Today, House Minority Leader John Boehner (R-OH) and Whip Eric Cantor (R-VA) sent President Obama a proposal with budget cuts that they claim could save taxpayers “in excess of $375 billion.” From their letter to Obama:
– Elimination of the Safe Routes to Schools program. The program “pays for building sidewalks, bike paths and crossing guards.” Not only does the program encourage green community practices, but also aims to increase safety and improve public health.
It's the bike with the style and geometry of a fixed gear track bike, BUT WAIT A MINIUTE!!! Yes it has a coaster break just like the bikes we all enjoyed as kids. Only now you no longer have to pedal around on your 50 pound beach cruiser from the middle of the 20th century. You can now enjoy a light weight single speed bicycle with no cables or pesky derailers to constantly adjust
x-posted from hsvbike.com; help them represent you
DO YOU HAVE QUESTIONS, CONCERNS, IDEAS?…THERE IS A PUBLIC MEETING SCHEDULED AT THE HUNSTVILLE PUBLIC LIBRARY…IN THE A/B ROOM WEDNESDAY, JUNE 10TH FROM 7:00PM-8:30PM. ALL ARE WELCOME AND ENCOURAGED TO ATTEND. I HOPE TO SEE YOU THERE.
I am often asked, "Why do you love bicycles?" For a few reasons, but mostly because I am in love with self-propulsion and self-motivation. I love finding solutions to problems and I want to leave the world in better condition than when I arrived. For too long we've behaved as if the resources of our world are infinite. They are not. They are finite. The disappearing species around the globe should be a canary in the coal mine for all of us.
Have you ever been witness to a baby's first steps? The open mouth smile and the parents, with arms outstretched, as the child wobbles into their waiting arms. With each step the child builds confidence and ventures further out into the world. I don't remember my first steps, but I remember the first time I found my balance and pedaled away from my father as he let go of the seat of my first bike. I remember. My heart seemed to stop and I gasped for breath. Balance. More than just a word, a metaphor. read more here
Normally I don't condone this kind of behavior but, when it involves getting away on a bike I let it slide.
A man dressed in a sport coat, and who rode a mountain bike, managed to rob a Norton Shores bank Wednesday and get away with an undetermined amount of cash, police said.
Some people go the beach when they graduate from college.
Phil Nagle is opting instead for a summer of suffering.
Nagle, 23, of Tipp City is graduating next month from the University of Cincinnati’s architectural engineering program. But before he returns to UC in the fall to finish a second major in construction management, he hopes to have done something no one has ever done before.
Nagle is planning to leave July 6 on an epic 8,000-mile bike trip through 48 states in 48 days. He hopes to raise $48,000 for the Lymphoma and Leukemia Society and land a spot in the Guinness Book of World Records.
Janette Sadik-Khan, the city’s Transportation commissioner, manages to be equal parts Jane Jacobs and Robert Moses. As she prepares to close swaths of Broadway to cars next week, she is igniting a peculiar new culture war—over the role of the automobile in New York. read more here
For the fifth year in a row, cycling ruled the road in Transportation Alternatives' annual commuter race Thursday, with a biker beating a straphanger and a cabbie.
It took librarian Rachel Myers 20 minutes and 15 seconds to pedal 4.2 miles from Sunnyside, Queens, to Columbus Circle during the morning rush.
"Woo hoo!" the 29-year-old Brooklynite shouted, pumping her fist in the air. "Just goes to show that bikes rule this city!" Subway rider Dan Hendrick - who hopped the No. 7 in Sunnyside and transferred to the No. 1 at Times Square - arrived 15 minutes later.
Hendrick, 38, usually rides the rails to work at the New York League of Conservation Voters, but he may be switching to pedal power.
"Twenty minutes saved is a lot in the morning," he said. "I could really use that time to get a latte or something." A yellow cab rolled up to the finish line 27 minutes after Myers, costing passenger Willie Thompson $30 and precious commuting time.
City Paper, DC’s alternative weekly, recently published a cover story that chides cyclists for not wearing their helmets.
In between grisly tales of riders’ heads being bumped, dragged, and otherwise mangled, the article reports that only about 36 percent of cyclists in New York City and about half of cyclists in DC wear helmets.
The article has a derisive tone. No helmet, the story implies, and you’re as foolish as the balding man on the front cover riding with his helmet strapped to his jeans rather than his head.
City Paper is right, of course. We’ve all heard the statistics before. Helmets reduce the risk of head injuries by 85 percent. Two-thirds of cyclists killed in accidents are not wearing helmets.
Helmet skeptics say such statistics are exaggerated, and they’re probably right. Still, you don’t need an advanced degree to recognize that a helmeted head has a far better chance of surviving an accident intact than an unprotected one.
There can, however, be too much of a good thing, and unfortunately that’s what’s happened with bicycles and helmets. At this point, in fact, the discourse on bicycle safety has become dangerously one-dimensional.
