We will discuss sports/athletic public policy seguing from health care policy very nicely. As I ride the bus to work in Baltimore I hear two men talking----WORK IS GOING TO HADES IN BALTIMORE AND I AM GOING RIGHT WITH IT. This is NOT the sign of good economic policy.
TV programs like MASH and the video of TWO AND HALF MEN with Alan experiencing global neo-liberalism health care DOING ANYTHING CORPORATIONS WANT TO EARN PROFIT let us know these few decades of CLINTON/BUSH/OBAMA that NOTHING HEALTHY is happening in MOVING FORWARD. Alan Harper and the episode having he as the PHARMA research victim was TRAGICOMEDY-----it is tragic yet done in comedic venue. Almost no medical research 'volunteers' experience every side effect as Alan did---that was what was funny----but MANY PHARMA 'VOLUNTEERS' experience HARM. When a global JOHNS HOPKINS controls all economic actively and deliberately creates massive poverty---and then uses the poor to side-step US clinical trial protections in place for a century----
THAT IS A CRIME -----
BIG PHARMA went all out HARM under CLINTON/BUSH/OBAMA led by BILL GATES and his new interest in GLOBAL PHARMA CORPORATIONS. We showed Bill Gates controls UNITED NATIONS WORLD HEALTH ORGANIZATION so why would WE THE PEOPLE THE 99% think anything good in policy is coming from WHO? Yet, that is what far-right wing global Wall Street pols PRETENDING to be left social progressives are hawking now as UNIVERSAL CARE/SINGLE PAYER/MEDICARE FOR ALL. Again, good left social progressive health policy tied to NEW DEAL/WAR ON POVERTY----corrupted by 5% to the 1% global Wall Street pols and players.
Below we see a headline----Baltimore's MAYOR PUGH is going after the REAL CRIMINALS in Baltimore. It will be hard for ROBBER BARON POLS AND 5% PLAYERS to go after REAL CRIME in Baltimore.
'Big Pharma Research Racket Is Killing People
June 23, 2006, 12:00:00AM. By Evelyn Pringle
New Baltimore gun laws will 'put the right people in jail,' police chief says
Jul 14, 2017, 12:12pm EDT'
We emphasized last week that when a developed Rule of Law/Justice/US Constitutional rights nation allows OPEN ROBBER BARON pols and 5 % player fraud and corruption ---when they are allowed to deliberately stagnate local economies just to create black market violent FAILED STATES/NARCO STATES inside the US------our youth have these few decades had only gangsters to model---whether private corporation gangsters or corrupt government gangsters----and THAT BECOMES THEIR ROLE MODEL for doing business. What does Baltimore have as top business-----black market with everything not nailed down being stolen or vandalized.
ARE OUR YOUTHS REALLY THE PACK OF CRIMINALS?
Youths steal dozens of bicycles from city program
Yvonne Wenger and Carrie Wells, The Baltimore Sun
May 30, 2014
We shouted before the article above was written that this BIKE SHARE program would FAIL and all bikes simply stolen and vandalized just as the article below states. That's OK says Baltimore Development/Greater Baltimore Committee, and Johns Hopkins ---the point was to send public money to buy the bikes and rakes =====we just spend the money we don't care if it actually HELPS THE PUBLIC. Installing public programs that work in a NYC/San Fran both extreme wealth cities in a US city like Baltimore where extreme poverty is still growing---will never work. The problem is ----these youth are forced to live in communities with such third world decay that even if they can afford to buy a bike it would be stolen. Baltimore City Hall has no intentions of FIXING COMMUNITIES---the goal is simply laying global corporate campuses OVER THE COMMUNITIES to push Baltimore's OLD CITIZENS out to replace with NEW CITIZENS.
The goal of BIKE SHARE is good----the way it is being implemented IS BAD.
Baltimore Bike Share program hampered by thefts, lack of returns
Colin CampbellContact ReporterThe Baltimore Sun Aug 7, 2017
When Baltimore launched its $2.36 million Baltimore Bike Share system last fall, officials said the program would begin with 200 bicycles at 20 stations, then expand to 500 bicycles at 50 stations in the spring.Officials have pushed back the program’s expansion to this fall, blaming a delay in receiving a steel component for the bike docks from the manufacturer.
But the program has also been plagued by a high rate of the bikes stolen or otherwise not returned — so many that Corps Logistics, the subcontractor that operates the program and maintains the bikes, has devoted two employees solely to bike recovery, dispatching them daily around the city to pick up bikes left leaning against trees or discarded in alleys.
Reviews of the system by The Baltimore Sun on three different days and times last week showed fewer than a third of the 200 bicycles were available at docks across the city — a much lower percentage than was available in other cities with similar programs.
James Decker, the city’s Bike Share coordinator, said the more than 130 absent bikes in each case could have been in use or undergoing routine maintenance. He added that the app might not be reporting accurately the number of bicycles at each station.
The Sun counted 53 bicycles available across the city on the bike share app on Tuesday afternoon, 56 on Wednesday afternoon and 61 on Thursday morning.
The bikes cost $2 to rent for a 45-minute single trip or $15 for a monthly pass, which provides an unlimited number of 45-minute rides for 30 days.
The percentage of bicycles available in Baltimore’s bike share system last week was more than 40 percent lower than on the Philadelphia bike-share app, Indego, after which Baltimore officials modeled their program.
Philadelphia, which launched its program three years ago, has 1,200 bikes at 117 stations. One morning last week, the Indego app showed 879 of those bicycles, or 73 percent, available at stations around the city.
The Philadelphia record for the most bikes in use at once — more than 70 percent — came in September 2015, when Pope Francis visited the city.
“That was a very unusual circumstance,” said Aaron Ritz, that city’s transportation programs manager. “It was pretty cool to see those numbers.”
About 100 out-of-service Baltimore Bike Share bicycles awaited maintenance last week at Corps Logistics, the Westport-based firm contracted by the Canadian vendor Bewegen to maintain and operate the system. The firm has 465 Bike Share bicycles, according to Jim Duffney, Corps Logistics founder and CEO.
He said his dozen or so bicycle mechanics — most of them homeless veterans hired from The Baltimore Station, a residential treatment center for homelessness and addiction — repair and return about 25 bicycles per day into the service.
Duffney said the Baltimore Police Department has been a great help. They know to call him on his cell phone when they see one, no matter where or how late at night, he said.
In some cases, he said, all the bicycles need is an hourlong charge to be returned to service; in others, a damaged bicycle might need more maintenance.
To speed up that down time, Duffney designed a trailer that charges the bicycles on the go, so they won’t have to come back to the workshop. The bike stations charge the bicycles, he said, but not as quickly.
It’s rare that a bicycle goes missing entirely, Duffney said, because they’re all outfitted with GPS. Neither Corps Logistics nor the city would provide the number of bicycle thefts.
A large dry-erase board in Corps Logistics’ building showed 103 bicycles “on the street” as of July 12. Duffney said he couldn’t provide an updated number because they’re routinely being moved around the system.
The 100 or so in the parking lot were awaiting “general maintenance,” he said. “They get a lot of ride pressure.”
Baltimore police don’t keep a count of specific bike-share bicycle thefts, spokesman T.J. Smith said. Officers often will refer the bikes they find directly to Duffney without taking a report, Smith said.
“We aren’t taking an inordinate amount of reports for stolen bikes,” Smith said. “Some might be taken or left discarded. They might not be reported as a theft.”
“There’s no doubt that it happens,” he added. “We’ve made arrests.”
In one case, Smith said, a juvenile was caught on video “viciously rocking” a bike and wrenching it from its dock, before police arrived to arrest him.
“A citizen filmed him, and officers able to get there and able to get an arrest,” he said.
One juvenile who has been charged with theft has been assigned to do his required community service with Corps Logistics, helping maintain bikes, Duffney said.
The transportation department is “actively working with [Bewegen] to continue to enhance security measures to safeguard the system,” Decker said. He did not elaborate on those measures.
“Some amount of theft or vandalism occurs in every bike share program,” Decker said in his statement. “To combat this, the Department of Transportation selected equipment with always-on GPS and is working with the Baltimore City Police Department to address any issues.”
Capital Bikeshare in Washington has 2,500 bicycles at about 250 stations and is continually expanding, according to program manager Kim Lucas. It’s part of a larger regional system with 4,000 bicycles and 460 stations across five jurisdictions, including Montgomery County.
The Washington program uses different bicycles without GPS. Lucas said 56 have been lost in the seven years the system has been operating.
Usually when citizens see the distinctive bikes, she said, they simply return them to a bike-share station. She said most maintenance can be done at the stations in the field rather than taking the bikes out of circulation.
“They don’t have to come back to the warehouse most of the time,” Lucas said.
Decker said the Baltimore Bike Share program has exceeded the city’s initial projections. More than 11,000 people have used the system, taking more than 37,000 trips totaling 56,000 miles.
The city received $2.8 million in state and federal grants to launch the first phase the program.
The system’s pedelec bikes, which have a small electric motor that makes pedaling easier, earned the program the 2017 International Innovative Transportation Solutions Award from the Women’s Transportation Seminar, an international group dedicated to advancing women in transportation.
The pedelec bikes are great for riders, said Paul DeMaio, principal at MetroBike LLC, a bike-share consulting firm. But they naturally require more upkeep than non-electric ones.
“I think it's worth it, because pedelec bikes can get folks who are not bicyclists to become bicycle riders,” DeMaio said.
Capital Bikeshare requires its operator, a firm called Motivate, to maintain a 50 percent bike-to-dock ratio, said DeMaio, who helped design the Arlington, Va. portion of it.
Last week, the ratio of bike-share bikes to docks in Baltimore was between 14 and 16 percent, according to The Sun’s review.
DeMaio, who also has advised Nice Ride Minnesota and Bycyklen in Copenhagen, said a low number of bicycles could stem from any number of issues, including a lack of maintenance staff, an outsize amount of vandalism or mechanical issues with the fleet.
Liz Cornish, executive director of the Baltimore-based advocacy group Bikemore, said Baltimore Bike Share’s biggest need is a private sponsor to invest in the system to allow it to grow as needed.
Cornish, who also serves on the Mayor’s Bicycle Advisory Commission, a group of volunteers tasked with designing the city’s Bicycle Master Plan and advocating for bicycle infrastructure, said there is a demand in Baltimore for bike sharing.
“Ultimately, when I look at the systems that have been more successful out of the gate, what I saw was a major cash infusion in the beginning,” Cornish said. “We’re just not there yet today, but this is one of the things I see going well and headed in the right direction.”
