Too Cool For (Bike) Helmet Head? Here"s One Swedish Solution

Enlarge image i

No more helmet hair: Hövding’s “invisible” helmet is an airbag tucked away in a collar that gets fastened around a cyclist’s neck. It’s aimed at urban cyclists and priced at $ 535.

Courtesy of Hövding

No more helmet hair: Hövding’s “invisible” helmet is an airbag tucked away in a collar that gets fastened around a cyclist’s neck. It’s aimed at urban cyclists and priced at $ 535.

Courtesy of Hövding

Hey there, hipster. No bike helmet, huh? Well, we all have our excuses. There are the vanity-driven ones that — let’s be honest — explain why the majority of our brain cages sit collecting dust in the dark corners of the garage. Squashed hair, unflattering chinstraps, general discomfort, etc.

Then there are the more nuanced arguments tied to piles of conflicting data about how effective helmets actually are (including one small, if oft-cited study suggesting that drivers tend to pass helmeted riders at closer distances than their non-helmeted counterparts).

But what if there were a helmet that answered both categories of complaint? One that respected your brain and your coiffure?

Enter, Hövding, the “invisible” helmet, brainchild of Swedish design duo Anna Haupt and Terese Alstin.

“Vanity might sound a bit stupid to talk about,” Alstin says, “but if that is the cause of people not protecting their heads in traffic, it is a real issue that you need to address.”

And, thus, what started out as a thesis project is now something that could revolutionize biking safety.

So how does it work? In a nutshell, it’s not a shell for your nut. It’s an airbag — one that’s tucked away in a collar that cyclists fastened around their neck. When the collar’s internal sensors detect a specific combination of jerks and jags signifying “ACCIDENT HAPPENING,” the airbag deploys, sending out a head-hugging, air-cushion hood in a tenth of a second.

Alstin explains: “We were aiming to do a product that was as safe as conventional helmets. But (helmets) are not really as safe as people think they are. But that has not been something that you want to talk about because there was no alternative before. Using the airbag technology we were actually able to set a completely new standard for safety in the bike helmet industry.”

Sweden has one of the highest percentages of people who use bikes as their primary mode of transportation, but only about 20 percent of adult Swedes wear helmets. Furthermore, bicyclists represented nearly 9 percent of all traffic fatalities in Sweden in 2005, the most recent year for which statistics were available. The comparable figure in the U.S. is 1.8 percent for that year.

In tests by a Swedish insurance company, Hövding was shown to be at least three times better at absorbing shock than conventional helmets (at 15 mph — this is a product aimed at urban cyclists). Hövding’s weakest point may be that it can’t protect riders from “direct hits” like overhanging branches and street signs, an issue that hasn’t prevented the company from winning Europe’s CE conformity label.

That said, Hövding has yet to be approved for sale in the U.S., and some experts are skeptical it will be able to muster a similar thumbs-up from the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission. But with interest mounting, Alstin says she and her colleagues are doing their best to get to the U.S. as soon as possible.

Alas, the $ 535 price tag is likely to provide a new excuse for anyone who bikes as a cost-cutting measure.

And what about cyclists in, say, Florida, where a thick collar might be slightly less appealing than in chilly Scandinavia where everyone already wears scarves that appear to hold their heads in place?

“For really hot countries, we’re thinking about developing a shell that would have a cooling system inside,” Alstin says. Innovate on.

News

Too Cool For (Bike) Helmet Head? Here"s One Swedish Solution

REPORT: Bike cop joined in on SUV beatdown...

An off-duty undercover cop who had claimed he took no active role as fellow bikers pulled a Manhattan dad from his SUV and beat him to a pulp was actually pounding the vehicle with his fists at the height of the bloody road-rage attack, sources told The Post.

The cop, a seven-year veteran, had told investigators he didn’t help the injured man because he rode up to the scene as the beating was nearly over, sources said.

But video footage clearly shows otherwise, disgusted sources said Monday — and Internal Affairs Bureau higher-ups want to nail the officer.

Still, probers believe their hands are tied, sources said, because authorities have dropped charges against another biker, Allen Edwards, 43, of Queens, who allegedly punched the rear window of Alexian Lien’s Range Rover before Lien was pummeled in front of his wife and 2-year-old daughter.

At the time, the chief of the Manhattan district attorney’s Trials Division, Karen Friedman Agnifilo, defended the move, saying, “Prematurely charging individuals with low-level crimes does not further the goals of the investigation and could weaken the cases we expect to bring against the perpetrators of serious crimes.”

But the cop will likely face internal charges. He didn’t tell his bosses he was with the bikers — much less at the crime scene — until more than three days after the Sept. 29 attack.

The unidentified cop has already been placed on modified duty and turned in his gun and badge.

“I think we all, no matter what your job is, have an obligation to help one another,’’ Mayor Bloomberg said on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe’’ on Monday, in response to questioning about the officer’s actions. “And if you see somebody getting beaten up, you know, let’s go jump in and stop the fight.”

The explosive development came as a fourth biker was arrested in Lien’s beating.

Craig Wright, 29, was nabbed at his Canarsie home on Monday. Wright was busted after cops allegedly saw him in witness video that has not yet been made public.

