07.31.08
Posted in General, Neighborhoods
by Mark Dieterich at 10:34 am
We received the following question via our online contact form:
Hi there! I am currently living in NYC and I am planning on moving to Providence within the next year, but my big concern is being able to ride my bike, so im curious if you can tell me how bike
friendly is Providence? I’ve been looking at the streets of the neighborhoods I want to live in, but i have yet to see a bike lane:( what are your thoughts on the relationship between cyclists and other
commuters (drivers, busses, etc)?
Rather than respond with just my opinion, I thought it best to open this up to the community. So what say you Providence, are we bike friendly? Are there any great biking neighborhoods out there?
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07.29.08
Posted in Tales from the Trenches
by Margherita at 8:26 am
July 29, 2008
Officer Investigated in Toppling of Cyclist
A New York City police officer was stripped of his gun and badge on Monday after an amateur video surfaced on the Internet showing him pushing a bicyclist to the ground in Times Square during a group ride on Friday evening.
The cyclist, identified in court papers as Christopher Long, 29, was taking part in a monthly ride, called Critical Mass, that often draws hundreds of riders. In a criminal complaint against Mr. Long, the officer, identified in the court documents as Patrick Pogan of the Midtown South precinct, says that the cyclist rode straight into him. But the video, posted on YouTube and on the blog Gothamist.com, shows the officer lunging toward Mr. Long.
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07.28.08
Posted in Events
by Mark Dieterich at 9:23 am
The next monthly advocacy meeting will be on August 7th @ 6pm. We will be meeting at the Hub (181 Brook Street, Providence).
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07.27.08
Posted in Tales from the Trenches
by Margherita at 1:00 pm
My daughter and grand-daughter going for groceries in St. Paul.
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07.25.08
Posted in Tales from the Trenches
by Mark Dieterich at 8:38 pm
This picture is the result of a collision between a RIPTA bus and a cyclist. A friend of the cyclist involved in this accident forwarded the picture to me. Fortunately the cyclist was uninjured and needed no hospital care, but look at this poor bike!
I scoured the internet to see if I could locate any mention of this incident, but couldn’t find anything. It does make you wonder how many events like this are occurring every day that the public just never hears about.
If those involved with the accident have any further details about the collision that you would like to share, I think we would all be interested in the details.
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Posted in Advocacy, East Bay
by Mark Dieterich at 7:37 am
From an article in today’s projo, the Barrington town council
approved spending up to $10,000 to construct a new bike shelter so people can safely store their bicycles before catching a RIPTA bus to work.
The Rhode Island Department of Transportation is offering to finance the design of the project, which will include the installation of about 10 bike racks and a covered shelter.
The location would be near where the bike path connector meets County Road, according to Town Planner Philip Hervey. There is already a shelter for bus riders.
Another town that is starting to understand how bicycles can be used for transportation. If all goes well, this project should end up costing the town very little as
the Rhode Island Public Transit Authority has offered to commit $40,000 if Barrington chips in 20 percent of the cost.
The only question I have here is whether or not RIPTA can afford to do this. At a time when they are discussing route cuts to cover bugetary shortfalls, should they be spending money on bike racks? Hopefully, this means RIPTA has secured other funding to continue their full compliement or routes.
Are you looking for some way to reach out to your local community? I’d suggest each of us can contact our local officials, make sure they know what Barrington is doing and ask whether your town can do the same!
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07.24.08
Posted in Advocacy
by Eric at 9:14 am
Re-cycling effort
Interest in commuting by bike on the increase
Getting on a bike for the first time since she was 16 years old, 42-year-old Priscilla Power rode 5 miles to her Wakefield office as part of her company’s “Bike to Work Day” last month. Though she remembered how to pedal, the inexperienced biker detoured through a Dunkin’ Donuts’ parking lot to avoid a busy intersection.
So last week Power took an hour away from her desk to attend a bicycle-commuting workshop offered by her employer, the Wakefield-based environmental engineering firm Metcalf & Eddy | AECOM.
