Author Archives: Christopher

Expensive road bikes? carbon frames? Is it worth spending upwards of 1500 dollars on a bike just for getting around? What does it mean to the average commuter? Apparently not a whole lot.

In a new study by Dr. Jeremy Groves, an “anaesthetist at Chesterfield Royal Hospital and self-confessed cycling fan,” he asserts that the commuting time between a commute with a carbon fiber bicycle verses the commuting time with a steel frame is about the same. The big part of this was that he spent 1000 euro, about 1326.70 US Dollars, and only 50 euro, about 66.33 US Dollars, on the steel framed bike.

The best part is the conclusion that he comes up with, “A lighter bicycle did not lead to a detectable difference in commuting time. Cyclists may find it more cost effective to reduce their own weight rather than to purchase a lighter bicycle.”

You can find the study link here [via: BBC News]

Written by Chris Belsole

You heard right! Copenhagen is building a network of bike highways. It would stand to reason that one of the most bike-friendly cities in the world has a bike path congestion problem. As I type these words I can’t help but feel jealous at the fact that they have these problems.

“… Roehl [the Copenhagen municipality’s bicycle programme manager] is not content with making life easier for Copenhagen’s inner-city cyclists: he wants to get suburbanites out of their cars and onto two wheels as well.

His goal is to hike the percentage of suburban commuters cycling to and from the city from the 37 percent it is today to over 50 percent by 2015.

Within the city, 55 percent of all commuters already travel by bike, according to the municipality.

Copenhagen’s bike highways of tomorrow will be dotted with pit stops where it will be possible to pump up tyres, fix a chain and have a drink of water, Roehl says.

And synchronised traffic lights prioritising bicycles over cars will bring riders from the suburbs into Copenhagen “quickly and safely,” he says.”

Written by Chris Belsole

Breakfast, the most important meal of the day or something more? At the Capital Region Healthy Communities Coalition they believe that breakast leads to greater chances for education and lower diciplinary problems.

Do all kids eat breakfast? In New York State it is mandatory that all schools serve a USDA approved breakfast; although not all schools do. Not all children eat breakfast even if it is offered at the school. In fact even the majority of the children who get free or reduced priced lunches don’t take advantage of the free breakfast.

So how do you get children to eat breakfast? Because children “eat with their eyes” the food must look apealing. Also there is something called stealth nutrition where you use tatics like low sodium chips or whole wheat pancakes to give children a healthier meal.

So what can we do as bicyclists to help these children get a proper breakfast? One thing that could be done is plan and get cities to put signs up for “safe routs” to schools as well as plan and run daily bicycling rides to schools so that children don’t have to wait for the buses and end up missing the time for a school breakfast.

For more information go to the Capital Region Healthy Communities Coalition website.

Written by Chris Belsole

In a recent article by the New York Times they described a situation in New York City that was, to put it a nice way, bike resistant. In truth is this really what is going on?

Let’s take a step back and explain the information. Bicycling in NYC has grown by leaps and bounds in the past few years mainly due to the various bike advocacy groups in the city as well as the director of the DOT who seems to be bike-friendly. For some reason people are now getting up in arms about the biking lanes being put into the city, but how big is this. The article makes it seem like there is a growing movement of people who are fighting the bike lanes. Today I received an e-mail that read:

Frankly, the backlash is often baffling. A new protected lane on Prospect Park West has produced a ridiculous uproar. Last week, the New York Times gave top billing to an anti-bike rally despite a turnout that could fit in a taxicab. “Opposition to the city’s agenda on bicycles,” the Times reported, “is gaining increased attention.”

It seems by the amount of people that actually show up to protest bikes that the movement is dead in the water compared to the amount of people the bike advocacy groups have.

On the Spokes blog on the NYTimes site there was a post asking for comments on this issue. You can read through them all but, trust me, it takes a while. There are anti-cyclist comments 0n the post and some of them make good points about bikers not following the rules of the road and things, but you won’t find many that talk about bike lanes as a detriment. If you take this as a sampling of the city itself I think they will be alright in terms of keeping their bike lanes.

We talk about other cities a lot here on the ABC blog, and that is only so that we can learn from the happenings going on there. So what can we take from this? Well for one we can see that people will not always see things our way. We have to have the support of the community at large to get things done and keep them that way.

What do you think?

Written by Chris Belsole