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Saturday, May 17, 2008

CBS News reports on commuter bikes

At the risk of sounding like a shill for CBS News, Here's another segment from the "Early Show" about Bike to Work Day. Harry Smith, a bike commuter, talks with Bicycling magazine Editor Steve Madden about the newest commuter bikes and the benefits of bicycle commuting.
Labels: bicycling, commuting

Roger 0 comments links to this post 12:38 PM

St. Louis Bike to Work Day on CBS

In case you missed it this morning -- count me among those who did -- St. Louis' Bike to Work Day was included in a a segment on CBS's "Early Show" in a story about gasoline prices. You have to sit through a commercial, then some footgage from a stock-car track in Junction City, Kan., before you get to the St. Louis segment. The entire segment takes about 3:25 (3:55 if you include the commercial).

Here's the link to the story: 64-Cent Gas! Eye On the Road.
Labels: bicycling, commuting, St. Louis

Roger 0 comments links to this post 10:48 AM

Saturday, May 10, 2008

CBS News to film St. Louis cyclists

CBS News plans to include St. Louis in an upcoming segment about Bike to Work Week. Here's the information I got from Trailnet Executive Director Ann Mack on Friday:
Help Trailnet show the nation a bike-friendly St. Louis! CBS News will be traveling through St. Louis on Friday, May 16. In recognition of Bike to Work Day, (CBS) will be filming at Trailnet's Bike to Work Day Refueling Station at the Missouri History Museum at 6:00 AM. The visual will be a sea of cyclists in brightly colored jerseys.

The correspondent will interview bike commuters, set up some shots and then would like to join a group of cyclists on their commute to work downtown. Please plan to participate and show your bike jersey colors. ...

We are hoping for a good crowd so please forward this to your friends and fellow cyclists. Don't forget: 6:00 a.m., Friday, May 16 at the Missouri History Museum Refueling Station.
I'm afraid you can count me out. Given that I don't normally get to bed until about 3 a.m. on Fridays, there's no way on God's green Earth that I can be up that early. I do, however, support the effort and hope those of you who can be up that early can join in on the fun.

The Missouri History Museum is one of 20 "refueling stations" on Friday, which Trailnet has designated as Bike to Work Day in the St. Louis area. Unfortunately for people who might be tempted to bike to work from Illinois into Missouri, there are no refueling stations on the Illinois side of the Mississippi River. The closest station for Illinois residents is the Downtown YMCA at 1528 Locust St.
Labels: commuting, St. Louis, Trailnet

Roger 0 comments links to this post 12:33 AM

Monday, May 05, 2008

Bike St. Louis expands

Just in time for National Bike to Work Week, May 12-16, the Great Rivers Greenway District is announcing the opening of 57 miles of additional on-street Bike St. Louis routes through St. Louis County and St. Louis City.

With the expansion, the Bike St. Louis system will today 77 miles of dedicated bike lanes and shared traffic lanes.

The dedication of the expansion will take place Thursday at three locations:
10 a.m. in Maplewood, Mo., in front of Schlafly Bottleworks, 7260 Southwest Avenue

11 a.m. in Clayton, Mo., at the MetroLink station at Central and Shaw Park Drive

12:30 p.m. in St. Louis at the intersection of St. Louis Avenue and Blair Avenue
(a half-block block west of Crown Candy Kitchen)
Here's a brief excerpt from the press release (Word document) Bike St. Louis has published about the expansion:
The new routes are the first major expansion of the Bike St. Louis network since 2005, when the first 20 miles of continuous on-street bicycle routes were dedicated and connected downtown St. Louis to surrounding neighborhoods. Nearly 50 miles of the expanded Bike St. Louis routes are located in the City of St. Louis, providing connections from downtown to neighborhoods, business districts, educational, cultural and recreation amenities in North and South St. Louis. The new routes also provide on-street connections to the North Riverfront Trail and the McKinley Bridge Bikeway along the Mississippi River in North St. Louis, as well as the River des Peres Greenway and Christy Greenway in South St. Louis.

In just a few short years, I have seen an important change in residents attitudes about bicycle trails and lanes, said St. Louis Mayor Francis G. Slay. What was suspicion and resistance five years ago is now enthusiastic support. A nearby trail is viewed and, more importantly for our physical fitness, used as an important amenity for city neighborhoods."
All Bike St. Louis routes feature highly visible customized designation signs, standard federal bicycle route signs and on-street pavement markings. In addition, Bike St. Louis maps are available online at www.bikestlouis.org and at many convenient area locations throughout the region. The maps provide information to assist riders plan their routes and feature safety tips and other pertinent resource information.