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The policy that makes all economic and public health policy in Baltimore fail is this:
It is not seen as a public health public interest goal by global Wall Street Baltimore Development. All funds directed at these projects are subjected first to all kinds of pay-to-play, fraud, corruption as to which global corporation will supply the bikes----which subcontractor to subcontract will get the service contract----and will it get the funds it needs at startup and for the long term. Whether planting city street trees which get planted and most die from lack of watering.......the most important thing for global Wall Street Baltimore Development is that NO PUBLIC AGENCY OR EMPLOYEE be tied to these PUBLIC PROGRAMS. As always these men at grassroots level do a good job----they want that job----it is the goals set by funding agencies that create the failure.
A decade ago our organization tried to create a bike share program tied to our public schools. Having each K-12 school with an allotted number of bikes that can be lent to students and parents at those schools opens ACCOUNTABILITY in lending. Parents are likely to assure bikes are returned ---students know they will be nabbed if they allow it to be stolen----and every community in the city has bikes to share with all our city youth.
Why does Baltimore not do this? They are creating CORPORATE K-CAREER APPRENTICESHIPS of our public schools so they do not want to extend public service programs inside our schools---they are firing all school staff----they would not want to hire a public employee to manage this.
'The bikes cost $2 to rent for a 45-minute single trip or $15 for a monthly pass, which provides an unlimited number of 45-minute rides for 30 days'.
Grassroots BIKERS with organizations like BIKE MORE really do want to promote biking for public health-----so as usual we have activists wanting good results but we KNOW this city biking plan is GLOBAL ONE WORLD with each FOREIGN ECONOMIC ZONE having the same formatted biking design with the same global corporations getting great deals of taxpayer money to build what is NOT a public system of biking but a corporate system of biking.
Bike to Work Day
JOIN US FOR BIKE TO WORK DAY ON FRIDAY MAY 19, 2017
Become a Bike to Work
Day 2017 Sponsor! We invite your business or organization to sponsor Bike to Work Day. Reach thousands of people in the Baltimore region and show them that your business is working to help reduce traffic congestion, enhance health, and improve the environment. It’s easy, just download and complete the sponsorship form, and send it and a check to the Baltimore Metropolitan Council. Remember you’re your donation is tax-deductible.
B2WD 2017 Sponsorship Form
For more information: Russ Ulrich, rulrich@baltometro.org, 410-732-9575
The Baltimore Metropolitan Council (BMC) is excited to celebrate the 20th annual Bike to Work Day in the Baltimore region on Friday, May 19, 2017. The celebration feature hundreds of cyclists at nearly 40 events throughout the region.
See a list of events below or click on our interactive map to find a location near you!
Bike Doctor of Annapolis
7 to 8:30 a.m.
2020 West St. Annapolis, MD 21401
B&A Trail at Riggs Ave. / Pedal Pushers Bicycle Shop / Big Bean Coffee Shop
7 to 8:30 a.m.
558 Baltimore Annapolis Blvd. Severna Park, MD 21146
B&A trail at Ranger Station / AA County Recreation and Parks
7 to 8:30 a.m.
51 West Earliegh Heights, Severna Park, MD 21146
Rest rooms available!
Cafe Joe's at the National Business Park
7 to 8:30 a.m.
114 National Business Parkway, Annapolis Junction, MD 20701
Baltimore City All Baltimore City events are 7 to 9 a.m., except where noted.
The primary event for the city of Baltimore is:
Baltimore City Department of Transportation
Baltimore City Hall
100 Holiday Street (21202)
The main event features speakers, free bike safety checks with Race Pace, and free bike lights and pedestrian lights from Toward Zero Baltimore!
In addition, there will be pit stops throughout the city!
Baltimore Bicycle Works
1813 Falls Road (21201)
Located in central Station North near MICA, below Howard Street bridge and North Avenue.
Bikemore
2209 Maryland Ave (21218)
Bikemore’s bike to work work day station will offer complimentary Charmington’s coffee, free bike safety checks with Race Pace, and a chance to talk about the future of bicycling in Baltimore with Bikemore’s staff
Charm City Circulator
400 Block of E. Pratt Street (21202)
Dovecote Café New!
2501 Madison Ave (21217)
Downtown Partnership of Baltimore
At the intersection of Pratt & Light Streets (21202)
HandleBar Café
511 South Caroline Street (21231)
Hampden/Woodberry New!
Sponsored by Mahan Rykiel Associates at Whitehall Mill
3300 Clipper Mill Road (21211)
Impact Hub
10 E North Avenue (21202)
Joe's Bike Shop @ Pratt Library, Roland Park
Enoch Pratt Free Library, Roland Park Branch,
5108 Roland Ave (btwn Longwood & Deepdene Roads in 21210)
Johns Hopkins Office of Sustainability and HopkinsLIFE
Armstrong Medical Education Building
1600 McElderry St. (21205)
Maryland State Highway Administration + Merritt Clubs Downtown
210 E. Centre Street @ the intersection of Guilford Ave & East Monument St.
(Back parking lot of Merritt Clubs @ Guilford Ave in 21202)
MedStar Union Memorial Hospital, Sponsored By The Green Team And Wellness Committee
33rd Street Entrance of the Hospital, Between Guilford Ave & Calvert St (21218)
Merritt Clubs Canton New!
3401 Boston Street (21224)
Look for this pit stop at the Merritt Clubs Canton, located at 3401 Boston Street, and pick up your t-shirt, breakfast and more.
________________________________________________
Why does a city with extreme poverty place bike racks outside---why does it not have CARD-KEYED KIOSKS? We spoke of this problem with how Baltimore City installed ELECTRIC CHARGING STATIONS in parking decks----no CARD-KEY KIOSK surrounding that charge station so it too gets vandalized ----
When rates charge $2 for 45 minutes----this means someone has to BRING BACK THAT BIKE TO ORIGINAL RACK---not leave it at the destination---who takes a rental bike for a ride for only 20 minutes? Why would a citizen want a monthly pass for a single 45 minute ride?
People biking for pleasure usually take that bike for an afternoon----an evening-----a morning---if you are a tourist---you don't want to have to bring a bike back to origin because you are sight-seeing and likely not returning anytime soon to that spot. So, the rating is obviously geared to PROFIT-MAKING FOR THE CITY ----REVENUE GENERATION.
Every time government makes something PUBLIC INTEREST about REVENUE-MAKING---it FAILS.......such as our privatized SPEED CAMERA set up to save lives.
it takes me 10 minutes just to get my leg muscles warmed for biking trips----
'The bikes cost $2 to rent for a 45-minute single trip or $15 for a monthly pass, which provides an unlimited number of 45-minute rides for 30 days'.
The policy of bringing bikes back from where they are rented stems from the city not wanting a city employee assigned to assure balance in where bikes are left.
Below we see NYC ---again the rates are predatory---no one bikes for 45 minutes and we see rates climb---they are creating a MTA TIER with these bikes rather than simply having them out for tourists to simply jump on for free-----why is this happening? Because public buses and transit systems are being PRIVATIZED and rates kept low when public will now soar this next decade or so----it is being built as transportation as last resort----NOT PUBLIC INTEREST.
Usage Fees
The first 45 minutes of each ride are included in the annual membership price. If you keep a bike out for longer than 45 minutes at a time, extra usage fees apply.
Ride LengthUsage Fee0-45 minutesIncluded in membership
Each additional 15 minutes+ $2.50To avoid additional usage fees, keep your rides to 45 minutes each. Take as many rides as you want while your membership is active!
If you incur any usage fees, your card on file will be charged. The fee for a lost or stolen bike is $1200 (+ tax).
It's obvious this is not about public health----sporting----it is public transit policy geared towards 99% of citizens not being able to afford rates of FOREIGN ECONOMIC ZONE city subways and buses-----remember, high-speed rail will end light rails/MARC trains so DRIVER-LESS VEHICLES OWNED BY GLOBAL CORPORATE CAMPUSES ----walking and biking will be it for 99% of citizens.
A city promoting health and welcoming tourists would simply want to make bikes available everywhere------the Swedish/Danish systems did that---as part of their free public transportation system.
Experience NYC in a whole new way
Citi Bike is the nation's largest bike share program, with 10,000 bikes and 600 stations across Manhattan, Brooklyn, Queens and Jersey City. It was designed for quick trips with convenience in mind, and it’s a fun and affordable way to get around town.
JoinBecome an Annual Member or buy a short-term pass through the Citi Bike app.
See pricing
UnlockFind an available bike nearby, and get a ride code or use your member key to unlock it.
Find a bike
RideTake as many short rides as you want while your pass or membership is active.
See popular rides
ReturnReturn your bike to any station, and wait for the green light on the dock to make sure it's locked.
Get started
Choose your planDay Pass$12
unlimited 30-minute rides in a 24-hour period
Get a Pass
3-Day Pass$24
unlimited 30-minute rides in a 72-hour period
Get a Pass
Best ValueAnnual Membership$163/year
unlimited 45-minute rides
Join Now
Or $14.95/mo, annual commitment
More Options Citi Bike offers special rates to the following groups: _______________________________________
As a baby boomer lucky to have been able to vacation in Europe several decades ago----all this biking structure especially in northern Europe was free made part of the EURORAIL system---one could ride trains, buses, bikes with plenty of public kiosks for one annual pass. It was easy----it was accessible---it was WELL-USED.
We have spoken how our once enlightened northern Europe was taken to global banking neo-liberalism these few decades and look at what we are seeing---the complexity of RACKS for these public bike systems is RIDICULOUS and only meant to send public money to global corporations designing this mess. Of course we need a solar bike rack -----of course we need E-BIKE systems ----of course all this is expensive to maintain---
Is this public health or is this how WE THE PEOPLE THE 99% will be able to move around in MOVING FORWARD? It is the only way we will move around. It's not bad to get people on bikes----it is bad for 99% of people to lose all options of transportation heading back to DARK AGES.
Even our Tour de France bicycle races were corrupted as DOING ANYTHING AMERICA RACE TEAM started the push to DOPING. Here we have the high-end of biking and this is to whom our bike shops are catering----not the public transportation crowd. So, biking comes with GPS---all aerobics electronics---Wi Fi----aerodynamics meters----
and our public bikes simple and plan cannot even get a kiosk----or a public school lending structure.
News Article
Expensive Models and E-bikes Increase Market Share in Sweden
Sales & Trends
STOCKHOLM, Sweden – Despite a cool, wet spring and early summer, bicycle sales and usage in Sweden increased this year. The volumes would even have been bigger if the Swedish kronor had not weakened against the US dollar, which forced suppliers to raise prices by 15-20% at the start of the season.
For 2015 the Swedish bicycle industry estimates the market volume at 598,000 units.
