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Entries tagged: Bike To Work Day

A little Bike to Work Day inspiration from our friends at Planet Bike...

Planet Bike from Planet Bike on Vimeo.

It’s been a big week with Bike to Work events and news of legislative victories in a number of states, but that doesn’t mean we haven’t been busily uploading the latest research and exemplary materials from Alliance member organizations to the Resource Library. Here’s the latest…

• Transportation Alternatives in New York City put together a best practices guide for its innovative Play Streets initiative — which we wrote about on the People Powered Blog back in November.

• Lisa Quinn at Feet First got us psyched about her participation in our upcoming Mutual Aid Call on “Cultivating an Active, Involved Membership” by sharing these great videos about the group’s popular Walk and Talk events.

• We received in the mail (Hint: We love getting mail!) a sleek, eye-catching tip sheet from the East Bay Bicycle Coalition on “5 Easy Ways to Inspire your Employees to Bike To Work,” which the organization used in its mailing to potential business supporters and participants for its Bike to Work Day on May 12.

• Speaking of Bike to Work Day, the Santa Barbara Bicycle Coalition created an artsy postcard promoting its CycleMAYnia events, with a listing of events and link to a one-stop website for all the festivities.

• And another tool for Bike to Work Day: The League of American Bicyclists debuted a quick, convenient online tool that provides bicycle commuting statistics by city, based on data from the 2009 American Community Survey.

• Bike Pittsburgh also launched a fun, new tool — unveiling its Car Free Calculator, which allows cyclists to enter their miles traveled and keep track of their calories burned, dollars saved and carbon dioxide reduced. (p.s. Brought to you, in part, by funding from the Advocacy Advance grant program!)

• Brighid O’Keane, our Advocacy Advance Program Manager, put together a helpful overview that covers funding sources for bike/ped organizations, including grants, government funding, grassroots fundraising, and other resources.

• A (relatively) new study out of Oregon dispels some myths about active transportation in the suburbs.

• And another report finds that traffic crashes are more strongly correlated to the built environment itself rather than random driver error.

When members of the Bicycle Coalition of Greater Philadelphia pedal to City Hall tomorrow morning, they’ll have plenty to celebrate.

The City of Brotherly Love is showing its affection for active transportation.

In honor of Bike to Work Day, Philadelphia Mayor Michael Nutter will lead the procession of cyclists on Friday morning. But the momentum for increased bike facilities has been building for months.

The Philadelphia Inquirer reports this morning that a new bike/ped plan is close to completion. “The city’s proposed new bicycle network, now undergoing final revisions, will roughly double the miles of marked bike lanes to about 400, not counting 40 or so miles of separate trails on parklands,” the story notes. “The bike lanes will come over the next decade as streets are repaved.”

Sarah Clark Stuart, campaign manager for the Bicycle Coalition of Greater Philadelphia, says the group has been very involved in the creation of the plan. “A lot of people are afraid to use their bikes because they are not used to riding in street traffic, and it is scary,” Clark Stuart told the Inquirer.  But city officials promise that the new network of marked lanes will make Philly one of the most bicycle-friendly cities in the world.

Click here to read the city’s draft bike plan. Or here to read the full newspaper story.

According to a press release issued by the San Francisco Bicycle Coalition, ” Hundreds of thousands of people, including members of the Board of Supervisors, community leaders, and other first- and long-time bike commuters, will pedal to work as part of the 16th Annual Bike to Work Day on Thursday, May 13. This year’s event is a celebration of the city’s first fully-separated,  green bike lane on Market Street and other innovations and additions that are improving streets all across the city.

“Scores of people will be experiencing the comfort of bicycling in the newly separated and now green Market Street bike lane for the first time on Bike to Work Day,” says Renee Rivera, acting Executive Director of the SF Bicycle Coalition, a non-profit which promotes bicycling for everyday transportation and organizes Bike to Work Day in San Francisco. “We are thrilled to have Mayor Newsom leading these exciting biking innovations on Market Street, the city’s busiest biking street. This is a great first step towards a separated bikeway the full length of lower Market Street.”

San Francisco has seen a whopping 53% increase in the number of people bicycling in the city since 2006, according to counts by the SF Municipal Transportation Agency (SFMTA). This number is expected to surge in the coming year with dozens of bicycling improvements planned for streets all across San Francisco.