And if that wasn't enough, the Great Rivers Greenway District will hold the grand opening of the McKinley Bridge Bikeway and Trestle on June 7. After a major renovation, the bridge reopened to vehicle traffic late last year, and now the McKinley Bridge will link the Bike St. Louis system to the Madison County Transit Confluence Trail in Illinois.

Once the bridge is open, St. Louis cyclists will have four safe ways to cross the Mississippi River between the two states. The existing crossings are the Eads Bridge, Old Chain of Rocks Bridge and the Clark Bridge, which connects St. Charles County, Mo., and Alton, Ill.

Not surprisingly, I applaud the efforts to make the St. Louis area more bicycle friendly, and I hope the trend continues.
Labels: commuting, cycling, Missouri, St. Louis, trails

Roger 2 comments links to this post 12:10 AM

Tuesday, March 25, 2008

Bike commuter in Southern Illinois

Over the weekend, The Associated Press sent out a feature about a Southern Illinois bike commuter to its member papers in Illinois. The Carbondale-based Southern Illinoisan originally published the story back in January.

Bobby Joe Wayne Cantrell -- a student at Rend Lake College, a community college in Ina -- regularly bikes the the 21-mile round trip from his home in West City to Ina on a red Mongoose mountain bike.

Why does he ride? Unlike most of his peers, Cantrell does not have a driver's license.

"I had a (learner's) permit but I was never taken out enough to get any real practice," he said. "And now it's the cost of it. I don't have the funding to get a car and pay for the upkeep of it, so I ride my bike everywhere."
Labels: commuting, Illinois

Roger 0 comments links to this post 12:47 AM

Thursday, December 20, 2007

Highway 40 and bicycles

Come Jan. 2, there will be plenty of fear and loathing in the St. Louis metropolitan area. That's the day when Highway 40 -- that's what the locals call Interstate 64-U.S. 40 -- closes for a major construction project. The highway will not be completely open again until Dec. 31, 2009.

Since Highway 40 is a major traffic artery for the St. Louis region, there is much concern about how people are going to get around. Traffic experts hope that people will turn to Metro, the St. Louis area's mass transit system, hope that employers offer work-at-home or flexible schedules or use alternative means of transportation, including the bicycle.

But they also suspect most people will simply find different routes to drive their cars. Highway officials already have or are making plans to create more lanes for vehicles.

And that's what concerns many members of the cycling community. An article in this week's Suburban Journals addresses that issue. One cyclist who regularly commutes in St. Louis County already reports more difficulties in riding his bike on Clayton Road, one of the roads that will be carrying part of the load from Highway 40.

Stephanie Leon Streeter, manager of the highway planning division of the St. Louis County Highways and Traffic Department, said roads the are being remarked to add lanes will remain available to bicyclists because they have a legal right to be on road because of state statutes.

"These roads are certainly open to bicyclists, but this does not mean these routes are ideal, especially with the amount of traffic, which will be historic, when Highway 40 closes," Streeter told the Suburban Journals.

Trailnet is working with St. Louis County officials to develop alternative bicycle routes between Spoede Road and Forest Park in St. Louis that are safer than the roads that are being remarked.

The increase of motorists on roads that are now popular with cyclists, and the possibility there will be more people riding their bikes as a means of transportation, raises concerns about conflicts between motorists and cyclists.

A recent letter to the St. Louis Post-Dispatch's Along for the Ride column shows the conflict. One writer, Jerry F., wrote this:
Conway Road seems to have become the exclusive path of bicyclists on weekends and many late afternoons. Many times they refuse to move to the right of a very narrow two-lane road so cars can get by. When Highway 40 shuts down, putting more automobiles on Conway, I am quite concerned about the safety of both bicyclists and drivers. Is there anything that can be done to restrict the bicycles to certain times on Conway, or restrict bicyclists to parts of Conway that might be a little wider?
It's clear from this letter that motorists need to learn to know that Missouri allows bicycles on most roads in the state. The Missouri Bicycle Federation has plenty of resources that explains state bicycle laws and how they pertain to cyclists and motorists alike.

