Increase Public Awareness of Positive Air Quality Choices
Develop and Implement Protocol and Policies for Environmental Justice
They're the ones behind the "Spare the Air Days" when we all get to ride transit for free so we can all breath.
I wonder then how they can explain this memo that was sent to their employees who, in the course of their duties have to travel around the Bay Area.
I guess when the Board members have their own reserved parking spots in the private garage its easy to become divorced from reality...
In other news, I've recovered the lost sound files for the long promised BORP episode. They need about six hours to be edited but they're next up so stay tuned!
As a sleepy off-year election approaches, San Franciscans face a choice of adding momentum to its Transit First policy or gutting it to add 20,000 more cars to its streets, all in the quest for more parking. Bikescape goes to the Saturday mobilization, chats with Susan King of the Green Party and Supervisor Ross Mirkarimi. Then we head downtown to talk to Dave Snyder to get the big picture on the destructive power of unrestrained parking in cities.
Proposition A will add $26 million to transit yearly and give more remove politics from the budgeting and planning process. The full text of the measure is here. (pdf)
Proposition H will allow significantly more parking in San Francisco, a prospect that runs counter to the city's entrenched transit-first policy, which uses land-use regulations and funding priorities to discourage use of the private automobile. Here's the text of the measure. (pdf)
Bikescape takes the family on vacation on its first bike tour with the kids. We visit Sunnyside Piazza, a grassroots redesign of a neighborhood intersection. Then we meet Todd Fahrner of Clever Cycles, go for a ride on a Dutch cargo bike and look over the unusual merchandise in his shop. Finally we check in with Portland denizens Meghan Sinnott and Ken Southerland and talk about the deep bike culture thay has taken root in their city.
Your go-to place on the web for cycling in Portland is bikeportland.org
Clever Cycles is a most unique bike bike shop in PDX. They sell the Bike Friday Tickets and the Brompton folding bikes as well as the Extracycle. And they have already sold over forty Dutch Bakfiets cargo bikes this summer.
In this episode we look at biking in the United Kingdom. We chat with Jack Thurston of London's Bike Showon Resonance FM. Then we get Josh Hart on the line to talk about his take on transportation in the UK as an American expat student of urban planning in Bristol.
The North American Cycle Courier Championship brought messengers from around the world to San Francisco for this year's games. Bikescape was there to cover the action and put it in your ears.
Over at London'sBike Showpresenter Jack Thurston revels in a most civilised form of tweedy touring. He's posted two very charming videos about English touring in the fifties.
Meanwhile, in the streets of Oakland, the kids gethyphywith bikes instead of cars.
The all but forgotten sport of bike polo is "a most noble tradition invented in Ireland 117 years ago." Now its enjoying a sudden resurgence in American parks both on turf and on hard tops. Bikescape checks in at a jaunty match at Speedway Meadow in Golden Gate Park. Then we celebrate a victory as the park inaugurates car-free Saturdays on JFK Drive.
How could transportation policy make a city not just more tolerable but a pleasant, more livable place for community? Bikescape gets some answers in an interview with San Francisco Supervisor Jake McGoldrick. Jake has learned in his travels around the world that car-centered planning leads only to congestion, waste, pollution and danger. We discuss the alternatives that can make the urban experience more convivial, like car free spaces, a charge to drive downtown and better transit.
Jack Thurston From London's Bike Show interviewed Erica Jobson of Futerra, the London-based sustainable development communications consultancy about London Mayor Ken Livingstone's plans for a green city.
Bikescape goes to the the San Francisco prologue of the Amgen Tour of California race. Levi Leipheimer won the time trials that day and then went on to win the six-stage race, but we weren't there to see that. Attila Horvath of Bike Rock fame was in town where he set up shop next to the Bike Coalition's valet bike parking and regaled the throngs and Bikescape listeners with his bike centric songs.
In other news, we win one in Golden Gate Park where a part of JFK Drive will be closed to cars on Saturdays after a thirty five year struggle.
Things got ugly after Critical Mass last month. To hear the whole story of what really happened, check out David's interview with me on The Fredcast. If you were dissappointed that the race was only used as a backdrop for this podcast you need to check out The Fredcast where David covers that facet of bike culture better than anyone.
