Bicycle City

pedbikeimages.org/Dan Burden

Imagine a planned car-free community where people can live, play, work and visit.  This community includes trails, community gardens, schools, housing and more.  Residents and visitors park their vehicles on the perimeter of the community and walk or bike into the neighborhood.

This utopian car-free community is built with sustainability in mind.  Buildings have small footprints and are energy efficient.  Paths and trails are built with permeable surfaces so they will have minimal impact on the earth, and gardens are organic.  Schools are within biking or walking distance, and a nearby greenway connects you to rail and transit.

Now imagine that this community is called Bicycle City and it's located in the USA.  Sound too good to be true?  Well think again.  The first Bicycle City is breaking ground on December 11 near Columbia, South Carolina, and first home sites will be for sale soon.  Learn more about the South Carolina project here.

The folks behind Bicycle City are thinking big.  They hope the Columbia community becomes a model for other planned Bicycle Cities around the country and around the world.  They have already evaluated many states, including Washington, and have identified potential locations for future Bicycle Cities.

Bicycle City, Washington.  Sounds pretty inviting, doesn't it?

Rumble Strips Can be Done Right!

Today's post was submitted by Kent Peterson of Issaquah.  You can follow Kent's bicycle adventures on his blog--aptly named--Kent's Bike Blog.


Rumble strips are those milled lines at the edge of the road designed to alert a drowsy or inattentive driver that they are drifting off the road. It's a safety mechanism designed to save lives. Unfortunately, in many locations when rumble strips are placed on the road they effectively make it impossible to safely cycle along the shoulder of the road. In my tour of Washington State a few years ago I'd often see rumble strips that looked like this:

Photo by Kent Peterson.

I've seen worse examples, where the rumble strip covers every inch of the width of the shoulder. But things don't have to be this way.

Rumble strips can be built into a road in a way that lets them serve their warning function and keeps the almost the entire width of the shoulder usable for cyclists. Here is a photo from a section of SR-507, also in Washington State:

Photo by Kent Peterson.

The rumble strips on SR-507 are built into the fog and center lines, effectively leaving the full width of the shoulder available to the cyclist. In addition, every dozen feet or so there are gaps in the rumble strips enabling cyclists to move from the shoulder to the traffic lane. Much of the time on a country road like this, the shoulder is the best place to ride, but a cyclist might have to merge into the traffic lane to get ready to make a left turn or to avoid some debris and it's good to see a road design that recognizes the legitimate needs of non-motorized road users.

Rumble strips can be done right. A page at http://www.rumblestrips.com/ (yes darn near everything has a page on the internet!) has some good information and documents describing how to implement rumble strips in such a way as to enhance the safety of all road users.

Post Script:

The application of rumble strips along Washington State roads is a problem.  The Bicycle Alliance has worked with WA State Department of Transportation to develop a set of rumble strip guidelines.  Read this post from earlier this year to learn about some of our efforts on rumble strips.  In spite of these guidelines, rumble strips continue to be installed incorrectly and sometimes installed in places where they shouldn't be applied.  Contact the WSDOT Bicycle/Pedestrian coordinator and your regional WSDOT bicycle coordinator if you believe there has been an incorrect installation of rumble strips in your area, and notify the Bicycle Alliance.

Snow Day

Sometimes it's good to park the bike and experience the world from a different perspective. The winter blast that gripped our state this week provided such an opportunity. From the Olympic peninsula to the Inland Northwest, Washingtonians are blanketed with snow, ice and freezing cold temperatures.

The Bicycle Alliance took a snow day on Tuesday so I donned a sturdy pair of walking shoes and expolored my West Seattle neighborhood. Here is some of what I saw:

People shoveling sidewalks.

Stranded and abandoned buses.

 Critter tracks in the alley.

Closed residential streets.

Kids sledding down closed streets.

Parents walking with their kids.

Interesting patterns.

After a couple of hours of wandering, I returned home to warm up by the stove and reflect on my day.  Sometimes Mother Nature forces us to slow down and alter our daily routines.  The snow day forced many of us to miss a day of work or school, but it also presented us with opportunities to play in the snow, spend time with our families and neighbors, and explore our own backyards.

Shopping by Bike

The following guest post was submitted to us by member Woody Wheeler of Seattle.  You can also follow Woody on his own blog, Conservation Catalyst.

Many car trips in the United States are less than one mile, a readily bikeable or walkable distance. Yet, some of us drive our ton+ vehicles and ignite fossil fuels to go this far. There are better ways to go.  Cities like Seattle are promoting non-car alternatives http://www.seattle.gov/waytogo/drivelessefforts.htm

I hate shopping, but biking makes it not only tolerable, but fun. You get exercise, and you experience the simple pleasure of cruising around in the open air, including up and down hills. You see more people; you experience the wind, the weather, the birds and wildlife, the changes in seasons, the interesting yards, landscapes, buildings, and other surroundings in your neighborhood. At the end of your trip, you feel good, as opposed to drained or lethargic from a car trip.

Photo by Woody Wheeler.

Mike Royko, the late great Chicago columnist used to lampoon a mythical lazy American prototype he called “Rollin’ Wheels.” Rollin never went anywhere “without steel belted radials underneath him.” It’s time to substitute two bicycle tires, or our own two feet for the steel-belted radials. If you insist upon having big wheels beneath you, take public transit. The planet and your health stand to benefit.

You've come a long way, baby!

Eric Berg of JRA Bike Shop recently got his hands on a copy of Seattle's first bike plan and he shared it with us. We have posted a copy of the 1972 Comprehensive Bikeway Plan on our website for your reading pleasure.