In the clip, Wright is seen throwing punches through the shattered driver’s-side window of the 33-year-old victim’s Range Rover, according to a law-enforcement source. He is also seen allegedly kicking Lien outside the SUV.

He was charged with gang-assault and assault Monday night.

The biker was tracked down after cops traced his license plate, sources said. The bike is actually registered to his uncle, who he borrowed it from, sources said.

Cops are searching for at least two more suspects.

Meanwhile, Christopher Cruz, 28, who allegedly started the chain of events by slowing down his bike to let his pals ahead — leaving Lien to bump his car into him — said in an interview aired Monday that he felt no responsibility.

“I was looking over my shoulder to see where my friends were,” he told ABC News. “I wanted them to pull in front so I could follow them. I didn’t brake, but when I looked over my shoulder, my hand came off the throttle a little, but the driver didn’t slow down at all and bumped me.”

Additional reporting by Kirstan Conley and Yoav Gonen

Drudge Report Feed

REPORT: Bike cop joined in on SUV beatdown...

Ending Bikelash: Bicycling Surges Nationwide As Urbanites Support Bike Lanes and Bike-Sharing Programs

Studies show that bike lanes make streets safer for everyone and are better for business.

Former New York mayor Ed Koch envisioned bicycles as vehicles for the future. In 1980, he created experimental bike lanes on 6th and 7th avenues in Manhattan where riders were protected from speeding traffic by asphalt barriers. It was unlike anything most Americans had ever seen, and some people roared their disapproval. Within weeks, the bike lanes were gone.

Twenty-seven years later, New York mayor Michael Bloomberg and his transportation commissioner Janette Sadik-Khan saw the growing ranks of bicyclists on the streets as a key component of 21st-century transportation, and began building protected bike lanes in Manhattan and Brooklyn. They had studied the success of similar projects in Copenhagen and the Netherlands, noting how to make projects more efficient and aesthetically pleasing.

These “green lanes” and pedestrian plazas were an immediate hit, but they ignited a noisy reaction from a small group of well-connected people unhappy about projects in their neighborhoods, including Bloomberg’s former transportation commissioner Iris Weinshall (who happens to be married to Senator Chuck Schumer). Lawsuits were filed while New York Post and Daily News columnists thundered about the inconvenience to motorists and supposed dangers to pedestrians. New York magazine declared the situation a “Bikelash” on its cover. 

Pressure mounted on Bloomberg to sack Sadik-Khan and rip out the green lanes. Anthony Weiner, then a Queens congressman and mayoral hopeful, told Bloomberg he would spend his first year as mayor attending “a bunch of ribbon cuttings tearing out your [expletive] bike lanes.” Bicyclists everywhere braced themselves for a setback, which would once again slow progress toward safer streets in New York and around the continent.  

Now two years later, Sadik-Khan is still very much the commissioner, despite the fact that the lawsuit is still in the works. Bike lanes continue appearing across the city, including 11.3 new miles of green lanes last year alone, and New York City has launched the most ambitious bike-share program in U.S. history.

Two-thirds of New Yorkers call bike lanes a good idea in the most recent New York Times poll, compared to only 27 percent who oppose them. All of the major candidates to replace Bloomberg as mayor expressed support for bicycling at a recent forum, notes Paul Steely White, executive director of the local group Transportation Alternatives.

“Bike lanes are the new normal in New York,” White says. “People in East Harlem are saying we want bike lanes like those in other parts of town.” 

Bloomberg’s and Sadik-Khan’s biggest idea to improve New York has now hit the streets: the CitiBike bike-sharing system, the largest in North America with 6,000 bikes available at 330 stations in Manhattan and Brooklyn.

What rallied the public around bicycling? “It was a combination of things,” reports Ben Fried, who chronicled the debate as editor of Streetsblog, a web magazine covering transportation in New York. First, independent polls debunked the myth that New Yorkers disliked bike lanes. “Actually a strong majority from throughout the city supported them.” 

Fried also credits neighborhood leaders and bicyclists with mobilizing grassroots support for bike lanes, both online and at public meetings. “In the end, politicians need to see that bike lanes are a win for them.”

Janette Sadik-Khan underscores that the bike-share program is already a success, as 25,000 people have already paid for annual memberships and 31,000 trips have been taken by New Yorkers for a combined 87,000 miles—a third of the way to the moon! Sadik-khan told AlterNet that one of her happiest moments was riding up First Avenue on launch day (Memorial Day): “Three cabbies stopped and asked me about the program and then gave me a thumbs up…that certainly hasn"t happened with the previous projects….It"s really a phenomenon to see the community aspect gel so nicely. So many people interacting with big smiles on their faces and showing how the system can thrive. It"s really social transportation.”

Pressure for new biking facilities came also from business leaders who see better biking conditions as an asset for their companies. High-tech executives at 33 firms—including Foursquare, Meetup and Tumblr—urged Bloomberg to implement the bikeshare system “as a way to attract and retain the investment and talent for New York City to remain competitive.” The Hearst Corporation recently announced it will pay employees’ cost to join the CitiBikes program. “It’s a cool New York thing to do and good for fitness,” says Hearst spokesperson Lisa Bagley. “Our decision is driven by what our employees are interested in.”

