Urban Cycling Developments

[M II A II R II K]

Swap car lanes for bike lanes along Chicago Avenue in West Town?

https://chicago.suntimes.com/news/we...ue-bike-lanes/

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- A proposal to put a stretch of Chicago Avenue in West Town on a “road diet” to accommodate bike lanes on both sides of the street will be on the Chicago Department of Transportation’s exploratory docket in 2018. The idea to reduce the number of traffic lanes from four to two and install a center turn lane was a recommendation in a taxpayer-funded “We Are West Town” Master Plan completed last spring. When it would happen or where the lane conversion will be along Chicago Avenue has not been decided.

- Additionally, there would be wider sidewalks along the corridor and larger curbs or “bump outs” at busy intersections like Chicago and Ashland avenues where pedestrians congregate and wait for the No. 66 bus, which is among the five most used bus routes in the city. CDOT spokesman Michael Claffey said the department plans to discuss the possible road changes during yet-to-be-announced outreach related to the city’s “Complete Streets” initiative.

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[M II A II R II K]

Baltimore Residents Peddling Frustration With Safety Of Bike Lanes

http://baltimore.cbslocal.com/2018/0...of-bike-lanes/

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- Protected bike lanes are becoming more prevalent across Baltimore, but some say the lanes are driving them crazy and putting lives in danger. People in one part of Baltimore are speaking out about bike lanes. They say bad engineering is leading to crashes and cars damaged. --- A narrow navigation on Roland Avenue, where some say squished streets are driving them crazy. “What we found out was, it just didn’t work,” said Hap Cooper, with the Roland Park Civic League. “At the core of the problem, the road just isn’t wide enough to accommodate a cycle lane, a buffer, a parking lane, and two travel lanes.”

- People are peddling frustration, anger and concerns over their safety because of lanes made for two wheels. “We’ve had doors taken off,” Cooper said. “We’ve had mirrors taken off. We’ve had people hit. We’ve had bikes hit.” Since the bike lanes were installed back in 2015, Cooper says bad engineering from the bike lanes has impacted businesses, schools, libraries, and even walkers. --- “Every day or two, we hear about a car like this one here. This car was totaled the day before last,” he said. In May, the group asked the city to immediately restore curbside parking and to work toward building a wider, safer bike lane.

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[M II A II R II K]

More Bike Lanes Could Save up to 10,000 Lives a Year in Europe

https://www.citylab.com/transportati...-lives/551111/

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- By expanding bike networks, they could prevent 10,000 premature deaths each year. That’s the finding from a new European Commission-funded study by the Barcelona Institute for Global Health that seeks to assess the relationship between cycling’s popularity and death rates. The findings, compiled from 167 cities and published in the journal Preventive Medicine, are striking. If 24.7 percent of all journeys were taken by bike, London could see 1,210 fewer premature deaths annually, Rome could see 433 fewer, and Barcelona could see 248 fewer. Spread across the entire network of cities investigated, that’s a substantial drop in mortality.

- To get 24.7 percent of journeys carried out by bike, the report estimates that cities need 315 kilometers of bike lanes per 100,000 inhabitants. In effect, they would need to install a lane on every road. As for how much that would cost, the report finds that in the Netherlands, every new kilometer of bike lane costs around €2 million. For cities with rudimentary bike lane networks, making the infrastructural leap could require a very large injection of cash. London’s current bike modal share is just 3 percent of all journeys, Barcelona’s is 2 percent and Rome’s only 1 percent. In cities like these, the cash needed to jump to 24.7 percent would be huge.

- Thankfully, this money could be more than recouped, the study finds. By reducing premature deaths through improvements in air quality, public fitness, and a drop in fatal road collisions, the benefits of a larger modal share more than outweigh the costs—quite strikingly so, in some cities. If Rome increased its cycling modal share by even 10 percent of its current level—still a major improvement—it could save €70 for every euro spent on bike lanes. Barcelona could save €35 for every euro spent on infrastructure, and London could save the pound equivalent of €8 for every euro spent.