A recent case in Webster Groves, Mo., has raised some doubts whether law enforcement officials in St. Louis County are aware of the laws. The case was bantered over in the STLBiking.com forum, and the Suburban Journals took a look at it:
Rachel Abbott of Glendale had an experience all her own that she thinks went against state statutes that allow her to be on the road with motorists.

She said that on Dec. 3 she was cycling home from work on Kirkham Road, just East of Elm Avenue in Webster Groves.

"At 5:40 p.m. a police officer turned on his lights and pulled me over," Abbott said. "When I questioned about my offense, he said I can't be riding on the street 10 miles per hour impeding traffic, and that I had to ride on the sidewalk. This was confusing to me because I was riding all the way to the right, and there are two lanes of traffic flowing in each direction."

She told the officer her understanding of what he was saying was that she could not ride on the road.

Abbott told the officer she had been commuting for years and had never been informed of this law.

"When I questioned him, he threatened me with a ticket. He asked for my identification and in a controlling manner said, 'Now, are you going to ride on the sidewalk?'"

She just shook her head yes and got out of there, she said.

Abbott did not obtain the name of the officer.

Webster Groves Police Chief Dale Curtis said Abbott's complaint is legitimate if the officer suggested that she ride her bicycle on the sidewalk.

"Telling someone to ride a bicycle on the sidewalk is not correct," he said.

Curtis said the police officer does have the right to instruct bicyclists to get off the road if they are impeding traffic.

He said after hearing about this incident, the supervisory staff is reviewing the state statutes on bicycle use with officers during briefing sessions.
My take on that and other similar situations is that the police officers in question may simply be ignorant of traffic laws and how they apply to cyclists. I'm sure there are a few officers who don't like bicyclists and would rather see us stay off the road, but I'm inclined to cut the vast majority of officers slack. They have an awful lot they have to remember, and cycling traffic laws likely are a low priority for them.

Patty Vinyard, the acting executive director of the St. Louis Regional Bicycle Federation, agrees.

"Individual police officers, like the public at large, may or may not be fully aware of the law as it pertains to bicycling on the roadways," she said in a recent e-mail statement to me. "Training materials and courses for law enforcement are available from NHTSA and other sources, and we would be happy to assist local police departments in making bike safety training available to their officers."

She pointed out resources for police officers that are available through the League of Illinois Bicyclists. I wrote about those recently. While they are written especially for Illinois law enforcement officials, there are enough similarities between Illinois and Missouri law that the principles could benefit officers in Missouri.

Patty and I are in full agreement that more, and more effective, bike education is needed for bicyclists, motorists and police.

I also would add in closing that is if we cyclists expect motorists and police officers to accept that we have a right to the road, we in turn must be responsible cyclists and follow the law as well.
Labels: advocacy, commuting, cycling, safety, St. Louis

Roger 3 comments links to this post 12:09 AM

Wednesday, October 10, 2007

Blagojevich's "Complete Streets" veto overriden

Illinois cyclists got a major victory today when the Illinois House voted 109-3 to override Gov. Rod Blagojevich's amendatory veto of the "Complete Streets" bill. That, along with the state Senate's vote last week to override the veto, means the bill as originally passed by both chambers becomes law.

What the law means, in short, is that the Illinois Department of Transportation shall include walkways and bicycle ways in their road designs in urban areas. IDOT also shall develop design and construction standards for bicycle and pedestrian ways.

Blagojevich's amendatory veto had changed the wording of the bill from "shall" to "may," effectively gutting the bill, according to the League of Illinois Bicyclists and the Chicagoland Bicycle Federation.

The law goes in effect immediately.
Labels: advocacy, commuting, Illinois, safety

Roger 1 comments links to this post 1:56 PM

Tuesday, October 09, 2007

Easing the way for cyclists

In case you missed these stories online yesterday, USA Today and The Associated Press had a couple of stories about making things a bit easier for people who want to ride their bicycles as a means of transportation.

The USA Today story says that cities are accelerating their efforts to encourage commuting on two wheels, putting bike racks where cars once parked, adding bike lanes and considering European-style bike-share programs to get residents out of their cars.

Among the cities mentioned in the USA Today story is Chicago, which is striving by 2015 to have 5 percent of all trips shorter than 5 miles to be taken by bicycle. Mayor Richard Daley also is considering launching a bike program he saw in Paris. That effort, begun in July, allows residents and visitors to check out a bike at one location, ride free during the first half-hour and park the bike at another location near their destination. As I mentioned last week, Montreal is implementing a similar program. That program is expected to begin by the fall of 2008.

