Bicycle Police

It was National Night Out tonight. Last year the fire truck came to visit, and this year was no exception. The kids go wild for it — they love the flashing lights, the sirens, the color red. Later, I was surprised when two more of Minneapolis’s finest showed up. On bicycle! Yes, two bike cops showed up. The funny part was that they were not mobbed by the kids so much as the adults. In a neighborhood of property-owning cyclists, police officers on bicycles are about as exciting as an ice cream truck.

They were riding Trek mountain bikes, and the interesting thing is that the bikes are gifts from the Republican National Committee. The officers said that 60 have been provided by the RNC for Minneapolis, and 60 more for St. Paul to help local police provide law and order during the convention. The bikes looked pretty nice: front suspension, disc brakes, SRAM components. The only thing is it sounds like there’s no plan to maintain the bikes. It’d be nice to see them well-tended and to see more police officers on bikes following the convention. Bicycle police are especially good for patrolling hard-to-reach places and are sorely needed to improve safety in the Greenway after dark. Here’s hoping they stick around, just like the Humana bikes.

Hard Core

There have been quite a few articles about bicycling as, gasp, a way to get to work in the mainstream press lately. My favorite is this article in the New York Times:

“It’s free, it’s good for the environment, good for your health,” he said, beads of sweat collecting under his helmet and underneath his backpack, about 5 miles into his 12-mile ride. “And it’s a little dangerous, so you get a little thrill at the beginning and the end of each day.” He also gets satisfaction from beating cars across the bridge. “I love it,” he said.

Me, too.

Another thing I really liked about this article was that it actually mentioned the so-called invisible bikers: all of the recent immigrants who ride their bicycles to their jobs because that’s their only option. Bicycling Magazine did an article on this group of cyclists once, and it was very eye opening. The Times article correctly points out that a major challenge with this group is getting them to ride safely and adopt the rules of the road.

The other article that caught my interest was this one in the Wall Street Journal about the challenges of cycling in Los Angeles. It made me sad more than anything else.

The thing that I wonder is this: are we truly experiencing a cycling renaissance or is this just increased media coverage due to the price of gas? Either way, I enjoy reading about my favorite pastime in the mainstream press.

Notes from MN Coalition of Bicyclists Meeting

The meeting itself was at the Bloomington REI. This in itself I would imagine was a big deterrent for many people, as that part of Bloomington is about as bicycle unfriendly as it comes. I was coming from Eagan, so I crossed 494 and then was spit out onto godforsaken American Boulevard. Do I take the sidewalk and risk getting swiped every block as I cross another driveway entrance or do I take the road with four lanes and no shoulder? Hmmmmm. Even better, the drivers were clearly getting angry at me because the traffic lights are timed for north-south traffic, not east-west, I’d imagine to get people out of Minneapolis and into the suburbs as soon as possible after work ends. So after each and every light–you guessed it–I would catch-up to the same cars at the next light.

Here are my notes from the meeting:

There were about 20 attendees. The meeting started by going around the room and everyone stating what they wanted out of the new organization. These ranged from having a body that educated people on how to get out and ride to organizing all the disparate organizations that currently operate in the state to having an organization that could rally cyclists when key infrastructure was being built and it needed to be made bike friendly

The name Minnesota Coalition of Bicyclists is a throwback to the 80s. A steering committee has met twice now to talk about forming the organization. Originally they wanted to revive the old coalition, but given how complicated their bylaws are, it makes more sense to make their own bylaws, mission, and vision. They are also changing the name to: Bicycle Alliance of Minnesota. The acronym BAM is already taken, so the shortened term for, say, a website will be BikeMN.

The next phase of the meeting was to brainstorm committees and then vote on them. The four that made the cut were: Advocacy, Marketing & Communications, Education & Promotion, and Technical Advice.

The meeting ended with a few general announcements:

- Humana needs volunteers to help with the bikeshare program they’re sponsoring during the RNC.

- AMCO is testing a bike corral idea at an upcoming Lynx game and Twins game. You can get discounted tickets for this.

- The next meeting will be on Thursday, August 14, hopefully at the Midtown Bike Center this time.

Renting Bikes

It’s all the rage.

Rackin' it in Paris

We’re not talking the failed yellow bike experiment in St Paul back in 1995.  However well-intentioned, we didn’t have the power of the credit card back then.  Now there’s accountability.  Once you swipe your card, you’re responsible.  And it looks like that’s been the ticket for the successful Vélib’ (“a contraction of vélo for bike and liberté”).  A popular New York Times article has profiled the successful bike rental program.  I think the coolest part is this:

And on July 27, at the conclusion here of the Tour de France, 365 lucky Vélib’ riders will be chosen to ride along for a while and cross the finish line.

