Impressive discussion of how/why cities can change their road infrastructure to be more bike friendly.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XuBdf9jYj7o&feature=player_embedded
Showing posts with label bicycles. Show all posts
Showing posts with label bicycles. Show all posts
Friday, January 04, 2013
Tuesday, November 27, 2012
Car Sharing Widens the Lanes of Access for City Drivers
For National Geographic News
Published November 26, 2012
Behind Valencia Street's widened sidewalks and bike lanes, San Francisco has another tool ready to cut traffic and transit crowding. Nestled in the neighborhoods surrounding this longtime transportation corridor are hundreds of parked cars—available for sharing.
Brian Scates, creative director at a Silicon Valley startup, rented out his 2000 Audi All-Road last year for $50 to $60 a day, rather than let it sit unused while he biked around town and commuted to work by train. Meanwhile, Sebastien Rouif throws his surfboard into the back of his neighbor's pickup truck on Saturdays to drive down the coast and catch some waves. The fee and gas total about $40, cheaper than other rental options—and it's a lot less expensive than owning a car. (Related Pictures: "Twelve Car-Free City Zones")
Scates has since cut back on sharing his car, but still believes in the idea: "I'm all about fewer cars on the road, and maximizing the value that we get out of those vehicles."
Scates and Rouif, who both rented through Getaround, a car-sharing network, are in the vanguard of San Francisco residents who have given peer-to-peer car sharing a whirl. P2P, as it's known, aims to help address transportation problems by mining a largely untapped resource: Most cars sit unused most of the time. At least 30 companies worldwide are offering P2P car sharing, which enables short-term access to personal vehicles in a way that is convenient, smartphone-friendly, and cheap.
The system is not without its problems. Sharers have to be willing to tolerate additional wear and tear on their vehicles; for some, that alone is a deal breaker. And though a few states have passed laws establishing rules on car-sharing insurance coverage, liability issues remain.
Still, cities like San Francisco—feeling the strain both of too many cars on the road and crowded public transit—are taking steps to encourage car sharing. Indeed, they echo the P2P startups in touting the business opportunity inherent in helping people to consume less through sharing.
"If you ask how to transform a car from a product into a service, you get a whole new economy," said Shannon Spanhake, deputy innovation officer for the City of San Francisco.
Community Cars
Car sharing isn't entirely new. One program begun in a Swiss housing cooperative in 1948 continued for 50 years; individuals who couldn't afford a car on their own instead gained mobility by sharing a few vehicles. A series of car-sharing experiments were launched in the 1970s in Europe, after the Arab oil embargo caused worldwide energy prices to skyrocket. But one of the earliest studies on the concept concluded in 1969 that "community garages" never would work in the United States because cities here had "numerous rivers" of highway and "oceans" of parking space to accommodate individual car ownership.
Four decades later, with jammed highways and astronomical parking prices a near-universal feature of life in U.S. cities, a few nonprofits and businesses have begun to see opportunity in offering car sharing as an alternative. (Related: "Five Signs California Is Ditching Its Car Habit")
A leader in the movement was Zipcar, the 12-year-old membership-based network with some 730,000 users in 20 cities and college campuses in North America, Spain, Austria, and the United Kingdom. Peer-to-peer car sharing embraces the Zipcar idea—short-term rentals and convenience enabled by mobile technology. But P2P takes the concept a crucial step further by cutting out the expense of keeping a fleet of cars as well as maintenance crews and dedicated parking spaces.
Network members list their own cars for rental. Carless city dwellers join to gain occasional access to a set of wheels. The car-sharing company typically screens renters and vehicles, offers a platform for matching up car owners and drivers, facilitates payments (while taking its cut), and provides insurance.
Car sharing can be relatively low tech. For many RelayRides and Getaround sharers, for example, the car owner meets the renter in person, checks the driver's license, offers a quick orientation on the car, and hands over the keys. But many companies use technology to allow the rentals to take place without such face-to-face meetings. RelayRides can enable keyless access if the car owner subscribes to General Motors' OnStar service. Wheelz has its own technology (and Getaround is deploying a similar device) to enable renters to unlock strangers' car with apps on their smartphones.
Wheelz, which started out on college campuses but rolled out to the general public in San Francisco last month, says it installs $100 to $200 worth of proprietary gear under the dash of each car in its network, not only for keyless entry, but for tracking vehicle location and calculating fuel use (the cost of which is then added to the driver's tab). Many of the car-share companies also plug into the power of social networks to enhance trust; they have online communities of users where car owners and renters rate each other publicly, following the eBay model. (Related: "California Tackles Climate Change, But Will Others Follow?")
