Bike Romance Romancing the Open Road in the Season of Locusts I fell in love with my bike at the age of 5. I would jump on it and go anywhere I wanted on my own. I was one with the wind. When I was seven, we had the seven-year locusts come to live
Normal bikes get a whopping 984 MPGe (miles per gallon equivalent), and that might be as good as it gets for green transportation (well, it can actually be much better if the bicyclist is vegetarian). However, I’m sure electric bikes are also up there for such efficiency… and who knows, maybe they even beat
The city of Atlanta, where one of our core Important Media employees lives, recently hosted a big bike parade. Atlanta isn’t knowing for its bicycles, but the parade looked pretty sweet and well attended, so it seemed like a good idea to share some photos here to encourage others to host such parades. A big
Although it has taken more than twenty years, Oklahoma City is making progress in its attempts to offer its citizens a variety of ways to get around town. It has been almost seventy years since the last streetcar was in operation, and automobiles have naturally become the dominant method of transportation in the area. However,
Princeton Survey The Streetsblog DC recently published a story on a telephone poll of 1,003 Americans, which was commissioned by the advocacy group America Bikes and conducted by Princeton Survey Research Associates. The results were “unequivocal: 83 percent said that federal bike-ped funding should increase, or at the very least be maintained.” The car is becoming
The wide, big routes that Europeans and other countries enjoy when biking are not yet in the US. However, Americans are turning out in amazing numbers in spite of the lack of good routes. “The NJ DOT study shows that during the peak usage time — Saturday afternoon — bicycles make up just over 47 percent of the
This is a pretty astounding stat from this year’s National Bike to Work Day — 75% of traffic on San Francisco’s Market Street was bikes that day, according to a traffic count from San Francisco’s organizers. Here’s a graphic from the San Francisco Bicycle Coalition: The League of American Bicyclists has a whole host of
This little piece is so very happy. Bicycling happy. In the sun…. In the sun. This is an ad for an insurance company that loves bicycling — wow, great ad. Bikes must really be the new “in” lifestyle or ads would not be using bikes and bikers in them to sell their wares. Be happy +
Biking has become a lifestyle, a way of life. Cyclists who hit their favorite bike paths or bike routes every day are like another cut of the zen surfer who never missed a dawn and a wave. Now, we have the bike-path-gilding travelers that make Kerouac’s On the Road look sedentary. Devotees of biking vary
Bikes and Northern Europeans — They Really Have It Going On April 14, 2012 — the first part of a Bicycle Superhighway network opened. Copenhagenize brought us the story of new bike routes that will help Copenhagen to continue leading the way in this arena. Dreams are coming true. (Cyclist’s long-distance bike-riding dreams.) The infrastructure
Renting a bike is a great option for going green for short distance transportation. Enter Splintster, offering an appealing combination of friendship, greener living and a cleaner, more connected community.
Of course, you can’t have a holiday without an infographic. So, here’s a nice Earth Day infographic that a friend of the site passed on to me — enjoy! Source: H&R Block
A big 1st annual National Bike Challenge will start this May and run through August 31. To join in the challenge, there’s a simple 3-step process: Sign up as an individual or with a team. Log your bicycling miles. Share your stories & encourage others to join you. As you bicycle, you will be competing
Cars kills countless people ever year. Hitting someone with your car on purpose is akin to shooting someone — a car can be used as a deadly weapon. I don’t know the full details of the story below, but from Chris DeMorro’s retelling of it on sister site Gas2, it certainly looks like a
As I just wrote, one should really be thankful for bicyclists when they see them on the street, and for the minuscule amount of funding bicycle and pedestrian infrastructure gets. No matter if you bicycle or not, these bicyclists and the infrastructure that supports them is good for societal/public health. Now, a new tool from the World
Something I think everyone knows now is that bicycling is good for your health. However, something many drivers probably let slip through their consciousness when they see a bicyclist on the road is that bicycling is also good for their (the driver’s) health. Of course, the benefits of bicycling go far beyond health, as well.
Young Americans seem to be more aware of the benefits of bicycling and taking the bus than their parents and older siblings. A new U.S. Public Interest Research Group report, Transportation and the New Generation, finds that young Americans are increasingly going by bike and by bus than by car. On driving: “From 2001 to 2009, the annual
A couple months ago, I wrote about Bikes Belongs’ project to get 6 cities some good, protected bike lanes. This week, Bikes Belong announced which 6 cities would get that support. They are: Austin, Chicago, Memphis, Portland, San Francisco, and Washington D.C. “The two-year, intensive technical assistance program is intended to help these cities develop
Bicyclist Visibility & a Flashy Bike Helmet One afternoon as I loaded my bike on the front of a bus I noticed a young man ride up behind me. I sat down on the bus happy to see another cyclist using integrated transit as I was. This is rare in the Florida city
How’s them apples? Seriously, though, it’s been known for a long time that biking benefits society in many ways, including economically, and that driving has the opposite effect. Nonetheless, some stats like this go a long way in getting the message across. From League of American Bicyclists President Andy Clarke, who recently took a
That’s what you call a DIY bike. Makes me think of that phrase “beauty’s in the eye of the beholder” for some reason. I ran across this cool bike with boots on Facebook.
Becky Striepe of sister sites Crafting a Green World and Eat Drink Better recently shared this sweet bicycle fabric with me. But, what I just realized is that it’s not just one bicycle fabric, it’s 199 of them! Apparently, the site Spoonflower was hosting a bicycle fabrics design competition, and the one above was
Biking is the greenest way to go, seriously. So, the fast growth of bicycle sharing programs across the country is something that excites me. Plus, bicycling is just so damn fun and exciting anyway — who isn’t into it? The Good News Today: London’s rather large bicycle sharing program, popularly called Boris Bikes, just
Here are three cool bicycling videos I thought you all might enjoy. The first two are from bicycle lover and leader of Copenhagenize, from a trip he took to Brazil. I think the third one is totally awesome and funny, I think, but if you are adverse to ‘bad’ language, you might want to skip
I’m not sure, technically, if something can be DIY and crowdsourced, but those seemed like the best adjectives for this bike map for Moscow… other than Awesome! Bicyclist, activist, and artist Anton Polsky has apparently triggered a “movement to create a participatory, informal bicycle map for Moscow,” as Shriya Malhotra of Pattern Cities reports. In other words, he’s spawned a crowdsourced bike
How would you like to have a conference on a 7-person bike? Well, if that sounds like a dream conference, you might like to look into a job at Google. The ConferenceBike it uses actually has its own website (conferencebike.com),.. a rather retro-looking website. As the website states: “It’s no joke: the ConferenceBike is a revolutionary
One of my favorite activism events: tons of people get together to ride their bicycles along the East or West coast to raise awareness about climate change, raise awareness about one of its best solutions — bicycling, and raise money for organizations promoting global warming and environmental action, especially bicycling. The event, if you’re
Love vintage bicycling outfits, and vintage bikes? Who doesn’t. Throw in some beautiful French countryside, old towns, and landmarks, and you’ve got a pretty beautiful bike ride (and video). Here’s a video ad for such a bike ride (love it): http://youtu.be/KEYQk1f90Mk Mikael Colville-Andersen of Copenhagenize, who shared the video above but is actually 100% about
Of course, we are all familiar with bike racks for parking your bike and locking it up — they are in just about every city. But have you heard of or seen bike repair racks before? These are public racks with most of the tools you would need to fix a broken bike. Here’s more
Ever wish you had some car-free streets in your city or town? At least once or twice a week? More and more cities across the U.S. and across the world are getting them, with the temporary street closings (i.e. once a week or once a month) commonly referred to as ciclovias. In the past
Salvaged urban trees, to be specific. Masterworks Wood and Design takes on the fun, creative, and totally green work of turning salvaged urban trees into wooden bicycles — sweet-looking ones! More via a video from Masterworks Wood and Design: “The story of these bikes goes from the felling of a family’s guardian tree, through the
Beijing’s planning a bike-sharing program that will give other top bike-sharing programs in the world a run for their money (as in, will be up there with the top bike-sharing programs in the world in size and scale). Stations for the program have been “spotted being installed in the Dongcheng and Chaoyang Districts of
