Bike Culture on The Huffington Post

Bike-Powered Cell Phone Charger

2008-12-23T09:20:37Z

OK, so this isn't break-through technology. But it does show the increasing availability of convenient alternative energy for charging gadgets.

Oscar L'Hermitte has designed a cool cell phone charger that clips onto the reflector of your bike.

The charger just clips on, and you ride for (yes, this seems like a long time) 90 minutes for a fully charged cell phone battery. But if you only need to top off your battery, then the ride can be much shorter.

Graham Hill: 2009 -- A Banner Bike Year, We Hope

2008-12-16T03:58:34Z

Name one industry that hasn't yet suffered from the global gray economy. Personal hygiene? Snacks for couch potatoes? Nope, it's the global bicycle industry. Taiwan's Shimano reports that its bike division is driving profitability, and Giant Manufacturing predicts upwards growth well into next year.

And the fledgling U.S. market for e-bikes is expecting a banner 2009, with sales projections of 170,000 and Wal-Mart as major distributor. (Kind of an irony when you consider how difficult it would be to bike to most Wal-Marts in this country!) Japan (the best e-bike market) added nearly twice that number of new electric bikes last year. China is increasing its export subsidies for the bicycle industry to fuel exports during the recession.

Bicycle technology is also advancing with the advent of the chainless belt-drive bike, new models of folding bikes, and snazzier e-bikes.

To support this positive data, continued improvement to the U.S. bike infrastructure is a necessity.

Seattle, where the City Council is determined to spend $240 million in order to one-up Portland's fabled reputation as Cycle City, has the right idea.

New York City's City Council, which is considering putting bike path development on the chopping block as spending projections plummet, does not.

From the looks of it, Obama's stimulus plan is giving a green light to infrastructure. "Shovel ready" highway and bridge projects total about $18 billion, while bicycle and pedestrian projects are currently a paltry $325 million.

America Bikes and Rails-to-Trails are trying to push a more balanced stimulus package with more emphasis on pedestrian and bike projects. Instead of a lot more eight-lane highways let's push for things like separated-lane city streets mixing the needs of peds, bikes and other transit, and give U.S. biking its best year ever.

More from TreeHugger on Cycling
::Data Confirms Cycling on the Rise in NYC
::Make Cycling Safer and More Convenient With An Informal Bicycle Triple A
::
Investment in Cycling Could Save 521 Million
::Virtuous Cycle Video Highlights Washington, D.C.'s Cycling Initiatives
::For Bicyclists, There is Safety in Numbers
::Cycling Saves Australia $200 Million in Health Care Costs

More from Graham Hill on Huffington Post
::Black Friday Versus Green Retailing
::Designing for Nextopia
::Toronto's Great Coffee Cup Debate Heats Up
::A New Age for Recycling...Prod Producers or Reward Consumers?
::Tech Enabled Bike Sharing Rolls Into North America
::From Floods of Hope to Rebuilding With Resilience
::5 Things to Do Post-Vote (No Matter Who is Winning)
::The Seven Habits of Highly Effective Future Cities
::Good Growth, Green Growth: Are We Ready for it?
::Right Now, $100 Billion Doesn't Sound Like Much for a Million Green Jobs and Lots of Clean Energy

Tate Museum's Christmas Tree Uses Pedal Power

2008-12-08T09:34:23Z

Every year the Tate Britain Art Museum commissions an artist to decorate its Christmas tree. Last year's was covered with guns and fighter planes, another was hung upside down and yet another year there was just a note saying the tree had been given to charity. This year's creation by Bob & Roberta Smith has an ecological and recycling theme.

Called "Make Your Own Xmas", it's big, ramshackle wooden structure made of recycled materials, including sandwich boards, tape, signs and an oil drum. Eight bicycles of various sizes have been fixed to stands around the "trunk" (bottom), each holding a generator that is connected to a set of light bulbs that decorate the tree. When happy children and chuckling adults hop on the bikes and pedal hard, the lights go on.

Waylon Lewis: Commuter Bike-Off! It's Electra Amsterdam vs. Bianchi Milano vs. Masi vs. Jorg & Olif vs. Simple City vs. Paul Frank vs. Biomega vs. Kronan (oh, my)

2008-11-23T17:07:43Z

What's the best commuter bike in America right now?

A commuter bike is defined, loosely, as a light, affordable, utilitarian bike fit for daily commuting. Qualities of the the winner will combine 1) upright riding position and practicality in riding and hauling groceries, schoolbooks etc. 2) style 3) at least 7 gears 4) utilitarian: gotta be compatible with rack, fenders (as well as bell and lights, which are always easy for any bike). Internal hub is nice: less maintenance, and seamless shifting.