- So how far should this investment go? Intriguingly, the study finds that there is an upper limit to the effect that constructing bike lanes can have on increasing cycling’s modal share—and notes that the most dramatic improvements happen at the lower end. When a city has very few bike lanes, installing more can produce a striking increase in cycling. This is why Rome could make such large cost savings from expanding its network—because its lanes are so rudimentary that even a modest expansion could flush a substantial number of cyclists on to the streets.

- Once a city’s cycling modal share reaches over a quarter of all journeys, however, more lanes won’t necessarily yield the same results. The study found this by looking at Antwerp and the Swedish city of Örebro, both cities with unusually healthy proportions of cyclists on their streets. While Örebro had over 2.5 times more kilometers of cycle lanes per inhabitant than Antwerp, its cycling modal share of 25 percent of all journeys was only slightly higher than Antwerp’s, which stands at 23 percent. If there is an upper limit after which more lanes make little difference, Antwerp seems to have reached it.

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[Pedestrian]

Tenants Love Bike Rooms. Bike Repair Shops? Not So Much. February 06, 2018
Julie Littman, Bisnow Bay Area

While real estate is all about location, multifamily amenities are what drive leasing activity. In Silicon Valley, multifamily developers are having to take the extra step to add that one amenity that everyone is talking about. But the next big amenity does not always work. “Bike storage works all the time, for sure, but we thought a shared bike repair shop would be really cool: three racks, tools, people can have conversations around their bikes,” Harmonie Park principal Don Capobres said during a recent Bisnow event in San Jose. “It’s been an utter failure in the projects we’ve implemented it. No one is using them.”

Read more at: https://www.bisnow.com/silicon-valle...medium=Browser

[M II A II R II K]

The benefits of bike trails

https://www.cnu.org/publicsquare/201...ts-bike-trails

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- In an effort to make sprawling Northwest Arkansas more livable, 163 miles of bicycle paths and trails have been built in recent years—including the 37-mile Razorback Greenway that links all of the region’s significant cities. Studies show that bicycling in general provided $137 million in health and economic benefits to the region in 2017, reports the Walton Family Foundation. The foundation provided $74 million for the construction of the trails over the last 10 years, working with municipalities that provide ongoing contributions—and use of trails rose 24 percent in the last two years.

- The trail system is one layer of reforms, along with form-based development codes, revitalization of historic main streets, and investment in culture and the arts, that are designed to make this region more livable. Bicycling infrastructure is a suburban retrofit strategy in Northwest Arkansas. --- The developed area of the region is now largely conventional suburban fabric, a pattern that has raised concerns among leaders who want to attract young, educated workers—a demographic noted for their preference of walkable urban neighborhoods.

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[Jonesy55]

I used a dockless bike sharing system for the first time at the weekend. For those who haven't seen them they are bike sharing systems where you don't have to pick up or leave the bike at fixed points where it is physically locked to a docking station, you just unlock it with an app wherever you find one by scanning a QR code on the bike frame then leave it wherever you want and lock it using a device on the rear wheel when you are finished so it can't be ridden until somebody else unlocks it again.

As far as I can see there are two main companies operating in the UK, both of them Chinese, these systems are apparently very popular in Chinese cities, sometimes too popular as I've seen pics of bikes abandoned in huge piles blocking sidewalks etc.

Ofo has networks in London, Sheffield, Oxford, Norwich and Cambridge while Mobike has networks in London, Manchester (where I used it) Newcastle-upon-Tyne and Oxford.

[202_Cyclist]

Washington, DC has four or five dockless bikesharing operators now and we even have two companies providing dockless scooter rentals!

[202_Cyclist]

Uber acquires dockless bike-share startup Jump
Rumored $100 million deal will no doubt send the bike-share hype cycle into the stratosphere

By Andrew J. Hawkins
The Verge
Apr. 9, 2018


Image courtesy of the Verge.