Advocates of peer-to-peer car sharing see these services as part of a larger trend, known by turns as "collaborative consumption, the "sharing economy," or simply, the "mesh." The idea is to turn goods into services, through an economy built on "accessing" cars, bicycles, power tools, homes, workspaces, or garden plots. (Related: "Bike Share Schemes Shift Into High Gear") The epitome of the notion is the rapidly growing Airbnb marketplace for sharing apartments, houses, and other spaces, which has expanded in four years to 26,000 cities in 192 countries.
Peer-to-peer car sharing has caught fire around the globe, expanding to more than 30 companies worldwide, up from only a handful in 2010. Investors are betting that peer-to-peer car sharing is an idea whose time has come. RelayRides has a slew of venture capital backing, from Google Ventures to General Motors Ventures. In August, Getaround announced it had attracted $13.9 million in funding, including from Google co-founder Eric Schmidt's Innovation Endeavors, Yahoo chief executive Marissa Mayer, and actor Ashton Kutcher.
Among the backers of Wheelz is the car-sharing giant Zipcar. The companies portray the services as complementary rather than competitive. Wheelz chief executive and co-founder Jeff Miller says vehicles in the Wheelz network are priced, on average, about 10 to 15 percent lower than comparable Zipcar vehicles. That's not a huge discount; what distinguishes Wheelz cars is their convenience, he said. "The cars are where people live. They're in your neighborhood, they're across the block." Plus, he added, "It has sort of a feel-good ethos to it," because the cars—and much of the fee—stay within the community. (Wheelz takes 40 percent of the rental fee, while the owner keeps 60 percent.)
General Motors is not the only automaker that is taking the trend of access over ownership seriously. Car2go, a program from the German automaker Daimler, allows members in 15 cities and five countries to borrow pint-sized Smart Fortwo cars. Similar networks have been set up by BMW in San Francisco and four German cities, and by Renault in France. Sydney, Australia, is now home to more than 9,000 car-sharing members, and by 2016 the city aims to boost car sharing among its residents to 10 percent of all households. The city is supporting the trend by offering convenient curbside parking, particularly in urban renewal areas. (Related: "Coal-Fired Australia, Buffeted by Climate Change, Enacts Carbon Tax")
Evolving Rules of the Road
The rules of the road are still evolving.
"There are all these apps and other ways of accessing transportation within cities, which are all part of the solution, but it's getting ahead of policies," said Rick Hutchinson, chief executive of San Francisco Bay area's pioneering nonprofit car-share service City CarShare, at a recent panel discussion. For instance, regulators in California and New York City have recently clamped down on operations of several companies they said were acting essentially as unlicensed taxi services, enabling citizens to hail and pay for chauffeured rides by smartphone. (Related: "To Curb Driving, Cities Cut Down on Parking")
For peer-to-peer car sharing, one of the trickiest questions has been insurance coverage. California, Oregon, and Washington state all have passed laws within the past two years aimed at ensuring drivers are covered (generally by the car-sharing company and its insurance partners), while protecting the vehicle owner from the risk of losing his or her own insurance coverage.
In U.S. states without such explicit law, insurance companies that write personal auto insurance typically view car sharing as an invalidating commercial use of a vehicle. In Boston earlier this year, a RelayRides renter died and four riders in the other vehicle were severely injured in a crash where lawyers anticipated the claims would surpass the $1 million insurance provided by the car-sharing company. Who will ultimately pay the balance will depend on the outcome of wrangling among insurance companies and, possibly, the courts. But a New York Times report on the case in August noted that the owner, who received a check from the car-sharing service insurance to cover the cost of replacing her car, immediately listed her new vehicle on RelayRides.
But are there enough enthusiastic car sharers out there to for P2P to grow into the kind of business its investors envision? In San Francisco, a hotbed of P2P activity, only about 1,500 of the city's 400,000 registered cars are shared vehicles, said Timothy Papandreou, deputy director of sustainable streets planning and policy for the city transit agency. The city is actively crafting a strategy for supporting—and regulating—sharing of "anything that moves," he said, from cars to electric scooters, and a much-anticipated bicycle-sharing service rolling out in January. Papandreou says that if the number of shared vehicles in San Francisco increases fivefold, total car ownership could potentially drop by an estimated 25 percent. That would ease crowding on roadways, and hopefully, on the city's strained streetcar and rapid transit system. "Everything comes down to transit crowding," he said. "Our transit is at peak capacity."