Any bikes that I'm forgetting, just comment below with link.

First among contenders for that elusive ideal commuter bike: a heavy retro Euro beauty: Jorg & Olif. Pricey, but looks to be well worth it. Heavy, but gorgeous--your inner Cary Grant or Audrey Hepburn will wake you each morning and demand you dress up and bike down to your local cafe. Handlebars reach a bit far back--making the riding position almost too upright--but overall Jorg & Olif has gotta rate 9 outta 10.

A new fave, however, is the recently-released Gary Fisher Simple City. It's a little heavy, but way lighter than Mr. Jorg & Miss Olif. It's lovely, got requisite comfy seat, upright riding position (but not too upright), rackable back and chain guard to save that dress/pants from the oily, ripping grip of Mr. Chain. Still, it's a lil'pricey for the 8 gear, 3 ain't enough, so I gotta save up for that one, I've been riding a lovely...

...black Electra Amsterdam, which is sweet-looking, comfortable (though again slightly too upright) but heavy and needs a trip to the shop every other week (literally, just ask 'em). So why'd I buy such a clunker (note: newer versions with Brooks saddles are probably better all-around than mine, which I got a year back)? I love the style, I love the company...and, oh yeah, my...

Bianchi Milano (in black) got stole. The Milano doesn't get much respect--but it should. It's good looking (red walled tires a bonus), sleek, light as air and (unlike the three above) ready to jump off a curb and hit the hills with abandon. Perhaps the ideal combo of good-to-look-at and eminently functional.

New to this list: the slick cool Paul Frank City Bike. Only three gears, but sweet-lookin'--in fact, our stylee videographer, Alex King, rides one he bought at Boulder's Full Cycle. It's light-ish, but no off-curbing mayhem for Mr. Frank.

Two I coulda been a contendahs: Biomega (gorgeous, if you love the Apple Air [which is kinda eco, btw] you'll love this high-priced, fancy, hard to replace parts since it's so unique) and Kronan (gorgeous, 5-speed max, colorfully classically European, stylee, like Jorg & Olif, super-heavy and pricey).

If you're rich and your money's under your mattress, rather than in the stockmarket, check out the A.N.T. Their site is bike porn for daily commuters.

My latest favorite: The Masi Urban commuter bike, it's the coolest yet--light enough like the Milano to jump off a curb and not feel like half the bike's gonna fall apart--stylish enough to give the Simple City a run for its money, affordable, cool (and--ouch!--hard) Brooksish seat, flat metal fenders (super-stylish), rack-compatible, cork (cool, and eco-ish) handlebars...barely a chain guard, which ain't ideal, but it's enough to keep your pans or skirt from turning black--an internal (commuter bikes must have internal, or maintenance and inconvenient gear-switching may send you back to your car) 7-gear hub (hopefully they'll go with sturdy Nexus hub next time 'round) and last but not least the Masi's got quick, but grippy tires fit for summertime (and the biking is easy) or winter (and black ice is lurking 'round every bike path corner). I'm in--despite being broke, starving, my mortgage on the line--I ran out and bought one this week (if I'd gone another month on my lovely but heavy and fragile Electra Amsterdam I'd hafta learn to play the violin).

So the Masi may take the cake, thus far, in the pleasurable, leisurely race to get out of the car nirvana--but if you want to be truly green, and save some green, there's no home like craigslist for affordable, old school bikes built as solidly as any of the above.

Why Own When You Can Rent? Bikes, Tools, Clothes, Cats?

2008-11-19T09:46:13Z

Ah, the product service system (or PSS): one of TreeHugger's favorite concepts shrouded by one of the clunkiest names. For anyone who'd like a quick refresher, a PSS replaces a product with a service; instead of paying for the product itself (and whatever maintenance and upkeep it requires), you pay to use the product for a bit, and then give it back. Think of it this way: a PSS is often an answer to the question, "Hey, do you really need to own one of those?"

There are a few classic examples: libraries, bike sharing (pictured above), and car-sharing services are all good ones, and we've rounded up a bunch of other good examples in the past. But what makes a good product service system? Read on for a few examples of some newer PSS's that also exemplify why it's better to rent than buy.

Tim Berry: How Obama Can Clean Up the Mess

2008-11-18T11:02:10Z

I'd like everybody who possibly can to listen to 'Obama's Challenge': A Transformative Opportunity, a 38-minute interview, podcast, from NPR's Fresh Air which was broadcast on Thursday November 6.

This seems really important to me. Hopeful as well, as if maybe there's a way out of this economic mess we're in; but also important in that I'd like you to listen to it too.

And read the excerpt that's included here as well.

Robert Kuttner, author of Obama's Challenge spells out a convincing argument for both the depth of the problem and the need of a Roosevelt-like, New-Deal-like solution. I hate to summarize something as important as this, but:

The government has to spend billions to prop up housing prices. Too many of us link our wealth to our home value. The economy can't survive a severe hit to the home owners. Roosevelt, facing something like this, established the Home Owners Loan Corporation (HOLC to buy up bad mortgages, keep people in their homes, and support home prices. If not -- listen to his very convincing explanations in the podcast, not me -- there will be hell to pay with the economic repercussions.

The government has to spend billions to create lots of new jobs. People out of work will -- or might -- cascade into a huge problem. That's the worry. And, to prevent it, he has some brilliant answers about where to put government money to add new jobs to keep the economy afloat. His suggestions, which strike me as brilliant, don't fit into my bullet points.

"Yeah, right!" I was saying to myself, as I listened in my car. "Pipe dream." How do we pay for that?" I was muttering about deficit spending and the current administration and all, when, as I listened, I discovered that I've been wrong for a while on a very important concept. I just assume, perhaps by instinct alone, that we can't afford a New Deal solution.

And that's where this interview caught me. Consider this, which Kuttner explained to Terry Gross. Our national debt has risen lately to 40% of GNP. To support the housing prices and create the jobs Kuttner recommends, he says, it would probably have to rise to 50% of GNP, maybe even more. But -- and this opened my eyes wide -- the debt rose as high as 120% of GNP during the New Deal. And, furthermore, that led to the most prosperous two decades in U.S. history, beginning with my birth in 1948 (not that I was the cause, but I enjoy the coincidence).

I don't like being wrong. But it's exciting to be wrong on this one because for the first time in months I see a way that the president-elect can dig us out of the mess. Hooray.

Graham Hill: Tech-Enabled Bike Sharing Rolls Into North America

2008-11-11T03:20:03Z

In its article on the "third generation" of bike sharing programs, the New York Times profiled Barcelona's Bicing in particular as demonstrating the success of bike sharing in getting people out of their cars and all over their cities.

The first generation of bike sharing started in Amsterdam in 1968 where free white bikes were left at key points around the inner core - an exciting concept yet too unorganized (bikes were rapidly trashed or stolen) to morph into reliable urban transport. The second generation used coin-op or cash systems to rent out bikes for short city hops.

Now RFID (radio frequency identification) tags and Smart Card payment systems have created a third generation of bike share programs popping up all over Europe and finally starting to penetrate North America.

TIME just gave Montreal's public bike system Bixi an award as one of the 50 best inventions of 2008, even though Bixi will not formally launch with 2,400 bikes until April 2009 - it now has around 40 demonstration bikes. Bixi bikes are RFID enabled, but TIME also lauded the rugged components on the bikes and the fact that that bike rack stations are web-enabled and solar powered. And Bixi bikes are locally assembled, in Quebec.

On the downside, Montreal's real winters means Bixi will run only from April through November. That seems a bit short-sighted, as once you start relying on a bike, inclement weather is only a signal for better clothing, not a riding deterrent.

The most exciting thing about the higher profile of bike sharing is that the systems are finally making their way to more Canadian and American cities. Washington, DC is perhaps fitting as the home of one of the first U.S. bike share programs, SmartBike DC, with ten bike rack stations.

And that means a handful of other U.S. cities will be playing catch-up in the next year to roll out their own programs. Denver and Minneapolis-St. Paul have a one-up on other cities such as San Francisco, as Freewheelin' implemented temporary bike sharing in both those cities as a highlight of the Democratic and Republican national conventions this year. Freewheelin' also installed a small-scale bike sharing in Louisville, KY for the Ideafest convention.

SF is straining to produce a bike-share system, Albuquerque's will be in place by next summer, and Boston is planning a 2010 launch for bike sharing. New York and Philadelphia are pondering their options. In the meantime, bike-sharing for university campuses is also set to boom, with NYU and the University of Minnesota designing programs.

Bike share programs aren't problem free - there are the hurdles of car-centric infrastructures, equitable pricing and even helmet concerns to overcome, but it is great that so many U.S. cities are beginning to give the bicycle it due in improving citizen health and city air. Now don't forget the suburbs!

More from TreeHugger on bike sharing
::Bike Sharing Goes Global - Five Program You Should Know About
::Montreal Want Paris-Style Bike Sharing
::DC Bike-Sharing Program Launches Today, First in the USA
::Short Film on Velib, World's Biggest Bike-Sharing Program in Paris
::Bike Sharing: A Tale of Two Cities

More from Graham Hill on Huffington Post
::The Seven Habits of Highly Effective Future Cities
::Good Growth, Green Growth: Are We Ready for it?
::Right Now, $100 Billion Doesn't Sound Like Much for a Million Green Jobs and Lots of Clean Energy
::Culture of Recession to a Culture of Abundance
::Culture of Recession to Culture of Abundance
:Wal-Mart and a World of Good
:: Ode to a Reusable Water Bottle
::Danish Happiness...Does It All Come Down To A Green Commute?
::Wrapping Up Our Plastic Habit...In More Plastic
::Beijing To London: Passing A Dubious Green Torch

Bikes With RFID: Stopping Theft With Technology

2008-11-10T09:27:19Z

Bike theft is a huge bummer and a always-growing problem in cities where bicycles are used more and more for daily transport. Amsterdam has always had a big theft problem, and 20,000 bike were stolen in the city of Copenhagen alone. Bike sharing programs nearly all share the feature of using RFID (Radio frequency ID) in order to identify bikes and help reclaim them if they are lost or stolen. Now RFID programs outside of bike sharing are on the upswing to try to reclaim stolen bicycles as well as deter thefts, and even reduce right-turn bicycle accidents.

Lakefront Bike Path Expansion Up For Vote

2008-10-30T11:56:10Z

Chicago's northern lakefront has become the battleground for an ongoing dispute over its future developments in the 48th Ward.

Voters next week will decide whether to endorse a referendum opposing the planned expansion of the lakefront bike path from Hollywood Avenue, where it currently ends, to Evanston. Existing designs would require the creation of an off-shore island.

The project, headed by the advocacy organization Friends of the Parks (FOTP), has been met by criticism from StopTheLandfill.org, an informal group of Edgewater residents who fashioned the referendum after a similar one introduced in Rogers Park last fall.

Read the entire article here.

From Geek To Chic: Biking Gets Glamorous

2008-10-27T11:19:05Z

The Daily Mail has declared biking the "It" activity this season.

Agyness Deyn has an Electra, Chloe Sevigny loves her folding Royce Union and Jennifer Aniston is thrilled with her Chanel, a present from close friend Courteney Cox. We're talking bikes, because this season cycling has finally gone from geek to chic.

Forget DayGlo Lycra; the vogue in pedal power is all about gorgeous pannier bags, leopard-print saddles and bicycle bells covered in Swarovski crystals.

'There is nothing more glamorous than gliding down the street in a lovely floaty dress,' says Caz Nicklin, whose new website Cyclechic.co.uk was picked up in Vogue's October trend report.

'It's almost as if we have come full circle. In its day, cycling was groundbreaking for women. It brought us trousers and meant we could go places on our own. Now, it's back again as a stylish pastime.

See pictures of famous people biking.

How To Bike All Year-Long

2008-10-27T11:00:21Z

This was the year of bikes in Chicago -- high gas prices and a growing acceptance of bicycling filled the streets with two-wheeled commuters.

But now that leaves and cold rain are falling, the bicycle ranks are thinning. Dave "Mr. Bike" Glowacz says this doesn't have to happen.

"There's so much attrition because of winter," said Glowacz, who wrote the book Urban Bikers' Tips and Tricks. "So many people went to bicycling this year, I want to try to keep some of them on their bikes."

Free Bikes For Students Who Pledge Not To Drive

2008-10-21T08:32:48Z

BIDDEFORD, Me. -- When Kylie Galliani started at the University of New England in August, she was given a key to her dorm, a class schedule and something more unusual: a $480 bicycle.

The goal, college and university officials said, is to ease critical shortages of parking and to change the car culture that clogs campus roadways and erodes the community feel that comes with walking or biking around campus.

"We're seeing an explosion in bike activity," said Julian Dautremont-Smith, associate director of the Association for the Advancement of Sustainability in Higher Education, a nonprofit association of colleges and universities. "It seems like every week we hear about a new bike sharing or bike rental program."

Read the full story here

-OR-

Check out related stories:

::Treehugger Reports On The Global Bikesharing Trend
::Green Shopping List For New College Students
::Colleges Give iPods To Freshmen

Yom Kippur Looked Pretty Green, Carless In Tel Aviv

2008-10-13T09:14:56Z

That's right - Yom Kippur. A somber day of introspection in most of Israel, in mellow Tel Aviv the Day of Atonement is the closest thing to a day without cars in the Middle East. With all cars banished from the pavements for 25 hours, helmet-clad children take to the streets in their masses.