For 2015 the Swedish bicycle industry estimates the market volume at 598,000 units. Total imports of bicycles including e-bikes, between January and August increased to 492,820 units, compared to 454,415 units in 2014. Exports, mainly to neighboring Nordic countries expanded to 92,907 units compared to 91,642 in 2014.
Trends
The Swedish bicycle market is still dominated by so-called standard bicycles with internal hub gears and coaster brakes, although their popularity is declining while hybrid and trekking bike sales continue to increase. It is apparent that the market continues to grow due to the increasing interest for fitness cycling. The two big bicycle races, Vätternrundan in June, primarily for road bikes and MTB-Vasan in August are both growing. MTB-Vasan now has several days of competition, just like Vätternrundan. Thanks to the growing popularity of 27 and 29-inch wheels, the availability of high-end performance 26-inch bikes is very limited.
Estimated sales
With the surge of the US dollar and more expensive bicycles increasing in sales, bicycle retailers have had a very satisfying season. Sales of e-bikes have increased substantially in 2015. Industry organization ‘Bicycle Industry Sweden’, formerly known as FOG estimates sales at around 30,000 e-bikes, up 70% compared to 2014. This increase is also reflected in the import statistics, which show an import of 31,157 e-bikes and export of 3,172. The local production of e-bikes is about 1,000 units.
Not only the volume but also the number of e-bike brands continues to increase. Ecoride, based in Gothenburg, started the manufacturing of its new brand Walleräng in Sweden. Even the all-Swedish manufacturer Skeppshultcykeln introduced an e-bike. This is one of the few manufacturers in Europe that also welds frames in its own factory. Other important brands on the Swedish e-bike market are Crescent, Batavus, Giant, Merida E-Green, Ecoride, Scott, and Trek. On the mass market, e-bikes are available as around 10,000 SEK (€1,070) from Biltema, Clas Ohlson and also from furniture store IKEA. IBDs sell e-bikes for between 14,000 SEK (€1,490) and 30,000 SEK (€3,190).
IBDs and sports chains
IBDs still hold a market share of 50%. Their main competitors are sports chains such as TeamSportia, Intersport, and XXL, while the largest sporting goods chain Stadium only holds a small market share. In 2015 TeamSportia was acquired by Finnish SGN Group which is collaborating with Tvåhjulsmästarna, a trade chain with 45 bicycle shops throughout Sweden. Bike Partner, with 35 bicycle dealers, has previously been associated with the chain. XXL continues to grow and now operates 18 large stores in Sweden. French Decathlon still runs only one department store in Stockholm and it appears to be difficult for the French to grow in Sweden.
In the mass market Biltema dominates with an estimated market share of 16-18%. Jula is also focusing more on bicycle sales while COOP is scaling back in Sweden. Internet sales, primarily for high-end road bikes and MTBs, have continued to grow and are estimated to comprise 6-7% of the market.
Published by Joakim Stenberg on 24 Feb 2016
last update: 24 Feb 2016
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The most environmental method of transportation was the bike---build it in our local towns and cities ---built well lasted forever----and it REALLY gave citizens a workout. This US CITIES AS FOREIGN ECONOMIC ZONE global biking initiative is only about sending money to technology-based corporations. Calling an E-BIKE environmental is yet another GLOBAL GREEN CORPORATION REVOLUTION right wing global Wall Street pretending these policies are about left social progressivism ----and look---we are going to attack these E bike racks to THE ONE WORLD ONE GRID---isn't that special.
So, what we see is a bike policy designed to send hundreds of billions of dollars to global corporations tied to E-COMMERCE costing 10 times what having simple public bike kiosks and allowing each of our public schools to have a bike rental for parents and students-----
CAN'T PROFITEER ON BIKE POLICY LIKE THAT SAY GLOBAL WALL STREET CLINTON/BUSH/OBAMA NEO-LIBERALS!
Today's poor children are not factored into these US CITY AS FOREIGN ECONOMIC ZONE bike programs----they cannot afford these whistles and bells. What 99% of citizens need to WAKE UP to----is neither will they as 99% of citizens are pushed to poverty ----you will not be E-----anything. So instead they steal them and strip them for parts. Being ENTREPRENEURS modeled after global Wall Street. Being placed on the ONE GRID means these bike racks will lock in a city-wide shutdown of energy.......no movement allowed at all.
Solar Powered Bike Sharing System with Electric Bikes
An overview of the energy system and the
technical
system
design
Master thesis
within the Master's P
rogram
me
Industrial Ecology
Examensarbete inom civilingenjörsprogrammet elektroteknik
Abstract Combining Electric Bikes (E-bikes)
with bicycle sharing systems could have a number of
benefits. E-bikes reduce the human force needed for propulsion which facilitates longer and hillier rides relative regular bikes. The system could thus have more widespread network of stations, not only reaching more people but also enable commuting longer distances. It could
also reduce the need for redistribution as users of regular
bike sharing systems tend to only ride downhill.
The focus of this report has been to perform energy calculations and system design on solar powered E-bike pools.
The geographical focus has been on Gothenburg, Sweden but the results can be applied to locations
with similar latitude. The calculation methodology may however
be applied to any other city around the world.
It was shown that placing 0.2-0.8m 2 solar panels per E-bike on the station's roof could supply enough energy to make the
E-bike self-sufficient on a yearly basis despite high degree of system use.
By increasing the solar panel area it was shown that there can be a net electric energy production on a yearly basis.
At the maximum assumed solar panel area (about 3-3.8 m2/E-
bike) there could be 600-800 kWh of solar energy fed to the grid per E-bike and year depending on the usage level.
Using a system that is on-grid and coupled with a stationary battery is seen as the best system design. That would enable origin marking of electricity and decrease the problem of
intermittency with solar power.
Reducing the interchange with the grid would also increase
the system efficiency as the current do not need to be converted to or from AC as often.
___________________________________________
Citizens in cosmopolitan cities like Rome----citizens in third world nations where only bikes are afforded ----have for almost a century been shouting GET THESE BIKES OFF OUR STREETS-----the traffic is crazy.
What we are seeing already is a claim that US citizens will not ride bikes unless they are E-equipped----unless they are motorized via electric or solar------know what? This is NOT a public health policy-----it is not even an environmental policy ----and none of this is geared towards our children really needing to be those people starting early with forming good athletic/sports habits. Of course today these same global cities are now passing laws to get rid of motor bikes because of their density.
Rome by Vespa: Three Clips That Take You There
October 17, 2012 No CommentsForget the Colosseum: When it comes to a symbol of Rome and la dolce vita, the Vespa's where it's at.
Like most Rome fantasies, this one doesn't always have a ton of bearing in reality. Yes, almost everyone here has a scooter. But no, it's not usually an adorable, sparkling, vintage Vespa. Those are expensive… and (haven't you heard?), there's an economic crisi here!
Still. I've had Vespas on my mind lately, thanks to a travel story I've been working on (more on that later!). And, whether the vehicles used by most of my friends could come out of a scene from Roman Holiday or not, whipping around Rome on a scooter—even a banged-up, anything-but-beautiful one—remains one of my favorite ways to get from Point A to Point B in the city. It's hands-down the most convenient. And, yes, it can be romantic.
In homage to seeing Rome by scooter, here are three movie clips to transport you.
Forgive me for the last one.
Ah, the face that launched a thousand dreams of Rome: Audrey Hepburn. In particular, Audrey Hepburn taking Gregory Peck's Vespa for a near-death experience adventure-filled spin. Although I'm hard-pressed to pick a favorite scene from this movie—which is, of course, the 1953 Roman Holiday--this might just have to be it.
And if you're wondering, yes, Rome's traffic is every bit as crazy today as it looks like it was then.
What Roman Holiday did for tourists' imaginings of Vespas and Rome, Nanni Moretti's Caro Diario did for locals. The first 10 minutes of the movie follows the protagonist on his sojourn through Rome's streets—not its main, all-too-famous piazzas and avenues, but the places known to locals, like the pretty neighborhood of Garbatella. And, because it's ferragosto in Rome, the streets are completely deserted.
When I looked up movie clips showing Vespas in Rome on YouTube, this came up. And while I'm kind of really embarrassed to include it (I promise, not being a 12-year-old girl, this is not a movie I have ever seen), I thought that the scene, while clearly sickly-sweet (and inaccurate: what Roman would ever say "This is Rome. Nobody knows how to drive"?), does a cute job of showing the sights in Rome's centro storico. They start at Piazza Farnese (and no, in real life you can't drive a scooter there), then move on to Via Nazionale (0:15), Piazza del Popolo (0:19), Via Nazionale again at Trajan's markets (0:28), the Palace of Justice (0:35), Via Giulia (I think) (0:40), Piazza della Repubblica (1:02), Pantheon (also not allowed) (1:11), Spanish Steps (1:18, and they must have filmed this at sunrise for it to be so empty).
And no, that route makes no sense whatsoever. But pretty sights, right?
Also, I really hope Hilary Duff doesn't wind up with this Italian boy at the end of the film. Because picking-up-a-straniera-via-scooter, in more ways than one, would be the oldest trick in the book. (Oh Audrey, if you only knew what you'd started back in '53).
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Citizens have these few decades been buying motorized bikes just for the convenience now being sold for new kinds of motorized bikes. Here we see one kind of bike being sent to paid parking to make way for new bikes which more times then not are the same motorized bikes---looking different.
So MOPED owners will now not be able to find the easily accessible parking ----making way for the next PRODUCT.
MEANWHILE, all these powered versions of BIKES is what killed biking in America. The percentage of people pedaling is not climbing---even our skateboards are now motorized.
MSU moving mopeds to make way for bikes
RJ Wolcott, Lansing State Journal Published 10:53 a.m. ET April 27, 2017 (Photo: MATTHEW DAE SMITH, MATTHEW DAE SMITH | Lansing Stat)
1 CONNECT EAST LANSING — Michigan State University is addressing the staggering spread of mopeds on campus with new regulations.
Mopeds won't be allowed to park at bike racks beginning this fall. Instead, students can either purchase a $50 pass to park in designated spaces in 17 non-gated lots or park their mopeds at metered or pay-by-place spaces.
The changes are expected to go into effect Aug. 30.
MSU has seen a 150% increase in moped use since 2012, according to Doug Monette, public information officer with the MSU Police Department. The increase has put bike-rack space near residence halls and other popular destinations at a premium.
But it's precisely the ability to drive up to class buildings and park easily that makes mopeds an attractive option for students, said Jack Viazanko, a junior who started a Change.org petition seeking to reverse the planned changes.
"MSU is essentially taking all the benefits of owning a moped away," Viazanko said.