Sign me up!

Bicycle Open House — Those Files

I promised last month that I’d get those Bicycle Open House files from the city posted.  Finally got around to figuring it out:

Bicycle Master Plan Draft Document

Bicycle Master Plan Presentation

Bicycle Master Plan Map

Bicycle Open House Follow-Up

Work has been busy. Hence the lack of posts. I went to the bicycle open house last week. In general, it was a good effort on the part of the Minneapolis bicycle program to engage the community’s input in the writing of the Bicycle Master Plan. This is an update on the 2001 plan. The format of the open house was the same presentation, given by Don Pflaum, presented three times over the course of three and a half hours. It was then followed by Q&A. In addition, around the room there were a lot of poster boards with different draft elements of the new master plan, along with maps. Post-it notes were provided, and participants were encouraged to walk around, read what was on the poster boards, and provide their comments on post-its.

Personally, I found it a little bit overwhelming to digest, especially in a setting where you’re interacting with and talking to people, so I didn’t leave many comments, though I plan to email my comments to Don. For those of you who also found this a bit overwhelming, I am going to post the main documents on which people were asked to comment so that you have them electronically. Once I figure out how to do this, that is.

Bicycle Open House — Minneapolis

Minneapolis will be hosting a Bicycle Open House this Wednesday from 4:30 – 8:00 PM in City Hall (350 South 5th Street).  Come to share ideas, voice grievances, and help articulate your vision for Minneapolis’s biking future.  For example, you may want to ask why the Bicycle Advisory Committee’s meeting minutes have not been posted for six months or why their meetings are in the middle of a weekday so that people with jobs cannot attend.

Tax Incentives for Cyclists

Sorry to get you all excited–this is in the UK, not US.  So maybe we’ll have something similar when the price of gas reaches $8 a gallon like it is there.  Next year?

From The Guardian: http://www.guardian.co.uk/money/2008/jun/14/9

With Bike Week starting today, it is a good time to tell bosses how they can have a fitter workforce – courtesy of the taxman. The Institute of Chartered Accountants in England and Wales (ICAEW) says employers can help staff buy a bike out of their income before tax and national insurance, with the company picking up the VAT – almost halving the cycle’s list price. Equipment such as lights and helmets can be added in. The main rules are that the benefit must be available to all employees and, broadly, more than half of their journeys are travelling from home to work. Employers can also pay staff 20p a mile tax-free for using their own bicycles for business travel.

Wounded Wildlife

One of the things that I enjoy about biking to work is the chance to see things I would never see if I were zipping by in a climate controlled car. Like wildlife. In my daily bicycle commute to Eagan, I’ve seen wild turkeys, deer, and even a fox. Since a bicycle doesn’t make that much noise, I’ve sometimes come upon these animals without them ever having noticed me. This is a little dangerous with the deer, but thus far I haven’t run into any.

The flip side of this is that I also notice all of the roadkill on my morning ride. It’s a macabre complement to the serenity of quietly rolling along a country road. I’ve also noticed that as the weather has gotten warmer, the usual line of dead squirrels and rabbits has been added to with many turtles. I don’t know why, but I get upset by this. Probably it’s because I’m just not used to seeing turtles crushed on the road. On Thursday I came across a magnificent snapping turtle on the shoulder of the Argenta Trail who had been hit by a car. The turtle was still alive, but it was bleeding from its shell and wasn’t moving much. I wanted to help it but didn’t know what to do.

After a phone call to 911 and a conversation with a conservation officer from the DNR, I figured out that there is a place in St Paul called the Wildlife Rehabilitation Center of Minnesota. They’ll take a wounded animal from you and care for it until it is healed and strong enough to be released back into the wild. But here is the catch that I encountered on Thursday night: you need to bring it in yourself. This is problematic for a cyclist. I couldn’t really put a bleeding snapping turtle into my messenger bag, and no one whom I got on the phone was willing to come get it. So I biked all the way home, got in my car, and came back to pick up the turtle (about an hour later). But it was gone. I am hoping that someone else, with a car, found it and took it to the Wildlife Rehabilitation Center. I wish there was an organization that had a vehicle to respond to calls like mine. Cyclists probably see more injured wildlife than motorists do, but they do not have the resources to get the injured animal to a place where it can be cared for.

Minnehaha Avenue

They repainted the bike lane stripes on Minnehaha Avenue. Bright shining white lines. It looks good.