An old form of public transport, the pedicab has made inroads in some US cities but in Midtown Manhattan over the last ten years the industry has exploded in popularity. The unimpeded views, immunity to gridlock and the sheer fun of riding a human powered vehicle have made pedicabs a true alternative to taxis, busses and the subway for locals and tourists alike.
But with popularity comes growing pains as the business reaches a crossroad. Lack of regulation has encouraged unscrupulous, uninsured drivers to enter the field and has caused complaints leading the City Council to pass broad regulations that would cap the number of pedicabs in New York at 350 and outlaw electric assist motors. There are now upwards of five hundred trikes out on the streets so many hard working entrepreneurs would lose their livelyhoods.
And for obvious reasons, the taxi industry has lent its weight to the fight while the other side responds.
As we go to air Mayor Bloomberg has vetoed the bill and we await an override or new legislation from the City Council. Write to your council member today!
Bikescape catches up with Bicytaxi mechanic Kate Freitag in her Fifth Avenue garage to talk about the state of New York's Pedicab Industry.
Bikescape spends an evening in Los Angeles and checks in on the thriving LA bike culture. We go on the Midnight Ridazz ride though the Pasadena area. We meet up with activists, fixie afficionados, partiers and the occasional alien.
"Try the Patch" uses the metaphor of smoking on an elevator to unveil the truth about transportation pollution. The myth of the "green" car is similar to myth of the "light" cigarette. Both are still toxic. Just as the patch offers a cure to cigarette addiction, the bicycle can end our addiction to cars. Many times more energy efficient during all phases of their life and fueled by willpower bicycles offer promise for a sustainable future.
Go and rate this film right now at treehugger.com. If my friends win the contest they will win two air tickets to Alaska to watch the glaciers melt. (No kidding.)
This is a repeat of a March 7, 2005 show. Its being reposted as a follow-up to the previous podcast about Octavia Boulevard.
As Octavia Boulevard rises from the rubble of the old Central Freeway, Bikescape takes a tour along with about thirty others led by Robin Levitt and Tom Radulovich from Livable City. The walk was jointly sponsored by Walk San Francisco and Transportation for a Livable City.
The downfall of the freeway and the rise of the Boulevard is another chapter on San Francisco's ongoing freeway revolt, a grass-roots movement that goes back to the fifties. San Francisco owes its livability, charm and cohesive community to the individual neighborhood activists who banded together at strategic times to fight the auto culture that was treatening to choke the city with cars and blight. Imagine what almost happened: an elevated freeway on Polk St. and six lanes cut into a trench where the Panhandle an Golden Gate Park now stand! And most of these victories (and some of the losses) squeaked by on six to five votes!
A woman gets hit (and nearly killed) by a truck making an illegal right turn onto a freeway ramp and San Francisco's cycling community mobilizes. Seventy people gathered last Friday for a rush hour protest demanding that the city re-engineer the intersection to make it safe for cyclists and pedestrians. Bikescape attends the demo at Market and Octavia and reports back with interviews and commentary. Photo courtesy San Francisco Bicycle Coalition
A typical day at Market and Octavia... More sfbc video here.
Sat. 3 - 15th Annual 49-Mile Ride meets at 9.15am at the Pool of Enchantment at the DeYoung Museum in Golden Gate Park. Usual counterclockwise route. For more info, contact Joe.
What do you look for in a new bike? One made of exotic, high tech materials also found in fighter jets and moon landers or a traditional lugged, steel ride where the "performance" is provided not by high tech but by you, the rider? In this episode, we take a trip out to Walnut Creek in the East Bay to chat with Grant Petersen of Rivendell Bicycle Works to gain insight into his philosophy of the bicycle craft.
Grant also had a chat recently with Sheldon Brown when they ran into each other at Interbike, the industry trade show.
I mentioned The Bike Hut during the calendar segment (they're looking for a database volunteer) but I didn't say much about this great institution. Here's a link to chase.
I guess when the Board members have their own reserved parking spots in the private garage its easy to become divorced from reality...
