October Critical Mass — 5:35 on the 4th

One week from today, Critical Mass Durham continues. Just to get you warmed up…

Thanks to Tino for originally spotting the video.

Meet at Major, the bronze bull in the CCB plaza (can we come up with a better name for the CCB plaza since CCB isn’t any longer the owner of the tall building?) at 5:35pm.

Strong Bad’s bike theft prevention tips

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upgrades in progress

Pardon the mess until the work is complete. Thanks for your patience.

Durham Police sponsor Bike Rodeo

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Saturday, Oct. 13 at the Teer House, the Durham Police Department will host a Bike Rodeo. From 10AM to noon, kids ages 6 through 13 can practice their skills navigating an obstacle course and learn more about bicycle safety. To ride, kids need to bring their own bike and be accompanied by a parent or guardian. Don’t forget the helmet.

The Bike Rodeo is being held in conjunction with a Health Fair sponsored by Duke’s Office of Patient/Family and Community Education.

Teer House (map)
4019 N Roxboro St, Durham, NC
(919) 477-2644

Cycling and advocacy in Boston

Below is a well-produced video highlighting some of the immediate dangers of cycling in Boston, recommending simple starter solutions.

Hallowheels — a new alleycat in Raleigh

mex08.pngThe folks over at 1304 Bikes (Raleigh’s counterpart to the Durham Bike Co-op) are organizing a new alleycat. And it looks like it will have a Halloween theme. See below for more details, and email Chris if you can help out.

hey everyone!

as some of you may know, I’m setting up another alleycat race in raleigh. “Hallowheels” will be the evening of October 27th! Proceeds will go to 1304bikes! This race is going to be a little more volunteer intensive and i’m desperately looking for people to help out with the race! The types of volunteers i need are:

* CHECKPOINTS!—the most crucial of steps! this is what makes the races run! i need a big handful of folks for help with this!
* design work—just getting the last minute flyers, spokecards, maps, and prizes together.
* promotion—i can put flyers in your hand, can you put them in others’?

if you can help out, please email me! friendsbackeast at yahoo dot com

thanks and see ya on october 27th!
-chris

Traffic congestion getting worse for Triangle

The Texas Transportation Institute’s (TTI) statisticians have confirmed what common sense and simple observation have told most of us already — that traffic congestion in the Triangle gets worse every year. What their mathematically blessed reports add to our collective understanding is that congestion in the Triangle is worse than it is in other similarly-sized metropolitan areas.

That means that, if you drive to work, you spend an extra 35 hours per year sitting in your car. And really, since “35 hours” is an average, some of you are spending much more than that. Your car might be nice, but is it that nice?

Hmm, maybe a dosage of light rail and/or commuter trains could help break up some of that congestion. Perhaps refocusing commercial and residential development through the lens of urban density would help.

If you would like to read the TTI’s full report for yourself, you can download it here (a 7MB pdf), with 12 of the 138 pages having something to say about Durham.

Meanwhile, you can download a Triangle-focused version of the report here — the 2007 Urban Mobility Information for Raleigh-Durham (downloads a pdf)

For those of you who have to spend those 35 hours behind the wheel of a car, the N&O further summarizes the report — you surely don’t have the time to read 138 pages — in a front page article digest.

By the end of the day, I’ll bet the John Locke Foundation recommends more asphalt to ease the congestion.

the politics of fear

Robo-Stith tries to drum up fear in Durham.

Thoughtful analysis on Stith’s campaign here and here.

Critical success!

Thanks to the 80+ beautiful people who turned out tonight, Durham’s first Critical Mass in years was a success. I don’t know how it was throughout the pack, but in the back, it was calm, courteous, and yet powerful. Thanks to all of you for making it happen.

If any of you have photos or video you would like to see posted here, send it to me. I’m happy to collect the imagery.

Camera-phone video from Jack Warman.


Jack Warman’s flickr photos.

Seth’s inconvenient flat.