Whether P2P can take a bite of city transit problems will depend on the experience of the sharers. Sebastien Rouif, the surfer, who works as a transportation analyst with the French consulate, has tried to persuade his roommates to list their cars on Getaround. In addition to helping the concept to spread, it would also enable him to borrow their vehicles and be covered by Getaround's insurance. So far, he said, they are not convinced.
Scates found that renting out his Audi through Getaround allowed him to bring in about $1,200 over the course of a year, offsetting a portion of the $300 per month he was paying for parking. "Everyone was nice and most of them brought the car back without issues, and had it clean and full of gas," he said. "Only one renter ever brought it back dirty and not full. I'd say it was 90 percent positive."
Still, there were downsides. "The individual renter is spending time handing off keys and coordinating rentals, keeping the car full of gas and clean, getting it serviced more often, and dealing with increased repairs," Scates said. "So even with the extra income, there are tradeoffs."
Once, his Audi came back with a broken cigarette lighter; another time there was a broken air spring in the suspension system. Because of the problems, and the fact that he no longer pays for parking (he now parks his car outside the city), Scates dropped out of active sharing. He doubled his rental rate, and has had no takers at the new price. Nonetheless, Scates says he'd still recommend the service to recoup some of the cost of keeping a car in a city like San Francisco, especially for "for folks who aren't emotionally invested in their cars."
The ranks of such drivers may well be growing, with statistics clearly showing that younger Americans are buying fewer cars and driving fewer miles than their peers in previous generations. Networks like Getaround, RelayRides, Wheelz, and others are betting that in the next chapter of the American love affair with the automobile, drivers will be less smitten with the vehicle, and more devoted to sharing the ride. (Related Pictures: "Cars That Fired Our Love-Hate Relationship With Fuel")
This story is part of a special series that explores energy issues. For more, visit The Great Energy Challenge.
Friday, October 05, 2012
How Bicycling Creates Economic Impact: A Tale of Two Cities
The conventional wisdom assumes that massive transportation projects are far more economically strategic than bike lanes. But the release of two studies from two very different cities – Portland, OR and New York City – reveals that bicyclists and pedestrians may spend more than their peers who arrive at the same neighborhoods via automobile or public transportation.
Whether businesses reached out and made their locations more bicycle friendly, or streets were redesigned to include bike lanes, the overall outcome has been increased spending in local neighborhoods. Shoppers who arrive in urban neighborhoods via cars may spend more in one sitting–but overall those who arrived on foot or by bicycling spent more month to month. The results indicate that neighborhoods and business districts that seek a healthier bottom line should work with municipalities and support such features as protected bike lanes, bicycle racks and pedestrian safety improvements.
A study that New York-based Transportation Alternatives completed demonstrates the positive impact of bicycling in Manhattan’s East Village. Newly created bike lanes on First and Second Avenues led to a sharp increase in bicycle ridership in the study’s focus area. Such improvements are particularly important to women because they are less likely to commute by bicycle if a route lacks dedicated bicycle lanes. The result is a 24 percent rate of residents bicycling in their neighborhood; the average in all of New York City is only one percent. But those who traipse about the East Village by bike spend the most week-to-week at an average of $163 a week. Car users, on the other hand, fall behind with average expenditures of $111 a week.
Kelly Clifton, a civil and environmental engineering professor at Portland State University, found similar conclusions in her study of bicycling trends in the Rose City. Portland is one of the most bicycle friendly cities in the U.S., but business owners often have the perception that auto access equals dollars–and anything that possibly impedes auto access, capacity or parking will hit their revenues. Clifton, through surveying residents at various neighborhoods throughout the city, found the opposite. While customers who drive to various establishments may spend more money per visit, bicyclists visit the same venue more often, and spend more overall.
The findings of both surveys, particularly the one in Portland, show that bicycling is a win-win all around. Such benefits as exercise (in a country with a morbid obesity rate) and reduced emissions are obvious. But as is the case with many business initiatives with a focus on sustainability, targeting, welcoming and marketing to bicyclists makes solid business sense. The lessons of neighborhoods in cities from Fresno to Missoula, and neighborhoods in cities with established bicycle networks in Chicago, is that welcoming all visitors, instead of excluding some, strengthens communities–and bank accounts. The business case for bicycling has become an even easier one to make.
Thursday, September 06, 2012
Wheels in the sky: Artist's impression gives stunning vision of Boris' planned elevated London bike network
- First phase of SkyCycle would link Stratford with City of London by 2015
- Commuters expected to pay £1 per journey
- Scheme could cost 'tens of millions of pounds'
By DAILY MAIL REPORTER
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It may have only been a matter of weeks since Mayor of London Boris Johnson was left suspended precariously above the capital in a comical zip wire malfunction during the Olympics.
But Mr Johnson could be looking to take to the skies once again, this time on his bike, as he considers an architect's proposals for a network of elevated cycle paths between London's mainline stations.
Spectacular artist's impressions of what the city's raised cycle network - given a working name of SkyCycle - could look like were released this week along with the first details of the project.
Scroll down for video
London Mayor Boris Johnson is considering architect Sam Martin's designs for SkyCycle, a bike network above the capital's streets. An artist's impression is shown
The scheme is designed to make cycling safer for the increasing numbers choosing to take their bike to work
Drawings showing a futuristic raised glass open-top tunnel, that have drawn comparisons with New York's High Line, could become a reality as soon as 2015.
Sam Martin, 43, the landscape architect who came up with the idea with a colleague two years ago, said discussions between the Mayor and Network Rail were 'going well' since an initial meeting in May and that feasibility studies over potential sites were already underway.
He stressed that plans were at an early stage, but the proposal was focused on commuters who would pay to use the network with an Oyster card.
SkyCycle could become a reality above the streets of London as soon as 2015
Mr Martin, director of Exterior Architecture, who admits to giving up cycling in London because he found it too dangerous added that the raised network was the only option left to expand cycling in London.
He said: 'TfL estimate the number of journeys made by bike will treble to around 1.5 million by 2020. Where are they meant to go? SkyCycle is the next logical step, because you can’t realistically build more cycle lanes on ground level.
'You have to start knocking down buildings and there will always be the problem of traffic. It will be less safe than it is now and you can’t persuade people to get on bikes as it is even if you keep raising taxes on cars.'
He added: 'Boris loves the idea and Network Rail are really positive about it. I sincerely believe it could be the next significant piece of London infrastructure and would transform the capital.
'It has been compared to New York’s High Line, which I am familiar with, but the reality is this is a completely different concept.
'In New York it is mainly pedestrian and primarily for tourists and uses converted disused railway lines.
'We are talking about new infrastructure for commuters that guarantees safety and will be quicker than taking public transport. It is a much more ambitious and expensive.'
The drawings show a bold red and blue design incorporating a helix structure partly encasing the raised platform above London.
Martin believes that a corporate sponsor similar to the Barclays-backed cycle hire scheme would be needed to help fund the project, which he said would cost 'tens of millions of pounds' and take around two years to build.
It is thought the first route could be built on the Olympic regeneration of east London, linking Stratford with the City of London through Liverpool and Fenchurch Street stations but this has yet to be confirmed
It is envisaged that cyclists could pay around £1 per journey, making it significantly cheaper to use than public transport - around the third of the cost of a regular commute.
There would also be the need for more cycle storage and ramps at stations.
Despite suggestions, Martin said the proposed network would not exclusively use old railway lines but would require new infrastructure build alongside or above tracks in some places.
The problem of negotiating with different landowners is to be overcome by using leasing land owned by Network Rail.
The SkyCycle idea has drawn comparisons with New York's High Line, pictured, which uses the city's old railway lines as walkways
Speaking about the idea recently Boris Johnson MP described it as 'very interesting'.
He said: 'There is a proposal, which is very interesting, to hook up mainline stations in London along the side of raised railway tracks, with a new cycle path.'
According to TfL, there were twice the number of cyclists in London in 2010 compared to 2000, sparking numerous campaigns for improvements to make cycling safer in the capital.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2198032/SkyCycle-Artists-impression-gives-stunning-vision-Boris-planned-elevated-London-bike-network.html#ixzz25hjBpnlt
Wednesday, July 18, 2012
Commuters Pedal to Work on Their Very Own Superhighway
By SALLY McGRANE
New York Times
COPENHAGEN — Picture 11 miles of smoothly paved bike path meandering through the countryside. Largely uninterrupted by roads or intersections, it passes fields, backyards, chirping birds, a lake, some ducks and, at every mile, an air pump.
For some Danes, this is the morning commute.
Susan Nielsen, a 59-year-old schoolteacher, was one of a handful of people taking advantage of Denmark’s first “superhighway” for bicycles on a recent morning, about halfway between Copenhagen and Albertslund, a suburb, which is the highway’s endpoint. “I’m very glad because of the better pavement,” said Ms. Nielsen, who wore a rain jacket and carried a pair of pants in a backpack to put on after her 40-minute commute.
