TIME   FEE   PRIZES
Men’s 1,2,3
 45
minutes 
10:00 AM 
$25
merch top 3 
Men’s 2,3,4
 45
minutes 
11:00 AM 
$25
merch top3 
Men’s Cat 4
 45
minutes 
12:00 PM 
$25
prizes top 3 
Women’s 1,2
 45
minutes 
1:00 PM 
$25
merch top 3 
Women’s 3,4
 45
minutes 
1:00 PM 
$25
merch top 3 
Under 16
 3
laps 
1:02 PM 
$10
prizes top 6 
Singlespeed only
 45
minutes 
2:10 PM 
$25
merch top 3 

The
Race:

It’s
always a sad goodbye when cyclocross season ends. We’re having a post-season race for fun to keep things rolling a little longer.  But we’re doing things
a little bit differently: The Elites always get to sleep in, so we’re
going to run the race order backwards so the “little guys” can catch a break for once.  In addition to the “normal” categories, we also added a Singlespeed
only category. Now, this isn’t Portland, so there won’t be
any Tequila shots on the course or anything like that, but this is
still your chance to show why Singlespeed Cyclocross is a special
kind of riding reserved for only the extremely strong, stubborn or
stupid.

Pint glasses:  Free pint glasses for the first 25 pre-registered participants.  Additional glasses will be available for purchase.  

The
Course:

Expect
some fast pavement, a fair amount of trails through the woods, stairs,
gravel, some off camber portions and a few fun
descents. No promises, but we are also working very hard on getting
a snow machine in case mother nature doesn’t give us any.

Continue reading ““‘Cross my Heart” and the SUPERBOWL of SINGLESPEED CX”

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Holier than You on the Bogus Bicycle Commuter Act

[In a word, where you can get a $220 parking allowance for your car, a $115 mass transit allowance or a $20 biking allowance but you can only pick one, which one would you choose?]
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One plus for LaHood – he co-sponsored the Bicycle Commuter Act. Of course, so did 64 other representatives, so it’s not like he really stuck his neck out on that one. It did get snuck into the bailout bill, but I find it very humdrum. $20/month subsidy for people who bike to work. Great! Except that if you already participate in a pre-tax transit benefit, you can’t take advantage. People who bike often are people who take transit, even if they aren’t multi-modal commuters like the Caltrain bike cohort. For example, I know people in SF who bike to work, don’t own a car, and also have a MUNI pass. A MUNI pass is $45. In order to get the bike benefit, they’d have to forfeit their much larger transit benefit.
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‘Green’ Jobs Compete for Stimulus Aid

In one of the first internal struggles of the incoming Obama administration, environmentalists and smart-growth advocates are trying to shift the priorities of the economic stimulus plan that will be introduced in Congress next month away from allocating tens of billions of dollars to highways, bridges and other traditional infrastructure spending to more projects that create "green-collar" jobs.
The debate has centered on two competing principles in the evolving plan: the desire to spend money on what President-elect Barack Obama calls "shovel-ready projects," such as highway and bridge construction, vs. spending on more environmentally conscious projects, such as grids for wind and solar power.
…
"If we’re going to call it a stimulus package, it has to be stimulating and has to be stimulating now. I think there are members of our caucus who are trying to create a Christmas tree out of this," said Rep. Baron P. Hill (Ind.), incoming co-chairman of the Blue Dog Coalition, a caucus of 51 fiscally conservative House Democrats.
…
But environmentalists and their allies view old-fashioned highway construction as encouraging longer commutes and increasing the energy-consumption crisis of the past year. "They’re going to put a bunch of money through a broken system to stimulate the economy. That doesn’t make sense to me," said Colin Peppard, a transportation expert for Friends of the Earth.
…
Goldberg’s group has studied infrastructure proposals from 15 states and found that 75 percent of their requests are for roadway construction, and of that, the overwhelming majority of money would fund new projects in outer suburbs that have been hard hit by the mortgage crisis. "We’re building all this stuff for where the economy isn’t anymore," he said.
…
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Something for the holidays

[I have been at a lost to find something to post for the holidays until I ran across this, revolution and excitement sounds like something we can get behind. 😉 ]
A RECIPE FOR FLIPPING
In the spirit of the season, we offer the following recipe for a holiday punch of another kind. The story is that the appropriately named "Flip" was a popular revolutionary-era drink, and that, together with coffee, it fueled the excitement –the ferment, you might say– that became the American Revolution. So for your own edification:
Continue reading “Something for the holidays”