Photos:
1. Just a Sweater
2. Hipsters at Brunch at the Portside
3. Leggings and a Scarf
4. All Bundled Up
5. . . . just kidding
Tag Archives: People for Bikes
Madison Ave. Traffic Calming & NYS DOT Transportation Enhancement
The Albany Bicycle Coalition provided a letter of support for the City of Albany’s application for NYS DOT Transportation Enhancement Program funds to assist with the “Madison Avenue Road Diet.” The letter follows:
August 16, 2013
Ms. Joan McDonald
Commissioner
New York State Department of Transportation
50 Wolf Road
Albany, New York 12205
Dear Ms. McDonald:
The Albany Bicycle Coalition unequivocally supports the Madison Ave. Road Diet application for the Transportation Enhancements Program. This will allow for restriping, traffic light retiming, paving, and constructing cycling and walking enhancements. The Madison Ave. Road Diet consistently has had strong community interest. With completion of the feasibility study and with appropriate funding, the City and the community are prepared to move forward with a new, calmed Madison Ave.
The City of Albany completed a Bicycle Master Plan in December 2009. It identified Madison Ave. as a “Major Bikeway” needing infrastructure improvements for all bicycle riders. With its current configuration of two travel lanes in each direction, the existing roadway simply cannot function as a major bikeway.
The proponents of the plan believe a road diet will have multiple advantages, included but not limited to increased safety for all, more efficient traffic flow, improved access between uptown and downtown, and reduction in emissions from motorized vehicles.
We strongly support the Madison Ave. Road Diet application for the Transportation Enhancements Program to assist with the restriping, light retiming, paving, and bicycle and pedestrian enhancements.
++++++
Filed under Activism, Support the Cause
Whiners and Complainers (and Keep Off Those Heels Too!)
A reader of the July-August 2012 League of American Bicyclists’ “American Bicyclist” complained that the magazine featured a rider in flip-flops. The writer’s statement is as follows (November-December 2012 issue): “Riding in flip-flops is dangerous. Featuring riders with helmets and flip-flops sends a distorted message implying safe riding conditions when, in fact, those flip-flops are a hazard to the person wearing them AND those riding along side the flip-flopper. Please stress the danger of riding in flip-flops and the importance of safe riding head and foot gear.”
The offending picture was clearly composed for the article and featured riders out for a causal cruise. (To view the image, click the above LAB link and page through to page 10 of the July-August issue.)
This kind of nonsense raises multiple questions:
- What exactly is the danger of flip-flops? Frostbite? Dirty feet?
- Is there a case of flip-flops causing death?
- What is the danger to “those riding along-side the flip-flopper”?
- If head and footgear is so critical – what about elbow, shoulder and kneepads, leather pants and jacket, and (even) gloves? How about a handle-bar-mounted air bag?
- Where is the distortion in the message? Even allowing for the helmet, why should not the rider be comfortable?
With so many more critical safe riding issues – rider education, bicycle maintenance, traffic control, motor vehicle traffic enforcement, road maintenance – it is regrettable that this level of criticism even gets printed.
No Heels Please!
Filed under Article
People For Bikes: If I Ride
Taken from: http://www.peopleforbikes.org/
I just wanted to bring this video to everyone’s attention. It is a heartwarming video of a poem where humanity is better off if there was just one more cyclists on the road. I would like to add one.
If I ride I will be able to see my grandchildren.
How about you?
Albany Bicycle Coalition 