At the workshop, conducted by the Massachusetts Bicycle Coalition, also known as MassBike, a nonprofit advocacy group, Power and 27 co-workers learned the nuts and bolts of bike commuting. Power jotted down a few notes on what to look for in a commuter bike: fenders, to keep water from flying on rainy days, and smooth, not nubby, tires.
She also learned that during her first commute she was riding too close to parked cars. And she had every right to be in the busy intersection as much as the cars, said Shane Jordan, who led the workshop.
“By law in Massachusetts, [bikes] are a vehicle,” said Jordan, the director of education and outreach at MassBike. “You have all the same rights and responsibilities. Bikers are allowed to take the full lane.”
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07.21.08
Posted in Advocacy
by Margherita at 6:39 pm
by Mike Chino
IKEA, that patent purveyor of all things flat-pack just announced that it has just teamed up with Velorbis to offer an exciting new service to its Danish customers: bike trailers. The arrangement will supply IKEA stores with a fleet of free trailer bikes, giving Danes an eco-friendly way to haul their housewares home and proving, once again, that Denmark rocks the bike lane.
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Posted in Advocacy
by Margherita at 8:09 am
Ditch the auto, saddle up, and reduce your commuting costs to zero
By Ty Burr, Globe Staff | July 21, 2008
All right: Why not bicycle to work?
Gas is headed for $5 a gallon, and our government can’t bring itself to pass any meaningful climate-change legislation. You can keep paying through the nose and contributing to global warming, or you can actually do something about it: Dust off the two-wheeler and commute by leg power.
You won’t be alone. Bike sales have soared this spring and so has ridership: the recent Bike to Work Week in Massachusetts logged 125,000 miles in pledges as opposed to an expected 50,000.
Only one question remains for many area commuters: Is it possible to bike to work and get there alive? Boston has a horrible reputation on the national bicycling scene and for three good reasons: lousy roads, bad drivers, and car-centric civic attitudes.
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07.19.08
Posted in Advocacy
by Mark Dieterich at 9:06 pm
Surprise, surprise… according to an article in the Woonsocket Call, the State is forecasting a significant financial shortfall.
Rhode Island needs approximately $600 million a year to fix and maintain its highways and bridges and otherwise operate the state Department of Transportation (RIDOT); its current revenue stream provides about $300 million.
Here’s a crazy idea, what if we were to cut back on our infrastructure needs? Perhaps develop a better public transportation system and allow people to move themselves around freely? Nope,
the Blue Ribbon Panel for Transportation Funding has suggested tolls on Route 95 near the Connecticut line tolls on I-95 closer to Providence; increased gas taxes; or hiking the sales tax. Right now, says RIDOT Director Michael Lewis, all of those, along with a few others, are just suggestions.
I for one will be upset if they increase sales tax to fund road projects. As far as I’m concerned our transportation infrastructure is already overbuilt and impossible to fund in any ongoing way. Director Lewis himself says
a big part of the problem is that “we don’t use a sustainable model” for highway maintenance and improvements. “Rhode Island is very dependent on the federal highway program, probably more so than any other state,” Lewis explained. “The federal program provides 80 percent of the cost of a project; we have to have 20 percent matching funds. We get approximately $200 million in federal highway money, we have to come up with 20 percent of that, which is about $40 million a year.”
The state borrows that money, so it has to pay debt service on that $40 million a year from its operating budget, which is also used to plow roads, sweep the highways, cut grass along the sides of the roads and in the medians, clear drains. Those funds come from the state’s gas tax and the debt service represents about half of what the state takes in from the gas tax each year.
If a private citizen operated in such a manner, we would never be approved for additional loans. Rather than focus on dramatically increasing revenue, let’s stop for a moment and think about how we could make a smaller infrastructure more efficient. Thomas Ardito, director of policy and communications for the Narragansett Bay Estuary Program and founder of the Center for Ecosystem Restoration, recently published an article in the Projo discussing some of the very ideas we’ve been promoting for a while now.
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