planted city

Infographic | Transportation in Cities: ‘The United Bike Lanes of America’

(Source: GOOD Magazine)

Gonna ride my bike til the break o’ dawn… 

A quote from the Forbes article, ‘Pedaling to Prosperity: Biking Saves U.S. Riders Billions A Year’.

Related:

~ Bicycling Magazine’s new ranking of ‘America’s Top 50 Bike-Friendly Cities’.

(Photo credit: Bicycling Magazine)

From UBC: 

University of British Columbia researchers are making bikeability research easily accessible to consumers and city planners by introducing bikeability “heat maps” in partnership with Seattle-based Walk Score® at www.walkscore.com/bike.

Combining data on availability of cycling infrastructure (bike lanes and trails), topography (hilliness), desirable destinations (attractions, shops and restaurants) and road connectivity, researchers from UBC’s School of Population and Public Health and Simon Fraser University worked with web developers from Walk Score® to develop algorithms to make the information easily accessible online.

Heat maps of Bike Score™ for 10 Canadian and 10 U.S. cities were launched today during National Bike Month in the U.S. and in advance of Bike Month in Canada. Victoria, Vancouver and Montreal rate highest in bikeability for Canadian cities; while Minneapolis, Portland and San Francisco lead in the U.S.

…

“‘Walkability’ has become part of the popular vocabulary as more emphasis is placed on physical activity, community interaction and healthy living,” says Meghan Winters, Assistant Professor, Faculty of Health Sciences at Simon Fraser University, who conducted the research while a PhD student at UBC. “Bike Score™ and the heat maps will help cities measure and improve their cycling infrastructure – a key to increasing ridership.”

Cycling rates in Canada and the U.S. are low in comparison to many European cities. This disparity is explained, in part, by differences in urban form and cycling infrastructure, says Mike Brauer, Professor, UBC School of Population and Public Health. With rising gas prices, however, more North Americans are looking for more affordable ways to get around, particularly in neighborhoods with limited access to public transportation and where distances are too far to walk to work or shopping.

Check out the rest of the article here.

(Image credit: Grist via WalkScore)

From Inter Press Service: 

Berlin is a big capital city of a country famed for making excellent automobiles, but it can no longer afford roads and is now moving people by transit, bike and especially through walking.

Berlin is not alone. Paris, Tokyo, Seoul, Bogotá, New York City and other major cities simply cannot afford the cost, the pollution, the noise and the congestion of more cars. They are embracing a new concept called EcoMobility - mobility without private cars. 
…

EcoMobility is defined as moving people and goods in urban areas using combinations of walking, cycling (including electric bikes) and wheeling (roller blades), public transport, and light electric vehicles. 

The concept is being widely embraced by cities looking for affordable and effective forms of sustainable transport. 

“Cities should focus more on moving people rather than moving vehicles,” said Stephen Yarwood, mayor of Adelaide, Australia. 

The fact is, cars are not very good at moving people. A standard 3.5-meter-wide city street has a maximum capacity of 2,000 people in cars per hour. The same road can carry 14,000 cyclists or 19,000 pedestrians each hour. 

Light rail in the same space can move 22,000 people, and a double lane of bus rapid transit will move 43,000 people, said Manfred Breithaupt, director of the GIZ Sustainable Urban Transport Project, a German NGO. 

The transportation sector is one of biggest contributors of carbon dioxide to the atmosphere, responsible for 25 to 30 percent of the emissions causing climate change. 

Check out the rest of the article here.

(Infographic credit: City of Münster via Lunchover IP)

From The Washington Post:

Is there anything cities can do to encourage cycling? Portland, for instance, has twice as many bike commuters per 1,000 people as Washington. But maybe that’s just because Portland has nicer weather or more young people. It’s not clear that there’s an actual policy issue here.

Yet in a new new study (PDF) in the journal Transport Policy, Ralph Buehler and John Pucher suggest that cities might actually be able to influence how many cyclists are on the road. Perhaps all they have to do is — and this shouldn’t come as a huge surprise — build more bike lanes and bike paths.

Buehler and Pucher found that the presence of off-road bike paths and on-street bike lanes were, by far, the biggest determinant of cycling rates in cities. And that’s true even after you control for a variety of other factors like how hot or cold a city is, how much rain falls, how dense the city is, how high gas prices are, the type of people that live there, or how safe it is to cycle. None of those things seem to matter quite as much. The results, the authors write, “are consistent with the hypothesis that bike lanes and bike paths encourage cycling.”

Check out the rest of the article here. You can read more coverage of the study here, here and here. 

(Photo credit: Atlantic Cities)

From The Los Angeles Times:

Los Angeles held its first CicLAvia in October 2010, when 7.5 miles of streets were blocked off to motor vehicles from East Hollywood to Boyle Heights. Sunday, which marked the fourth version of the event, tested the city’s flexibility as cyclists invaded downtown, Dodgers fans attended a home game up the hill and the Lakers faithful poured into L.A. Live — all at roughly the same time. And somehow the city still seemed to function.

The idea of booting cars off the roads and turning the asphalt over to cyclists and pedestriansfirst took hold as a weekly ciclovía in Colombia more than 30 years ago and was later adopted by cities elsewhere in Latin America and in the United States.

The festival was an immediate hit in L.A. and quickly became the city’s marquee event for pedestrians and cyclists.

“Angelenos are aching for a day without a car. CicLAvia provides us one of those days,” Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa said Sunday before joining in the ride.

“But the change doesn’t have to be temporary, so we are taking steps to make it easier for Angelenos to get from point A to point B — with or without a car,” he said.

Villaraigosa used the platform Sunday to unveil a privately funded $16-million bike-share program that aims to put 4,000 rental bicycles at 400 kiosks across the city.

Check out the rest of the article and news video of the event here.

(Photo credit: Los Angeles Times)

Here’s a shot of one of the bike specific traffic signals on the Hornby Street separated bike lane in downtown Vancouver. The signals guide cyclists across busy intersections and help to avoid conflicts with motorists and pedestrians. Details here.                                                      

-> i’ve got some more photos here if you’re interested.

A quote from the Shareable article, ‘The Boom in Cycling Benefits Everyone, Not Just Bicyclists’

(Photo credit: Shareable)

A few paragraphs from the CityFix article, ‘User Preference Key to Implementing Sustainable Transportation’, highlighting some important lessons for improving the walkability and bikeability of cities. The article profiles a new report, ‘Integration of Biking and Walking Infrastructure into Urban Communities’, which “highlights best practices and identifies program characteristics associated with high levels of non-motorized travel.” You can check out the rest of the article here.

(Photo credit: TheCityFix)