In contemporary Israel, where land is running out, asphalt is eating up the landscape, the air is thick with smog and gas isn't getting any cheaper, a day like this is an absolute necessity, reminding us all that the car's dominance of our living space is not a divinely-ordained decree, but a conscious decision that we have made - and that we can decide otherwise if we wish.

Josie Garthwaite: U.S. Cities Cozy Up to Cycling

2008-10-09T17:43:03Z

Never mind the banks -- it might be time to start worrying about a run on your local bike shop. That's because commuters are asking, "Why shell out for gas when we can get around on sweat equity?" Although cycling remains uncommon in most of the U.S. relative to Europe, according to the League of American Bicyclists, many cities here are warming up to pedal power. Streetsblog draws our attention today to the league's latest round of Bicycle Friendly Community designations, which it announced yesterday. Awards go out twice a year to places that the group deems to have made "measurable efforts to integrate bicyclists into the community."

Once a community makes it onto the list, its platinum, gold, silver, or
bronze-level status is good for four years. Nineteen communities came
up for renewal this time around, and five moved up the ranks: Boulder,
Colorado snatched platinum, while neighboring Fort Collins, Jackson,
Wyoming, and Stanford, California moved from silver to gold. (You can
find the full list at bikeleague.org.) If you're wondering how your town measures up, consider these five questions asked by reviewers to help determine rankings:

Does your community have systems in place to train children and adult cyclists?

Are bicycles included in the city transportation plan?

Do police officers understand and enforce bicyclists' rights and responsibilities?

Does the community participate in Bike Month, offer bike rodeos, host community bike rides, or otherwise encourage cycling?

Does the community have methods in place to ensure their bicyclist programs are making a difference?

Andy Posner: Why We Just Need 306,000 People to Say Thanks, But No Thanks, To Offshore Drilling

2008-10-01T14:28:32Z

Just because Congress has allowed the ban on drilling on the Outer Continental Shelf to expire doesn't mean we need to throw our hands in the air and watch idly as the oil companies swoop in and make a profit. In fact, we don't even need to allow all this petty, ridiculous talk about "Drill Here, Drill Now" to distract us from the larger challenge of lowering energy prices, getting off foreign oil and addressing climate change. Despite the fact that our leaders have already said 'yes' to offshore drilling, it isn't too late to change that answer to 'thanks, but no thanks.' All we need are 306,000 people willing to show our leaders how eager Americans are, as Thomas Friedman likes to say, to do nation building here at home.

Let's first, as many have already done, put the whole offshore drilling debate in perspective. The U.S. currently imports 630 million gallon of oil a day. According the Department of Energy, additional offshore drilling would bring online an additional 153 million gallons of oil A YEAR by 2017, reaching a maximum of roughly 300 million gallons by 2030.

There are lots of ways to save more oil, at little or no cost, than we would get from drilling. For example, if the Corporate Average Fuel Economy Standards (CAFE) were set at 40 miles per gallon, the U.S. would save 3.4 million barrels (142,800,000 gallons) of oil a day, or almost as much oil as additional offshore drilling would produce in a year. As an added benefit, this would nearly completely eliminate our need for foreign oil. And let's not forget that the savings would go to American families instead of multinational oil companies. But let's be honest: getting Congress to do anything bold these days isn't terribly likely. It seems, then, that we need to bypass our paralyzed leadership and show them, from the ground up, that we are tired of the status quo and are ready to move into a new era of health, wealth and prosperity.

Actually, we don't even need all of America to participate. My simple proposal is as follows: given that the average American car consumes 500 gallons of gasoline per year, we would only need 306,000 drivers--or just under half the population of the state of Alaska--to give up their cars for 365 days in order to save as much gasoline in 2009 as we would gain from offshore drilling in 2017. I know, I know, not everyone can do without their car. Fortunately, in this case that doesn't matter. With roughly 200 million American drivers, it would only take .0015% of them to boldly volunteer to save money, reduce stress, get in shape and partake in a broader movement to refocus a nation that, in so many ways, is losing its way.

These 306,000 individuals could walk, take the bus, train, or subway, ride their bikes or carpool. The only requirement is that they not drive their car for an entire year. Ideally they would cancel their insurance, saving even more money in the process. Each year a different group of people could sign up for the challenge, although I wouldn't be surprised if many participants found that they could do without a car after all. This group of committed people would then be in a position to go to Congress and say: "thanks, but no thanks, to offshore drilling. Instead of dumbing down the debate about energy policy, we want you to come up with real solutions that will challenge American citizens and companies to do become leaders, create jobs, truly lower energy prices, and enable us to get our military out of the business of protecting pipelines."