Some top green living stories from the past couples weeks: Support This Pedal-Powered Food Cart on Kickstarter! A Cincinnati-based urban farm program has developed a cart for transporting fresh veggies to market. In the wake of the urban farm movement, Permaganic Eco Garden is seeking funding to support the development and production of a pedal powered tricycle. In
Copenhagenize, a tremendous bicycling blog based in… Copenhagen, recently posted four awesome bicycling videos (ads/commercials, basically). None of the videos are in English, but Copenhagenize’s Mikael Colville-Andersen took the time out of his day to translate them. They’re great advertisements for bicycling, I think, and most of them are just plain funny, too. So, here they
I wrote on the uniting of three of the United States’ largest bicycle organizations last week (something I’m very excited about). The wonderful folks over at Streetsblog took the time to sit down and speak with Andy Clarke, president of the League of American Bicyclists, and Jeff Miller, president of the Alliance for Biking & Walking, about this unification
I loooove time-lapse videos like these, but this is a super fun one. It really highlights some beautiful areas and aspects of Berlin, a city a really love. One of the things it highlights is Berlin’s great public transport and bicycling network. But it’s got much more than that and I couldn’t do it
Three of the largest bicycling organizations in the U.S. are joining forces—this has my blood moving and my nerves tingling! I’ve been wishing they’d do this for a looong time. However, I never thought they would. The leaders of the Alliance for Biking & Walking, Bikes Belong, and the League of American Bicyclists (LAB) have decided to untie
I’ll admit it, I love numbers. And I love bicycling, as you know. So, running across this recent statistic on one of the sites I used to write for, Earth & Industry, brought a little light to my face. Here’s more from Alison Leahy on San Francisco’s bicycle ridership growth: “Urban cycling is on
Well, if you’re an average American, James D. Schwartz of The Urban Country reports that you do. Of course, this definitely matches up with the energy efficiency of a bike versus a car, and the environmental impact of a bike versus a car. The bottom line is, whether you are average or not, bikes are
In case you missed these amongt the 70+ posts of the past 2 weeks, here are the top 14: Greenpeace and the True Story Behind the Film Big Miracle In First, NASA Probe Detects ‘Alien Matter’ Entering Our Solar System (VIDEO) Roseanne Barr Running for Green Party Presidential Nominee! LeBron James Biking to Work/Game (Photo
A bicycle bus! I have to admit, I didn’t see one of these when I lived in the Netherlands! (For a bunch of photos of the cool things I did see, however, check out this bicycle photo tour of Groningen.) The Dutch company De Café Racer developed this fun bicycle-bus, a good mode of transportation
Really, I’m not sure why bike companies don’t invest more money in bicycle infrastructure—it’s advertising gone wild! Communities can easily value and trust bike companies that do so, and the companies can even stick permanent advertising along the routes! Well, I don’t know if that’s what Bikes Belong’s thinking was (note that Bikes Belong is
The most comprehensive map of bike-sharing programs in the world (and it is comprehensive!) hit 2 million total views this last week. After taking a few years to reach its first 1 million, it got to 2 million in just another 11 months. Screenshot of the map above. The person behind the map, Paul DeMaio,
I wrote on the horrid transportation bill proposed by the House GOP at the end of last week, summarizing just how bad it was. Well, now, there are a couple of options for you to take action in opposing this bill, which the Center for Neighborhood Technology (CNT) calls the “worst transportation bill in 30
I recently included this report, the Alliance for Biking & Walking’s 2012 Benchmarking Report, in a green living roundup post. But I’ve decided it really needs a full post. I don’t think I can out-do the Alliance’s summary of the report, so rather than try to, I’m reposting their full summary below. Check it out, and
OK, last weekly roundup of the day, here are 10 big green living stories, other than OUR green living stories, I recommend checking out (if you are into green and healthy living): 1. Nature in children’s books declining! (So sad.) “A new study finds a significant decline in the depiction of the natural world and animals
1. Exxon Rakin’ in the Dough, Paying Super Low Taxes ExxonMobil’s end-of-year financial summary shows that it made a whopping $41.1 billion in 2011 (35% more than in 2010) but only paid a 17.6% tax rate. Who lets them get away with such robbery? Congress obviously does. But so do we, if we don’t hold
Here’s one more awesome and inspiring bicycling video for the day. Again, it’s about living on your bike, and enjoying the freedom, high quality of life, and mental and physical health that comes from that. I don’t remember where I ran across this one. Enjoy! What more is there to say about bicycling–it’s good for