Among much of the media and the government organizations that publish information about cycling, the helmet safety message has become something close to gospel. The narrative about bicycle safety in most cases boils down to this: Helmet = safe and responsible
No helmet = unsafe and irresponsible
That’s it. End of story. The problem: Bicycle safety is far more complicated than this simplistic message suggests. Worse, this helmet-centric public health message probably make the roads less safe for cyclists.
Don’t get me wrong. Helmets are important. Cyclists should wear helmets. I wear a helmet, and I encourage other people to wear them too. But the one-dimensional message that helmet safety advocates push to the exclusion of other key factors is a problem. Here, then, are five things that helmet advocates aren’t talking about but should be: 1) Helmets are a last resort. Helmets don’t prevent accidents; what they do is give riders a somewhat better chance of surviving one. There’s much more, however, that could and should be done in regards to cyclist (and driver) education and infrastructure improvement, for example, that would go a long ways to preventing accidents in the first place.
2) One of the best ways to make the roads safer for cyclists is to get more cyclists on the road. There’s an inverse relationship between the number of cyclists on the road and the accident rate for cyclists. Research shows, for example, that when communities double the number of cyclist the accident rate per cyclist drops by about a third. This is presumably because motorists become more accustomed to sharing the road with cyclists. Some of the safest countries for cyclists--Denmark, for example--don’t promote helmet usage very aggressively and fear that such campaigns might discourage people from cycling, thus making roads less safe for cyclists.
3) There are trade-offs to consider. We hear often that cycling is a dangerous activity because of the risk of traffic accidents. And, yes, there is a certain degree of risk associated with cycling. We hear far less, however, about the risks of not cycling as it relates to obesity, diabetes, and a host of other life-threatening health problems. Death from a heart attack might not be as dramatic as a gory traffic accident, but the loss of life is just as real. When you factor the health benefits in, some researchers estimate the benefits of cycling outweigh the risks by nearly twenty-fold.
4) Alcohol is a major cause of accidents. In nearly a third of all fatal accidents involving cyclists either the cyclist or driver is intoxicated, research from the United States National Highway Traffic Safety Administration shows. This suggests that one of the most powerful ways to make the roads safer for cyclists is to get serious about combating drunken cycling and driving.
5) Expanding the diversity of cyclists will make biking a significantly safer form of transportation. One of the key reasons that cycling appears to be a dangerous form of transportation has to do with the demographics of the people who cycle. Currently, the vast majority of people who cycle as a form of transportation are males below the age of thirty. This particular demographic group, as most people can probably guess, leads the way in nearly every single type of accident regardless of whether it involves automobiles, guns, or bikes. The per capita accident rate among male cyclists is approximately eight times that of females, according to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration. Thus, increasing the number of women and older riders will significantly reduce the accident rate simply because these groups take far fewer unnecessary risks.
6) Some perspective is in order. Though many people regard bicycling as a particularly dangerous form of transportation, few realize that walking is even worse. One study conducted by a Rutgers University researcher, for example, shows that per kilometer traveled walking is more than 3 times more dangerous than cycling. Makes you wonder why there aren’t stronger public health pushes for walking helmets, say, or safer pedestrian crosswalks, doesn’t it?
7) Pushing helmets can have unintended consequences. Some research, as detailed in this New York Times story, shows that drivers drive more aggressively when passing cyclists wearing helmets. In addition, there’s evidence that extra safety gear can give cyclists a false sense of security that elevates their risk-taking behavior--a phenomenon economists call the Peltzman effect.
We are not going to republish the Huntsville Times or any of the other local news media reports here because they simply under reported the number: I counted over 200 at the ride.
WHNT: Dozens of Cyclist Huntsville Times: 120 cyclist
The one thing we did notice is the News Media and the Tall Bikes. All the TV channels showed the Tallbikes!!!! It looks like Dustin,Tyler and the Tallbikes were shown much more than the sea of yellow and spandex!!!
So Huntsville may now be known as the Tallbike City instead of the recreational and brightly clad city of cyclist.
The League of American Bicyclists released their second annual ranking of Bicycle Friendly States, scoring the 50 states on a 75-item questionnaire that evaluates a state's commitment to bicycling within six key areas: legislation, policies and programs, infrastructure, education and encouragement, evaluation and planning, and enforcement.
League President Andy Clarke said that "several states dramatically improved their ranking by updating their traffic codes, increasing the level of funding for bicycle improvements, implementing education programs aimed at cyclists and motorists, getting organized and hosting their first statewide bicycling conferences and events."
For 2009, the top five highest scoring states ranked one through five are: Washington, 1; Wisconsin, 2; Maine, 3; Oregon, 4; and Minnesota, 5. The lowest scoring states ranked 46 through 50 are: New Mexico, 46; Alaska, 47; Oklahoma, 48; Montana, 49; and Alabama, 50. A PDF file with complete list of state rankings is available at this link (40KB).
