Bicycle enthusiast claims gas prices are leading to increase in bicycle commuters

Thousands trade four wheels for two during Bike to Work Month

Rising gas prices, crowded buses, concern for the environment, and the desire to squeeze in a workout are motivating more people to commute by bike. Here's what you need to know if you're thinking about joining them.

By Bill Thorness

Craig Skipton traverses the concrete walkways of Ballard's Hiram Chittenden Locks nearly every working day, with bicycle in tow. The link to Magnolia proves convenient for the bike commuter on his way downtown, as he joins thousands of people using pedal power to get to work.

If it's a nice day, engineering consultant Ben Kerbaugh will hop on his bike in Northeast Seattle and head to his Redmond office at Medtronic, a 17.5-mile ride that's largely on the Burke-Gilman and Sammamish River trails. "It sure beats sitting in traffic," he says.

In May, many more will give the two-wheeled commute a try, cajoled by their office mates to try it during "National Bike Month," a promotion by the League of American Bicyclists. The event swells daily bike commuting from an estimated 6,000 in winter to 13,000 people in summer locally, according to Chris Cameron, director of bicycle commuting for Cascade Bicycle Club. Municipalities and organizations like Cascade promote the event, which includes a month-long "bike to work challenge" that has 11,000 riders on 800 corporate teams, and Bike to Work Day on Friday, May 16, where morning commuters — 19,000 of them last year — are greeted by free coffee and energy bars on popular routes.

Cyclists save money, pollute less, and find other reasons to commute by bike.

"It's the combination of the cost of gas, convenience, and the ease of using a bike for a journey between one and six miles, which is the ideal length of a bike commute," says Gordon Black, executive director of the Bicycle Alliance of Washington (BAW). On his commute from Bainbridge Island, he's seen the number of ferry cyclists increase from a dozen in 1993 to "79 riders on the 5:30 boat on a wet February day" recently, and more than 100 in summer.

"Exercise is definitely part of it" for Skipton, who's training for a marathon and says the biking "keeps my workout going." A landscape architect with Mithun, his 7.5-mile ride takes 30 minutes inbound to offices on the central waterfront, but 40 back to Ballard because of the hills. "It's faster to get to work, and less frustrating" than driving or riding the bus, he says. "It's amazing, the contrast of sitting on the bus crushed next to someone rather than cruising along."

"You arrive at work awake and arrive at home relaxed," says Kerbaugh. "It kind of blows the stress off you."

If you're not fortunate enough to work and live adjacent to a major trail, the first hurdle is often choosing a route. To find a safe ride that avoids really big climbs or the most dangerous traffic, consult municipal bike maps that chart off-street trails and streets commonly used for biking.

Cascade offers lunchtime bike commute seminars and group classes in downtown Seattle, and BAW has a "Bike Buddy" program that pairs mentors with new commuters.

Seattle's Bicycle Master Plan, enacted last year, means that the city is adding more bike lanes, signage, and even a few new trails that promise routing help. Last year, the city opened the Chief Sealth Trail, which bisects Beacon Hill and will connect with the light-rail line. Shoreline recently finished linking its sections of the Interurban Trail, and Issaquah just opened the Highpoint Regional Trail Connector.

Once at the office, changing from road racer to desk jockey presents more challenges. The most basic requirement is a shower and a locker to store work clothes and hang up the cleats. Secure, dry bike storage is also a must. Such amenities are being designed into new office buildings and touted by human resource recruiters. BAW suggests additional perks to make biking more attractive:

• offer loaner cars for daytime meetings,
• provide a bike lease or purchase program, and
• offer to pick up cycling employees stranded by a breakdown.

In recent years, bicycle lockers have proliferated at transit centers and park-and-rides, but Black says such efforts are not keeping up with demand. "The popularity of bicycling is ahead of the government's response to the need to make improvements for bicycling," he says. BAW has a waiting list for lockers in the program it administers for King County.

Keeping upright between the cars is also a prime concern, as most bike commutes include some road riding in traffic. Skipton sticks to side roads in Ballard and a trail from Interbay to downtown, but a short stretch of riding on Alaskan Way proves perilous. "I actually had to call the police a couple of days ago" and report a reckless driver after a scary near-miss, he says. Last year, he slammed into the back window of a car that cut him off and made a right turn, and the driver simply yelled "You all right?" out his window as he drove away.