The cycle superhighway, which opened in April, is the first of 26 routes scheduled to be built to encourage more people to commute to and from Copenhagen by bicycle. More bike path than the Interstate its name suggests, it is the brainchild of city planners who were looking for ways to increase bicycle use in a place where half of the residents already bike to work or to school every day.
“We are very good, but we want to be better,” said Brian Hansen, the head of Copenhagen’s traffic planning section.
He and his team saw potential in suburban commuters, most of whom use cars or public transportation to reach the city. “A typical cyclist uses the bicycle within five kilometers,” or about three miles, said Mr. Hansen, whose office keeps a coat rack of ponchos that bicycling employees can borrow in case of rain. “We thought: How do we get people to take longer bicycle rides?”
They decided to make cycle paths look more like automobile freeways. While there is a good existing network of bicycle pathways around Copenhagen, standards across municipalities can be inconsistent, with some stretches having inadequate pavement, lighting or winter maintenance, as well as unsafe intersections and gaps.
“It doesn’t work if you have a good route, then a section in the middle is covered in snow,” said Lise Borgstrom Henriksen, spokeswoman for the cycle superhighway secretariat. “People won’t ride to work then.”
For the superhighway project, Copenhagen and 21 local governments teamed up to ensure that there were contiguous, standardized bike routes into the capital across distances of up to 14 miles. “We want people to perceive these routes as a serious alternative,” Mr. Hansen said, “like taking the bus, car or train.”
The plan has received widespread support in a country whose left- and right-leaning lawmakers both regularly bike to work (albeit on slightly different models of bicycle).
Riding on the first superhighway, which grew more crowded as it neared the city, Marianne Bagge-Petersen said she was heading to a support group for job seekers. “I think it’s very cool,” she said, noting that the path allowed her to avoid roads with more car traffic. “Taking the bike makes me feel good about myself. I’m looking for a job, and if I don’t get out, it’s going to be a very long day.”
The Capital Region of Denmark, a political body responsible for public hospitals as well as regional development, has provided $1.6 million for the superhighway project.
“When we look at public hospitals, we look very much at how to reduce cost,” said a regional councilor, Lars Gaardhoj, who had just picked up his three small children in a cargo bike decorated with elephants. “It’s a common saying among doctors that the best patient is the patient you never see. Anything we can do to get less pollution and less traffic is going to mean healthier, maybe happier, people.”
In Denmark, thanks to measures like the superhighway, commuters choose bicycles because they are the fastest and most convenient transportation option. “It’s not because the Danes are more environmentally friendly,” said Gil Penalosa, executive director of 8-80 Cities, a Canadian organization that works to make cities healthier. “It’s not because they eat something different at breakfast.”
Lars Gemzo, a partner at Gehl Architects, said that within Copenhagen, biking was already the best option for many kinds of trips. “If you want to drive a car for a medium distance, you know you are a fool,” he said. “You are going to waste time.”
Danish statistics show that every 6 miles biked instead of driven saves 3 1/2 pounds of carbon dioxide emissions and 9 cents in health care costs. But many cite happiness among the chief benefits of bicycle commuting.
“When you have been biking for 30 minutes, you have a really good feeling about yourself,” said Henrik Dam Kristensen, the minister for transport, who supports the superhighways. “You really enjoy a glass of wine because you’ve earned it.”
Frits Bredal, the head of communications at the Danish Cyclists’ Federation, cautioned that the superhighways were not perfect. “Ideally, there would be no red lights, there would be a perfect pavement, no holes, no obstacles, a real highway,” Mr. Bredal said.
Several biking innovations are being tested in Copenhagen. Some, like footrests and “green wave” technology, which times traffic lights at rush hour to suit bikers, have already been put into place on the superhighway. Others, like garbage cans tilted at an angle for easy access and “conversation” lanes, where two people can ride side by side and talk, might show up on long-distance routes in the future.
Superhighway users can also look forward to some variation on the “karma campaign,” now under way in Copenhagen, in which city employees take to the streets with boxes of chocolate to reward cyclists who adhere to the five rules of cycling: be nice, signal, stay to the right, overtake carefully and, rather than let bicycle bells irritate you, do your best to appreciate them.
The next superhighway will link Copenhagen with the municipality of Fureso, to the northwest. There, the existing bike path takes riders through a beautiful forest that is, unfortunately, very dark at night.
Last winter, to comply with superhighway standards, Fureso tested solar-powered lighting. “People were so happy about it,” said Lene Hartmann, Fureso’s climate project leader. “One rider said, ‘We feel like the trolls are taking care of us.’ ”
Several years ago, a Fureso resident, Karsten Bruun Hansen, started a “bike bus,” in which cyclists meet and commute together, taking turns blocking the wind. (Inspired by Mr. Hansen’s idea, the municipality also created a bike bus for children to ride to school together.)