MSU officials also are concerned about the hazard to pedestrians created by moped users driving on sidewalks to get to bike racks, said John Prush, a deputy director of the MSU Police Department.
To make room for mopeds, MSU is converting standard parking spaces in more than a dozen parking lots. For each of those spaces, Prush said, MSU will get four moped spots. Exactly how many spaces will be converted is still being worked out. Parking a moped at a bike rack or parking in a designated moped space without a permit will be punishable by a $25 fine.
Changes to moped regulations at MSU were recommended by MSU's All University Traffic and Transportation Committee. The committee's next meeting is scheduled for 3 p.m. Thursday in the MSU Police Community Room..
For more information on the changes, visit mopeds.police.msu.edu Online moped registration opens July 1.
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The problem for bikers in Baltimore is------people in Baltimore are not used to bikers. We have people taking buses---we have people driving---that has long been the dynamic. We have another problem ----we do not have police or traffic officers on arteries into downtown---we never see a police car or traffic officers pulling bad drivers. So people double-park anywhere----people speed----people fail to abide by traffic lights--and those are just the bad drivers---not those intoxicated by drugs and alcohol.
The first stage of any new program like this would be changing THESE behaviors. Baltimore should have a few decades ago created a public safety program designed to slow traffic-----to stop traffic law abuses---THEN introduce biking and bike lanes. Baltimore does not allow public revenue to go to these kinds of programs unless it is on a global corporate campus like Johns Hopkins. If people were monitored in Baltimore's city center as they are in surrounding communities we would have a safer street presence for our bikers.
Second, these biking lanes never worked---citizens in each community having them installed voiced these concerns. What we are sure these bike lanes do is take from public parking----it is a strategy to limit EVEN MORE the availability to park a car on the street. Where we see the street parking moved from curb-----that will soon disappear because more street space is obviously needed----it does indeed slow traffic.
THIS IS THE PROBLEM----THE GOALS OF IMMEDIATE INSTALLATION OF BIKING TRANSIT IS TIED TO UNITED NATIONS/ONE WORLD FOREIGN ECONOMIC ZONE DEVELOPMENT---and not our individual US cities needs. So BOOM----here it is----with absolutely no funding to introduce all this----improper infrastructure---and no targeting of our young people needed to be those future bikers---
LEFT social progresssives are passionate about community sports and public health and for centuries our cities and towns provided for the best of venues for all citizens to engage----
Baltimore community citizens were shouting that all of these problems would occur---Baltimore City Council working for Baltimore Development and Johns Hopkins simply wanted to be one the ONE WORLD US FOREIGN ECONOMIC ZONE bandwagon -----all those funds need to go to global corporations!
Transportationby Mark Reutter6:00 pmJun 8, 201769
Civic League asks the city to tear out Roland Avenue Cycle Track
As bike lane wars escalate, a Pugh aide says privately: “We regret the launch of our program.”
Above: Cars parked in front of Eddie’s Market today. The Roland Avenue cycle track is to the left. (Fern Shen)
A new front has broken out in the battle over bicycle infrastructure in Baltimore.
Just as the Pugh administration declares it won’t back down from a plan to redesign a protected bike lane in Canton – and her top aide privately blames the Rawlings-Blake administration for the program’s flawed roll-out – the Roland Park Civic League has called on the city to remove the cycle track on Roland Avenue.
In a letter on Tuesday copied to Mayor Pugh and aide James T. Smith Jr., the Civic League requests that acting Department of Transportation (DOT) director Frank Murphy “immediately and completely” restore curbside parking on Roland Avenue.
The mile-long cycle track was part of the $6.7 million Roland Avenue Traffic Calming Project, a DOT effort that necessitated a major curb reconstruction in 2015 and boasted cost overruns of 72%.
To install the cycle track, curbside parking was replaced by two four-foot-wide lanes whose location roiled many in the community.
With stationary cars serving as a buffer between the bike lane and and moving traffic, the project was hailed by the city as state-of-the-art infrastructure that would make cyclists safer and encourage more people to ride bikes.
But, responding to complaints, the Civic League conducted its own review, concluding that the new alignment makes cyclists less safe in part because the track is too narrow. (Federal guidelines call for an eight-foot-minimum width.)
The League’s Cycle Track Committee reported that five cars parked in the buffer zone have been “totaled” in accidents and that “many more have been sideswiped and unknown but very large number of side mirrors damaged.”
What’s more, conflicts between cyclists and turning cars (whose sightlines are often obscured by the parked cars) have resulted in five crashes, none causing serious injury.
ABSOLUTELY!!!!!!
“Ongoing highly dangerous safety problems” exist between bikers and pedestrians on the 5100 block of Roland Avenue, where Eddie’s Market and the public library are located, and on the 4700 block, where preschool classes are held at St. David’s Church, the study said.
The committee also reports that many cyclists avoid the leaf-strewn cycle lane and instead pedal amid the moving traffic.
The Roland Avenue cycle track under construction in December 2015. (Mark Reutter)
Bike Advocates: Disappointed
At the conclusion of its review, according to the letter to the city from the League’s president, Robert H. “Hap” Cooper III, the Cycle Track Committee submitted the following recommendation:
Either restore curbside parking with a wider, safer bike lane and slower traffic, or partner with the community to create a complete street that works for everyone.
“After discussion at the Civic League’s Annual Meeting last month, the membership in attendance voted 55-31 to adopt an alternate position statement,” Cooper said in the letter:
Restore curb side parking immediately and completely on Roland Avenue and continue the work of the committee to achieve the other objectives (included in the year-end report).
Asked to comment on the Civic League’s action, a spokesman for the advocacy group Bikemore said it has long advocated for reducing Roland Avenue to one car travel lane in each direction.
A “constrained facility” was built instead, said Bikemore policy director Jed Weeks.
“Weeks said Bikemore is “disappointed” that the voting body failed to adopt the conclusion of its committee and chose not to adopt stronger language that would have maintained a parking protected bike lane and eliminating a car travel lane as an option.”
But a Civic League member said Weeks mischaracterized the group’s position.
“All options included in the report that include curbside parking are still under consideration,” the League member said last night.
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A History of Cost Overruns• City to replace three miles of faulty curbs along Roland Avenue (9/6/15)
• Roland Avenue roadway redo now slated to cost $1.1 million more (10/15/15)
• Tree treatment adds still more costs to Roland Avenue repave (4/21/16)
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The cycle track was championed by former DOT director William Johnson as part of a “complete streets” repaving of the thoroughfare. Johnson left city government last April.
Prior to the installation of the track, Roland Avenue had a traditional bike lane running between moving traffic and parked vehicles. That pattern remains on the roadway south of Cold Spring Lane and between Northern Parkway and Lake Avenue.
Then-DOT director William Johnson addresses the Roland Park Civic League in March 2016 after the launch of the cycle track. At his side is deputy traffic chief Graham Young and, at right, community liaison Kohl Fallin. (Brew file photo)
Mixed MessagesAdding to the confusion over the future of the city’s bike-lane program are public and private statements coming out of City Hall.
Yesterday Mayor Catherine Pugh said her concern about bike lanes was limited to the Potomac Street track in Canton and the administration’s discovery that the roadway failed to meet the 20-foot-clearance standard of the fire code.
Her spokesman, Anthony McCarthy, said the mayor’s position does not indicate sagging city government support for cycling improvements. “You go into almost any neighborhood and you see these bikes and lanes popping up. We’re moving forward.”
He said criticism by Bikemore is flat-out wrong. (Bikemore says that the Downtown Bike Network has been halted and sections of the Maryland Avenue-Cathedral Street track may be reevaluated.)
“I think oftentimes advocacy organizations build their reputations on confrontation,” McCarthy told reporters. “I don’t care how many people call. I don’t care how many petitions you start. I don’t care if you call the mayor names on your websites – she’s going to put the interests of the people of the city first.”
Bikemore responded on its website, saying:
“We look forward to holding the mayor accountable to this claim, particularly in respect to the miles of reverse angle parking that have been installed during the same time period as the Potomac Street planning process that fail the 20-feet-clear standard and the many major development projects underway in the city that have planned streets under 20-feet clear.
“The decision to weigh international code above local street context flies in the face of best practices of safety, public health and economic development.”
Smith: “Regret the Launch of Program”Behind the scenes, meanwhile, Jim Smith has been critical of the program’s implementation.
In a private email responding to concerns expressed by a bike rider last week, Smith blamed the Rawlings-Blake administration and DOT’s consultants for mishandling the matter in Canton.
“We only became aware of the Potomac St. issue when it was in crisis as it was initiated under the prior administration. I would have expected that the City’s consultant would have raised the conflict before finalizing his design recommendations, but that did not happen,” Smith wrote.
“We will now have to balance traffic safety & the fire safety responsibilities in our neighborhoods to reach a result that supports our intention of being a multi-modal city that also protects people in their homes & businesses,” he added.
“We regret the launch of our bike lane program,” Smith concluded. “We will work to get it right for the people of Baltimore.”
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As with ALL Baltimore Development policy things worked better BEFORE they changed things -----lots of cost overruns---lots of profiteering in what was installed-----very little promotional effect on actually increasing biking -----sure, our new citizens are coming bringing with them biking habits but we hear them all lament---WHY DOES BIKING HAVE TO BE SO HARD IN BALTIMORE?
IT'S BECAUSE NO POLICY IS IMPLEMENTED FOR PUBLIC INTEREST!
Baltimore's bike lanes should not be such a hassle
July5, 2017
At the risk of being accused of piling on, I would like to add a few comments to the ongoing discussion about bike lanes (“Bike lane in Canton is the wrong fight for bikers,” June 30). I have been riding a bicycle in Baltimore for 50 years. It's a great way to travel and get exercise at the same time. Plus, it's cheap.
The best thing that happened to bicyclists in Baltimore was Mayor Sheila Dixon's painted bike lanes — she was herself a bike rider — which provided an official recognition that we had a two-wheeled right to be on the street. But I am also a car driver and a regular user, whether biking or driving, of Maryland Avenue, a quieter alternative to St. Paul Street. No more. I avoid it on my bike or in my car. The new two-way bike lanes are an overblown solution to a non-existent problem. For a bicyclist, it used to be simple, south on Maryland, north on Charles Street. I did it for years with no problems. But the taking of a parking lane for bicyclists and a traffic lane for parked cars has reduced the automobile-carrying capacity of Maryland by 50 percent. Considering that the route worked fine for bicyclists as it was, this is retrograde motion.
The fact that the city is having such difficulty with its new bike lanes on Roland Avenue and Potomac Street shows that something is wrong with the planning process. Better consideration of alternatives and long-term effects, and more work with communities to let them know what's coming (instead of springing it on them full-blown) would be a good start.