“We are taking hold of an incredible opportunity to transform Market Street into one of the greatest streets in the world,” said Mayor Gavin Newsom. “San Francisco is an innovator and this newly separated, green bike lane is one example of how we can make Market Street safer and more bike friendly for the tens of thousands of people who use it everyday.”

The SF Bicycle Coalition is organizing “Commuter Convoys” which will escort VIPs on tours of Market Street to show them firsthand the positive changes transforming the city’s most important biking, walking and transit street. These tours will converge on the steps of City Hall at 8:30am for a press conference celebrate and build support for the fully separated and continuous bikeway on Market Street from Van Ness all the way to the Embarcadero.

San Francisco-based companies also understand that a Market Street bikeway will be good for business, good for employee health and safety, and key to a vibrant future for our city’s main street.

“We support a fully separated, continuous bikeway on Market Street as a way to improve the safety of our employees that bicycle regularly to our office as well as to meetings at other companies in the area,” says Christopher Sacca, Managing Partner of Lowercase Capital. “I also anticipate that this improvement will be just the encouragement needed to get more of our employees and the founders of our portfolio companies choosing this healthy form of transportation.”

Market Street is just one of many streets that has improved in the last few months. California’s first colored bike box (an advance stop line for cyclists) was added to Scott Street at Oak on the busy ‘wiggle’ bike route, new bike lanes have been striped on numerous streets and hundreds of new bike parking racks installed all over the city. These additions are making it easier and more inviting for people to choose to bicycle every day.

The San Francisco Bicycle Coalition will host 27 morning and afternoon Energizer Stations in neighborhoods across the city to fuel up commuters with free snacks, fair trade certified coffee and distribute bicycling information. The San Francisco Bicycle Coalition will end the day in style with the Bike Away from Work Party and Fashion Show (6-10pm, Rickshaw Stop, 155 Fell Street) where dozens of models will pedal the runway in functional finery.

Bike to Work Day 2010 is presented by Kaiser Permanente, the Bay Area Bicycle Coalition, the Metropolitan Transportation Commission, the San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency, the San Francisco Bicycle Coalition and hundreds of local volunteers. For more information on San Francisco’s Bike to Work Day, visit http://www.sfbike.org/btwd.”

Sure Bike Pittsburgh (Bike PGH) had a great Bike-to-Work Day with over a hundred commuters stopping in for their biker breakfasts, and with many more on the streets. The real celebrations, however, were after work at the Bike PGH Bike-FROM-Work Day Party in conjunction with a local brewery.  Over 500 participated and help haul kegs of “Pale Ale by Bike” to the shindig.

For more information, click here…

According to the Washington Area Bicyclist Association, “Thousands of bicyclists turned out to celebrate Bike to Work Day 2009 at locations in the District of Columbia, suburban Maryland, and Northern Virginia.  Over 8,000 people signed up to participate in advance of the event, which set a new record for registrations. Bicyclists gathered at a total of 26 “pit stops” featuring entertainment, food, drinks, and raffles.  Experienced WABA volunteers helped lead “commuter convoys” from across the area to Freedom Plaza and other pit stop destinations. Convoy leaders assisted participants with safe riding and equipment tips as well as showing riders the best route to their destination.”

For more information, click here…

According to the Virginia Bicycling Federation, Virginia Governor Tim Kaine and Richmond Mayor Dwight Jones joined hundreds of riders (on May 15th) for a Bike to Work Day ride in Richmond.
According to Champe Burnley of the Federation,  “It was a great ride. Despite questionable weather forecasts, hundreds of riders from across Richmond converged on Monroe Park. Deputy Secretary of Transportation Ralph Davis commented on the benefits of bike commuting.”

For more information, click here…

San Francisco’s 14th Annual Bike to Work Day was a record-breaking success.  The San Francisco Bicycle Coalition (SFBC) welcomed 704 new members through 25 Energizer Stations, which takes SFBC to over 9,000 members! The city also counted twice as many bicycles as cars on Market Street in downtown San Francisco. Bicyclists made up 64% of the eastbound traffic on Market St. at Van Ness Ave., while motorists comprised 32% between 8am and 9am (a 31% increase in biking over last year).