Tag: bicycle

Moscow and New York City Both Launch Bike Sharing Services

Mayor Bloomberg in New York City has been clear that streets are meant to move people around and not just cars. The efforts the city has made to open up streets to people are working and the most recent push comes from their new bike sharing program.

“I expect to use it most days when it’s not raining,” McGlinn said after his journey, during which passersby flashed him thumbs-ups. “I expect to save money, although that’s not the primary reason why I’m doing it — it’s just nicer.”
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New York’s version opened yesterday for people who purchased annual memberships, as most businesses were closed for the Memorial Day holiday. The first of 6,000 Citigroup Inc (C).- sponsored bicycles available from 330 solar-powered docking depots in Manhattan south of 59th Street and in sections of Brooklyn will open to the riding public next week.

Read more at Bloomberg.

In Moscow, they also launched a bike sharing program this past week. Unlike New York, Moscow has not spent the past couple years improving transportation networks so upon announcing the new bicycle program, officials proclaimed their intent to expand infrastructure for safe riding.

Moscow city hall has announced that it will develop a total of 131 kilometres (81 miles) of cycle paths by the end of this year, a small figure compared with other large cities around the world.

“Cycling will develop and in two years maybe it will find a compromise with cars, and drivers will understand that cyclists are also a part of the city,” said rider Vitaly as he sat on a bench next to his newly-rented bike.

The city has promised to widen the network to 120 locations and expand outside the centre by the end of July. The system will close at the end of October ahead of winter.

Read more at Yahoo.

Chicago Wants to be a World Class Bicycle City

Chicago politicians understand that people in their city commute sustainably via bicycles and that this is a great component to their transit planning. What’s more is that by building proper infrastructure for cyclists they can draw people to the city and show the world what the future looks like – again. Over at Roads Were Not Built For Cars they provide a very interesting historical perspective on the bicycle in Chicago and how it relates to cities today.

“Bicycling is an integral part of Chicago’s transportation system. Every day, thousands of people bike on our streets, whether it is to ride to work, to the store, or for recreation…My vision is to make Chicago the most bike-friendly city in the United States…Over the next few years, we will build more protected bike lanes than any other city in the country, redesign intersections to ensure they are safer for bicyclists, and improve hundreds of miles of residential streets for bicyclists, pedestrians, and the people that live on them.”

Read the full article.

Cameras Capture How Safely Cyclists Cruise

It’s clear that car drivers don’t comprehend cyclists, and often I hear drivers complain that bicyclists aren’t safe and tend to be “dangerous” on the road. It turns out that cyclists are safer than cars, cause way fewer collisions, and are amazingly great at avoiding a collision.

To reach this conclusion that bicyclists are safe riders researchers used cameras mounted on bicycles (and riders) accompanied by other observations.

In total, 127 hours and 38 minutes of usable footage was obtained. 54 ‘events’ were captured on film – two collisions, six near-collisions (where rapid evasive action by the cyclist was needed) and 46 other incidents (where some collision avoidance was required).

The cameras also recorded the road position and behaviour of the cyclists – including head checks, reactions and manoeuvres. The aim was to identify risk factors for both cyclists and motorists.

In 88.9% of cases, the cyclist had been travelling in a safe/legal manner prior to the collision/near miss.

Read more at BikeRadar.

So car drivers please remember to share the road and be conscious of what’s around you.

A Better Truck for Safer Driving

Trucks kill a lot a cyclists and that’s a problem. We’ve looked at ways we can make trucks more efficient, now London Cycling Campaign has found ways to make trucks safer. They have modified the layout of a truck to allow the driver to see more of the road – in particular cyclists.

London Cycling Campaign haulage expert and former lorry driver Charlie Lloyd said:

“Our Safer Urban Lorry design is a challenge to the construction industry to use vehicles that help reduce the terrible number of people on bikes and on foot who are killed by lorries.

“The restricted view from the cab of many of today’s construction lorries means the driver often has little or no idea who or what is in their immediate vicinity, which is totally unacceptable

Read more at London Cycling Campaign.

NYC Mayor Bloomberg Loves Bike Lanes

As Toronto fights smart planning and removes sustainable transportation infrastructure (indeed, paying hundreds of thousands of dollars to do so), New York City Mayor Bloomberg continues to espouse how great bike lanes are. In NYC they have added a lot of miles of bike lanes and found local business get more business, neighbourhoods become nicer, and more people can get around easier than they did before!

With the release by NYC DOT this week of a report showing the economic impact of their street projects, Bloomberg wove the economic case into his speech. “Talk to merchants everywhere we’ve put protected bicycle lanes [and pedestrian plazas]… They will tell you that business is dramatically better than it was before.”

Bloomberg called New York City’s legacy of mega-highway building by former DOT Commissioner Robert Moses a “mistake” because “we bulldozed neighborhoods.”

With the mistakes of the past fading from view, Bloomberg seems to understand the direct link between how streets are used and whether or not a city succeeds. “We’re using the streets in ways they had not been used in a long time,” he said, “Cyclists and pedestrians and bus riders are as important — if not, I would argue more important — than automobile riders.”

While he acknowledged that bike lanes “are always controversial” he defended them by noting that, “more and more people are using them.”

Looking ahead, Bloomberg said he has no plans of letting naysayers or controversies stop the progress. “Transportation… it’s not sexy and it certainly invites controversy,” he said, but added, “We’ve just got to keep developing, keep building, sensibly, with some plans and community involvement; but not stopping.”

As you can probably guess from my recent series of pro-bike lane posts, I am rather embarrassed by Toronto Mayor Rob Ford and his archaic approach to transit. When he’s out of office we may get to see some good news coming from Toronto again.

Read more here.