But even riding the trails can be dangerous. Kerbaugh collided head-on with another cyclist in a pre-dawn commute that left him with a broken collarbone and other injuries that requires surgery and four months to heal. "I've noticed I'm more careful on the trail now," he says. "It's more crowded, there are more people who aren't paying attention, and more people in the dark with no lights."

Primary safety advice:

• Stay alert and ride defensively. Assume that drivers don't see you

  and scan ahead for potholes and traffic problems.

• Enhance visibility by wearing bright clothes and using front and

  rear lights.

• Become traffic, rather than an accessory. When cars are turning

  right, move to the middle of the lane.

• Avoid the most challenging route segments by combining mass transit with your ride.
• Stow the iPod. Even at a low volume, you'll miss important auditory cues and be less attentive.
• Wear a helmet. It's the law in many places, including King County, and it increases your chance of surviving a crash.

Road dangers, sweaty climbs, or even crowded bike trails might conspire to keep you off the bike, but consider the offsets: "Peace and quiet," says Kerbaugh.

"There's a lot of wildlife at the Locks," Skipton says. "I've been watching kingfishers catch fish lately."

• Bill Thorness is a Seattle freelance writer and author of Biking Puget Sound: 50 Rides from Olympia to the San Juans (Mountaineers Books, 2007).

Source Crosscut

Nation's first bike sharing program

Bicycle-Sharing Program to Be First of Kind in U.S.
Ed Alcock for The New York Times

Bikes waiting for pickup at a self-service docking station in Paris, where the Vélib sharing program began last summer.

By BERNIE BECKER
Published: April 27, 2008

WASHINGTON — Starting next month, people here will be able to rent a bicycle day and night with the swipe of a membership card.

A new public-private venture called SmartBike DC will make 120 bicycles available at 10 spots in central locations in the city. The automated program, which district officials say is the first of its kind in the nation, will operate in a similar fashion to car-sharing programs like Zipcar.

The district has teamed up with an advertiser, Clear Channel Outdoor, to put the bikes on the streets.

“There’s a lot of stress on our transit systems currently,” said Jim Sebastian, who manages bicycle and pedestrian programs for Washington’s Transportation Department. Offering another option, Mr. Sebastian said, “will help us reduce congestion and pollution,” as well as parking problems.

In the deal, Clear Channel will have exclusive advertising rights in the city’s bus shelters. The company has reached a similar deal with San Francisco. Chicago and Portland, Ore., are also considering proposals from advertisers.

For a $40 annual membership fee, SmartBike users can check out three-speed bicycles for three hours at a time. The program will not provide helmets but does encourage their use.

Similar programs have proved successful in Europe. The Vélib program in Paris and Bicing in Barcelona, Spain, both started around a year ago and already offer thousands of bicycles.

Mr. Sebastian, who started trying to bring bike-sharing to Washington even before its success in Paris and Barcelona, said he believed that the program could grow within a year and hoped that it would eventually offer 1,000 bicycles.

While automated bike-sharing programs are new to the United States, the idea of bike-sharing is hardly novel. Milan, Amsterdam and Portland have all had lower-tech free bike-sharing programs in the past, with Amsterdam’s dating to the 1960s.

But “studies showed that many bikes would get stolen in a day, or within a few weeks,” said Paul DeMaio, a Washington-area bike-sharing consultant. “In Amsterdam, they would often find them in the canals.”

Improved technology allows programs to better protect bicycles. In Washington, SmartBike subscribers who keep bicycles longer than the three-hour maximum will receive demerits and could eventually lose renting privileges. Bicycles gone for more than 48 hours will be deemed lost, with the last user charged a $200 replacement fee.

That technology comes with a price, which is one reason cities and advertisers started joining forces to offer bike-sharing. The European programs would cost cities about $4,500 per bike if sponsors did not step in, Mr. DeMaio said.

Cities realize “they literally have to spend no money on designing, marketing or maintaining” a bike-sharing program, said Martina Schmidt of Clear Channel Outdoor. Washington will keep the revenue generated by the program.

Bike-sharing has become a “public service subsidized by advertising,” said Bernard Parisot, the president and co-chief executive officer of JCDecaux North America, an outdoor advertiser that made a proposal to bring bike-sharing to Chicago.

But, Mr. Parisot added, if users had to pay all of the costs for bike-sharing, “they would probably just take a cab.”

The low cost could be one of the program’s major selling points.

At George Washington University in Foggy Bottom, one of the program’s 10 locations, students were unsure how often they would use SmartBike, but said its price made it worth a try.

“I’d probably use it more in the summer than winter,” said Dewey Archer, a senior. “But for $40? That’s cheaper than gas.”

Portland becomes more bicycle friendly

Bicycle-friendly Portland works to be bicycle-safe, too
Commuting - New city policies and outreach efforts aim to remind everyone to share the road
Monday, April 28, 2008
STEPHEN BEAVEN
The Oregonian Staff

By late last week, six bright green bike boxes were installed, and eight more are on the way. But the biggest changes in Portland's efforts to make cyclists safer are far less obvious.

The Portland Police Bureau changed its policies for investigating crashes involving cyclists and appointed a liaison officer to work with the cycling community. The city, meanwhile, is retrofitting its truck fleet with "bike guards" to protect riders. It also invited cyclists and truckers to meet and mingle on Southeast Clinton Street during the evening commute on Tuesday.

Although the bike boxes and other safety measures were on the drawing board for some time, those efforts took on a new urgency in recent months following the deaths of two cyclists in high-profile crashes in October.
Advertisement





Now the city and the cycling community are working more closely to put new policies and equipment in place to make bike lanes and intersections safer for two-wheeled commuters.

"Those two deaths were a catalyst for positive change," said Mark Ginsberg, an attorney who is chairman of the city's bicycle advisory committee. "It has definitely accelerated."

Capt. Larry O'Dea, who heads the Police Bureau's traffic division, plans to meet with attorneys, judges and cycling advocates in May to better understand language in several bike-related state laws. The bureau has appointed an officer who used to be a bike messenger as a liaison to the cycling community.

O'Dea also has begun talking with members of the Bicycle Transportation Alliance and regularly attending bicycle advisory committee meetings.

"In being at all these meetings, I'm getting very strong feedback from the bicycle community," O'Dea said. "They want a good relationship with the Police Bureau."

Perhaps the biggest change at the bureau came in February when Chief Rosie Sizer issued an executive order that changed the policy for investigating crashes involving cyclists, as well as pedestrians, skateboarders and others defined as "vulnerable road users."

Before, there was no separate standard for crashes involving such users. Investigations were mandatory only if there were serious or life-threatening injuries.

Now any collision in which a cyclist is taken to a hospital by an ambulance is investigated. The traffic division investigated nine such crashes involving cyclists last month, compared with five in March 2007, O'Dea said.

Ginsberg credits the bureau for building a better relationship with cyclists, adding that it was especially helpful for officers to hand out educational brochures instead of tickets when the bike boxes were initially installed.

But he'd still like to see the bureau pursue reckless and careless drivers more aggressively, even if cyclists aren't injured. O'Dea said he has already asked the Bicycle Transportation Alliance for help in determining where the bureau should focus its efforts.

Cyclist Tim Calvert said he's glad the city is listening to the cycling community and taking even incremental steps to make the streets safer.

The bike boxes are an especially vivid reminder of the changes Portland has undertaken in recent months.

"I think anytime bicycling is elevated on the street level to a more equal status with cars," Calvert said, "it helps both the drivers and cyclists acknowledge that they're both commuters, and they're both trying to get to work safely."

Stephen Beaven: 503-294-7663; stevebeaven@news.oregonian.com

Introducing Bicycle Sharing

Linnea Noreen
Car-sharing just got a one-up. Enter Velib, the Parisian bike-sharing program.
Zipcar (or should I say Flexcar?!) is so last year. The latest and greatest is bike-swapping – better for your health, the environment, cheaper and vastly more flexible. With the expansion of the Burke-Gilman Trail and Bike Master Plan approval, maybe Seattle is the place to start the trend, State-side?
It works like car-sharing… you pay roughly $30 for a year membership, but unlike its carbon-depended cousin, you get 30 minutes free for every trip using Velib. It is then incrementally a dollar (roughly) an hour--$1 for the first hour, $2 for the second hour-- the idea is to avoid permanent “check-outs”. Bikes are available every 300 meters (few hundred feet), and are interchangable. If you want to extend the time, you can swap it with one down the road, and the clock restarts. Clever, huh?
In Seattle, the idea would be to pair the bike system with public transit – have many pick-up locations in urban neighborhoods and suburban developments, where people can grab and go (in this case a shared bike). They ride to the park and ride, and hop on transit. After work, they hop off transit, grab one of the many bikes waiting and ride it back to neighborhood or suburban bliss.
It's really quite dreamy, and a great addition to our current transit system. Instead of wondering about whether the park and ride will be full, or how you’re going to walk the extra 2 miles to your friend’s house, you just grab a bike at the Transit Center. Even better, the system in Paris was entirely self-funded through advertising contracts. Image: a huge boon to mobility and convenience, with no taxpayer money. What a steal!