Tim Blumenthal, president of PeopleForBikes and the sister Green Lane Project, stresses, “Bike issues need to be framed in the context of what they mean to the city, not just what they mean to people who bike. In New York City, for example, more green lanes, better bikeway networks, and the new CitiBike system will benefit all residents and visitors by reducing traffic, noise and air pollution–making city life a little less frenetic for everyone.”

This all represents good news for cities coast-to-coast. “If you can do it here, you can do it anywhere,” says White, paraphrasing the old song “New York, New York.” Other communities will no doubt face their own version of bikelash, but the high-profile debate in New York over bike lanes highlights two key assets of protected green lanes:

1.Bike lanes create safer streets for everyone. “It’s the safety stats that carried the day,” notes Streetsblog editor Ben Fried. “They’re pretty indisputable.” Crashes for all road users (drivers, pedestrians and bicyclists) on streets with green lanes drop on average by 40 percent, and sometimes as much as 50 percent, according to a memorandum from Deputy New York Mayor Howard Wolfson. Green lanes also lead to significantly fewer bicyclists riding on sidewalks.

2.Bike lanes are good for business.Shop owners are sometimes zealous opponents of bike lanes, which they claim will suffocate business by reducing traffic and eliminating parking. Yet businesses on 9th Avenue, the first major green lane in the city, saw a 49 percent rise in retail sales, compared to 3 percent across Manhattan as a whole, according to research by the New York City Department of Transportation. Another study of consumer patterns by Portland State University researchers, found that shoppers who arrive by bicycle spend 24 percent more at stores per month than those who drive.

New and unfamiliar ideas like green lanes always spark opposition, at first. “Pushback is inevitable,” Fried says. “It doesn’t mean the project is flawed. Once it’s built, the constituency for it will grow.”

Complaints about a “war on cars” have echoed around Seattle from a small but persistent chorus opposed to bike lanes. In response, the Cascade Bicycle Club commissioned a poll of Seattle voters (conducted by the independent research firm FM3 using a scientifically rigorous sample of 400 respondents), which found that 79 percent view bicyclists favorably, 73 percent want to see more protected green lanes, 59 percent support “replacing roads and some on-street parking” to build green lanes,” and only 31 percent believe Seattle is “waging a war on cars.”

(Green lanes in Washington, DC have also been denounced as a “war on cars,” even though only 1 percent of Washington"s roads are dedicated to bicyclists, according to computations by Washington City Paper reporter Aaron Wiener.)

In Chicago, there’s no organized opposition to Mayor Rahm Emanuel’s vision of boosting the city’s economy by providing 100 miles of green lanes and 550 more of on-street bike lanes. More than 16 miles of green lanes were built in 2012. One project on the South Side, however, did raise aesthetic concerns about historic Martin Luther King Drive, which was solved by shifting the protected green lane to a parallel street and adding buffered bike lanes (wide swaths of paint) to King Drive. The community engagement process around this issue resulted in neighbors forming the Bronzeville Bicycling Initiative to encourage more people to bike in this historically African-American community.

However Chicago Tribune columnist John Kass rouses emotions with his warnings that the mayor’s plans “foreshadow the day that cars will be illegal.” He also targets “little bike people” as “free riders” who don’t pay to keep up the roads and as scofflaws who defy traffic laws.

Ron Burke of the Active Transportation Alliance regards “little bike people” as a compliment, noting “how little space we take up on the roadway, how little wear and tear we cause, and how little our facilities cost within the grand scheme of transportation spending.”

Burke agrees with Kass that bicyclists who endanger other people should be ticketed, but deconstructs his claim that motorists pay their own way on the streets. Between 24 and 38 percent of total road costs in Illinois are not covered by user fees such as gas taxes and vehicle stickers, even when you count federal funding as user fees, Burke explains, citing a study from the Environmental Law & Policy Center.

The Tribune"s John Kass is one of a number of commentators across the country who regularly target bikes and bicyclists. After New York Daily News columnist Denis Hamill wrote, “I hate bike lanes…they are steering some people like me to road rage,” one reader responded, “All I hear is an old man yelling, ‘Get off my lawn.’”

 

Related Stories

• Native American Communities From New York Launch Fight Against Fracking and For the Environment


• Scam Alert! Press Sleeps Through the Great Post Office Fire Sale


• Guess What? Fewer Americans Call Themselves Economic Conservatives

AlterNet.org Main RSS Feed

Ending Bikelash: Bicycling Surges Nationwide As Urbanites Support Bike Lanes and Bike-Sharing Programs

Ending Bikelash: Bicycling Surges Nationwide As Urbanites Support Bike Lanes and Bike-Sharing Programs

Studies show that bike lanes make streets safer for everyone and are better for business.

Former New York mayor Ed Koch envisioned bicycles as vehicles for the future. In 1980, he created experimental bike lanes on 6th and 7th avenues in Manhattan where riders were protected from speeding traffic by asphalt barriers. It was unlike anything most Americans had ever seen, and some people roared their disapproval. Within weeks, the bike lanes were gone.

