Bike Action Plan & Energy Resilience

This week the Santa Monica City Council approved the Bicycle Action Plan by unanimous vote and last week the ribbon was cut on a new high capacity Bike Center facility. Tuesday’s vote finishes the long public process of drafting avisionary document, and marking the beginning of the real work of implementation. I am much more hopeful for the full implementation of this plan than the never quite finished bicycle master plan from 1995.

The momentum has shifted a lot since 1995 and there is a new and largely younger crowd emerging and rallying around bikes. They are carrying the torch from the tireless advocates that fought for years even when it seemed like no one was listening. Rates of bike ownership in Santa Monica now represent a majority of residents. The survey data cited in the plan indicates commuting among employees of major city employers has been inching up recently, despite fairly little change on the street for bicycling in the time I have been living here. The remaining naysayers and critics that oppose bike facility development are looking more out of touch with every passing year. What I don’t think our society has quite come to terms with yet, is how drastically economic, ecological, and cultural shifts will be shaping our transportation reality. These emerging shifts are demanding more serious consideration for bicycling in urban transportation. Riding a bike will be viewed as an increasingly logical response for people trying to manage our high levels of unemployment, stagnant wages and climbing fuel and food prices. Private automobiles are simply not economical machines, and for the typical commute in L.A., which is actually less than 5 miles for 60% of commuters, they are not as necessary as we make them out to be. When combined with transit service, the reach by bike can also be extended much further. For these and other reasons it is my belief that bicycling ridership will continue to grow even if the city were to do nothing to encourage it. For example in San Francisco, significant ridership gains were seen in recent years despite a legal injunction that had delayed the development of any new bicycling facilities.

Read the rest of the story at Santa Monica Patch

The Bicycle Dividend

More Americans are biking or walking to work these days, in part because public-sector investment is improving the infrastructure they need to get there safely. Further public investments in bike paths and bike lanes are likely to offer a big social payoff.

Federal spending on bicycle and pedestrian infrastructure has more than doubled since 2006 but amounted to less than $4 a person in 2010.

This chart, a snippet of a larger infographic by Kory Northrop, a graduate student at the University of Oregon, that illustrates differences across states and highlights the top 10 major American cities for bike commuting, draws on data from the American Community Survey for 2009.

Portland, Ore., tops the list, with 5.8 percent of workers riding to their jobs on a regular basis. Snowy Minneapolis comes in second, at 3.9 percent, and Seattle third, at 3 percent. San Francisco, despite its hills, is nearly tied with Seattle. Smaller cities are not included in this ranking, but some, like Boulder, Colo., and Eugene, Ore., have higher bike-commuting rates than Portland.

At last count, New York City was still below 1 percent, but that may be changing, with the recent large expansion of bike paths there.

see the rest of the story at:  http://economix.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/07/04/the-bicycle-dividend/

Building Bicycle Infrastructure Creates Jobs, Studies Find

While the economy remains in the doldrums and job growth continues to stutter, the bicycle industry, at least, seems to have recovered from the woes of the recession. The National Bicycle Dealers Association details that in 2010, bicycle sales were up 15% over the previous year, bolstering the industry to $6 billion in annual sales.

This positive development is complemented by further bicycle-related good news reported in Fast Company, regarding the job creation effects of competing infrastructure projects. Recent studies show projects for building bicycle and pedestrian routes create more jobs than road building, indicating a nice synergy exists; provide more cycling facilities for a growing population of cyclists and stimulate some job growth into the bargain.

One of the Key studies referenced was by the Political Economy Research Institute of the University of Massachusetts, entitled “Pedestrian and Bicycle Infrastructure – A National Study of Employment Impacts” and was released in June 2011. The main points and findings of the study are as follows.

See the rest of the story at "building bicycle infrastructure creates jobs"

Bicycle Infrastructure Is Good For Business

Montreal bike infrastructure – by James D. Schwartz / The Urban Country

A common misconception in North America is that businesses will suffer if we remove on-street surface parking and replace it with widened sidewalks or bicycle infrastructure.

Car-addicted societies have a tendency to believe that people in cars spend more money than people who arrive on foot, transit or by bicycle, and businesses and motorists will defend on-street parking at all costs.

For me personally, I have to admit that I spend more freely now that I have removed myself from the imprisonment of automobile ownership. The average of $6,000-$8,000 a year that I save from living car-free makes it easier to spend more money on local businesses and worry less about my personal finances.

A study in Toronto seems to support the theory that people who arrive sans automobile spend more than those who arrive by automobile.

Read the rest of the article at The Urban Country.