Photos by menshi mihas
Durham Critical Mass, September 2007

Durham Critical Mass, September 2007

Durham Critical Mass, September 2007

Durham Critical Mass, September 2007

Durham Critical Mass, September 2007

Durham Critical Mass, September 2007

Photo by Eleni Binge
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The success of our Durham Critical Mass is being noticed as far away as Brazil — see apocalipse motorizado.

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Critical Mass is a monthly event — we’ll start at Major, the bronze bull sculpture downtown, at 5:35pm on the first Thursday of each month.

The Outspokin’ Cyclist: Don’t fret, downtown getting bike racks

Phillip Barron
The Herald Sun

Durham Rising brought a lot of people downtown on Saturday — 12,000 by some estimates. A surprising (yes, even to me) number of those folks were cyclists. So, if you walked around downtown at all that day, you surely had to step around some of their bikes. There wasn’t a lamp-post, street sign, or sapling that didn’t have a bike chained to it. Outside Bull McCabe’s, the new Irish pub replacing Jo and Joe’s, signs and lamp-posts secured two and three bikes a piece.

Where were the bike racks?

I left downtown that day feeling disgusted, and no, it wasn’t from gorging on Locopops.

The city of Durham spent more than sixteen million dollars on its Downtown Improvements project as the civic investment in re-energizing downtown. They developed a new central plaza, realigned streets, and marked pedestrian crossings with stamped brick designs. But no bike racks? I was incredulous.

Turns out, bike racks were on their way. They just weren’t installed yet.

Hopefully, you’ve been back downtown since June. As of the end of August, one city program installed bike racks downtown, and one will continue to install them throughout Durham.

First, the streetscape project did include bike racks; they simply couldn’t be installed by the Durham Rising event. Ed Venable of the City says that bike racks were installed in eight locations in July. See them outside the Professional Center, the Empowerment Center, and the CCB Plaza among other spots inside the loop.

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Second, the CityRacks program secured funding from the state and federal governments to install bike racks all over Durham. Under a Congestion Mitigation for Air Quality (CMAQ — often pronounced see-mack) Improvement Program, Durham will be installing bike racks all over the city. CityRacks, as the CMAQ funded program is called, will install “inverted U” bicycle racks on city-owned property. Look for them to start popping up this fall.

There’s a common story told on many college campuses (whether myth or fact doesn’t matter) about how it was decided where sidewalks should go. It usually goes something like this. Suppose you want to lay out a campus, and you want to put in sidewalks only where the students will use them. The best way is to wait a few years to see what pathways the students wear into the lawn, and put the sidewalks there, because those are the pathways students use to get from building to building. Otherwise you’ll have sidewalks, and then you’ll have pathways across the lawn where the students actually walk.

The CityRacks program takes a similar strategy with bike racks. By letting citizens (cyclists) request where racks should go, the City ends up installing racks where they will be used.

Dale McKeel, the city’s new Bicycle and Pedestrian Transportation planner, says that the first bike racks were installed downtown in August at locations selected more than a year ago. Before the 2007 year is out, a total of sixty seven racks will be installed at parks, commercial districts, museums, universities, and libraries. For those of us cyclists, that means we will no longer have to lock a bike to a No-Parking sign outside Brightleaf or Ninth St.

Piedmont Parks, Inc. of Greensboro won the $48,000 contract to install the racks, and the upside-down U design was chosen by the Durham Bicycle and Pedestrian Advisory Commission, who says this style bike rack is the most secure.

In 2008, the City Racks program will focus on installing bike racks at public schools throughout Durham. And in 2009, the public will again be invited to request bike racks at locations around Durham.

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Jim Reingruber, using Google Maps, has started a website noting all of Durham’s bike racks — at least, all the ones he can find. Check it out at http://www.durhambikeracks.com/

For the full list of all planned bike rack locations, see the pdf available at http://www.durhamnc.gov/departments/works/bikerack_form.cfm

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