Twenty-seven years later, New York mayor Michael Bloomberg and his transportation commissioner Janette Sadik-Khan saw the growing ranks of bicyclists on the streets as a key component of 21st-century transportation, and began building protected bike lanes in Manhattan and Brooklyn. They had studied the success of similar projects in Copenhagen and the Netherlands, noting how to make projects more efficient and aesthetically pleasing.

These “green lanes” and pedestrian plazas were an immediate hit, but they ignited a noisy reaction from a small group of well-connected people unhappy about projects in their neighborhoods, including Bloomberg’s former transportation commissioner Iris Weinshall (who happens to be married to Senator Chuck Schumer). Lawsuits were filed while New York Post and Daily News columnists thundered about the inconvenience to motorists and supposed dangers to pedestrians. New York magazine declared the situation a “Bikelash” on its cover. 

Pressure mounted on Bloomberg to sack Sadik-Khan and rip out the green lanes. Anthony Weiner, then a Queens congressman and mayoral hopeful, told Bloomberg he would spend his first year as mayor attending “a bunch of ribbon cuttings tearing out your [expletive] bike lanes.” Bicyclists everywhere braced themselves for a setback, which would once again slow progress toward safer streets in New York and around the continent.  

Now two years later, Sadik-Khan is still very much the commissioner, despite the fact that the lawsuit is still in the works. Bike lanes continue appearing across the city, including 11.3 new miles of green lanes last year alone, and New York City has launched the most ambitious bike-share program in U.S. history.

Two-thirds of New Yorkers call bike lanes a good idea in the most recent New York Times poll, compared to only 27 percent who oppose them. All of the major candidates to replace Bloomberg as mayor expressed support for bicycling at a recent forum, notes Paul Steely White, executive director of the local group Transportation Alternatives.

“Bike lanes are the new normal in New York,” White says. “People in East Harlem are saying we want bike lanes like those in other parts of town.” 

Bloomberg’s and Sadik-Khan’s biggest idea to improve New York has now hit the streets: the CitiBike bike-sharing system, the largest in North America with 6,000 bikes available at 330 stations in Manhattan and Brooklyn.

What rallied the public around bicycling? “It was a combination of things,” reports Ben Fried, who chronicled the debate as editor of Streetsblog, a web magazine covering transportation in New York. First, independent polls debunked the myth that New Yorkers disliked bike lanes. “Actually a strong majority from throughout the city supported them.” 

Fried also credits neighborhood leaders and bicyclists with mobilizing grassroots support for bike lanes, both online and at public meetings. “In the end, politicians need to see that bike lanes are a win for them.”

Janette Sadik-Khan underscores that the bike-share program is already a success, as 25,000 people have already paid for annual memberships and 31,000 trips have been taken by New Yorkers for a combined 87,000 miles—a third of the way to the moon! Sadik-khan told AlterNet that one of her happiest moments was riding up First Avenue on launch day (Memorial Day): “Three cabbies stopped and asked me about the program and then gave me a thumbs up…that certainly hasn"t happened with the previous projects….It"s really a phenomenon to see the community aspect gel so nicely. So many people interacting with big smiles on their faces and showing how the system can thrive. It"s really social transportation.”

Pressure for new biking facilities came also from business leaders who see better biking conditions as an asset for their companies. High-tech executives at 33 firms—including Foursquare, Meetup and Tumblr—urged Bloomberg to implement the bikeshare system “as a way to attract and retain the investment and talent for New York City to remain competitive.” The Hearst Corporation recently announced it will pay employees’ cost to join the CitiBikes program. “It’s a cool New York thing to do and good for fitness,” says Hearst spokesperson Lisa Bagley. “Our decision is driven by what our employees are interested in.”

Tim Blumenthal, president of PeopleForBikes and the sister Green Lane Project, stresses, “Bike issues need to be framed in the context of what they mean to the city, not just what they mean to people who bike. In New York City, for example, more green lanes, better bikeway networks, and the new CitiBike system will benefit all residents and visitors by reducing traffic, noise and air pollution–making city life a little less frenetic for everyone.”

This all represents good news for cities coast-to-coast. “If you can do it here, you can do it anywhere,” says White, paraphrasing the old song “New York, New York.” Other communities will no doubt face their own version of bikelash, but the high-profile debate in New York over bike lanes highlights two key assets of protected green lanes:

1.Bike lanes create safer streets for everyone. “It’s the safety stats that carried the day,” notes Streetsblog editor Ben Fried. “They’re pretty indisputable.” Crashes for all road users (drivers, pedestrians and bicyclists) on streets with green lanes drop on average by 40 percent, and sometimes as much as 50 percent, according to a memorandum from Deputy New York Mayor Howard Wolfson. Green lanes also lead to significantly fewer bicyclists riding on sidewalks.

2.Bike lanes are good for business.Shop owners are sometimes zealous opponents of bike lanes, which they claim will suffocate business by reducing traffic and eliminating parking. Yet businesses on 9th Avenue, the first major green lane in the city, saw a 49 percent rise in retail sales, compared to 3 percent across Manhattan as a whole, according to research by the New York City Department of Transportation. Another study of consumer patterns by Portland State University researchers, found that shoppers who arrive by bicycle spend 24 percent more at stores per month than those who drive.

