In the U.S., cities like Washington D.C., Minneapolis and Boulder have received national attention for their bike share programs. It seems like the movement is gaining momentum as the positive effects pop up: reduced carbon emissions, money saved and increased physical activity for commuters. Just yesterday, our athlete Nitish Nag posted about how cycling can protect you from heart disease and today we stumbled across a study in Barcelona shows that their bike sharing program is actually saving lives. Check it out.
Every Wednesday on Ditch Your Car we’ll be bringing you just another reason to spend more time on two wheels. Be it a photo, a statistic or an inspirational video, we want to keep reminding you about why riding is great!
What’s better than a Danish music video about cycling in Copenhagen? Not a whole lot.
Earlier this month David Suzuki published a piece calling for improving cycling infrastructure. The environmental activist highlights that investing in bicycling infrastructure is in fact a crucial investment, both in the environment and the economy:
Human-powered transportation will only get more popular as gas prices rise and as the negative consequences of our car-centric culture increase. We should be doing everything we can to discourage single-occupant automobile use while encouraging public transit and pedestrian and pedal-powered movement.
Suzuki continues:
Building bike lanes also creates jobs and other economic spin-offs, according to a study from the Political Economy Research Institute in Amherst, Massachusetts, titled “Pedestrian and Bicycle Infrastructure: A National Study of Employment Impacts”. Researchers found that “bicycling infrastructure creates the most jobs for a given level of spending.” For every $1 million spent, cycling projects created an average of 11.4 jobs in the state where the project was located, pedestrian-only projects created about 10 jobs, and multi-use trails created about 9.6 jobs. Infrastructure combining road construction with pedestrian and bicycle facilities created slightly fewer jobs for the same amount of spending, and road-only projects created the least, with a total of 7.8 jobs per $1 million.
Every Wednesday on Ditch Your Car we’ll be bringing you just another reason to spend more time on two wheels. Be it a photo, a statistic or an inspirational video, we want to keep reminding you about why riding is great!
Bikelordz is a short documentary about the self-taught, self-invented bicycle culture which young people in Accra, Ghana have created and passed on to their younger contemporaries over time. It follows crews of these young bicycle gurus as they try and use their skills to make money, gain recognition, and live on their own terms.
All images in Bikelordz were shot in Ghana and all of the music is Ghanaian. It focuses on a young BMX movement which thrives amid adverse circumstances which are particularly urban Ghanaian but undeniably universal.
Every Wednesday on Ditch Your Car we’ll be bringing you just another reason to spend more time on two wheels. Be it a photo, a statistic or an inspirational video, we want to keep reminding you about why riding is great!
Not only does bike share let you explore cities in a fun and carbon friendly way, now it turns out that implementing bike share programs might even improve safety.
A study of Barcelona’s bike-sharing program — called Bicing — showed that the system not only saved 9,000 tons of pollution from carbon dioxide, but it also led to 12 fewer cycling deaths a year. The study was published last week in the British Medical Journal.
Even though there were small estimated increases in cyclists’ deaths from traffic accidents and air pollution — 0.03 extra deaths and 0.13 deaths each year, respectively — the study found that about 12 lives were saved from the extra heart-healthy exercise per year.
Every Wednesday on Ditch Your Car we’ll be bringing you just another reason to spend more time on two wheels. Be it a photo, a statistic or an inspirational video, we want to keep reminding you about why riding is great!
Every Wednesday on Ditch Your Car we’ll be bringing you just another reason to spend more time on two wheels. Be it a photo, a statistic or an inspirational video, we want to keep reminding you about why riding is great!
Thanks to Treehugger for drawing our attention to the new video from Oregon Manifest; it’s all about the collaborative design spirit going into building the utility bike of the future.
A lot of fancy futuristic bicycle designs have garnered TreeHugger posts. We all want to know what the future will bring in terms of cooler features and entirely novel forms. You’ll notice, though, that most of those future-oriented bicycle ideas sport a bit of a Jetson’s feel while falling short on amenities city cyclists really need – kickstands, fenders, back racks. Oregon Manifest, a bike design challenged sponsored in part by Levi’s (recently out with bicycle jeans), is aiming to find the future of utility bikes. Competing for a $3,000 prize, craftspeople and student teams are looking to innovate, show off their bike builder chops, and fashion a bike that makes people able and willing to get out of their cars…
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A lineup of 34 illustrious bike builders and many student designers from Oregon as well as other U.S. states are working with some fairly specific smart criteria for a city bike. The bikes must have built-in anti-theft devices, fenders, lighting, some load-carrying capability, and some sort of kickstand mechanism so the bike can stand while parked.
Manifest’s panel of judges will be looking for entries that also push the envelope in terms of function, materials used, technologies employed, and the ability of the bike to adapt to different environments and lifestyles.
Every Wednesday on Ditch Your Car we’ll be bringing you just another reason to spend more time on two wheels. Be it a photo, a statistic or an inspirational video, we want to keep reminding you about why riding is great!
That’s how Project Bike Trip, a non-profit based in Santa Cruz, started. A program to get youth working with bicycles, this is not your typical classroom setting, instead it’s all about grease, gears and grime. Hope this idea spreads across the country.
Every Wednesday on Ditch Your Car we’ll be bringing you just another reason to spend more time on two wheels. Be it a photo, a statistic or an inspirational video, we want to keep reminding you about why riding is great!
We just can’t get enough of this video. Biking with baguettes? So hip.
Every Wednesday on Ditch Your Car we’ll be bringing you just another reason to spend more time on two wheels. Be it a photo, a statistic or an inspirational video, we want to keep reminding you about why riding is great!
In the U.S., cities like Washington D.C., Minneapolis and Boulder have received national attention for their bike share programs. It seems like the movement is gaining momentum as the positive effects pop up: reduced carbon emissions, money saved and increased physical activity for commuters. Just yesterday, our athlete Nitish Nag posted about how cycling can protect you from heart disease and today we stumbled across a study in Barcelona shows that their bike sharing program is actually saving lives. Check it out.
