bikes

Flickr via Ed Yourdon

At the same time urban biking is becoming more prominent, so too are bicycle thefts.

But as The Wall Street Journal reports, bike theft victims are using social media Web sites and bike blogs to reclaim their wheels.

Take 29-year-old Toronto resident Heather McKibbon. After her bike was stolen back in May, she posted about the theft on Facebook:

Just hours later, a friend replied with a link to a bike for sale that looked like her own $1,300 Cannondale touring bike on eBay's Kijiji, an online classified-ads site. Ms. McKibbon recognized her bike and, posing as an interested buyer, arranged to meet the seller at a local subway station. She brought the police along as well, resulting in a small-scale sting operation.

Police arrested the man and returned the Cannondale to Ms. McKibbon, who claimed it with photos of herself on the bike, as well as its serial number. "It was a little overwhelming to realize that nobody in Toronto gets their stolen bike back, and here I was about to get my stolen bike back," she says.

Then there are Web sites like StolenBicycleRegistry.com, where people can list their stolen bikes for free. The city of Boston recently launched a similar Web site, StolenBikesBoston.com, which sends out stolen bike alerts to police, bike shops and hospital and school security officials via Twitter and Facebook.

New York doesn't have any such Web site, but the city's recently-passed bike access bill, which reduces the threat of theft by requiring building owners to provide bike storage indoors, gets a shout out in the article:

montreal.bixi.com

Bike-sharing got a big boost Thursday morning, August 20, when the New York Post reported that Mayor Michael Bloomberg, once skeptical that bike-sharing systems could work in New York City, shifted gears and said that such a system would be “ideal” here.

Cycling advocates had even more cause for optimism later that day when the city’s transportation department set up a bike-sharing demo in Union Square.

It was the latest in a series of such events to teach New Yorkers about a system, prominent in cities like Paris, Barcelona and Montreal, in which bikes are rented out in short intervals at self-pick-up and drop-off points throughout a city.

At Thursday’s demo in Union Square, which was by Bixi, a Montreal-based bike-share company that recently enlisted Boston and Minneapolis as the first U.S. cities to implement its services, Bixi employees and D.O.T. staffers were teaching curious passersby about how bike-sharing works, and there were about 10 docking stations set up with bikes available for people to ride around the square.

Transportation Commissioner (and local cycling hero) Janette Sadik-Khan happened to be checking out the demo when we stopped by around 4 p.m.

Looks like the mayor is warming to the idea of a bike-sharing system in New York.

The New York Post reports:

He's been skeptical for years about whether bike-sharing would work here, but in the middle of his re-election campaign, Mayor Bloomberg has told a bicycling advocacy group that such a program would be "ideal" for the city.

Stu Loeser, Bloomberg's spokesman, said the city continues to explore the viability of setting up a system, such as Paris has, where a bike could be grabbed by anyone from one spot and dropped off at another location.

Last week, Boston's Metropolitan Area Planning Council announced it would be implementing a bike-sharing system used in Montreal.

UPDATE: There's a demo of Montreal's Bixi bike share system in Union Square today, another tomorrow at Bowling Green, and another Saturday at Washington Square Park.

[via newamsterdamize]

Flickr via Ed Yourdon

The Daily News takes a look at the conflicts that are emerging between cyclists, pedestrians and drivers as New York's bike-riding and general populations continue to expand.

According to the paper, the city's population is expected to increase by a million people by 2030, which, as transportation commissioner and cycling advocate Janette Sadik-Kahn points out, would make cycling more necessary to alleviate the strain on roads and subways.

Indeed, the number of bike commuters in New York is expected to triple by 2020, and to meet this demand, city officials are planning to create 50 new miles of bike lanes a year, reaching 1,800 by 2030. The number of city cyclists jumped by 35 percent between 2007 and 2008 alone, according to the News report.

But while "cyclists see themselves as the healthy, green, cheap future of transportation," they're at odds, sometimes at a deadly cost, with some of those with whom they share the roads:

Streetsblog via noneck

Over at Streetsblog, Sarah Goodyear (who I interviewed many moons ago), has a post about the first #bikenyc 'tweetup,' which took place last Wednesday, August 5. The event was an 'in-real-life' meeting of city cyclists who had connected on Twitter using the #bikenyc hash tag.

Ms. Goodyear writes:

So in this case, we were all folks who like both Twitter and biking in New York City, about ten or twelve of us. We met at Bicycle Habitat (thanks for the free water bottles, guys) and then rode over to the West Side bike path via the Prince Street bike lane, ending up at Pier I Cafe for drinks and conversation on a beautiful summer evening. It was pretty sweet. No real agenda, except for enjoying our bikes and our city and each other.

The event was organized by @newamsterdamize (aka @noneck), and it won't be the last. If you're on Twitter, start using and looking for the #bikenyc hashtag. Who knows what could happen next?

Another tweetup, apparently. As a commenter points out, the next one's scheduled for August 29 at Berry Park in Brooklyn.

Flickr via Ed Yourdon

It's official. The long-coming bike access bill, which at one point last month sparked some infighting between city councilmen and comptroller candidates David Yassky (the bill's author) and John Liu (who was criticized for stalling the legislation), has cleared the Council's transportation committee and is headed for a vote by the full City Council tomorrow, July 29.