High gas prices have already lead to record reductions in miles driven, record public transportation ridership, and more bicyclists on the roads. For now, these trends are being driven not by the shared goal of creating a better America, but by a desire to save money at the pump which, while entirely understandable, will only last as long as global oil prices remain high. Of course, if Americans really can't conceive of a life without their cars, an unbelievably simple alternative would be to ask to every driver to curtail their driving by roughly 20 miles per year to save as much gas as offshore drilling would produce (assuming average fuel economy of 25 MPG). That said, most statistics indicate that somewhere around half a million Americans commute to work by bicycle, so in essence I am advocating, more or less, a doubling of that figure.

There are infinite permutations that would lead to saving as much gas as the drilling would uncover. The reason I have focused on an option that involves some personal sacrifice is that, at least from the perspective of a young person like myself, I see a lot of energy in a lot of people that isn't being tapped because the conversation is about tapping the resources under the sea rather than in the hearts and minds Americans; that, more than anything, is the danger of offshore drilling. We are not being given the opportunity to shine as a nation. What I'm proposing is a voluntary movement to show ourselves, our political leaders and the world that we are eager to challenge ourselves to take the lead on global challenges. The benefits to those that participate, and to society as a whole, would far outweigh the minor inconvenience of occasionally sweating in the summer, getting wet from the rain, or feeling the cold air of a winter day.

In the end, there are no easy solutions to difficult problems. After all, while on the face of it offshore drilling may appear to be an easy way to lower gas prices and reduce dependence on foreign oil, the truth is that it would do neither. But more importantly, as a strategy for revitalizing the nation, offshore drilling is most certainly a bridge to nowhere, and as we've seen in the last month, politicians will support these bridges only until they become a national embarrassment.

Sources:
Department of Energy and
Nicolas School of Environment at Duke

More on Offshore Drilling
Offshore Drilling Graph Speaks for Itself
I'm John McCain and I approve of Offshore Drilling
Offshore Drilling Will Still Not Lower Gas Prices
Coastal Drilling is Backward Thinking; Innovation is Our Future

More on Cycling and the Car-Free Life
Car? What Car?. . .Hauling Furniture By Bike
Car-Free City, USA: Walk Away From Oil
Life Can Be So Car-Free (Even in Los Angeles)
"Change Your World" Encourages Alternatives to the Car
Cyclists, Motorists and the Law

How To Start Biking To Work (VIDEO)

2008-09-30T12:39:45Z

Commuting by bike is a great step to take if you want to quickly and drastically reduce your daily expenses and your carbon footprint. It can be kind of tough to get over the mental and logistical hurdles at first, but as Grist's Umbra Fisk explains, it's worth it.

WATCH:

Esther J. Cepeda: From Chicago to Colombia and Beyond for College Dreams

2008-09-22T19:07:01Z

On September 12, 2007, I stood next to the Chicago river with a skinny little guy who had gotten it into his head that he was going to ride his rickety bicycle from the 'burbs to Argentina for twenty months in order to raise money for low-income students to go to college.

He had a satchel containing a few rudimentary bike tools, some clothes, a few cans of food, a map, and a picture of his girlfriend, Danielle, which he'd taped to the frame of his bike for inspiration.

Then-25-year-old Isai Madriz, a resident of Montgomery, IL, a tiny 'burb outside Aurora, planned to rely on hard work and the proverbial kindness of strangers for his own sustenance as he pedaled 22,500 miles to Tierra del Fuego (''Land of Fire'') at the Southernmost tip of Argentina.

From there he was going to bike up to Caracas, Venezuela, all the while getting the word out to local media in order to raise money for the Jesus Guadalupe Foundation, which had helped him, back in 2004, when he needed a hand to graduate from California's Humboldt State University.

The commitment he made seemed crazy to others - but only those others who didn't know that the Guadalajara, Mexico native who'd arrived here when he was 16 had been so poor that he had been riding his bike everywhere. Even to college in California. This is a kid who literally would not take "no" for an answer.

"I started riding for myself because after I transferred to Humboldt State University in California, I needed a way to pay for my tuition and board. Then I did a second ride in 2004 to help pay for my student loans, but 500 miles into the trip a truck drove me off the road and I fell and fractured my hand," Isai told me the morning before he left. He said there was little he could do, but that this was the one statement he could make about the crushing problem of low college enrollment and graduation for Hispanic students.

"People tell you the door is closed before you even try to open it. Most [immigrant] students that are here don't have the means or the papers to go to college once they graduate from high school," he said. "Hispanics don't have really good jobs. Mostly families don't have papers to get good jobs then don't have the means to help their kids go to college. I know a lot of really intelligent students, really gifted people who graduated from high school then went to work because they have to help their families. Then they settle in, have their own kids, and never go back to college."

