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Why You Should Care That Fewer Kids Are Riding Bikes

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Here in America, the number of kids who ride bikes  has declined  by 19 percent since 2007, and 2018 holiday bikes sales were down 10 percent from 2017. Advocates and industry analysts offer  all sorts of explanations  as to why this is happening, from the pervasiveness of video games and screen-based entertainment, to the highly structured and programmed nature of childhood recreation in general. But the most obvious and fundamental reason fewer kids are riding bikes these days is sitting right in your driveway. It’s your car. Driving is the new smoking. For all the stranger danger! and just say no! warnings that we’ve subjected our kids to over the years, the  number-one threat  to their lives is cars. Only guns come close. Therefore, everything that makes it possible for you to drive everywhere also serves to ensure that their environment remains deadly. The roads are far too dangerous thanks to all the car traffic, and even the sidewalks are bisected by active driveways. Car depend
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To Encourage Biking, Cities Lose the Helmets

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  By  ELISABETH ROSENTHAL This article appeared in the New York Times in 2012. ONE spectacular Sunday in Paris last month, I decided to skip museums and shopping to partake of something even more captivating for an environment reporter:  Vélib , arguably the most successful bike-sharing program in the world. In their short lives, Europe’s bike-sharing systems have delivered myriad benefits, notably reducing traffic and its carbon emissions. A number of American cities — including New York, where a bike-sharing program is to open next year — want to replicate that success. So I bought a day pass online for about $2, entered my login information at one of the hundreds of docking stations that are scattered every few blocks around the city and selected one of Vélib’s nearly 20,000 stodgy gray bikes, with their basic gears, upright handlebars and practical baskets. Then I did something extraordinary, something I’ve not done in a quarter-century of regular bike riding in the United States:
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The Growing Importance of Bicycling Infrastructure

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BECAUSE THIS IS INSANITY Why more cities need to embrace bike lanes, bike parking and other bicycle infrastructure in their urban cores. The Value of Bicycle Lanes and Thoroughfares There is a growing connection in the relationship between amenity- or service-oriented businesses and the proximity to bicycle thoroughfares. These kinds of businesses would include restaurants, coffee shops, pubs, boutiques, and the like.  Michael Andersen, who writes for BikePortland and People for Bikes, has written numerous articles that detail this trend. “Bikes, it turns out, seem to be a perfect way to get people to the few retail categories that are thriving in the age of mail-order everything: bars, restaurants and personal services. And in Portland, where an early investment in basic bikeways has made bikes a popular way to run errands, retailers are responding by snapping up storefronts with good bike exposure.” Locally, an example of these changes taking place is North Williams Avenue (and Nort
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These countries pay people to ride bicycles and e-bikes to work. Shouldn’t the US too?

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It may sound foreign to Americans, but being paid to cycle to work on a pedal bicycle or electric bike is common in many countries. While bicycles are still popular forms of transportation, many more workers are now switching from four wheels to two thanks to the proliferation of electric bicycles. Electric bicycles work like traditional pedal bicycles, but include an additional electric motor and battery to assist the rider, taking the edge off of hill-climbing and higher-speed riding. Many riders favor e-bikes for allowing them to arrive at work without breaking a sweat, while still getting in some heart-healthy modest physical activity twice a day. The bike-to-work programs found in most countries usually take the form of a tax incentive, where tax-free bonuses are added to an employee’s paycheck each month for cycling to work instead of driving a personal car. And the programs are so successful that they’re continuing to grow. Across Europe, there are over 300 tax-incentive and pur
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Commuting Takes Its Toll

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Reprinted with permission from Scientific American  By Annette Schaefer   Workers are traveling ever longer to attain the job or home life they want, but the daily stress may outweigh the gains WHEN ACCIDENTS snarl traffic and bad weather cripples mass transit, images of frustrated commuters often lead the nightly news. But the normal, everyday insanity that commuters endure is the bigger story. Mobility is a prime mover in today's job markets. Workers who want to “make it” have to be flexible and willing to take the punishment. Move to another branch office? No problem. Still want that nice house in the country? Absolutely. The result of our desires is that more and more people commute, and more travel longer than ever. The percentage of Americans with a commute greater than 90 minutes a day nearly doubled between 1990 and 2000, according to the U.S.  Census Bureau The added time and distance may not be worth the hassle, however. Research from around the wor
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Inside Oslo’s plan to go carbon neutral by 2030

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For the delivery company, DB Schenker, the bikes are a way to avoid traffic; unlike most other cargo bikes, they’re narrow enough to fit in bike lanes. In tests, the company found that the bikes increased productivity by 40%. For the city, they’re one small part of a move to become carbon neutral in a little more than a decade. WHAT A CONCEPT! Reprint from FastCompany Newsletter 9.18.18 In the center of Oslo, the city is removing parking spaces, closing streets to traffic, improving public transportation, handing out grants for cargo bikes, and building 40 miles of new bike lanes as it prepares to make the entire center car-free by 2019. When the changes began, there was resistance. But the mayor of Oslo says that more people are beginning to see new opportunities. READ >>
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Cyclists over 60. Fastest growth of any Demographic

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By Mark Cramer, retiree, cycling advocate, regular contributor to  Freewheeling France   22 percent of the net growth in U.S. bike trips from 1995-2009 is by people ages 60-79. Their biking quadrupled in those 14 years, the fastest growth of any demographic. During the past 17 years I’ve been cycling on a regular basis. As I’ve aged (I’m 72 now), I have observed an increasing population of senior cyclers around me, especially in France, my home base. Recently in Paris I presented a slide show on Cycling in Bolivia. The canyon city of La Paz, Bolivia, where I live for six weeks each year, is 12,000 feet above sea level, has no bike lanes and if you find a rare flat street, it’s never going where you need it to. Given the challenge of cycling in an area with sometimes many thousand foot variations in altitude, I expected a younger crowd to attend the presentation. Instead, the audience was comprised mainly of seniors. Mingling with them I learned that their retirements are e
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