Source Cascadia Prospectus

Bike Lanes Create False Sense of Security

Danger in the bike lane">2/4/08

By Mike Lindblom

Seattle Times transportation reporter

Matt Corwin was pedaling home from work on his usual route when he approached the University Bridge. A line of cars waited at the red light, as Corwin cruised past in the bike lane.

As he reached the intersection, the light turned green. An SUV turned right -- into Corwin's path. Corwin squeezed his hand brakes. He stopped 2 feet from the SUV. The driver never saw him.

"I would have run into the side of his car, Corwin recalled. "It's not like he would have run over me. I probably would have bounced off. But still, it was pretty disconcerting."At this same corner, 19-year-old cyclist Bryce Lewis was killed by a dump truck Sept. 7, as it turned from Eastlake Avenue East onto Fuhrman Avenue East.

"Right-hook" collisions, as riders call them, are among the most common risks of urban cycling. A bike enters an intersection going straight and gets hit by a right-turning car.

It's a problem that cities such as Seattle must solve as they encourage thousands of people to switch from cars to bicycles. Mayor Greg Nickels has set a goal of tripling bicycle use within a decade.

Currently, the city estimates that 4,000 to 8,000 people cycle to work or school each weekday, depending on the weather, and 36 percent of residents ride for fun, errands or a commute at least occasionally.

The city's new Bicycle Master Plan calls for expanding the bike-lane network, now 31 miles, to 143 miles by 2016, and extending the trail system from 39 miles to 58 miles. To address right-hook crashes, Seattle this spring will attempt to make bike lanes at a few busy intersections more noticeable by painting them green, a strategy already tried by other cities.

Veteran cyclists warn that unless riders stay alert, a bike lane can lure them into danger.

"Avoid the Suicide Slot," warns an essay by Kent Peterson, commute director for the Bicycle Alliance of Washington. He generally uses bike lanes but will often move left into the car lane to make himself more visible as he approaches intersections.

David Smith, of Seattle, a part-time cycling instructor with the Bicycle Driver Training Institute, argues that bike lanes create a false sense of security, and he avoids them. "It is an enormous task to help bicyclists overcome that eye candy in the streets." He advocates mixing with traffic, or "bicycle driving."

Right hooks

In Portland, which has done some of the nation's best research on bike safety, recent data show that 10 percent of car-bike crashes are right hooks. They caused two of Portland's six bike fatalities last year.

In Gig Harbor, cyclist Gloria Lavick, 58, died July 5 after she went under a right-turning delivery truck.

At Seattle's University Bridge, a picture of Bryce Lewis and a white memorial "ghost bike" are mounted on a utility pole above the crash site, a daily reminder next to the bike lane.

Peterson describes the Eastlake-Fuhrman intersection as hazardous, where he would ride in the general traffic lane.

"I think this would actually be safer if there weren't a bike lane here," he said, "because what it does is, it encourages bicycle riders to crowd to the right, and that takes you out of the line of sight."

King County prosecutors are reviewing the case and have not announced whether the dump truck driver will face charges.

From 2003 to 2007, 20 accidents involving bicycles were reported in Seattle near the south end of the University Bridge.

On the other side of Lake Union, 36 bike accidents were reported on busy Dexter Avenue North, out of a total 1,217 citywide crashes involving bicycles. The city would not release details on types of crashes, including how many were right hooks.

Seattle law requires drivers to yield to cyclists in bike lanes -- but on the street, bike lanes usually aren't marked once riders enter an intersection. And often, riders will forge through a crossing without looking for cars that might turn.

Green lanes

In response to right-hook crashes, cities are trying to move bicyclists away from the curb at busy crossings.

The federal government's street-design manual encourages cities to replace a solid bike-lane stripe with a dotted line where bikes and cars are likely to cross paths. A dotted line warns cyclists that cars will be turning right, and it invites cyclists to move left into general traffic, said Rich Meredith, city traffic engineer in Shoreline.