Mr. Hansen, who estimates that he personally saves a ton of carbon dioxide every year, hopes that the superhighway will encourage more people to ride their bikes. “It’s unavoidable to commute to work,” Mr. Hansen said. “This way, you are using the time doing something fun.”
Ole Bondo Christensen, Fureso’s mayor, is also looking forward to the improvements that the superhighway will bring. Mr. Christensen, who does not own a car, bikes nearly four miles to work every day. “It’s my way to clear my brain,” he said. “Sometimes I get new ideas.”
This summer, after the rest of the solar-powered lights are installed, Fureso’s section of the road will be superhighway-ready.
“Now, the wind should always be at your back,” Mr. Christensen said with a smile. “We are working on that.”
Thursday, October 27, 2011
Making Bikes a Part of the Neighborhood
Tom Angotti
Gotham Gazette
The brouhaha in the press about bike lanes seems to have subsided for now and the buzz has turned to New York City’s plan to launch the largest bikeshare program in the country. Highly publicized efforts to erase new bike lanes, like the failed court case against the Prospect Park West bike lane in Brooklyn, may have run out of steam. But in the long run, the battles over street space are bound to move beyond downtown and City Hall to the city’s hundreds of neighborhoods where there are many cyclists and very few bicycle lanes, raising complex and long-neglected issues of transportation justice.
Next year New York City’s bikeshare program New York City’s bikeshare program will place 10,000 bicycles at 600 locations in Manhattan and Brooklyn, so that for a minimal charge New Yorkers can get around the city – as an alternative and supplement to private cars, taxis, walking and mass transit. People will be able to pick up a bike at one station and leave it at another. Boston, Washington, DC, Paris and scores of other large cities around the world already have successful bikeshare programs that are expanding bicycle use and changing the way streets are shared.
For the remainder of the article: http://www.gothamgazette.com/article/Transportation/20111025/16/3625
Wednesday, September 14, 2011
New York Chooses Company to Run Bike-Share Program
Published: September 14, 2011
The Bloomberg administration has selected Alta Bicycle Share to bring an ambitious bike-share program to New York, the city’s latest foray into transforming its streets to make them more hospitable to cyclists and pedestrians.
The announcement was made Wednesday afternoon at a press conference at a pedestrian plaza in the Flatiron district, where a sample bike station — a kiosk and a rack of sturdy, utilitarian bicycles — was on display.
By the time the program is to officially begin next summer, it is expected to feature 10,000 bicycles available at 600 stations in Manhattan, south of 79th Street, and in select neighborhoods in Brooklyn. The company said it was exploring options for adding stations in other boroughs.
The city’s mayor, Michael R. Bloomberg, has been anxious to bring New York up to par with global cities, including London and Paris, that have been praised for improving clogged city centers, partially through encouraging bicycle use. In the last four years, Mr. Bloomberg’s transportation commissioner, Janette Sadik-Khan, has rolled out 250 miles of bike lanes, and the bike-share program was seen as another central element of the city’s plan.
New York’s program would become the largest bike-share effort in the country, but it also brings outsized concerns about the placement of thousands of bicycles and hundreds of rental kiosks in parks and on sidewalks and streets.
The program will require participants to purchase long- or short-term memberships that include an unlimited number of trips of as long as 45 minutes; additional fees would apply for longer trips. A yearly membership would cost $100 or less; other pricing details have yet to be finalized.
“We could not be more excited to bring our successful bike share system to New York City,” Alison Cohen, president of Alta Bicycle Share, said in a press release. “Bike share is a new form of public transportation that will help connect New Yorkers to their own neighborhoods, to other neighborhoods and to public transit.”
Alta will introduce a trial program in the spring, testing a smaller number of stations at locations yet to be chosen.
In November, the Department of Transportation issued a request for proposal seeking companies interested in running the bike-share program. But the requirements were high: bidders had to promise that the program would be self-financed and would not require taxpayer help. The bidder could not excavate streets to build its stands or allow the bikes to take up too many parking spaces. The contractor also had to consult with city officials on all of its sponsorship plans to avoid making these bikes look purely like two-wheeled advertisements (think Ricky Bobby in the film “Talladega Nights”). Most of all, if the winning bidder makes any money on this venture, it has to share profits with the city.