James D. Dilts, Baltimore
TV programs like MASH and the video of TWO AND HALF MEN with Alan experiencing global neo-liberalism health care DOING ANYTHING CORPORATIONS WANT TO EARN PROFIT let us know these few decades of CLINTON/BUSH/OBAMA that NOTHING HEALTHY is happening in MOVING FORWARD. Alan Harper and the episode having he as the PHARMA research victim was TRAGICOMEDY-----it is tragic yet done in comedic venue. Almost no medical research 'volunteers' experience every side effect as Alan did---that was what was funny----but MANY PHARMA 'VOLUNTEERS' experience HARM. When a global JOHNS HOPKINS controls all economic actively and deliberately creates massive poverty---and then uses the poor to side-step US clinical trial protections in place for a century----
THAT IS A CRIME -----
BIG PHARMA went all out HARM under CLINTON/BUSH/OBAMA led by BILL GATES and his new interest in GLOBAL PHARMA CORPORATIONS. We showed Bill Gates controls UNITED NATIONS WORLD HEALTH ORGANIZATION so why would WE THE PEOPLE THE 99% think anything good in policy is coming from WHO? Yet, that is what far-right wing global Wall Street pols PRETENDING to be left social progressives are hawking now as UNIVERSAL CARE/SINGLE PAYER/MEDICARE FOR ALL. Again, good left social progressive health policy tied to NEW DEAL/WAR ON POVERTY----corrupted by 5% to the 1% global Wall Street pols and players.
Below we see a headline----Baltimore's MAYOR PUGH is going after the REAL CRIMINALS in Baltimore. It will be hard for ROBBER BARON POLS AND 5% PLAYERS to go after REAL CRIME in Baltimore.
'Big Pharma Research Racket Is Killing People
June 23, 2006, 12:00:00AM. By Evelyn Pringle
New Baltimore gun laws will 'put the right people in jail,' police chief says
Jul 14, 2017, 12:12pm EDT'
We emphasized last week that when a developed Rule of Law/Justice/US Constitutional rights nation allows OPEN ROBBER BARON pols and 5 % player fraud and corruption ---when they are allowed to deliberately stagnate local economies just to create black market violent FAILED STATES/NARCO STATES inside the US------our youth have these few decades had only gangsters to model---whether private corporation gangsters or corrupt government gangsters----and THAT BECOMES THEIR ROLE MODEL for doing business. What does Baltimore have as top business-----black market with everything not nailed down being stolen or vandalized.
ARE OUR YOUTHS REALLY THE PACK OF CRIMINALS?
Youths steal dozens of bicycles from city program
Yvonne Wenger and Carrie Wells, The Baltimore Sun
May 30, 2014
We shouted before the article above was written that this BIKE SHARE program would FAIL and all bikes simply stolen and vandalized just as the article below states. That's OK says Baltimore Development/Greater Baltimore Committee, and Johns Hopkins ---the point was to send public money to buy the bikes and rakes =====we just spend the money we don't care if it actually HELPS THE PUBLIC. Installing public programs that work in a NYC/San Fran both extreme wealth cities in a US city like Baltimore where extreme poverty is still growing---will never work. The problem is ----these youth are forced to live in communities with such third world decay that even if they can afford to buy a bike it would be stolen. Baltimore City Hall has no intentions of FIXING COMMUNITIES---the goal is simply laying global corporate campuses OVER THE COMMUNITIES to push Baltimore's OLD CITIZENS out to replace with NEW CITIZENS.
The goal of BIKE SHARE is good----the way it is being implemented IS BAD.
Baltimore Bike Share program hampered by thefts, lack of returns
Colin CampbellContact ReporterThe Baltimore Sun Aug 7, 2017
When Baltimore launched its $2.36 million Baltimore Bike Share system last fall, officials said the program would begin with 200 bicycles at 20 stations, then expand to 500 bicycles at 50 stations in the spring.Officials have pushed back the program’s expansion to this fall, blaming a delay in receiving a steel component for the bike docks from the manufacturer.
But the program has also been plagued by a high rate of the bikes stolen or otherwise not returned — so many that Corps Logistics, the subcontractor that operates the program and maintains the bikes, has devoted two employees solely to bike recovery, dispatching them daily around the city to pick up bikes left leaning against trees or discarded in alleys.
Reviews of the system by The Baltimore Sun on three different days and times last week showed fewer than a third of the 200 bicycles were available at docks across the city — a much lower percentage than was available in other cities with similar programs.
James Decker, the city’s Bike Share coordinator, said the more than 130 absent bikes in each case could have been in use or undergoing routine maintenance. He added that the app might not be reporting accurately the number of bicycles at each station.
The Sun counted 53 bicycles available across the city on the bike share app on Tuesday afternoon, 56 on Wednesday afternoon and 61 on Thursday morning.
The bikes cost $2 to rent for a 45-minute single trip or $15 for a monthly pass, which provides an unlimited number of 45-minute rides for 30 days.
The percentage of bicycles available in Baltimore’s bike share system last week was more than 40 percent lower than on the Philadelphia bike-share app, Indego, after which Baltimore officials modeled their program.
Philadelphia, which launched its program three years ago, has 1,200 bikes at 117 stations. One morning last week, the Indego app showed 879 of those bicycles, or 73 percent, available at stations around the city.
The Philadelphia record for the most bikes in use at once — more than 70 percent — came in September 2015, when Pope Francis visited the city.
“That was a very unusual circumstance,” said Aaron Ritz, that city’s transportation programs manager. “It was pretty cool to see those numbers.”
About 100 out-of-service Baltimore Bike Share bicycles awaited maintenance last week at Corps Logistics, the Westport-based firm contracted by the Canadian vendor Bewegen to maintain and operate the system. The firm has 465 Bike Share bicycles, according to Jim Duffney, Corps Logistics founder and CEO.
He said his dozen or so bicycle mechanics — most of them homeless veterans hired from The Baltimore Station, a residential treatment center for homelessness and addiction — repair and return about 25 bicycles per day into the service.
Duffney said the Baltimore Police Department has been a great help. They know to call him on his cell phone when they see one, no matter where or how late at night, he said.
In some cases, he said, all the bicycles need is an hourlong charge to be returned to service; in others, a damaged bicycle might need more maintenance.
To speed up that down time, Duffney designed a trailer that charges the bicycles on the go, so they won’t have to come back to the workshop. The bike stations charge the bicycles, he said, but not as quickly.
It’s rare that a bicycle goes missing entirely, Duffney said, because they’re all outfitted with GPS. Neither Corps Logistics nor the city would provide the number of bicycle thefts.
A large dry-erase board in Corps Logistics’ building showed 103 bicycles “on the street” as of July 12. Duffney said he couldn’t provide an updated number because they’re routinely being moved around the system.
The 100 or so in the parking lot were awaiting “general maintenance,” he said. “They get a lot of ride pressure.”
Baltimore police don’t keep a count of specific bike-share bicycle thefts, spokesman T.J. Smith said. Officers often will refer the bikes they find directly to Duffney without taking a report, Smith said.
“We aren’t taking an inordinate amount of reports for stolen bikes,” Smith said. “Some might be taken or left discarded. They might not be reported as a theft.”
“There’s no doubt that it happens,” he added. “We’ve made arrests.”
In one case, Smith said, a juvenile was caught on video “viciously rocking” a bike and wrenching it from its dock, before police arrived to arrest him.
“A citizen filmed him, and officers able to get there and able to get an arrest,” he said.
One juvenile who has been charged with theft has been assigned to do his required community service with Corps Logistics, helping maintain bikes, Duffney said.
The transportation department is “actively working with [Bewegen] to continue to enhance security measures to safeguard the system,” Decker said. He did not elaborate on those measures.
“Some amount of theft or vandalism occurs in every bike share program,” Decker said in his statement. “To combat this, the Department of Transportation selected equipment with always-on GPS and is working with the Baltimore City Police Department to address any issues.”
Capital Bikeshare in Washington has 2,500 bicycles at about 250 stations and is continually expanding, according to program manager Kim Lucas. It’s part of a larger regional system with 4,000 bicycles and 460 stations across five jurisdictions, including Montgomery County.
The Washington program uses different bicycles without GPS. Lucas said 56 have been lost in the seven years the system has been operating.
Usually when citizens see the distinctive bikes, she said, they simply return them to a bike-share station. She said most maintenance can be done at the stations in the field rather than taking the bikes out of circulation.
“They don’t have to come back to the warehouse most of the time,” Lucas said.
Decker said the Baltimore Bike Share program has exceeded the city’s initial projections. More than 11,000 people have used the system, taking more than 37,000 trips totaling 56,000 miles.
The city received $2.8 million in state and federal grants to launch the first phase the program.
The system’s pedelec bikes, which have a small electric motor that makes pedaling easier, earned the program the 2017 International Innovative Transportation Solutions Award from the Women’s Transportation Seminar, an international group dedicated to advancing women in transportation.
The pedelec bikes are great for riders, said Paul DeMaio, principal at MetroBike LLC, a bike-share consulting firm. But they naturally require more upkeep than non-electric ones.
“I think it's worth it, because pedelec bikes can get folks who are not bicyclists to become bicycle riders,” DeMaio said.
Capital Bikeshare requires its operator, a firm called Motivate, to maintain a 50 percent bike-to-dock ratio, said DeMaio, who helped design the Arlington, Va. portion of it.
Last week, the ratio of bike-share bikes to docks in Baltimore was between 14 and 16 percent, according to The Sun’s review.
DeMaio, who also has advised Nice Ride Minnesota and Bycyklen in Copenhagen, said a low number of bicycles could stem from any number of issues, including a lack of maintenance staff, an outsize amount of vandalism or mechanical issues with the fleet.
Liz Cornish, executive director of the Baltimore-based advocacy group Bikemore, said Baltimore Bike Share’s biggest need is a private sponsor to invest in the system to allow it to grow as needed.
Cornish, who also serves on the Mayor’s Bicycle Advisory Commission, a group of volunteers tasked with designing the city’s Bicycle Master Plan and advocating for bicycle infrastructure, said there is a demand in Baltimore for bike sharing.
“Ultimately, when I look at the systems that have been more successful out of the gate, what I saw was a major cash infusion in the beginning,” Cornish said. “We’re just not there yet today, but this is one of the things I see going well and headed in the right direction.”
