January is already over, and it’s time for another First Friday ride! As always, we roll out from Loch Haven Park at 6:00 p.m. for a casual, family-friendly, law-abiding, hour-long ride around Orlando. All bikes and all bicyclists are welcome! Front and rear lights are required; helmets are required for kids under 16, and are a […]
I’m compiling and mapping crashes involving cyclists in bike lanes in Orange, Seminole and Osceola Counties. If you’ve been involved in such a crash I’d like to hear from you. Some key information I’d need: Date and Time: if you don’t have the exact date, just the year will do. Location: what street were you […]
I’ve spent the past two decades trying to figure out how make bicycling work better for people. Perhaps instead I should have been trying to figure out how to make our communities work better. As John Wooden implied, when it comes to cycling, I’m a know-it-all, but when it comes to what really counts…
I’ve found I have to refute a number of things I used to believe, or at least wanted to be true. That’s a fancy way of saying I was wrong.
I experienced a superb example this morning of how bike lanes can make cyclists irrelevant. Rosalind Avenue through downtown Orlando has a designated bike lane. While it’s next to on-street parking, it is wide enough for a cyclist to stay out of the door zone, and in the morning there are very few cars parked […]
If there was ever a time for you to attend a public hearing, this is it. At the request of the Governor’s office, FDOT Secretary Ananth Prasad will be conducting a series of public meetings on Tuesday, June 28, 2011 regarding the SunRail project. These are to ensure that all partners understand their respective obligations […]
Bicycling in the United States suffers from a failure of imagination.
Failures of imagination usually grow out of a sense that the current situation is unchangeable. Cultures often create such a sense of inevitability inadvertently, but in some cases it’s due to an intentional effort by some to maintain the status quo.
From CBS News: “John Hofmeister, an ex-president of Shell Oil, says we’re looking at $5 a gallon gas in 2012.” From my observations, industry insiders tend to low-ball their price predictions. On the other hand, he’s calling for more drilling, so he may be inflating the number in order to scare people into supporting it. […]
A compelling video is making the rounds of Facebook and cycling blogs on how helmet promotion feeds the fear of cycling. Mikael Colville-Anderson makes some very powerful arguments against the insistence that all cyclists wear helmets, and shows the real absurdity of that message. He blames a culture of fear – bolstered by marketing hacks […]
“‘I’ll see it when I believe it’ is more accurate than ‘I’ll believe it when I see it.’” — Social psychologist Karl Weick Regular readers of this blog know we recommend an assertive lane position when the lane is too narrow to share. Our rationale was initially that when a cyclist is in the right […]
A challenge to think in an entirely different way: Let’s suppose, as a thought experiment, that tomorrow morning every adult American woke up and decided to ride his or her bicycle instead of getting in the car. (And if they didn’t have a bike, went out and bought one.) What’s more, they all decided to […]