So whatever happened to the skinny guy with the rickety bike? He crossed into South America on August 11th, and he's in Colombia right now, moving slowly but making progress.

"Hi Esther! I'm in Popoyan, Colombia," one recent email chirped. I promised him I'd keep telling his story as long as he was on his quest, so he sends me email and we talk from time to time. Never once did I doubt he'd keep going, and I've been so happy to receive his pictures and letters telling of incredible adventures.

A short run-down: We first checked off all the states in this country Isai pedaled through. On October 11th, he crossed into Mexico after having been nearly run over by semis too many times to count, being chased by toothy Rottweilers and mauled by fire ants.

After tussling with cacti, breaking a toe, and catching a terrible flu, he made it to Guadalajara, where he lay sick in his uncle's home until recuperating enough to go to the state of Tabasco to aid flood victims. Yes, all on his bike--at a rate of about 50 miles a day.

From there he made his way south from Mexico biking through Belize, Honduras, Nicaragua, Panama City, and, finally, into Colombia.

The stories are, frankly, too horrifying to repeat here, but his emails are so ridiculously upbeat--accounts of nearly crashing into a truck after hurtling down a steep hill in a Colombian town called Ipiales because his brakes went out--and spiced with descriptions of "glorious skies," "beautiful people," and statements such as "after almost an hour of recuperating and thinking about this episode [by the side of the road] I went on my way."

Isai's fundraising efforts, to be honest, have not been spectacular. Aside from a few local donations--and the hospitality shown to him by the people he's touched on his quest--the fund for other low-income Hispanic students to get a helping hand through the new, bizarre, and breathtakingly expensive experience called college still needs help.

But that never enters into Isai's equation when he's on the hot road or under the stars in the mountains. "Education is like planting little seeds, and when those seeds grow everybody benefits."

As Isai continues on his way I'll share his stories with you in this space. If you'd like to help you can send donations - which will go to the education fund, not Isai's travel expenses - to: Jesus Guadalupe Foundation, 902 S. Randall Road, Suite C-322, St. Charles, IL 60174. Write "For Isai" on the check.

Park(ing) Day: Turning Metered Parking Spots Into Public Parks (VIDEO)

2008-09-19T09:15:54Z

Hooray, one of my favourite days of the year: International Park(ing) day. This glorious anti-car festival only started in 2005, when a San Francisco-based group called REBAR decided that they would take over a parking space for a day and turn it into a park. So they did.

They brought along some astroturf and a bench and a tree and fed the metre all day long and had a lovely day with people asking what they were doing and why. As one of their members explained, they re-interpreted a parking space as a potential inexpensive short-term lease, and decided that it didn't just have to be for cars: the day was a success.

Read the full story here

Videos below:

NEW YORK:

SYDNEY:

Bike-Sharing Around The World

2008-09-05T13:49:59Z

What is Bike-Sharing?
If you are at all familiar with the Zip Car model of car-sharing, then you should already undersand how bike-sharing works. Essentially, in a bike-share program bicycles are made available at special kiosks or racks that are strategically placed around a city. Users can access the bikes 24 hours a day, either by inserting a credit card or by paying an annual fee for a membership card. The bikes can then be returned at any of the stations in the city. While the details of the program vary by city, the basic concept has caught on and spread like wildfire. In fact, there was even a bike-sharing program in place at this year's Democratic National Convention!

Bike-Sharing Goes Global
Especially as gas prices rise and the concept of livable cities becomes more popular, cities around the world have begun to embrace bike-sharing as a way to improve quality of life, meet greenhouse gas reduction targets, increase tourism, and so on. Paris, Barcelona, Washington, D.C., Montreal and Mexico City have all implemented such programs, while New York City, Portland and others are in the planning stages.

Read the full story here

Bikes Vs. Housing Market, Oil Costs

2008-08-29T10:19:57Z

PORTLAND, Ore. — With gas prices high, bicycles flying out of stores and a buyers' market for houses, a handful of real estate agents around the country are touting the two-wheeled appeal of their listings.

Some even show houses exclusively by bike, wheeling through the neighborhood with potential buyers to show off bike lanes and bike-focused businesses and repair shops.

John Sauer: Finding the Toilet in Stockholm

2008-08-27T14:56:21Z

Last week a mix of water and sanitation experts gathered for World Water Week in Stockholm, Sweden to mull over the world's biggest public health crisis. The problem is that not enough people paid attention.