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The policy that makes all economic and public health policy in Baltimore fail is this:
It is not seen as a public health public interest goal by global Wall Street Baltimore Development. All funds directed at these projects are subjected first to all kinds of pay-to-play, fraud, corruption as to which global corporation will supply the bikes----which subcontractor to subcontract will get the service contract----and will it get the funds it needs at startup and for the long term. Whether planting city street trees which get planted and most die from lack of watering.......the most important thing for global Wall Street Baltimore Development is that NO PUBLIC AGENCY OR EMPLOYEE be tied to these PUBLIC PROGRAMS. As always these men at grassroots level do a good job----they want that job----it is the goals set by funding agencies that create the failure.
A decade ago our organization tried to create a bike share program tied to our public schools. Having each K-12 school with an allotted number of bikes that can be lent to students and parents at those schools opens ACCOUNTABILITY in lending. Parents are likely to assure bikes are returned ---students know they will be nabbed if they allow it to be stolen----and every community in the city has bikes to share with all our city youth.
Why does Baltimore not do this? They are creating CORPORATE K-CAREER APPRENTICESHIPS of our public schools so they do not want to extend public service programs inside our schools---they are firing all school staff----they would not want to hire a public employee to manage this.
'The bikes cost $2 to rent for a 45-minute single trip or $15 for a monthly pass, which provides an unlimited number of 45-minute rides for 30 days'.
Grassroots BIKERS with organizations like BIKE MORE really do want to promote biking for public health-----so as usual we have activists wanting good results but we KNOW this city biking plan is GLOBAL ONE WORLD with each FOREIGN ECONOMIC ZONE having the same formatted biking design with the same global corporations getting great deals of taxpayer money to build what is NOT a public system of biking but a corporate system of biking.
Bike to Work Day
JOIN US FOR BIKE TO WORK DAY ON FRIDAY MAY 19, 2017
Become a Bike to Work
Day 2017 Sponsor! We invite your business or organization to sponsor Bike to Work Day. Reach thousands of people in the Baltimore region and show them that your business is working to help reduce traffic congestion, enhance health, and improve the environment. It’s easy, just download and complete the sponsorship form, and send it and a check to the Baltimore Metropolitan Council. Remember you’re your donation is tax-deductible.
B2WD 2017 Sponsorship Form
For more information: Russ Ulrich, rulrich@baltometro.org, 410-732-9575
The Baltimore Metropolitan Council (BMC) is excited to celebrate the 20th annual Bike to Work Day in the Baltimore region on Friday, May 19, 2017. The celebration feature hundreds of cyclists at nearly 40 events throughout the region.
See a list of events below or click on our interactive map to find a location near you!
Bike Doctor of Annapolis
7 to 8:30 a.m.
2020 West St. Annapolis, MD 21401
B&A Trail at Riggs Ave. / Pedal Pushers Bicycle Shop / Big Bean Coffee Shop
7 to 8:30 a.m.
558 Baltimore Annapolis Blvd. Severna Park, MD 21146
B&A trail at Ranger Station / AA County Recreation and Parks
7 to 8:30 a.m.
51 West Earliegh Heights, Severna Park, MD 21146
Rest rooms available!
Cafe Joe's at the National Business Park
7 to 8:30 a.m.
114 National Business Parkway, Annapolis Junction, MD 20701
Baltimore City All Baltimore City events are 7 to 9 a.m., except where noted.
The primary event for the city of Baltimore is:
Baltimore City Department of Transportation
Baltimore City Hall
100 Holiday Street (21202)
The main event features speakers, free bike safety checks with Race Pace, and free bike lights and pedestrian lights from Toward Zero Baltimore!
In addition, there will be pit stops throughout the city!
Baltimore Bicycle Works
1813 Falls Road (21201)
Located in central Station North near MICA, below Howard Street bridge and North Avenue.
Bikemore
2209 Maryland Ave (21218)
Bikemore’s bike to work work day station will offer complimentary Charmington’s coffee, free bike safety checks with Race Pace, and a chance to talk about the future of bicycling in Baltimore with Bikemore’s staff
Charm City Circulator
400 Block of E. Pratt Street (21202)
Dovecote Café New!
2501 Madison Ave (21217)
Downtown Partnership of Baltimore
At the intersection of Pratt & Light Streets (21202)
HandleBar Café
511 South Caroline Street (21231)
Hampden/Woodberry New!
Sponsored by Mahan Rykiel Associates at Whitehall Mill
3300 Clipper Mill Road (21211)
Impact Hub
10 E North Avenue (21202)
Joe's Bike Shop @ Pratt Library, Roland Park
Enoch Pratt Free Library, Roland Park Branch,
5108 Roland Ave (btwn Longwood & Deepdene Roads in 21210)
Johns Hopkins Office of Sustainability and HopkinsLIFE
Armstrong Medical Education Building
1600 McElderry St. (21205)
Maryland State Highway Administration + Merritt Clubs Downtown
210 E. Centre Street @ the intersection of Guilford Ave & East Monument St.
(Back parking lot of Merritt Clubs @ Guilford Ave in 21202)
MedStar Union Memorial Hospital, Sponsored By The Green Team And Wellness Committee
33rd Street Entrance of the Hospital, Between Guilford Ave & Calvert St (21218)
Merritt Clubs Canton New!
3401 Boston Street (21224)
Look for this pit stop at the Merritt Clubs Canton, located at 3401 Boston Street, and pick up your t-shirt, breakfast and more.
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Why does a city with extreme poverty place bike racks outside---why does it not have CARD-KEYED KIOSKS? We spoke of this problem with how Baltimore City installed ELECTRIC CHARGING STATIONS in parking decks----no CARD-KEY KIOSK surrounding that charge station so it too gets vandalized ----
When rates charge $2 for 45 minutes----this means someone has to BRING BACK THAT BIKE TO ORIGINAL RACK---not leave it at the destination---who takes a rental bike for a ride for only 20 minutes? Why would a citizen want a monthly pass for a single 45 minute ride?
People biking for pleasure usually take that bike for an afternoon----an evening-----a morning---if you are a tourist---you don't want to have to bring a bike back to origin because you are sight-seeing and likely not returning anytime soon to that spot. So, the rating is obviously geared to PROFIT-MAKING FOR THE CITY ----REVENUE GENERATION.
Every time government makes something PUBLIC INTEREST about REVENUE-MAKING---it FAILS.......such as our privatized SPEED CAMERA set up to save lives.
it takes me 10 minutes just to get my leg muscles warmed for biking trips----
'The bikes cost $2 to rent for a 45-minute single trip or $15 for a monthly pass, which provides an unlimited number of 45-minute rides for 30 days'.
The policy of bringing bikes back from where they are rented stems from the city not wanting a city employee assigned to assure balance in where bikes are left.
Below we see NYC ---again the rates are predatory---no one bikes for 45 minutes and we see rates climb---they are creating a MTA TIER with these bikes rather than simply having them out for tourists to simply jump on for free-----why is this happening? Because public buses and transit systems are being PRIVATIZED and rates kept low when public will now soar this next decade or so----it is being built as transportation as last resort----NOT PUBLIC INTEREST.
Usage Fees
The first 45 minutes of each ride are included in the annual membership price. If you keep a bike out for longer than 45 minutes at a time, extra usage fees apply.
Ride LengthUsage Fee0-45 minutesIncluded in membership
Each additional 15 minutes+ $2.50To avoid additional usage fees, keep your rides to 45 minutes each. Take as many rides as you want while your membership is active!
If you incur any usage fees, your card on file will be charged. The fee for a lost or stolen bike is $1200 (+ tax).
It's obvious this is not about public health----sporting----it is public transit policy geared towards 99% of citizens not being able to afford rates of FOREIGN ECONOMIC ZONE city subways and buses-----remember, high-speed rail will end light rails/MARC trains so DRIVER-LESS VEHICLES OWNED BY GLOBAL CORPORATE CAMPUSES ----walking and biking will be it for 99% of citizens.
A city promoting health and welcoming tourists would simply want to make bikes available everywhere------the Swedish/Danish systems did that---as part of their free public transportation system.
Experience NYC in a whole new way
Citi Bike is the nation's largest bike share program, with 10,000 bikes and 600 stations across Manhattan, Brooklyn, Queens and Jersey City. It was designed for quick trips with convenience in mind, and it’s a fun and affordable way to get around town.
JoinBecome an Annual Member or buy a short-term pass through the Citi Bike app.
See pricing
UnlockFind an available bike nearby, and get a ride code or use your member key to unlock it.
Find a bike
RideTake as many short rides as you want while your pass or membership is active.
See popular rides
ReturnReturn your bike to any station, and wait for the green light on the dock to make sure it's locked.
Get started
Choose your planDay Pass$12
unlimited 30-minute rides in a 24-hour period
Get a Pass
3-Day Pass$24
unlimited 30-minute rides in a 72-hour period
Get a Pass
Best ValueAnnual Membership$163/year
unlimited 45-minute rides
Join Now
Or $14.95/mo, annual commitment
More Options Citi Bike offers special rates to the following groups: _______________________________________
As a baby boomer lucky to have been able to vacation in Europe several decades ago----all this biking structure especially in northern Europe was free made part of the EURORAIL system---one could ride trains, buses, bikes with plenty of public kiosks for one annual pass. It was easy----it was accessible---it was WELL-USED.
We have spoken how our once enlightened northern Europe was taken to global banking neo-liberalism these few decades and look at what we are seeing---the complexity of RACKS for these public bike systems is RIDICULOUS and only meant to send public money to global corporations designing this mess. Of course we need a solar bike rack -----of course we need E-BIKE systems ----of course all this is expensive to maintain---
Is this public health or is this how WE THE PEOPLE THE 99% will be able to move around in MOVING FORWARD? It is the only way we will move around. It's not bad to get people on bikes----it is bad for 99% of people to lose all options of transportation heading back to DARK AGES.
Even our Tour de France bicycle races were corrupted as DOING ANYTHING AMERICA RACE TEAM started the push to DOPING. Here we have the high-end of biking and this is to whom our bike shops are catering----not the public transportation crowd. So, biking comes with GPS---all aerobics electronics---Wi Fi----aerodynamics meters----
and our public bikes simple and plan cannot even get a kiosk----or a public school lending structure.
News Article
Expensive Models and E-bikes Increase Market Share in Sweden
Sales & Trends
STOCKHOLM, Sweden – Despite a cool, wet spring and early summer, bicycle sales and usage in Sweden increased this year. The volumes would even have been bigger if the Swedish kronor had not weakened against the US dollar, which forced suppliers to raise prices by 15-20% at the start of the season.
For 2015 the Swedish bicycle industry estimates the market volume at 598,000 units.
For 2015 the Swedish bicycle industry estimates the market volume at 598,000 units. Total imports of bicycles including e-bikes, between January and August increased to 492,820 units, compared to 454,415 units in 2014. Exports, mainly to neighboring Nordic countries expanded to 92,907 units compared to 91,642 in 2014.