New and unfamiliar ideas like green lanes always spark opposition, at first. “Pushback is inevitable,” Fried says. “It doesn’t mean the project is flawed. Once it’s built, the constituency for it will grow.”

Complaints about a “war on cars” have echoed around Seattle from a small but persistent chorus opposed to bike lanes. In response, the Cascade Bicycle Club commissioned a poll of Seattle voters (conducted by the independent research firm FM3 using a scientifically rigorous sample of 400 respondents), which found that 79 percent view bicyclists favorably, 73 percent want to see more protected green lanes, 59 percent support “replacing roads and some on-street parking” to build green lanes,” and only 31 percent believe Seattle is “waging a war on cars.”

(Green lanes in Washington, DC have also been denounced as a “war on cars,” even though only 1 percent of Washington"s roads are dedicated to bicyclists, according to computations by Washington City Paper reporter Aaron Wiener.)

In Chicago, there’s no organized opposition to Mayor Rahm Emanuel’s vision of boosting the city’s economy by providing 100 miles of green lanes and 550 more of on-street bike lanes. More than 16 miles of green lanes were built in 2012. One project on the South Side, however, did raise aesthetic concerns about historic Martin Luther King Drive, which was solved by shifting the protected green lane to a parallel street and adding buffered bike lanes (wide swaths of paint) to King Drive. The community engagement process around this issue resulted in neighbors forming the Bronzeville Bicycling Initiative to encourage more people to bike in this historically African-American community.

However Chicago Tribune columnist John Kass rouses emotions with his warnings that the mayor’s plans “foreshadow the day that cars will be illegal.” He also targets “little bike people” as “free riders” who don’t pay to keep up the roads and as scofflaws who defy traffic laws.

Ron Burke of the Active Transportation Alliance regards “little bike people” as a compliment, noting “how little space we take up on the roadway, how little wear and tear we cause, and how little our facilities cost within the grand scheme of transportation spending.”

Burke agrees with Kass that bicyclists who endanger other people should be ticketed, but deconstructs his claim that motorists pay their own way on the streets. Between 24 and 38 percent of total road costs in Illinois are not covered by user fees such as gas taxes and vehicle stickers, even when you count federal funding as user fees, Burke explains, citing a study from the Environmental Law & Policy Center.

The Tribune"s John Kass is one of a number of commentators across the country who regularly target bikes and bicyclists. After New York Daily News columnist Denis Hamill wrote, “I hate bike lanes…they are steering some people like me to road rage,” one reader responded, “All I hear is an old man yelling, ‘Get off my lawn.’”

 

Related Stories

• Native American Communities From New York Launch Fight Against Fracking and For the Environment


• Scam Alert! Press Sleeps Through the Great Post Office Fire Sale


• Guess What? Fewer Americans Call Themselves Economic Conservatives

AlterNet.org Main RSS Feed

Ending Bikelash: Bicycling Surges Nationwide As Urbanites Support Bike Lanes and Bike-Sharing Programs

Ending Bikelash: Bicycling Surges Nationwide As Urbanites Support Bike Lanes and Bike-Sharing Programs

Studies show that bike lanes make streets safer for everyone and are better for business.

Former New York mayor Ed Koch envisioned bicycles as vehicles for the future. In 1980, he created experimental bike lanes on 6th and 7th avenues in Manhattan where riders were protected from speeding traffic by asphalt barriers. It was unlike anything most Americans had ever seen, and some people roared their disapproval. Within weeks, the bike lanes were gone.

Twenty-seven years later, New York mayor Michael Bloomberg and his transportation commissioner Janette Sadik-Khan saw the growing ranks of bicyclists on the streets as a key component of 21st-century transportation, and began building protected bike lanes in Manhattan and Brooklyn. They had studied the success of similar projects in Copenhagen and the Netherlands, noting how to make projects more efficient and aesthetically pleasing.

These “green lanes” and pedestrian plazas were an immediate hit, but they ignited a noisy reaction from a small group of well-connected people unhappy about projects in their neighborhoods, including Bloomberg’s former transportation commissioner Iris Weinshall (who happens to be married to Senator Chuck Schumer). Lawsuits were filed while New York Post and Daily News columnists thundered about the inconvenience to motorists and supposed dangers to pedestrians. New York magazine declared the situation a “Bikelash” on its cover. 

Pressure mounted on Bloomberg to sack Sadik-Khan and rip out the green lanes. Anthony Weiner, then a Queens congressman and mayoral hopeful, told Bloomberg he would spend his first year as mayor attending “a bunch of ribbon cuttings tearing out your [expletive] bike lanes.” Bicyclists everywhere braced themselves for a setback, which would once again slow progress toward safer streets in New York and around the continent.  

Now two years later, Sadik-Khan is still very much the commissioner, despite the fact that the lawsuit is still in the works. Bike lanes continue appearing across the city, including 11.3 new miles of green lanes last year alone, and New York City has launched the most ambitious bike-share program in U.S. history.