Six bidders submitted proposals in February, and city officials narrowed the finalists down to B-Cycle and Alta. Alta Bicycle Share, based in Portland, Ore., runs programs in Washington and Boston and in Melbourne, Australia, and its supplier of bicycles and related equipment, Public Bike System Company, provides the bikes in programs in London, Montreal, Toronto and Minneapolis. B-Cycle, which is affiliated with the manufacturer Trek, has been associated with programs in Denver and Chicago.
The selection process has not been without controversy. The Department of Transportation faced heated discussions with City Council members about whether the agency had inappropriately excluded them from the planning stages of the program. Council members argued that because the bike-share network would be run by a third-party vendor, it was considered a franchise, which requires the Council’s authorization to run.
On Friday, the Department of Transportation agreed to hold public hearings and briefings on the progress of the program with the Council
Friday, August 05, 2011
Bike hire schemes may save lives, researchers say
A study on the Barcelona bike hire scheme suggests averted carbon emissions saves 12 lives each year
Thursday, December 09, 2010
City Council hears sides of bike lane battle
City Council Hears Sides of Bike Lane Battle
By MICHAEL M. GRYNBAUM
The Brooklyn borough president, Marty Markowitz, sang a self-written song about bicycle lanes to the tune of a popular selection from “The Sound of Music”: “These are a few of my favorite lanes.” A 40-year resident of Park Slope, Brooklyn, testified that an influx of cyclists had made her afraid to cross the street in front of her house. A group of cycling advocates wondered why the city would reject a nimble, environmentally friendly mode of transportation in favor of bulky, polluting automobiles.
The battle of the bike lanes, a civic discussion that has turned increasingly contentious and common at community boards and dinner tables throughout New York, made its way to the City Council on Thursday. The theatrics seemed to survive the transition.
Dueling protests, vicious invective from both sides and good old New York-style kvetching have been hallmarks of the bicycle debate since the Bloomberg administrationbegan installing hundreds of miles of bicycle-only lanes throughout the city.
Thursday’s oversight hearing was the first time that Janette Sadik-Khan, the city’s transportation commissioner, sat for formal questioning from city politicians about the implementation and enforcement of the ambitious new cycling network she has been overseeing.
“Nobody disagrees that using more bicycles is a good thing, but in a city where traffic is horrendous and finding a parking space is difficult, bike policy is all about trade-offs,” said James Vacca, the chairman of the Council’s transportation committee, as he introduced the hearing.
But Ms. Sadik-Khan firmly defended her department’s actions, countering a barrage of questions from council members who were irritated and enraged about the subject.
“While there are inevitable growing pains as cycling moves from the margins to the mainstream, its growth in New York is already delivering substantial safety, mobility and health dividends,” Ms. Sadik-Khan said. “The city’s bicycle program, with your assistance and support, is a huge success.”
The discussion touched on topics like the proper regulation of conduct on the road (Ms. Sadik-Khan said she planned a major advertising campaign featuring celebrities who would warn cyclists “to stop riding like jerks”) and whether the city had sufficiently solicited the views of people in communities where bicycle lanes have been installed (the commissioner said yes; several council members said no).
Advocates argued that the lanes encourage a safer, more environmentally friendly mode of transportation while making the city safer for pedestrians. “You’ve got to lay the tracks before you run the train,” said Noah Budnick, a deputy director at Transportation Alternatives, a cycling and pedestrian advocacy group.
Opponents lamented the loss of parking spaces and traveling lanes for automobiles, as well as complaining about what they labeled an imperious approach by city officials.
Jessica Lappin, a councilwoman from the Upper East Side, has introduced a bill that would require the Transportation Department to release detailed information about traffic accidents, including a count of those involving bicycles. Transportation officials have said the Police Department keeps the data, and Ms. Sadik-Khan testified that she had not yet read the bill, an assertion that Ms. Lappin seemed to doubt.
“I will tell my staff that despite our negotiations, I guess the top of the agency is not engaged,” Ms. Lappin said after her questioning of Ms. Sadik-Khan.
In her remarks, Ms. Sadik-Khan emphasized that she believed bicycle lanes provided significant improvements to street safety, and offered statistics showing fewer pedestrian injuries and a slower flow of traffic where lanes had been installed.
But when asked by Mr. Vacca how many people in the city ride bicycles every day, Ms. Sadik-Khan could not immediately produce an absolute number. Mr. Vacca said he was surprised that the city would engage in a large-scale change to the city’s roads without a more precise count of how many New Yorkers might use it.
“We don’t have the number of cars in the street, either,” Ms. Sadik-Khan replied.