Trends
The Swedish bicycle market is still dominated by so-called standard bicycles with internal hub gears and coaster brakes, although their popularity is declining while hybrid and trekking bike sales continue to increase. It is apparent that the market continues to grow due to the increasing interest for fitness cycling. The two big bicycle races, Vätternrundan in June, primarily for road bikes and MTB-Vasan in August are both growing. MTB-Vasan now has several days of competition, just like Vätternrundan. Thanks to the growing popularity of 27 and 29-inch wheels, the availability of high-end performance 26-inch bikes is very limited.
Estimated sales
With the surge of the US dollar and more expensive bicycles increasing in sales, bicycle retailers have had a very satisfying season. Sales of e-bikes have increased substantially in 2015. Industry organization ‘Bicycle Industry Sweden’, formerly known as FOG estimates sales at around 30,000 e-bikes, up 70% compared to 2014. This increase is also reflected in the import statistics, which show an import of 31,157 e-bikes and export of 3,172. The local production of e-bikes is about 1,000 units.
Not only the volume but also the number of e-bike brands continues to increase. Ecoride, based in Gothenburg, started the manufacturing of its new brand Walleräng in Sweden. Even the all-Swedish manufacturer Skeppshultcykeln introduced an e-bike. This is one of the few manufacturers in Europe that also welds frames in its own factory. Other important brands on the Swedish e-bike market are Crescent, Batavus, Giant, Merida E-Green, Ecoride, Scott, and Trek. On the mass market, e-bikes are available as around 10,000 SEK (€1,070) from Biltema, Clas Ohlson and also from furniture store IKEA. IBDs sell e-bikes for between 14,000 SEK (€1,490) and 30,000 SEK (€3,190).
IBDs and sports chains
IBDs still hold a market share of 50%. Their main competitors are sports chains such as TeamSportia, Intersport, and XXL, while the largest sporting goods chain Stadium only holds a small market share. In 2015 TeamSportia was acquired by Finnish SGN Group which is collaborating with Tvåhjulsmästarna, a trade chain with 45 bicycle shops throughout Sweden. Bike Partner, with 35 bicycle dealers, has previously been associated with the chain. XXL continues to grow and now operates 18 large stores in Sweden. French Decathlon still runs only one department store in Stockholm and it appears to be difficult for the French to grow in Sweden.
In the mass market Biltema dominates with an estimated market share of 16-18%. Jula is also focusing more on bicycle sales while COOP is scaling back in Sweden. Internet sales, primarily for high-end road bikes and MTBs, have continued to grow and are estimated to comprise 6-7% of the market.
Published by Joakim Stenberg on 24 Feb 2016
last update: 24 Feb 2016
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The most environmental method of transportation was the bike---build it in our local towns and cities ---built well lasted forever----and it REALLY gave citizens a workout. This US CITIES AS FOREIGN ECONOMIC ZONE global biking initiative is only about sending money to technology-based corporations. Calling an E-BIKE environmental is yet another GLOBAL GREEN CORPORATION REVOLUTION right wing global Wall Street pretending these policies are about left social progressivism ----and look---we are going to attack these E bike racks to THE ONE WORLD ONE GRID---isn't that special.
So, what we see is a bike policy designed to send hundreds of billions of dollars to global corporations tied to E-COMMERCE costing 10 times what having simple public bike kiosks and allowing each of our public schools to have a bike rental for parents and students-----
CAN'T PROFITEER ON BIKE POLICY LIKE THAT SAY GLOBAL WALL STREET CLINTON/BUSH/OBAMA NEO-LIBERALS!
Today's poor children are not factored into these US CITY AS FOREIGN ECONOMIC ZONE bike programs----they cannot afford these whistles and bells. What 99% of citizens need to WAKE UP to----is neither will they as 99% of citizens are pushed to poverty ----you will not be E-----anything. So instead they steal them and strip them for parts. Being ENTREPRENEURS modeled after global Wall Street. Being placed on the ONE GRID means these bike racks will lock in a city-wide shutdown of energy.......no movement allowed at all.
Solar Powered Bike Sharing System with Electric Bikes
An overview of the energy system and the
technical
system
design
Master thesis
within the Master's P
rogram
me
Industrial Ecology
Examensarbete inom civilingenjörsprogrammet elektroteknik
Abstract Combining Electric Bikes (E-bikes)
with bicycle sharing systems could have a number of
benefits. E-bikes reduce the human force needed for propulsion which facilitates longer and hillier rides relative regular bikes. The system could thus have more widespread network of stations, not only reaching more people but also enable commuting longer distances. It could
also reduce the need for redistribution as users of regular
bike sharing systems tend to only ride downhill.
The focus of this report has been to perform energy calculations and system design on solar powered E-bike pools.
The geographical focus has been on Gothenburg, Sweden but the results can be applied to locations
with similar latitude. The calculation methodology may however
be applied to any other city around the world.
It was shown that placing 0.2-0.8m 2 solar panels per E-bike on the station's roof could supply enough energy to make the
E-bike self-sufficient on a yearly basis despite high degree of system use.
By increasing the solar panel area it was shown that there can be a net electric energy production on a yearly basis.
At the maximum assumed solar panel area (about 3-3.8 m2/E-
bike) there could be 600-800 kWh of solar energy fed to the grid per E-bike and year depending on the usage level.
Using a system that is on-grid and coupled with a stationary battery is seen as the best system design. That would enable origin marking of electricity and decrease the problem of
intermittency with solar power.
Reducing the interchange with the grid would also increase
the system efficiency as the current do not need to be converted to or from AC as often.
___________________________________________
Citizens in cosmopolitan cities like Rome----citizens in third world nations where only bikes are afforded ----have for almost a century been shouting GET THESE BIKES OFF OUR STREETS-----the traffic is crazy.
What we are seeing already is a claim that US citizens will not ride bikes unless they are E-equipped----unless they are motorized via electric or solar------know what? This is NOT a public health policy-----it is not even an environmental policy ----and none of this is geared towards our children really needing to be those people starting early with forming good athletic/sports habits. Of course today these same global cities are now passing laws to get rid of motor bikes because of their density.
Rome by Vespa: Three Clips That Take You There
October 17, 2012 No CommentsForget the Colosseum: When it comes to a symbol of Rome and la dolce vita, the Vespa's where it's at.
Like most Rome fantasies, this one doesn't always have a ton of bearing in reality. Yes, almost everyone here has a scooter. But no, it's not usually an adorable, sparkling, vintage Vespa. Those are expensive… and (haven't you heard?), there's an economic crisi here!
Still. I've had Vespas on my mind lately, thanks to a travel story I've been working on (more on that later!). And, whether the vehicles used by most of my friends could come out of a scene from Roman Holiday or not, whipping around Rome on a scooter—even a banged-up, anything-but-beautiful one—remains one of my favorite ways to get from Point A to Point B in the city. It's hands-down the most convenient. And, yes, it can be romantic.
In homage to seeing Rome by scooter, here are three movie clips to transport you.
Forgive me for the last one.
Ah, the face that launched a thousand dreams of Rome: Audrey Hepburn. In particular, Audrey Hepburn taking Gregory Peck's Vespa for a near-death experience adventure-filled spin. Although I'm hard-pressed to pick a favorite scene from this movie—which is, of course, the 1953 Roman Holiday--this might just have to be it.
And if you're wondering, yes, Rome's traffic is every bit as crazy today as it looks like it was then.
What Roman Holiday did for tourists' imaginings of Vespas and Rome, Nanni Moretti's Caro Diario did for locals. The first 10 minutes of the movie follows the protagonist on his sojourn through Rome's streets—not its main, all-too-famous piazzas and avenues, but the places known to locals, like the pretty neighborhood of Garbatella. And, because it's ferragosto in Rome, the streets are completely deserted.
When I looked up movie clips showing Vespas in Rome on YouTube, this came up. And while I'm kind of really embarrassed to include it (I promise, not being a 12-year-old girl, this is not a movie I have ever seen), I thought that the scene, while clearly sickly-sweet (and inaccurate: what Roman would ever say "This is Rome. Nobody knows how to drive"?), does a cute job of showing the sights in Rome's centro storico. They start at Piazza Farnese (and no, in real life you can't drive a scooter there), then move on to Via Nazionale (0:15), Piazza del Popolo (0:19), Via Nazionale again at Trajan's markets (0:28), the Palace of Justice (0:35), Via Giulia (I think) (0:40), Piazza della Repubblica (1:02), Pantheon (also not allowed) (1:11), Spanish Steps (1:18, and they must have filmed this at sunrise for it to be so empty).
And no, that route makes no sense whatsoever. But pretty sights, right?
Also, I really hope Hilary Duff doesn't wind up with this Italian boy at the end of the film. Because picking-up-a-straniera-via-scooter, in more ways than one, would be the oldest trick in the book. (Oh Audrey, if you only knew what you'd started back in '53).
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Citizens have these few decades been buying motorized bikes just for the convenience now being sold for new kinds of motorized bikes. Here we see one kind of bike being sent to paid parking to make way for new bikes which more times then not are the same motorized bikes---looking different.
So MOPED owners will now not be able to find the easily accessible parking ----making way for the next PRODUCT.
MEANWHILE, all these powered versions of BIKES is what killed biking in America. The percentage of people pedaling is not climbing---even our skateboards are now motorized.
MSU moving mopeds to make way for bikes
RJ Wolcott, Lansing State Journal Published 10:53 a.m. ET April 27, 2017 (Photo: MATTHEW DAE SMITH, MATTHEW DAE SMITH | Lansing Stat)
1 CONNECT EAST LANSING — Michigan State University is addressing the staggering spread of mopeds on campus with new regulations.
Mopeds won't be allowed to park at bike racks beginning this fall. Instead, students can either purchase a $50 pass to park in designated spaces in 17 non-gated lots or park their mopeds at metered or pay-by-place spaces.
The changes are expected to go into effect Aug. 30.
MSU has seen a 150% increase in moped use since 2012, according to Doug Monette, public information officer with the MSU Police Department. The increase has put bike-rack space near residence halls and other popular destinations at a premium.
But it's precisely the ability to drive up to class buildings and park easily that makes mopeds an attractive option for students, said Jack Viazanko, a junior who started a Change.org petition seeking to reverse the planned changes.
"MSU is essentially taking all the benefits of owning a moped away," Viazanko said.
MSU officials also are concerned about the hazard to pedestrians created by moped users driving on sidewalks to get to bike racks, said John Prush, a deputy director of the MSU Police Department.