Two-thirds of New Yorkers call bike lanes a good idea in the most recent New York Times poll, compared to only 27 percent who oppose them. All of the major candidates to replace Bloomberg as mayor expressed support for bicycling at a recent forum, notes Paul Steely White, executive director of the local group Transportation Alternatives.

“Bike lanes are the new normal in New York,” White says. “People in East Harlem are saying we want bike lanes like those in other parts of town.” 

Bloomberg’s and Sadik-Khan’s biggest idea to improve New York has now hit the streets: the CitiBike bike-sharing system, the largest in North America with 6,000 bikes available at 330 stations in Manhattan and Brooklyn.

What rallied the public around bicycling? “It was a combination of things,” reports Ben Fried, who chronicled the debate as editor of Streetsblog, a web magazine covering transportation in New York. First, independent polls debunked the myth that New Yorkers disliked bike lanes. “Actually a strong majority from throughout the city supported them.” 

Fried also credits neighborhood leaders and bicyclists with mobilizing grassroots support for bike lanes, both online and at public meetings. “In the end, politicians need to see that bike lanes are a win for them.”

Janette Sadik-Khan underscores that the bike-share program is already a success, as 25,000 people have already paid for annual memberships and 31,000 trips have been taken by New Yorkers for a combined 87,000 miles—a third of the way to the moon! Sadik-khan told AlterNet that one of her happiest moments was riding up First Avenue on launch day (Memorial Day): “Three cabbies stopped and asked me about the program and then gave me a thumbs up…that certainly hasn"t happened with the previous projects….It"s really a phenomenon to see the community aspect gel so nicely. So many people interacting with big smiles on their faces and showing how the system can thrive. It"s really social transportation.”

Pressure for new biking facilities came also from business leaders who see better biking conditions as an asset for their companies. High-tech executives at 33 firms—including Foursquare, Meetup and Tumblr—urged Bloomberg to implement the bikeshare system “as a way to attract and retain the investment and talent for New York City to remain competitive.” The Hearst Corporation recently announced it will pay employees’ cost to join the CitiBikes program. “It’s a cool New York thing to do and good for fitness,” says Hearst spokesperson Lisa Bagley. “Our decision is driven by what our employees are interested in.”

Tim Blumenthal, president of PeopleForBikes and the sister Green Lane Project, stresses, “Bike issues need to be framed in the context of what they mean to the city, not just what they mean to people who bike. In New York City, for example, more green lanes, better bikeway networks, and the new CitiBike system will benefit all residents and visitors by reducing traffic, noise and air pollution–making city life a little less frenetic for everyone.”

This all represents good news for cities coast-to-coast. “If you can do it here, you can do it anywhere,” says White, paraphrasing the old song “New York, New York.” Other communities will no doubt face their own version of bikelash, but the high-profile debate in New York over bike lanes highlights two key assets of protected green lanes:

1.Bike lanes create safer streets for everyone. “It’s the safety stats that carried the day,” notes Streetsblog editor Ben Fried. “They’re pretty indisputable.” Crashes for all road users (drivers, pedestrians and bicyclists) on streets with green lanes drop on average by 40 percent, and sometimes as much as 50 percent, according to a memorandum from Deputy New York Mayor Howard Wolfson. Green lanes also lead to significantly fewer bicyclists riding on sidewalks.

2.Bike lanes are good for business.Shop owners are sometimes zealous opponents of bike lanes, which they claim will suffocate business by reducing traffic and eliminating parking. Yet businesses on 9th Avenue, the first major green lane in the city, saw a 49 percent rise in retail sales, compared to 3 percent across Manhattan as a whole, according to research by the New York City Department of Transportation. Another study of consumer patterns by Portland State University researchers, found that shoppers who arrive by bicycle spend 24 percent more at stores per month than those who drive.

New and unfamiliar ideas like green lanes always spark opposition, at first. “Pushback is inevitable,” Fried says. “It doesn’t mean the project is flawed. Once it’s built, the constituency for it will grow.”

Complaints about a “war on cars” have echoed around Seattle from a small but persistent chorus opposed to bike lanes. In response, the Cascade Bicycle Club commissioned a poll of Seattle voters (conducted by the independent research firm FM3 using a scientifically rigorous sample of 400 respondents), which found that 79 percent view bicyclists favorably, 73 percent want to see more protected green lanes, 59 percent support “replacing roads and some on-street parking” to build green lanes,” and only 31 percent believe Seattle is “waging a war on cars.”

(Green lanes in Washington, DC have also been denounced as a “war on cars,” even though only 1 percent of Washington"s roads are dedicated to bicyclists, according to computations by Washington City Paper reporter Aaron Wiener.)

In Chicago, there’s no organized opposition to Mayor Rahm Emanuel’s vision of boosting the city’s economy by providing 100 miles of green lanes and 550 more of on-street bike lanes. More than 16 miles of green lanes were built in 2012. One project on the South Side, however, did raise aesthetic concerns about historic Martin Luther King Drive, which was solved by shifting the protected green lane to a parallel street and adding buffered bike lanes (wide swaths of paint) to King Drive. The community engagement process around this issue resulted in neighbors forming the Bronzeville Bicycling Initiative to encourage more people to bike in this historically African-American community.

However Chicago Tribune columnist John Kass rouses emotions with his warnings that the mayor’s plans “foreshadow the day that cars will be illegal.” He also targets “little bike people” as “free riders” who don’t pay to keep up the roads and as scofflaws who defy traffic laws.

Ron Burke of the Active Transportation Alliance regards “little bike people” as a compliment, noting “how little space we take up on the roadway, how little wear and tear we cause, and how little our facilities cost within the grand scheme of transportation spending.”

Burke agrees with Kass that bicyclists who endanger other people should be ticketed, but deconstructs his claim that motorists pay their own way on the streets. Between 24 and 38 percent of total road costs in Illinois are not covered by user fees such as gas taxes and vehicle stickers, even when you count federal funding as user fees, Burke explains, citing a study from the Environmental Law & Policy Center.

The Tribune"s John Kass is one of a number of commentators across the country who regularly target bikes and bicyclists. After New York Daily News columnist Denis Hamill wrote, “I hate bike lanes…they are steering some people like me to road rage,” one reader responded, “All I hear is an old man yelling, ‘Get off my lawn.’”

 

Related Stories

• Native American Communities From New York Launch Fight Against Fracking and For the Environment


• Scam Alert! Press Sleeps Through the Great Post Office Fire Sale


• Guess What? Fewer Americans Call Themselves Economic Conservatives

AlterNet.org Main RSS Feed

Ending Bikelash: Bicycling Surges Nationwide As Urbanites Support Bike Lanes and Bike-Sharing Programs

Ending Bikelash: Bicycling Surges Nationwide As Urbanites Support Bike Lanes and Bike-Sharing Programs

Studies show that bike lanes make streets safer for everyone and are better for business.

Former New York mayor Ed Koch envisioned bicycles as vehicles for the future. In 1980, he created experimental bike lanes on 6th and 7th avenues in Manhattan where riders were protected from speeding traffic by asphalt barriers. It was unlike anything most Americans had ever seen, and some people roared their disapproval. Within weeks, the bike lanes were gone.

Twenty-seven years later, New York mayor Michael Bloomberg and his transportation commissioner Janette Sadik-Khan saw the growing ranks of bicyclists on the streets as a key component of 21st-century transportation, and began building protected bike lanes in Manhattan and Brooklyn. They had studied the success of similar projects in Copenhagen and the Netherlands, noting how to make projects more efficient and aesthetically pleasing.

These “green lanes” and pedestrian plazas were an immediate hit, but they ignited a noisy reaction from a small group of well-connected people unhappy about projects in their neighborhoods, including Bloomberg’s former transportation commissioner Iris Weinshall (who happens to be married to Senator Chuck Schumer). Lawsuits were filed while New York Post and Daily News columnists thundered about the inconvenience to motorists and supposed dangers to pedestrians. New York magazine declared the situation a “Bikelash” on its cover. 

Pressure mounted on Bloomberg to sack Sadik-Khan and rip out the green lanes. Anthony Weiner, then a Queens congressman and mayoral hopeful, told Bloomberg he would spend his first year as mayor attending “a bunch of ribbon cuttings tearing out your [expletive] bike lanes.” Bicyclists everywhere braced themselves for a setback, which would once again slow progress toward safer streets in New York and around the continent.  

Now two years later, Sadik-Khan is still very much the commissioner, despite the fact that the lawsuit is still in the works. Bike lanes continue appearing across the city, including 11.3 new miles of green lanes last year alone, and New York City has launched the most ambitious bike-share program in U.S. history.

Two-thirds of New Yorkers call bike lanes a good idea in the most recent New York Times poll, compared to only 27 percent who oppose them. All of the major candidates to replace Bloomberg as mayor expressed support for bicycling at a recent forum, notes Paul Steely White, executive director of the local group Transportation Alternatives.

“Bike lanes are the new normal in New York,” White says. “People in East Harlem are saying we want bike lanes like those in other parts of town.” 

Bloomberg’s and Sadik-Khan’s biggest idea to improve New York has now hit the streets: the CitiBike bike-sharing system, the largest in North America with 6,000 bikes available at 330 stations in Manhattan and Brooklyn.

What rallied the public around bicycling? “It was a combination of things,” reports Ben Fried, who chronicled the debate as editor of Streetsblog, a web magazine covering transportation in New York. First, independent polls debunked the myth that New Yorkers disliked bike lanes. “Actually a strong majority from throughout the city supported them.” 

Fried also credits neighborhood leaders and bicyclists with mobilizing grassroots support for bike lanes, both online and at public meetings. “In the end, politicians need to see that bike lanes are a win for them.”

Janette Sadik-Khan underscores that the bike-share program is already a success, as 25,000 people have already paid for annual memberships and 31,000 trips have been taken by New Yorkers for a combined 87,000 miles—a third of the way to the moon! Sadik-khan told AlterNet that one of her happiest moments was riding up First Avenue on launch day (Memorial Day): “Three cabbies stopped and asked me about the program and then gave me a thumbs up…that certainly hasn"t happened with the previous projects….It"s really a phenomenon to see the community aspect gel so nicely. So many people interacting with big smiles on their faces and showing how the system can thrive. It"s really social transportation.”

