A bike survey on the Hawthorne Bridge in 2009. (Photo by Elly Blue) Last week I wrote that if we want to see a major increase in bicycling in the U.S., we are going to need to get mathematical about it. (This morning provided some vindication for the idea in the form of an article […]
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RSS feed for this sectionFraming the debate.
On tour: Lack of infrastructure can't st...
Posted onMobilians on Bikes on a group ride. (Photos by Ben Brenner) There’s a chicken and egg question I keep coming back to – which comes first, the bike infrastructure or the bike riders? There doesn’t seem to be any single answer except the frustrating non-simple one that you need both at once and that they […]
Moneyball for bikes: Can we use data to ...
Posted onHere’s a new kind of Bikenomics – What if we could increase bicycle ridership not through general encouragement or infrastructure or culture change, but through strategic, targeted tweaks aimed at identifying potential bicycling demographics and tipping them? Or, to put it inversely, what if we could quantify barriers to bicycling and use that data to […]
Looking back on Portland's Golden Age of...
Posted onThis is a guest post by Rex Burkholder, who represents parts of Portland on the council of Metro, our area’s regional government. He is one of the founders of Oregon’s statewide bike advocacy organization, the Bicycle Transportation Alliance, and served as the organization’s first policy director. After reading my Bikenomics zine, in which I discuss […]
Bike infrastructure -- how not to do it
Posted onI’m not entirely sure where I took this photo – Atlanta, maybe? [Thanks to the first commenter below for discovering that this was taken in Athens, Georgia] But it strikes me as a fine counter-example for bike infrastructurists to heed. I’ll leave it to y’all in the comments to provide a thorough critique, but I […]
On tour: The battle of Baton Rouge
Posted onIn Baton Rouge last week, our event was on the same night as a big vote on transit funding. The vote was a big deal – a yes outcome would infuse over $10 million into the area’s struggling transit system, lowering average wait times from 75 to 15 minutes, increasing the number of routes, and […]
Bikes and fashion (and me) meet in Black...
Posted onThe lady in this photo is Sheilanova Molina y Vedia, our host during our brief stay in Austin two weeks ago, looking chic as she headed out to her office, by bike of course. Though we stayed at her house, we only saw her for a few minutes; she was busy organizing a bicycling fashion […]
Photo contest: Bad streets for bicycling
Posted onI recently posted a link to my coverage last year of our trip to Las Vegas. I believe Vegas may be the worst city for bicycling in the country, and I attempted to capture some of those terrible bicycling conditions in photos. The photo above is one that I snapped of a street where we […]
On tour: Is Houston the next bicycle cap...
Posted on“Houston is the sleeper – the next big bicycle city that nobody knows about yet,” Tom McCasland told us on Thursday. I was, of course, skeptical. My impression of Houston so far was all potholes, unpredictable driving, the chaotic geography of a city without zoning, and only a few sightings of hardy bicyclists. A conversation […]
Tu Familia: An awesome bike safety video...
Posted onThis might be the best transportation related PSA I’ve ever seen (okay, except maybe for the Louisville, KY transit rap, but that’s a tough one to beat). I love it because it conveys the experiences of both the guy behind the wheel and the people unlucky enough to encounter him on the street – and […]
On tour: From the most fit to the least ...
Posted onOne of the best things about being on tour is we get to see the absolute best of the places we visit. And that’s been true this time around, as our friendly hosts have shown us extensively and generously around their cities and neighborhoods. Their love and knowledge of where they live is infectious and […]
On Tour: Trouble in Tulsa, or How to Cre...
Posted onWe’re in Tulsa, where the news this past week has not been good. On Good Friday, five people on a public sidewalk were shot and three were killed; the story is that two men in a truck pulled up alongside, asked for directions, and then opened fire. Two men have been charged and there’s evidence […]
Researching bike tourism's economic impa...
Posted onThis is a guest post by Heather Andrews, who recently interned at Adventure Cycling Association as part of her Master of Publishing program at Simon Fraser University. She regularly wordsmiths about bicycling and history, and provides opposable thumbs and faithful companionship to her 10 year old Australian shepherd Atticus. She blogs at Bikish. When Heather […]
Seeding the Grassroots: Portland's newes...
Posted onABC’s Community Bike Educator training.(Photo: Cristina Mihaescu, courtesy of the CCC) Exciting news in Portland’s bike advocacy landscape – there’s a new organization and they’re on a roll. Yesterday, the Community Cycling Center, a Portland bicycle advocacy and education nonprofit, announced their partnership with a new organization, Andando en Bicicletas en Cully (ABC) – the […]