The AP story focuses on New York City, which received bronze medal from the Washington-based League of American Bicyclists for the city's efforts under Mayor Michael Bloomberg to promote cycling for a cleaner environment and a healthier populace.

The city is installing 400 to 500 bike racks a year and plans to have more than 400 miles of bike lanes and paths by 2009, the AP reported. There will then be 1 mile of bike lane for every 10 miles of road; the ratio is now 1 to 15. In San Francisco, it's 1 to 7.
Labels: commuting, cycling, United States

Roger 0 comments links to this post 10:01 AM

Friday, October 05, 2007

"Self-serve" bicycle rentals

Those of you who have read about the bicycle tours I've done over the years know that I have a soft spot for the the Canadian province of Quebec. Every once in a while, I visit the Montreal Gazette's Web site to get my fix of Canadian news, and I happened to come across this item:
The city of Montreal plans to be the first North American city to set up a large-scale "self-serve" public bike rental service.

Following in the footsteps, or pedalling along the same path, as European cities such as Paris and Lyon where such systems have recently exploded in popularity, Montreal hopes to get its project started by next fall and fully operational by late 2009. ...

The idea is to encourage Montrealers and tourists to use the public bicycles instead of cars for short, inner city trips, allowing them to pick up a bike at one station, use it for half an hour or an hour, and then drop it off at any other station of their choice.
Andre Lavallee, a city executive committee member responsible for transportation issues, said the program will be the first not only in Quebec, but in all of North America.

"We used to see cycling as recreation, but now thousands of people are using bikes to get to work, or school," Lavallee said at a press conference Thursday. "This summer, we actually saw traffic jams of cyclists on some of our new bike routes, like St. Urbain. Something is changing right now in Montreal and we all have to come along on this wave."

Whether the wave is strong enough to make it south to the United States remains to be seen.
Labels: Canada, commuting, cycling, Montreal

Roger 1 comments links to this post 11:15 AM

Thursday, February 08, 2007

Cycling issues in Missouri

There's good news and bad news regarding cycling on the Missouri side of the St. Louis Metropolitan Area.

First, the good news: The St. Louis Post-Dispatch reported Wednesday that work on an additional 11 miles of the Katy Trail in St. Charles County should begin this summer. Gov. Matt Blunt announced Wednesday that the state and the local levee district have finally reached an agreement on completing the section of trail from St. Charles north to Machens.

Blunt said the state has asked Ameren Corp. to let the state use an old Rock Island Railroad bed it owns as part of the trail, the Post-Dispatch This would extend the trail from Windsor, east of Clinton, to Pleasant Hill, a suburb of Kansas City.

Now, the bad news: Fritz's Cycle-licious blog has picked up on the controversy raised by some cyclists about the plans to divert motorized traffic from Interstate 64/U.S. Highway 40 onto Clayton Road, a popular road with St. Louis County cyclists, during the reconstruction of I-64/U.S. 40.

I haven't written about the topic because I thought it was being handled well by the Missouri Bicycle Federation and the St. Louis Regional Bicycle Federation forums. Since I don't have a lot of first-hand experience riding on St. Louis County roads -- the bulk of my local riding is done on Illinois roads and trails -- I'm not sure how qualified I am to offer an opinion.

The concerns is that the plan for Clayton Road to handle some of the I-64/U.S. 40 would eliminate the wide lanes popular with cyclists, and there are fears that the altered lanes would become permanent once the highway work is done.

Garry Earls, St. Louis County's chief highway engineer, told one member of STLBikeFed:
... St. Louis County has neither considered nor proposed that bicycle traffic be banned on public roads. We know that in a perfect world, the masses would embrace bicycle riding as their regular mode of transportation. It's good for the heart and good for the planet. We don't live in a perfect world. In the real world, our community is composed of a diverse population measured from any statistic. It is clear that commuter patterns and family composition establish a level of motor vehicle traffic on our roads that cannot be swept away by any transportation planner's idealism. The reality of our circumstances is that for an extremely high percentage of our road users, the 10-speed simply isn't an option for traveling to work or getting children to school.
And that is the crux of the issue: Is the greater good served by providing options that serve the populace as it now stands, or is it better served by options that change the way people approach transportation in the region?
Labels: advocacy, commuting, cycling, Katy Trail, St. Louis

Roger 1 comments links to this post 12:31 AM