Pressure for new biking facilities came also from business leaders who see better biking conditions as an asset for their companies. High-tech executives at 33 firms—including Foursquare, Meetup and Tumblr—urged Bloomberg to implement the bikeshare system “as a way to attract and retain the investment and talent for New York City to remain competitive.” The Hearst Corporation recently announced it will pay employees’ cost to join the CitiBikes program. “It’s a cool New York thing to do and good for fitness,” says Hearst spokesperson Lisa Bagley. “Our decision is driven by what our employees are interested in.”

Tim Blumenthal, president of PeopleForBikes and the sister Green Lane Project, stresses, “Bike issues need to be framed in the context of what they mean to the city, not just what they mean to people who bike. In New York City, for example, more green lanes, better bikeway networks, and the new CitiBike system will benefit all residents and visitors by reducing traffic, noise and air pollution–making city life a little less frenetic for everyone.”

This all represents good news for cities coast-to-coast. “If you can do it here, you can do it anywhere,” says White, paraphrasing the old song “New York, New York.” Other communities will no doubt face their own version of bikelash, but the high-profile debate in New York over bike lanes highlights two key assets of protected green lanes:

1.Bike lanes create safer streets for everyone. “It’s the safety stats that carried the day,” notes Streetsblog editor Ben Fried. “They’re pretty indisputable.” Crashes for all road users (drivers, pedestrians and bicyclists) on streets with green lanes drop on average by 40 percent, and sometimes as much as 50 percent, according to a memorandum from Deputy New York Mayor Howard Wolfson. Green lanes also lead to significantly fewer bicyclists riding on sidewalks.

2.Bike lanes are good for business.Shop owners are sometimes zealous opponents of bike lanes, which they claim will suffocate business by reducing traffic and eliminating parking. Yet businesses on 9th Avenue, the first major green lane in the city, saw a 49 percent rise in retail sales, compared to 3 percent across Manhattan as a whole, according to research by the New York City Department of Transportation. Another study of consumer patterns by Portland State University researchers, found that shoppers who arrive by bicycle spend 24 percent more at stores per month than those who drive.

New and unfamiliar ideas like green lanes always spark opposition, at first. “Pushback is inevitable,” Fried says. “It doesn’t mean the project is flawed. Once it’s built, the constituency for it will grow.”

Complaints about a “war on cars” have echoed around Seattle from a small but persistent chorus opposed to bike lanes. In response, the Cascade Bicycle Club commissioned a poll of Seattle voters (conducted by the independent research firm FM3 using a scientifically rigorous sample of 400 respondents), which found that 79 percent view bicyclists favorably, 73 percent want to see more protected green lanes, 59 percent support “replacing roads and some on-street parking” to build green lanes,” and only 31 percent believe Seattle is “waging a war on cars.”

(Green lanes in Washington, DC have also been denounced as a “war on cars,” even though only 1 percent of Washington"s roads are dedicated to bicyclists, according to computations by Washington City Paper reporter Aaron Wiener.)

In Chicago, there’s no organized opposition to Mayor Rahm Emanuel’s vision of boosting the city’s economy by providing 100 miles of green lanes and 550 more of on-street bike lanes. More than 16 miles of green lanes were built in 2012. One project on the South Side, however, did raise aesthetic concerns about historic Martin Luther King Drive, which was solved by shifting the protected green lane to a parallel street and adding buffered bike lanes (wide swaths of paint) to King Drive. The community engagement process around this issue resulted in neighbors forming the Bronzeville Bicycling Initiative to encourage more people to bike in this historically African-American community.

However Chicago Tribune columnist John Kass rouses emotions with his warnings that the mayor’s plans “foreshadow the day that cars will be illegal.” He also targets “little bike people” as “free riders” who don’t pay to keep up the roads and as scofflaws who defy traffic laws.

Ron Burke of the Active Transportation Alliance regards “little bike people” as a compliment, noting “how little space we take up on the roadway, how little wear and tear we cause, and how little our facilities cost within the grand scheme of transportation spending.”

Burke agrees with Kass that bicyclists who endanger other people should be ticketed, but deconstructs his claim that motorists pay their own way on the streets. Between 24 and 38 percent of total road costs in Illinois are not covered by user fees such as gas taxes and vehicle stickers, even when you count federal funding as user fees, Burke explains, citing a study from the Environmental Law & Policy Center.

The Tribune"s John Kass is one of a number of commentators across the country who regularly target bikes and bicyclists. After New York Daily News columnist Denis Hamill wrote, “I hate bike lanes…they are steering some people like me to road rage,” one reader responded, “All I hear is an old man yelling, ‘Get off my lawn.’”

 

Related Stories

• Native American Communities From New York Launch Fight Against Fracking and For the Environment


• Scam Alert! Press Sleeps Through the Great Post Office Fire Sale


• Guess What? Fewer Americans Call Themselves Economic Conservatives

AlterNet.org Main RSS Feed

Ending Bikelash: Bicycling Surges Nationwide As Urbanites Support Bike Lanes and Bike-Sharing Programs