More Bike News

02008-08-21 | Bicycle, Environment

Op-Ed Columnist – Flush With Energy – Op-Ed – NYTimes.com
After appointments here in Copenhagen, I was riding in a car back to my hotel at the 6 p.m. rush hour. And boy, you knew it was rush hour because 50 percent of the traffic in every intersection was bicycles. That is roughly the percentage of Danes who use two-wheelers to go to and from work or school every day here. If I lived in a city that had dedicated bike lanes everywhere, including one to the airport, I’d go to work that way, too. It means less traffic, less pollution and less obesity.

More Boston commuters are taking to their bicycles – The Boston Globe
“We’re definitely at some kind of a tipping point,” said David Watson, executive director of MassBike (massbike.org), a nonprofit cycling advocacy and education group.

Data on commuter bicycle use are scant, Watson said. On his daily ride from Arlington into Boston, he sees “more and more bike traffic from week to week.” He mentioned a survey showing a 70 percent increase in ridership between 2002 and 2006 in Cambridge, quoted on the website of the League of American Bicyclists (bikeleague.org).

Monkey-wrenching Bike Plans in San Fran : TreeHugger
The San Diego Union Tribune reports this morning that, while most cities are seeing a huge growth in bicycle-ridership, San Francisco has a bit of a cog in the wheel. 65-year old Rob Anderson thinks bikes might actually be more harmful for the environment and has demanded an environmental impact assessment from the city, ultimately halting the city’s massive pro-bike plan rollout.

New bike lanes, bike racks and even a possible bike sharing program with an aim to increase ridership 10% by 2010 are all on halt until the city can quantify the environmental impact such a change might have. Bike riders, on the other hand, are furious, but nothing has worked, from protesting outside of City Hall to threatening to bring the issue to local voters.

Anderson’s beef: that cars will always outnumber bikes, and by squeezing streets to allow for bikes, you just make traffic congestion worse – thus increasing pollution. The city’s bike-friendly plan included 527 pages of “maps, traffic analyses and a list of roughly 240 locations where the city hoped to make cycling easier.”

And best of all – the guy doesn’t even own a car. Just a man on a strange and inexplicable mission…

Here is a reaction from Copenhagen:

Copenhagenize.com – The Copenhagen Bike Culture Blog: More Promoting Cycling – or Not
San Francisco Sillyness
On the other side of the pond, in San Francisco, there is a man fighting against bike lanes and infrastructure. He sounds like a ‘character’ – read into that whatever you like – but it is amazing that he has gotten this far. There are so many studies from Europe that basically disprove every claim he has. A shame nobody tells the city hall about them.