We've been following the bill, which is designed to encourage bike commuting by requiring commercial building owners to provide bicycle access and storage, for the past few months, and you can find our full coverage here.

In anticipation of the bill's passing in committee, Mr. Yassky, Mr. Liu, D.O.T. Commissioner Janette Sadik-Khan, Transportation Alternatives' Paul Steely White and various other officials and bike/sustainability/public health advocates gathered on the Manhattan side of the Brooklyn Bridge this morning to celebrate.

Read the release Mr. Yassky's office sent out after the jump:

A few updates on the now controversial bike access bill since we filed our report before the holiday weekend:

Azi Paybarah spoke with Councilman John Liu, who bicycle activists are accusing of stalling the legislation that would require commercial-building owners to allow bikes to be stored in their buildings. (The bill was expected to be voted out of Mr. Liu's Transportation Committee last Tuesday and subsequently passed by the full City Council.)  

Mr. Liu spoke to Mr. Paybarah about the problems he has with the legislation, which happens to have been authored by one of his primary opponents in the race for city comptroller, Councilman David Yassky. Mr. Liu echoed concerns he raised during a public hearing on the bill last month. From PolitickerNY:

Transportation Alternatives

Tensions surfaced this week between members of the city's cycling community and Councilman John Liu over a piece of legislation—the Bicycle Access to Buildings Bill—that has yet to make it out of the City Council Transportation Committee, which Mr. Liu chairs.

The bill, which was first introduced back in 2003 and has resurfaced in various incarnations since then, would require office buildings to let tenants store bikes in the buildings, hence encouraging more people to commute to work by bike, hence advancing the bike-friendly, semi-car-hostile transportation agenda being pushed by Mayor Michael Bloomberg and Department of Transportation Commissioner Janette Sadik-Kahn.

The bill was expected to be voted out of the transportation committee on Tuesday afternoon and passed by the full City Council the following day. But that didn't happen. A spokesman for Councilman David Yassky, a co-sponser of the bill and one of Mr. Liu's opponents in the 2010 city comptroller race, told Streetsblog on Tuesday: "The bill has been laid on council members' desks for eight days, which is typically what is done before a bill comes before the full council. That was done with the anticipation that it would be voted out of the transportation committee today."

Now, supporters of the bike bill are coming down on Mr. Liu because the bill remains stalled.

Image via PSFK

Apparently, alternative transportation in New York got a big PR boost from two upscale-ish brands this past weekend. From PSFK:

Anglophiles everywhere took notice when Topshop rolled out their new bicycle club concept, parking a small fleet of blue beach cruisers (decked out  with baskets and cupcake stickers) outside their flagship store and making them available for free daily rental to the public. In exchange for leaving a credit card and signing a liability waiver, would-be cyclists were granted access to a curated experience that included a bike, customized helmet, U-lock and map of Topshop-endorsed destinations throughout Manhattan, Brooklyn and Queens.

Another instance of the NYC’s branded bike frenzy was a recent promotion executed by Whole Foods. The healthy-living corporation temporarily offered free pedicab rides around the city. The drivers would take customers anywhere within a ten block radius of the store, making it that much easier to justify purchasing that extra bag of groceries.

And while these recent campaigns have met with success, we need only look to past attempts at co-opting two-wheel culture, such as DKNY’s orange bike debacle  from last year’s fashion week, to note the difference between thoughtful events and PR stunts.

In other bike news today, The New York Times' City Room blog reports on the Department of Transportation's new bike safety campaign, Look. As the article notes, the campaign takes "a decidedly more confrontational approach, not unlike some of the more striking efforts by the city to curb smoking with ads of the amputee Maria from the Bronx," with its graphic TV ad that shows a bloodied and bruised cyclist in an ambulance. Other campaign materials include posters and postcards, and bike advocates interviewed by the Times think its a good sign for the future of cycling in New York:

“What the D.O.T. is doing is going in the right direction,” said Bill DiPaola, the executive director of Time’s Up, the environmental nonprofit organization often associated with Critical Mass rides.

Mr. DiPaola said he hoped that the campaign would extend to permanent “Share The Road” signs like those used in many other American cities.

“Cycling is improving in the city,” he said. “The more infrastructure and the more signs, we feel in the long run, the streets will be safer and there will be more respect for different kinds of transportation.”

Flickr via Ed Yourdon

Since last fall, the City Council has been developing legislation that would require office buildings to let tenants bring their bikes into work. This morning, June 15, the Council’s transportation and consumer affairs committees jointly held a hearing on what has come to be known as the Bicycle Access Bill, and on a corresponding piece of legislation that would create tens of thousands of parking spaces for bikes in some city lots and garages.

Since the idea behind the bill is to encourage more people to bike to work, it’s no surprise that Department of Transportation Commissioner Janette Sadik-Kahn, a fervent—and, some might say, autocratic—bike advocate, worked with Council members on drafting the bill, and showed up to testify about it this morning.

“Given the costs associated with traffic congestion, both economic and environmental, and the fact that transit fares and costs are on the rise, cycling is needed now more than ever,” Ms. Sadik-Kahn said. Bike ridership in New York saw a 45 percent increase between 2006 and 2008, she said, citing a 2007 D.O.T. study that found more than half of the city’s non-cycling commuters don’t ride their bikes to work due to a lack of secure bike parking.

“The benefits are crucial to a more sustainable and vibrant city,” Ms. Sadik-Khan said.