"Uber bought a bike-share company. The ride-hailing company announced on Monday that it will acquire Jump, the New York City-based e-bike startup that has been working with Uber for two months on a pilot to integrate bike-sharing options into Uber’s app. Apparently that trial went well because now Jump will become a subsidiary of Uber, and the ride-hailing company will take a leap into a brand new industry, with a different set of challenges and pitfalls..."

https://www.theverge.com/2018/4/9/17...ike-share-jump

[JManc]

Bike sharing companies sure have made ugly bikes cool. 10 years ago no one would be caught dead riding these things except 70 year-old couples in Ocala but you see people everywhere riding these things.

[Jonesy55]

Unless it was somewhere like the Netherlands, everybody rides ugly bikes there and always has a fast as I know, they don't seem to be seen as something that should look cool over there, just a cheap functional method of getting from A to B.

[JManc]

Originally Posted by Jonesy55

Unless it was somewhere like the Netherlands, everybody rides ugly bikes there and always has a fast as I know, they don't seem to be seen as something that should look cool over there, just a cheap functional method of getting from A to B.

Which is smart. I stayed with a forumer a couple times who lives in the NL and he explained to me the reason...they get stolen so often.

[M II A II R II K]

Europe's longest heated cycle path to connect Dutch cities

https://www.theguardian.com/world/20...t-dutch-cities

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- The longest heated cycle path in western Europe, and possibly the world, is set to be built in a Dutch beauty spot to cut the between two of the country’s cities all year round. The new 1.7km “cycle highway”, which forms part of the route linking Wageningen and Arnhem in the east of the Netherlands, will be kept warm by residual heat from a local paper plant. Concerns have been raised that frogs might find the warm path a little too comfortable, putting them and cyclists in danger. But Gelderland council has promised to monitor the impact on the local wildlife, which includes many water birds and beavers.

- Towns across the Netherlands have been investing in heating stretches of cycle paths, but nothing on the scale proposed in Gelderland has been constructed. Cutting through the Jufferswaard, a nature reserve near the Nederrijn in Renkum, the two-way cycle path is also likely to be one of the most idyllic, and is due to be completed in time for the winter of 2019. De Jufferswaard, a nature area of 31 hectares (77 acres), is located in the floodplain along the Nederrijn river, between the factory site of the paper mill Parenco, one of the area’s biggest employers, and the Rhine bridge at Heteren village, 7.5 miles (12km) south-west of Arnhem.

- Petra Borsboom, a spokeswoman for Gelderland council, said they believed the path would be the longest of its type in western Europe. “We don’t want to make the claim that it is the longest in the world because there might be one in China we don’t know about,” she said. The cycle route will shorten the riding distance between Wageningen and Arnhem by 600 metres. The biggest gain of the route would be “time, safety and experience”, the council said. Borsboom said the project would be put out to tender soon. “We want to work with companies developing new techniques,” she said. “The company who [wins the contract] will have a great influence on how they do the heating.”

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[mrnyc]

yay we now have five citibikes with baskets!



OPINIONCOLUMNISTSMARK CHIUSANO
/opinion/columnists/mark-chiusano
By Mark Chiusano


It’s a dark world, but at least (some) Citi Bikes will have baskets


Updated April 11, 2018 6:17 PM


It’s time for some good news in this city, and the news is this: Citi Bike has started testing bikes with baskets.

Every Citi Bike user has surely had the experience of unsuccesfully stuffing a bag of groceries into the inferior storage space on the bike handlebars. Trying to wrestle that little strap over it all. You can’t even call that cell-phone-deep slot a bin. No one in the history of Citi Bike has figured out a good way to fit more than a purse or murse up front there. There are adrenaline junkies who squeeze their tiny toddlers in, but that’s just oddball behavior.