To make room for mopeds, MSU is converting standard parking spaces in more than a dozen parking lots. For each of those spaces, Prush said, MSU will get four moped spots. Exactly how many spaces will be converted is still being worked out. Parking a moped at a bike rack or parking in a designated moped space without a permit will be punishable by a $25 fine.
Changes to moped regulations at MSU were recommended by MSU's All University Traffic and Transportation Committee. The committee's next meeting is scheduled for 3 p.m. Thursday in the MSU Police Community Room..
For more information on the changes, visit mopeds.police.msu.edu Online moped registration opens July 1.
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The problem for bikers in Baltimore is------people in Baltimore are not used to bikers. We have people taking buses---we have people driving---that has long been the dynamic. We have another problem ----we do not have police or traffic officers on arteries into downtown---we never see a police car or traffic officers pulling bad drivers. So people double-park anywhere----people speed----people fail to abide by traffic lights--and those are just the bad drivers---not those intoxicated by drugs and alcohol.
The first stage of any new program like this would be changing THESE behaviors. Baltimore should have a few decades ago created a public safety program designed to slow traffic-----to stop traffic law abuses---THEN introduce biking and bike lanes. Baltimore does not allow public revenue to go to these kinds of programs unless it is on a global corporate campus like Johns Hopkins. If people were monitored in Baltimore's city center as they are in surrounding communities we would have a safer street presence for our bikers.
Second, these biking lanes never worked---citizens in each community having them installed voiced these concerns. What we are sure these bike lanes do is take from public parking----it is a strategy to limit EVEN MORE the availability to park a car on the street. Where we see the street parking moved from curb-----that will soon disappear because more street space is obviously needed----it does indeed slow traffic.
THIS IS THE PROBLEM----THE GOALS OF IMMEDIATE INSTALLATION OF BIKING TRANSIT IS TIED TO UNITED NATIONS/ONE WORLD FOREIGN ECONOMIC ZONE DEVELOPMENT---and not our individual US cities needs. So BOOM----here it is----with absolutely no funding to introduce all this----improper infrastructure---and no targeting of our young people needed to be those future bikers---
LEFT social progresssives are passionate about community sports and public health and for centuries our cities and towns provided for the best of venues for all citizens to engage----
Baltimore community citizens were shouting that all of these problems would occur---Baltimore City Council working for Baltimore Development and Johns Hopkins simply wanted to be one the ONE WORLD US FOREIGN ECONOMIC ZONE bandwagon -----all those funds need to go to global corporations!
Transportationby Mark Reutter6:00 pmJun 8, 201769
Civic League asks the city to tear out Roland Avenue Cycle Track
As bike lane wars escalate, a Pugh aide says privately: “We regret the launch of our program.”
Above: Cars parked in front of Eddie’s Market today. The Roland Avenue cycle track is to the left. (Fern Shen)
A new front has broken out in the battle over bicycle infrastructure in Baltimore.
Just as the Pugh administration declares it won’t back down from a plan to redesign a protected bike lane in Canton – and her top aide privately blames the Rawlings-Blake administration for the program’s flawed roll-out – the Roland Park Civic League has called on the city to remove the cycle track on Roland Avenue.
In a letter on Tuesday copied to Mayor Pugh and aide James T. Smith Jr., the Civic League requests that acting Department of Transportation (DOT) director Frank Murphy “immediately and completely” restore curbside parking on Roland Avenue.
The mile-long cycle track was part of the $6.7 million Roland Avenue Traffic Calming Project, a DOT effort that necessitated a major curb reconstruction in 2015 and boasted cost overruns of 72%.
To install the cycle track, curbside parking was replaced by two four-foot-wide lanes whose location roiled many in the community.
With stationary cars serving as a buffer between the bike lane and and moving traffic, the project was hailed by the city as state-of-the-art infrastructure that would make cyclists safer and encourage more people to ride bikes.
But, responding to complaints, the Civic League conducted its own review, concluding that the new alignment makes cyclists less safe in part because the track is too narrow. (Federal guidelines call for an eight-foot-minimum width.)
The League’s Cycle Track Committee reported that five cars parked in the buffer zone have been “totaled” in accidents and that “many more have been sideswiped and unknown but very large number of side mirrors damaged.”
What’s more, conflicts between cyclists and turning cars (whose sightlines are often obscured by the parked cars) have resulted in five crashes, none causing serious injury.
ABSOLUTELY!!!!!!
“Ongoing highly dangerous safety problems” exist between bikers and pedestrians on the 5100 block of Roland Avenue, where Eddie’s Market and the public library are located, and on the 4700 block, where preschool classes are held at St. David’s Church, the study said.
The committee also reports that many cyclists avoid the leaf-strewn cycle lane and instead pedal amid the moving traffic.
The Roland Avenue cycle track under construction in December 2015. (Mark Reutter)
Bike Advocates: Disappointed
At the conclusion of its review, according to the letter to the city from the League’s president, Robert H. “Hap” Cooper III, the Cycle Track Committee submitted the following recommendation:
Either restore curbside parking with a wider, safer bike lane and slower traffic, or partner with the community to create a complete street that works for everyone.
“After discussion at the Civic League’s Annual Meeting last month, the membership in attendance voted 55-31 to adopt an alternate position statement,” Cooper said in the letter:
Restore curb side parking immediately and completely on Roland Avenue and continue the work of the committee to achieve the other objectives (included in the year-end report).
Asked to comment on the Civic League’s action, a spokesman for the advocacy group Bikemore said it has long advocated for reducing Roland Avenue to one car travel lane in each direction.
A “constrained facility” was built instead, said Bikemore policy director Jed Weeks.
“Weeks said Bikemore is “disappointed” that the voting body failed to adopt the conclusion of its committee and chose not to adopt stronger language that would have maintained a parking protected bike lane and eliminating a car travel lane as an option.”
But a Civic League member said Weeks mischaracterized the group’s position.
“All options included in the report that include curbside parking are still under consideration,” the League member said last night.
______________________________________________
A History of Cost Overruns• City to replace three miles of faulty curbs along Roland Avenue (9/6/15)
• Roland Avenue roadway redo now slated to cost $1.1 million more (10/15/15)
• Tree treatment adds still more costs to Roland Avenue repave (4/21/16)
_______________________________________________
The cycle track was championed by former DOT director William Johnson as part of a “complete streets” repaving of the thoroughfare. Johnson left city government last April.
Prior to the installation of the track, Roland Avenue had a traditional bike lane running between moving traffic and parked vehicles. That pattern remains on the roadway south of Cold Spring Lane and between Northern Parkway and Lake Avenue.
Then-DOT director William Johnson addresses the Roland Park Civic League in March 2016 after the launch of the cycle track. At his side is deputy traffic chief Graham Young and, at right, community liaison Kohl Fallin. (Brew file photo)
Mixed MessagesAdding to the confusion over the future of the city’s bike-lane program are public and private statements coming out of City Hall.
Yesterday Mayor Catherine Pugh said her concern about bike lanes was limited to the Potomac Street track in Canton and the administration’s discovery that the roadway failed to meet the 20-foot-clearance standard of the fire code.
Her spokesman, Anthony McCarthy, said the mayor’s position does not indicate sagging city government support for cycling improvements. “You go into almost any neighborhood and you see these bikes and lanes popping up. We’re moving forward.”
He said criticism by Bikemore is flat-out wrong. (Bikemore says that the Downtown Bike Network has been halted and sections of the Maryland Avenue-Cathedral Street track may be reevaluated.)
“I think oftentimes advocacy organizations build their reputations on confrontation,” McCarthy told reporters. “I don’t care how many people call. I don’t care how many petitions you start. I don’t care if you call the mayor names on your websites – she’s going to put the interests of the people of the city first.”
Bikemore responded on its website, saying:
“We look forward to holding the mayor accountable to this claim, particularly in respect to the miles of reverse angle parking that have been installed during the same time period as the Potomac Street planning process that fail the 20-feet-clear standard and the many major development projects underway in the city that have planned streets under 20-feet clear.
“The decision to weigh international code above local street context flies in the face of best practices of safety, public health and economic development.”
Smith: “Regret the Launch of Program”Behind the scenes, meanwhile, Jim Smith has been critical of the program’s implementation.
In a private email responding to concerns expressed by a bike rider last week, Smith blamed the Rawlings-Blake administration and DOT’s consultants for mishandling the matter in Canton.
“We only became aware of the Potomac St. issue when it was in crisis as it was initiated under the prior administration. I would have expected that the City’s consultant would have raised the conflict before finalizing his design recommendations, but that did not happen,” Smith wrote.
“We will now have to balance traffic safety & the fire safety responsibilities in our neighborhoods to reach a result that supports our intention of being a multi-modal city that also protects people in their homes & businesses,” he added.
“We regret the launch of our bike lane program,” Smith concluded. “We will work to get it right for the people of Baltimore.”
________________________________________________
As with ALL Baltimore Development policy things worked better BEFORE they changed things -----lots of cost overruns---lots of profiteering in what was installed-----very little promotional effect on actually increasing biking -----sure, our new citizens are coming bringing with them biking habits but we hear them all lament---WHY DOES BIKING HAVE TO BE SO HARD IN BALTIMORE?
IT'S BECAUSE NO POLICY IS IMPLEMENTED FOR PUBLIC INTEREST!
Baltimore's bike lanes should not be such a hassle
July5, 2017
At the risk of being accused of piling on, I would like to add a few comments to the ongoing discussion about bike lanes (“Bike lane in Canton is the wrong fight for bikers,” June 30). I have been riding a bicycle in Baltimore for 50 years. It's a great way to travel and get exercise at the same time. Plus, it's cheap.
The best thing that happened to bicyclists in Baltimore was Mayor Sheila Dixon's painted bike lanes — she was herself a bike rider — which provided an official recognition that we had a two-wheeled right to be on the street. But I am also a car driver and a regular user, whether biking or driving, of Maryland Avenue, a quieter alternative to St. Paul Street. No more. I avoid it on my bike or in my car. The new two-way bike lanes are an overblown solution to a non-existent problem. For a bicyclist, it used to be simple, south on Maryland, north on Charles Street. I did it for years with no problems. But the taking of a parking lane for bicyclists and a traffic lane for parked cars has reduced the automobile-carrying capacity of Maryland by 50 percent. Considering that the route worked fine for bicyclists as it was, this is retrograde motion.
The fact that the city is having such difficulty with its new bike lanes on Roland Avenue and Potomac Street shows that something is wrong with the planning process. Better consideration of alternatives and long-term effects, and more work with communities to let them know what's coming (instead of springing it on them full-blown) would be a good start.
James D. Dilts, Baltimore
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