Mr. Vacca responded: “Maybe we should have those numbers, too.”
(Officials later cited a survey from 2007 that showed about 500,000 New Yorkers identified themselves as regular cyclists.)
Friday, December 03, 2010
The complexities of a biking transition and the New York City backlash
The CityFix: Sustainable Urban Mobility
Submitted by Jonna McKone on December 1, 2010
New York City's new-ish First Avenue bike lane.
On November 22 and November 23, 2010, The New York Times gave biking in New York City significant coverage in print.
The paper wrote about the city’s plans for a cross-borough bike share system. And then a day later how the transformation of the 200 miles of city streets in the past few years to accommodate bike lanes has resulted in a heated “backlash.”
We’ve been writing about and support New York City’s successful bike initiatives and EMBARQ, the producer of this blog, released a video on the bike- and pedestrian-friendly infrastructure spearheaded by New York City Department of Transportation (NYCDOT) Commissioner Janette Sadik-Khan. The City is instituting mass transit expansion, including bus rapid transit and policies for more healthful and livable communities to bring a balance in modal usage, improve quality of life and ultimately diminish the dominance of personal vehicles on the City’s streets.
Yet, according to the Times article, business owners and drivers in Manhattan have erupted in discontent over the eliminated parking spaces and difficulty of making deliveries caused by new bike lanes on Columbus Avenue. And in Staten Island, lanes were removed on Capodanno Boulevard to “better meet Staten Island’s unique transportation issues.”
Perhaps, as Streetsblog’s Ben Fried points out, the article overstates the tension between bike lane supporters and detractors, pitting one group against the other without giving the issues their due explanation. The New York Times reporter J. David Goodman is inconsistent in his explanation of the conflict. First he states, “the opposition to the city’s agenda on bicycles has far less organization and passion than the bicycling advocates, but it is gaining increased attention.” Taking on a different tone, later in the article he says that surging bike ridership has spurred “simmering cultural conflict between competing notions of urban transportation.” Fried calls out Goodman’s poorly researched examples of “dissent” to bike lanes like an anti-bike lane rally in the Lower East Side he chose not to cover in Streetsblog because it “drew more reporters than bike lane opponents.”
Rather than pointing to conflict, Scott Stringer, Manhattan Borough President, more accurately described the complicated issues as New York surges ahead with infrastructure changes. Stringer says it’s a lack of education and attention to safety that causes a misuse of the lanes. “We’ve got seniors who think bike lanes are walkways. We’ve got police cars using bike lanes as a quick way around town.” He continues, “We’ve got taxi cabs pulling up so close to the bike lanes that a passenger gets out and actually doors a cyclist.”
And then there are the cyclists who hop onto sidewalks, ride against traffic and cruise at dangerous speeds. For those riders, NYC DOT has a campaign called “Don’t be a Jerk” that it released along with a set of cycling rules.
A New York City DOT posted promoting safety in bike lanes. Photo by scottmontreal.
One commenter on TheCityFix described his concerns:
For all its candy coated political correctness & college town nostalgic dreams, cycling in Manhattan’s over-congested streets is dangerous & often out of control. Not the least of which it is unregulated, unenforced & totally uninsured . . . NYC cyclists rarely use bike lanes, ride in any direction they please, yell at pedestrians to get out of the way and basically are on power trips with no regard for anyone. There is even an ever growing, non-gender specific, macho cyclist subculture that promotes bikes without brakes & gears…
And indeed some bikers who want to ride fast even oppose the lanes. We found a video by a biker who said the new First Avenue lanes are dangerous because she wasn’t able to go fast enough.
In the wake of all this, the City Council will hold a hearing on bicycling on December 9th to address the needs of cyclists and other road users as well as how NYC DOT has worked with community boards to review large-scale road changes. And police are cracking down on biking traffic violations. (Bikers must follow the same rules, markings and traffic signals as motorists.)
Paint on pavement lanes as well as protected lanes that move the car-parking lane away from the curb have improved safety for bikers and shifted the paradigm of what a sustainable and livable city is. More people are biking than before and the City is finding more of an equilibrium between cyclists, pedestrians, mass transit riders and cars on the streets. Traffic calming measures makes streets safer and more usable for walkers and riders and clears up space for expanded surface transit. Although injuries and fatalities increased for riders in 2010 compared to 2009, daily biker ridership has increased dramatically, meaning rates of injuries are dramatically on the decline.
New York is a city of such diverse street activity that compromise is required. Even though a subset of biking culture is about breaking the rules, bike lanes and city streets must accommodate all types of mobility.
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