Bicycling
Basics
What’s Wrong With Telling Cyclists to Ride on the Bike Path?
With all due respect to my vehicular-cyclist friends, I'm a big fan of separate facilities for bikes. They keep bicyclists safer and encourage more people to ride, and I know I make a lot fewer risky moves when I'm riding in a lane built for my two wheels and not a two-ton, 200-horsepower steel box.
November 11, 2011
Bike/Ped Funding Safe as Senate Rejects Rand Paul’s Amendment
Bike/ped funding is pitching a perfect game in the Senate after Republicans swung (and missed) at the popular Transportation Enhancements program for the third time in two months. The final strike came this morning, when Kentucky Republican Rand Paul's amendment to divert all TE funds to bridge repair failed spectacularly, garnering only 38 votes in favor, with 60 senators voting against.
November 1, 2011
Strike Three: Another Senator Takes Another Swipe At Bike-Ped Funding
Last month, the Senate's notorious vote-blocker, Tom Coburn of Oklahoma, tried to obstruct Senate process until they voted on his measure to take bike/ped funding out of the transportation bill. He failed.
October 27, 2011
The Last Mile: How Bike-Ped Improvements Can Connect People to Transit
Whether it’s just a short walk down the street or a five-mile bike ride, the journey between home and station is a major factor in people's decision to take public transit.
October 18, 2011
LaHood: Rail-Trails Are the Best Health Care Program
Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood became a darling of the bicycling advocacy community last year when he jumped up on a table at the National Bike Summit and affirmed his support for biking, later declaring "the end of favoring motorized transportation at the expense of non-motorized."
October 12, 2011
GM to College Students: Stop Pedaling, Start Driving
Car ads that try to appeal to the desire for social status are nothing new, but here’s one that just gets it wrong: GM is trying to convince college students that driving a Buick is hipper than riding a fixie.
October 12, 2011
Minneapolis’s Midtown Greenway: Good for Bikes, Good for Business
In the increasingly heated competition to see who deserves the title of America's most bike-friendly city, Minneapolis has plenty going for it. Last year Bicycling magazine anointed the city tops in the nation, knocking Portland off its long-held perch.
September 29, 2011
New Survey Numbers Show Surprising, But Slight, Dip in Bike Commuting
Bicycling advocates say that the American Community Survey has never accurately measured bike commuting, because they don’t ask the right questions. That may be true, but the upshot is that a year that appeared to be a banner year for cycling ended up being kind of a dud, according to the ACS. The ACS recorded a slight dip in bike commute mode-share, from 0.55 percent in 2009 to 0.53 percent in 2010.
September 26, 2011
Harry Reid Calls Bike Facilities “Absolutely Important”
Seems like bicycling heroes are coming out of the woodwork these days. I'd missed this in all the coverage of the extension, but was gratified to see that Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid's opposition to Sen. Coburn's machinations weren't just in the interest of smooth procedure. The man actually cares about bike/ped issues.
September 16, 2011
The Stranger: If Safer Streets Mean War, We’re Ready for Combat
Under the headline, "Okay, Fine, It's War,” Seattle’s weekly newspaper, The Stranger, this week published a manifesto “of and by the nondrivers themselves.” They’re sick of being called “militants” for caring about pedestrian safety, and they’re tired of the specter of a “war on cars.”
September 16, 2011