Each year over 2 million deaths could be prevented with improvements related to access to safe drinking-water, sanitation and hygiene. To put that in perspective, we have it within our grasp to prevent the equivalent deaths of 10 Asian tsunamis or 1,000 Hurricane Katrinas. Yet a major effort--like those that have been launched to address HIV/AIDS and malaria--to tackle the global drinking water and sanitation crisis remains elusive. The scope of this disconnect is baffling; water- and sanitation-related diseases (like relatively-easy-to-prevent diarrhea) kill more children each year than HIV/AIDS, malaria, and measles combined.

One reason why there hasn't been a Herculean effort to address this global scourge is that we in the water and sanitation sector are not doing enough to influence how this issue is understood by others. We have not been proactive or coordinated enough to frame the issue to the media and the wider development community in an action-oriented "this-can-be-done" tone.

All too often, water and sanitation has been framed as a "privatization" issue instead of an "access" issue. This is problematic. The "privatization" frame is confusing. It too often results in a blame game that takes attention away from the end result of the sector's work: getting water and sanitation to those who need it. Many of the most innovative, scalable solutions to the water and sanitation crisis are locally initiated approaches, such as the production of latrine slabs or ceramic water filters. They are put in place by a combination of actors: beneficiaries, communities, governments, local entrepreneurs, corporations and NGOs. The work of all of them is necessary to solve this problem.

There is a great need for the water and sanitation sector to reframe the issue so that those outside the sector understand what is at stake and become part of the solution. This effort will take leadership, resources, and working together (for more than one week in Stockholm). I propose "universal access" as the theme that guides this new direction. Developed countries have had universal access to water and sanitation for nearly 100 years. It makes no sense why the rest of the world can't get universal access as well.

Another explanation why the water and sanitation crisis remains in the shadows is that "sanitation" specifically has been ignored. Let's face it-- diseases associated with sanitation, like diarrhea, do not have "disease appeal" for governments and donors. The result is that very few people in the general public even know that 2.5 billion people do not have access to improved sanitation--nearly half of whom actually have to resort to open defecation. Those who do learn are outraged and take action.

More resources must be devoted to recruiting sanitation champions. HIV/AIDS has a built-in constituency because many people have a direct connection with someone who has suffered from or died of HIV/AIDS. Malaria has David Beckham trumpeting its cause. Sanitation needs a brave soul to be its spokesperson.

It has become a joke in the sector that no one in their right mind would become a "sanitation spokesperson." But this is no laughing matter. The lack of sanitation is one of the main reasons there isn't greater progress towards enabling the world's poor to meet their basic needs; malnutrition, poor education and disease burden are all exacerbated by inadequate sanitation. And the plight of the poor becomes more related to the survival of all as the world gets smaller each day.

In fact, some high-profile individuals have spoken out about the urgency of access to sanitation and they should be applauded. Matt Damon, Ashley Judd, Keira Knightley are a few. Would they be willing to form a Sanitation Celebrity Council to move this issue to its tipping point?

So the appeal I'd make to the 2,500 experts who went to Stockholm is to start a "universal access" campaign and to make sanitation--the most important medical advance since 1840--a major part of it. It's time to elevate water and sanitation to the status that it enjoyed during the UN's first Water Decade, which ended in 1990. This is, after all, the second Water Decade (2005-2015) in case we forgot. It's time to get this done.

Michael Graham Richard: Bike-Sharing: An Idea Whose Time has Come

2008-08-15T14:59:02Z

After the great success of high-tech bike-sharing program in places like Paris, with its Velib, and Barcelona, among others, it's about time for the US to join the party.

Some cities already had small-scale and/or low-tech bike-sharing programs, but to scale and really make a difference, you need something more. This is what the District of Columbia (D.C.) is now doing with its Smart Bike DC bike-sharing program that launched this week.

It's still a bit small - 120 bikes will be available at 10 stations, compared to 20,000 bicycles at 1,500 stations in Paris - but a good start. The way it works is simple:

"A $40 annual fee gets riders a membership card, which allows them to pick up a cherry red three-speed bike." Once you pick up a bike, you have it for up to three hours. If you need it longer, you need to go back to a station. There are no limits to the number of trips. Unfortunately, short-term memberships will not be available at first, so the target audience isn't tourists.

We can hope that other US cities - and cities around the world in general - will follow in D.C.'s footsteps and give their citizens a new transportation option. It has been shown that many people will hop on a bike for short distances over the city of bikes are conveniently available. This reduces air pollution, traffic congestion, and everybody benefits (especially cyclists who improve their health).

More about the DC Bike-Sharing program here.

More from Michael Graham Richard on Huffington Post
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