In 1972, Seattle had only 8 miles of trail where a cyclist could "ride without fear of an automobile running him down."  The city also had 32 miles of "bicycle safety routes"--routes on park boulevards or residential streets that were meant for recreational cycling.

Recommendations from this first plan included establishing bike routes with a transportation function, developing a voluntary bicycle registration program, and establishing a program to help install bike racks in key locations around town (only one or two bike racks existed in the Central Business District in 1972),

Fast forward to 2007.  Seattle now has 40 miles of trails, 25 miles of bike lanes, a 24/7 indoor bike parking facility and, following an intense public process, City Council approves the Seattle Bicycle Master Plan.  This aggressive ten-year plan calls for tripling the amount of trips made by bike, reducing the rate of bike crashes by a third, and expanding the bicycle facility network to over 450 miles.

According to a March 2010 progress report posted on the Seattle Department of Transportation (SDOT) website, bike plan accomplishments include 93 miles of bike lanes and sharrows, 31 miles of signed bike routes, installation of 801 bike racks-including 3 on-street parking facilities, distribution of over 60,000 bike maps, and funding the Bike Smart education program.

While there is much more to accomplish if Seattle is to achieve its ten-year goals outlined in the Bicycle Master Plan, the progress that has been made in the past three years is noticeable.  And if you compare today's bike infrastructure to what existed in 1972, what a difference a few decades have made!

The future is worth a thousand visions

The future is worth a thousand visions--or so believes the Spokane Regional Transportation Council.  SRTC is in the midst of updating its long range transportation plan and they are employing a unique strategy to engage the community for feedback. Citizens are encouraged to play an online interactive game called A Thousand Visions and SRTC hopes that at least a thousand folks play this game and submit their results.

Cyclists pass Riverfront Park on their way to work.

This game is a fascinating exercise in transportation planning and resource allocation.  You, the player, are given a baseline transportation budget then you must decide how you will raise additional revenue to fund the projects of the future.  You might choose to raise property taxes, enact a special sales tax for transit and increase the local gas tax.  The game calculates how much revenue each source will raise and it tells you approximately how much the financial burden will be annually on a household.

Assuming you have survived a tax revolt, it's time to fund the transportation projects of the future.  Do you build new roads and complete the North Spokane corridor?  Do you invest in a new high performance transit system for the region?  Do you complete the Fish Lake Trail and fund the regional bicycle and pedestrian network?  You learn how much it costs to fund a project and the game calculates whether or not you have raised enough revenue to fund your projects.  You will most likely find yourself forced to scale back projects or drop them completely.

A Thousand Visions is available to play until November 29.  If you live in the Spokane region, please play the game and submit your vision results.  If you live elsewhere, you can still play the game without submitting your results.  It's a thoughtful exercise in transportation planning and funding.

Channeling Ian Hibell

If there were a contest for coolest bicyclist ever, Ian Hibell would win, hands-down.

You may be forgiven for asking: Ian who?  Hibell remains an obscure figure, especially outside his native England, to all but a few cyclists and adventure-travel buffs who happen to read the right magazines or assiduously surf the Internet.

But to me, he best represents the possibilities for adventure, discovery and serendipity that a bicycle can bring, if you let it.

I first discovered Hibell several years ago when I opened my new issue of Adventure Cycling magazine to find an article by him about his adventures.  The article was accompanied by two-page photo of Hibell on his touring bike, grinding his way up the rocky road to Machu Picchu in Peru. Below him, going on seemingly forever, stretched the route up which he had come.  To me that one photo perfectly captures the possibilities that a bicycle can unlock.

Hibell was a true British eccentric in the positive sense of the term. He grew up in mostly rural but decidedly civilized Devonshire, in the Southeast of England.  His first experience as a cycle tourist was borne of a combination of accident and necessity, when his father could not afford train tickets to send the entire family to the seaside for a vacation. So Hibell and his dad rode their bikes there, sleeping on park benches and wherever else they could.

As an adult, Hibell worked for a local English telephone company for a time, but soon found that the allure of the open road trumped the comforts of a nine-to-five job. He spent the next 40 years as a nomad on a bike, never really settling down.  He rode from Bangkok to Vladivostok. He rode from Norway to the Cape of Good Hope.  He rode from the tip of Tierra del Fuego to Alaska. He rode across the Sahara Desert, almost dying of thirst before he was rescued by a band of tribesmen. He buried himself in mud to escape hoards of mosquitoes.  He was chased by rogue elephants and almost eaten alive by tropical ants.  He was shot at and jailed. He crossed the notorious Darien Gap in Panama (an adventure captured in this vintage film). His family knew him fondly as “mad uncle Ian.”

Ironically, it wasn’t the wilderness that killed Hibell, but civilization. After 40 years on the road, Hibell was killed by a hit-and-run driver on the Athens-Salonika Highway in Greece while on a training ride for another adventure.

But I like to remember Hibell for his adventures rather than his end.  And I think it’s a good thing for all cyclists to channel Ian Hibell occasionally.  If you want to cycle across the Sahara or brave the Darien Gap, great. Long-distance touring is fabulous.  But you don’t have to go that far to get a taste of adventure. Just try something new.  Go camping on your bike. Explore some local logging roads. Go up a valley that you’ve driven by but have never been to.  Sometimes there’s great joy to be had in breaking your routine to discover the simple pleasures of an unexpected mountain view, or eating a cheese sandwich in the fall sun while listening to the wind in the firs, or even getting a little lost. And after you’ve done it, raise a toast to Ian.