Seattle is gingerly trying out new designs to see if they reduce conflicts between bicyclists and motorists turning at intersections.

Last year, parts of Stone Way North were repainted with new bike lanes that include dotted lines at several crossings.

At each end of the Fremont Bridge, road signs tell car drivers to yield to bikes -- southbound motorists turning right toward Seattle Pacific University will wait for the bicyclists pedaling straight, toward the Dexter Avenue North bike route. On a recent morning, many drivers were looking over their shoulders toward the bike lane, before making the turn.

"It's a big help," said rider Sean Sheldrake, who has commuted for 12 years. "A couple of $50 signs go a long way."

Similar issues exist at some trails, and Seattle has installed warning signs for drivers making turns across the Chief Sealth Trail on Beacon Hill.

This spring, Seattle will paint green bicycle lanes at four busy intersections, said Peter Lagerwey, a bicycling expert with the city's transportation department. The sites are southbound Dexter at Denny Way, both ends of the Fremont Bridge, and North 145th Street where Shoreline's new Interurban Trail meets the city limits.

Portland has used blue-colored bike lanes since the 1990s and is adding 13 similar lanes this year, to be painted green. City officials videotaped traffic and found that motorists yielded far more often to bikes in marked blue lanes -- and that cyclists glanced at cars less often, a problem. Still, drivers and cyclists said the streets seemed safer.

If upcoming experiments go well, Seattle's University Bridge is a top candidate for the next round of improvements, Lagerwey said.

New York City; Victoria, B.C.; Vancouver, B.C.; Portland; and several European cities have gone further by painting "bike boxes."

These are marked zones at stoplights, where bicycles can go to the head of a line of traffic. That gives bicyclists a head start to beat turning automobiles, once the light turns green. New York has 60 bike boxes, but it's too soon to measure whether safety has improved.

In Davis, Calif., the city has gone further, giving cyclists their own traffic signals, with bike icons replacing solid red, yellow and green lights, at complex intersections.

Kirkland is studying whether to try bike boxes in certain areas, said Councilman Tom Hodgson, a bicycle commuter. Hodgson said a dump truck turned and hit his bike about five years ago.

Bike advocates argue that safety will improve as the sight of more riders translates into better awareness by drivers.

"We are not at a critical mass of bicyclists on the road, that drivers are aware bicyclists are omnipresent," said Chuck Ayers, executive director of the Cascade Bicycle Club.

Ayers said the right-hook risk "is not an engineering issue. It is a taking-responsibility issue, for both drivers and cyclists."

Riding paranoid

There are other ways to get hit in a bike lane.

In so-called "left hook" crashes, left-turning drivers become so focused on avoiding oncoming cars that they miss a cyclist in the oncoming bike lane.

"They look for threats. That's how they're wired," Peterson said.

Like old cats, urban cyclists tend to develop survival instincts, such as assuming they are invisible to all drivers.

Hodgson has added a hand signal to his repertoire -- he now points straight ahead to show motorists he's proceeding straight.

"I just ride paranoid," said Sheldrake, who said he's been accident-free for 12 years in Fremont.

He will not pass a car on the right unless he makes eye contact first. That can mean shining his head-mounted, high-intensity light through the car window.

"It gets their attention, long enough to keep you from rolling over their hood," he said.

Safe cycling

Be visible. State law requires a headlight and rear reflector after dark, but riders should add a solid or blinking rear light. Wear bright or reflective clothes and reflective leg bands. A flag is good for short or recumbent cycles.

Use a rearview mirror. It can be mounted on a helmet or handlebar. It will be easier to gauge whether you can move out into the roadway, and whether approaching drivers are likely to pass you at a safe distance.

Avoid blind spots. Bicyclists on sidewalks, or who pass cars on the right, become virtually invisible to drivers.

Be predictable. Stake out a clear position. Don't weave frequently between the main roadway and the curb.

Use residential streets that run parallel to traffic-heavy corridors.

"Take the lane" when it's safer than being squeezed to the right, especially riding downhill.

Educate yourself. Two good online articles are "How to Not Get Hit by Cars" at bicyclesafe.com, and "Avoid the Suicide Slot" on Kent's Bike Blog.

Sources: BicycleSafe.com; Kent Peterson, Bicycle Alliance of Washington