But folks, your Citi Bike basket world is about to be rocked. The bike-share company is testing legitimate storage space above the front wheel, so that you might at least fit your gym bag or a normal-sized child.



more:
https://www.amny.com/opinion/columni...ets-1.17984755

[mrnyc]

the dockless debate -- btw i have already seen dockless bikes here and there in nyc, up at waterline square for example. perhaps a a pilot? i dk. also, hoboken's system is dockless.



TRANSIT
Dockless bike share pilot program divides transportation experts

"We wonder if the city is pursuing this pilot for the right reasons," one public transit advocate said.




JUMP Bikes, based in Brooklyn, is one of 12 companies vying for the pilot to bring dockless bike share technology to the city. Photo Credit: Jump Bikes


By Vincent Barone
vin.barone@amny.com @vinbarone
Updated April 19, 2018 7:02 AM


With the de Blasio administration preparing to launch dockless bike share service this summer, some experts see the future of cycling while others worry the city is cutting corners.

There are 12 companies from around the world vying for the pilot to bring the emerging technology to areas not currently served by Citi Bike, including the Bronx, Staten Island and sections of northern Manhattan, Brooklyn and Queens.

Unlike the station-based Citi Bike, dockless systems typically let riders park bikes anywhere with automatic locking and unlocking features accessed through a mobile app.

Once a foreign concept, dockless bikes have begun popping up in major cities all across the country.


more:
https://www.amny.com/transit/dockles...nyc-1.18139340

[M II A II R II K]

Ellis commits $10 million to Houston-area bike efforts

https://www.houstonchronicle.com/new...e-12839042.php

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- Harris County Precinct 1 Commissioner Rodney Ellis on Monday announced a one-year $10 million commitment to bicycling projects in Houston, in the hopes of jump-starting the city’s transformation into a bike-friendly place. “Working together, we can better leverage scarce resources from governmental entities and the private sector and share our collective expertise to serve the people in this region,” Ellis said. --- Officials estimated the money would build at least 50 miles of protected bike lanes considered crucial to providing usable bike access to neighborhoods and jobs. “​This really gives us a boost we needed,” Houston Planning Director Patrick Walsh said. The money, along with city funds from its capital improvement plan, will go toward repainting bike lanes, developing safer intersections and other improvements aimed at making riding a bike in Houston easier and safer.

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[bzcat]

I used the local bike share (Santa Monica Breeze) maybe once or twice a week. But since we got Bird, I've been using the scooters exclusively. It's actually a little more expensive than bike share but it's more fun... plus it is motorized so less effort.

[mrnyc]

behold the nutso east village bike lane!


http://gothamist.com/2018/05/16/groo...lane_award.php

[jtown,man]

Norfolk just got dockless bikeshare. I absolutely love it. I remember in DC biking from station to station, always on my phone looking for the next stop.

With dockless bikeshare, I literally just ride, and park it anywhere. Also, I live downtown, so I have no problem finding a bike, but for the further out neighborhoods, its nice they also have bikes scattered around.

[M II A II R II K]

After quickly installing 80kms of bike lanes in just 18 months, the city has gone from 0 to nearly 10% bike mode share, 35% of cyclists are women & almost no one wears a helmet.

Video Link

[M II A II R II K]

Get Your Kicks Biking Route 66

https://www.citylab.com/life/2018/07...ute-66/565175/

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- Decades after the interstate highway system wiped it off the map, Route 66 still conjures up images of the golden age of the automobile, when travelers cruised through the majestic landscapes and quaint towns of the American West on a ribbon of blacktop. --- Those days are long gone. But the “mother road,” which stretched from Chicago to Santa Monica, has found a new life—as a bike route. The first section of United States Bicycle Route 66, a route that would roughly follow the 2,400-mile course of the original highway, was inaugurated in Missouri and Kansas last month, and it’s already hosting a steady stream of two-wheeled adventurers.

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