My Bike Blog

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For the past year, I didn’t live far enough from work to bother bicycling (I was walking to work), but I recently started a new job, so yesterday was my first bicycle ride to work and back. It felt great! It was also nice that the snow had melted so that there was room for me on the side of the road.

But on my way home, an ignorant motorist shouted out the window to me. “Get off the ____ road, you _____!”  You may fill in the blanks with “paved” and “bicyclist” if you wish, but that would not really convey the spirit of what the boy said. Well, he looked like a boy, to me.

I saw their car pull into a coffee shop at the next light, so I coasted into the lot, waited for him and the girl who was driving to get out of the car, and (once I saw he wasn’t bigger than me, heh heh) said “Nice mouth you have there!” Yeah, that was the sum total of my amazing wit.

You’d think that, after cyclo-commuting all these years, my brain would have a larger set of responses for dealing with these people. But no, that’s all I could muster. When he countered “Get on the sidewalk, stay out of the road,” I could barely reply that sidewalks are for walking.

Maybe I need to take longer rides, because I was out of breath from catching up to him at the red light.

After I pedaled away, I thought of some really pithy comebacks. Great timing. I could have said “When you go for your driver’s license test, maybe you’ll learn that cars and bikes share the road.” I KNOW, isn’t that CUTTING?!? I’m so witty.

I think what I should do instead of breathlessly stuttering at offensive motorists (and their passengers) is carry with me a bunch of little cards that give <a href=”http://www.nydmv.state.ny.us/DMVfaqs.htm#bikes”>the NYS DMV web address for the page</a> that talks about how cars and bicycles have to share the road, with a brief statement about safety on the other side of the card. A little less “crazy old guy on a Schwinn” and a little more “if it’s on the web, it must be true” instead.

What do you think?

I’ve been waiting for this for a long time. At one point, I started working on a program that would use Google’s map tools to create bicycle routes, but the programming was a little over my head.

<blockquote><a href=”http://www.wired.com/autopia/2010/03/google-maps-for-bikes?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+wired%2Findex+%28Wired%3A+Index+3+%28Top+Stories+2%29%29″>Google Maps Finally Adds Bike Routes<br> (click here for complete article on Wired.com)</a>

At long last, Google Maps has routes specifically for bikes.

With the click of a mouse, the new feature allows you to plot the best (and flattest!) ride from Point A to Point B. Several cities, including New York, Minneapolis, San Francisco and Portland, Oregon, have bike-specific mapping sites. But Google is rolling it out in 150 cities nationwide and announcing it Wednesday at the 10th Annual Bike Summit in Washington, D.C.

“This has been a top-requested feature from Google Maps users for the last couple years,” says Shannon Guymon, product manager for Google Maps. “There are over 50,000 signatures on a petition.”</blockquote>

I’m going to write a note to these people to ask for a copy of the draft legislation mentioned in the article. I hope the legislation passes, because it will help keep bike taxis (AKA pedicabs) on the street in other cities. Who knows, it could even encourage people to PUT bike taxis on their streets.

New Orleans pedicabs could get City Council OK

By Bruce Eggler, The Times-Picayune
January 26, 2010

Despite opposition from the president of New Orleans’ largest cab company, City Hall seems to be prepared to allow dozens of “pedicabs” — three-wheeled, pedal-powered rickshaws — to operate in the French Quarter and Central Business District.

City Council members Cynthia Willard-Lewis and Jackie Clarkson endorsed the idea Tuesday during a meeting of the council’s Ground Transportation Committee, and Councilwoman Shelley Midura’s office has offered to help draft legislation to authorize the vehicles’ operation.

Sid Bournes, who oversees the Taxicab Bureau in the Department of Safety and Permits, said the vehicles that two local companies propose to operate are “a far cry” from the “pretty rinky-dink” pedicabs that another company operated in New Orleans in 1999-2000.

The owners of the two companies said they expect the bulk of their business would be short rides, as little as four or six blocks, such as from a hotel to the Ernest N. Morial Convention Center.

Although they said such rides are so short that most taxi drivers prefer to avoid them, hoping for trips to the airport or other lucrative destinations, United Cabs Inc. President Pat Murphy said he fears the new industry would cut into regular cabs’ business, which he said “hasn’t been that good.”

But Clarkson told him the pedicabs would be “a niche that won’t be in competition with you,” and Willard-Lewis called the vehicles “a very interesting and fresh opportunity.”

Although some pedicabs have been operating recently during big events, Bournes said they are “quite illegal” and the city plans to crack down on them.

P.J. Lynch, the owner of New Orleans Bike Taxi LLC, and Sal Palmisano, the owner of Nola Rickshaw LLC, said they hope to get permits for a total of 40 to 60 pedicabs.

They said the vehicles — 9 1/2-foot-long tricycles that cost about $4,000 each — will have lights and two-way radios. They promised their operators will obey all traffic rules and won’t travel on sidewalks. Similar vehicles operate in many other U.S. cities, they said.

Lynch said the companies won’t offer guided tours and so won’t be in competition with mule-drawn carriages in the French Quarter.

The owners submitted letters of support from Police Superintendent Warren Riley and leaders of several tourism and business associations.

A company called Turtle Taxi began operating five pedicabs in New Orleans in 1999 but shut down a year later because city officials refused to let the vehicles operate in the French Quarter, their most lucrative potential market.

Then-Mayor Marc Morial said a study had concluded that the slow-moving vehicles would hinder traffic and that passengers could be endangered while entering and exiting them. “When it comes to issues of public safety, I’m not going to overrule the experts,” Morial said, referring to the study done by Urban Systems Inc., a consulting firm.

The owners of Turtle Taxi later filed a federal lawsuit alleging that city officials put them out of business because they refused to take on a partner with connections to Morial. They said they were told they would be allowed to operate in the Quarter if they transferred a 35 percent interest in the business to a partner who would be picked for them.

Morial and others denied the allegations, and a trial resulted in a hung jury in 2002.

In case you didn’t already know this, I’m interested in bike taxi issues around the country because I’m the guy responsible for The Buffalo Bike Taxi Co.

In Buffalo, NY, there are a lot of buses with bike racks on the front, so that you can extend your bicycle commute to the furthest reaches of the NFTA Metro system. (Unfortunatley, bike rack installation isn’t 100% yet, so there are still a few OLDER buses without racks.)

Here’s how they’re promoting the use of bike racks in Kentucky: