One constant in policymaking, from the Progressive Era through the New Deal up to today, is the need to support policy proposals with data. Policymakers are expected to quantify the extent of a problem and measure the impacts of policy interventions. Just look at the curriculum of a public policy graduate program today and you will see that it is heavily weighted toward quantitative analysis. While this approach increases our knowledge and our ability to make informed decisions and generally leads to greater government accountability, it does present a challenge for bicycling given the current dearth of data collected on bicycling. (To give just one example of the feeble state on data on bicycling, bikes appear just twice in this 385 page catalogue of “transportation energy data.” Despite their limitations, the Census’ American Community Survey and the National Household Travel Survey remain the best sources on bicycling levels.)

For many of us, the health benefits of bicycling may seem self-evident. After all, traveling by foot and by bicycle requires a physical exertion not needed to drive a car.  However, for policy purposes these benefits need to quantified and demonstrated empirically. Researchers Pucher, Buehler, Bassett, and Dannenburg, recently released a study called “Walking and Cycling to Health: A comparative analysis of city, state, and international data,” which uses existing data on health and active transportation to show that higher rates of walking and biking are correlated with lower rates of self-reported obesity at the city, state, and country level. At the city level, active travel has a negative relationship with diabetes, meaning that cities with higher biking and walking rates have generally lower rates of diabetes.

For those interested in statistics, in both figures above, the solid line is the log regression line for the fifty states and the dashed line is the regression line for 47 of the 50 largest cities. The direction of line shows the inverse relationship between biking and walking (the x-axis in both figures) and obesity (the y-axis in the top figure) and diabetes rates (the y-axis in the bottom figure). The relationship is statistically significant at p<0.001 for cities and states for obesity and for states in diabetes. The relationship is significant at p<0.01 for cities for diabetes.

The results effectively show the direction of the relationship. Cities and states with higher levels of biking and walking have lower levels of obesity and diabetes. This may be enough to encourage communities to promote walking and biking. However, the data constraints limit the conclusions that can be drawn from this particular study. First, the data are cross-sectional, a snapshot of one moment, and therefore they cannot tell us anything about change over time. Secondly, the data are aggregated, which means that they speak to population-wide characteristics, not individual results. Third, data were not available to account for other factors that may have contributed to biking and walking levels and health status. For example, they did not take into account diet or family medical history. Finally, even if such data had been available, the relatively small sample sizes would have made it difficult to get statistically significant results if they had added control variables . These data limitations reinforce the need for better data collection.

In a related study, “Evaluating Public Transportation Health Benefits,” Todd Litman of the Victoria Transport Policy Institute reports on the health benefits of living in transit-oriented and mixed used neighborhoods. Litman finds that high quality public transportation and walkable and bikable mixed-use communities located around transit stations reduce traffic crashes and pollution emissions, increase physical fitness, improve mental health, improve basic access to medical care and healthy food and increase affordability.

~Darren Flusche
League Policy Analyst

Imagine my surprise to get an e-mail solicitation yesterday from a casino in Black Hawk, Colo., asking me to bring our business to their facility…. Regular blog readers will know this is the very same town that has banned bicyclists from its streets, making it really quite an unlikely destination for a national bicycling organization to choose for a meeting, unless perhaps we are planning some civil disobedience, or a field trip to see what life would be like in a town where bikes were not allowed.

Yes, maybe we could take a handful of potential major donors out there and put the fear of God (or Glen Beck) into them by showing what the world would be like without bicycle advocacy groups like the League and Bicycle Colorado. Or maybe we could go undercover and surreptitiously hand out garish plastic bike pins (if you’ve been to the National Bike Summit you know what I’m talking about) to resort visitors.

What a stark contract we could draw with the promotional materials I picked up at the ASAE convention last week from places like Sonoma County: check out the cover of their Visitor Guide and Wine Map; or Vancouver BC where the meeting planners guide also has a cover shot of normal looking people on bikes and the local bike network is promoted as evidence of their green credentials. Of course, Portland, Ore., and their Travel Portland site has not just a few images but a choice of hotel packages that include bikes.

Closer to Black Hawk, nearby Boulder has getaway packages featuring on- and off-road biking attractions that might just appeal more to the 50+ million adults in the USA that love to ride; Longmont has plenty of riding options; and Fort Collins proudly boasts of its walking and bicycling opportunities in the opening sentence of its website.

For the time being, at least, I think we’ll consider those places as just a tad more suitable for us than Black Hawk.

In fact, we’re having our next strategic planning meeting this fall in … Denver; check out the pedicab on the cover of their tourist guide this year, and the launch of the Denver bike sharing program certainly factored into our location decision! And we’ll be taking a tour of Boulder while we are there. Sorry, Black Hawk. Maybe next year.

Andy Clarke
President, League of American Bicyclists

A ten-day traffic jam stretching more than 60 miles outside of Beijing, China is a nightmare – a nightmare for those in their cars,  for the Chinese government, and for its citizens. The jam, noted as the longest in history, formed on August 14 and has caused some drivers to be stuck on the road for six days.

(Associated Press/Alexander F. Yuan)

According to The Hindu,

The number of vehicles in Beijing has increased by 1,900 a day on average in the first six months of this year, officials said at a recent transportation seminar. Beijing, like many of China’s big cities, has invested heavily on widening roads, building towering flyovers and expanding its subway system. It is, however, still struggling to keep pace with the surge of new vehicles. China, with its fast-expanding middle-class, this year, overtook the United States to become the world’s biggest car market. In Beijing alone, a city of 20 million, the total number of vehicles is expected to hit 7 million by 2015. The city’s roads can accommodate 6.7 million vehicles…To ease the burden on the roads, the government is planning to invest 331.2 billion Yuan ($ 49.4 billion) in the next five years to expand its subway system by 850 km and increase the usage of public transport to 40 per cent.

Hopefully, China’s efforts include bike infrastructure and increasing the bike-mode share, in addition to expanding its public transportation system. Similar problems are popping up in countries near and far. Click here for a slide show of 12 of the world’s most high traffic areas.

Similar recurring nightmares (albeit not as long as Beijing’s) are clogging our own backyards. Next time, instead of sitting idle in your car for two hours on you way to work and for two hours on the way back, ride your bike. Worst case scenario, it will take you the same amount of time as when you sat in traffic. However, when you bike commute you don’t subject yourself to the frustration of going nowhere and annoying radio morning shows. You feel refreshed and not the least bit irritated from the time you wasted sitting in traffic – because you didn’t!

In addition to biking your work commute and errands, take action and protect vital bicycle funding in your community. The more citizens on bikes, the less traffic and the happier we will all be.

The League is working to build a Bicycle Friendly America. Get involved, and enjoy the ride.

~Meghan Cahill
League Director of Communications

The League is proud to be a Gold Level sponsor of this year’s Pro Walk/Pro Bike Conference taking place September 13-17.  Bronze Level BFC Chattanooga, TN will be hosting the biennial conference. Along with sharing information on the League’s programs to participants from our booth, we’ll be taking part in several plenaries, panel discussions and workshops on connecting offroad riding opportunities to traditional bicycle networks, creating bicycle friendly work places, Bicycle Friendly Communities, state DOT bicycle programs, distracted driving and federal transportation policy. You can see the full list of program items here.

Though the conference is quickly approaching, it’s not too late to sign up. As added incentive, all panel presentations are now qualified for AICP continuing education credit. This not only speaks to the importance and timing of our work in the planning field, but offers added incentive for your community’s planning staff to participate.

~Jeff Peel
State & Local Advocacy Coordinator

As bicycling continues to grow across the country, so does the need for increased understanding of how to safely ride a bike. There’s much more to learn beyond the basic balance, braking and shifting.  Luckily, with proper training and a bit of practice, it’s not that hard. With our terrific Smart Cycling series of courses, and our hardworking League Cycling Instructors (LCIs), we offer courses for cyclists of all skill levels – beginner to expert.

With this growth of bicycling, comes the need for more instructors. The League relies on our wonderful LCIs to help deliver our Smart Cycling message across the country, and we welcome more cycling enthusiasts to join us in this effort. What would have made for a full year of instructor seminars a few years back, now makes for a full month! We have 16 seminars remaining this year [2 are apparently already full!]. See the schedule below, and consider signing up for one:

Having active LCIs  in your state, community or business earns you credit in their respective award recognition applications. If  you’re working on any of these, it’s a great way to bolster your responses to the Education section. Also, we strongly encourage law enforcement, Safe Routes to School practitioners, planners and engineers to participate. As professionals working on behalf of cyclists, you already understand the needs, rights and responsibilities of bicyclists. You’ll learn the necessary skills to better share this with others.

To learn more about becoming a LCI, visit the Instructor FAQ’s , contact Education Program Director Preston Tyree or call the League office at 202.822.1333.

~Jeff Peel
State & Local Advocacy Coordinator

There’s been a lot said and written about the decline of Detroit, Mich after its deindustrialization. Long ago dubbed the Motor City, locals tell us that many streets are void of auto-traffic making them great for bikes. There’s lots of people and organizations trying to turn the city around. Folks like the League of Michigan Bicyclists and Todd Scott at Michigan Trails and Greenways Alliance are working to re-energize the city through bicycles and greenways. Now they may have some help from the Mower Gang.

Walking through a maze of shrubbery, trees, tires, paint cans and logs the size of wheelbarrows, it was hard to imagine that people raced bicycles there.

“I cannot believe that this has been abandoned in time,” said Tom Nardone, founder of the Mower Gang. The small group of volunteers was standing on the Dorais Velodrome in northeast Detroit on Friday. The motto on their shirts said it all, “Winning Detroit’s Other Turf War.”

Though the concrete velodrome needs quite a bit more maintenance to be race worthy, the group of volunteer armed with mowers and weedwackers did succeed in making it rideable again.

“It’s really not about getting some 45-year-old guy a better place to ride his bike,” said [Tom] Nardone, reflecting on the Mower Gang’s mission. “It’s more about getting 10-, 12-, 13-year-old kids a better place to spend an afternoon.”

~Jeff Peel
State & Local Advocacy Coordinator

We have been following the Reed Bates’ case since pretty much the day the saga began. At the very outset, I called a couple of the people closely involved with Mr. Bates and offered the League’s help; it did appear that the charges were inappropriate, that Bates had a legal right to ride where he was riding, and that the jury that Bates chose to be heard by was incorrectly instructed by the first judge involved. On that basis, we would have been happy to help defend his right to ride on the road.

Our offer to assist was not accepted; instead, he and his advisers chose to assert that not only was Bates legally allowed to ride where he was riding, but that’s where he and everyone else should be riding, even in the presence of a perfectly rideable shoulder. That approach took the issue beyond a strict legal argument as to where one is legally allowed to ride to where one should ride, and a rural Texas courtroom may not be the best place to have that call made on our behalf.  As the situation has developed, Bates (and the people advising him) has unfortunately chosen to follow a strategy that our board and legal advisers did not think was in the best interests of all cyclists – from the initial trial by jury preference to a failure to show up for court dates and hearings to the pursuit of a position that is simply not reasonable and could easily backfire.

We have remained in touch with the issue with local Dallas-area advocates,  Bike Texas and our board of directors. It is instructive that none of us have chosen to get involved. I think we all regret that the way the case has been played by Bates and his advisers has precluded us from constructively intervening to help him and defend our collective rights to the road.

Andy Clarke
President, League of American Bicyclists

As we mentioned last week, state transportation agencies are faced with another round of rescissions and will be cutting unspent funds from various programs. Unlike previous rescissions, these cuts do not have to follow a proportionality clause, meaning an increased threat for programs that typically fund bicycling projects.

You can help prevent this by taking action! Visit our Advocacy Center and tell your Governor to require that these cuts be made proportionately across eligible programs. States must report which program funds are affected by August 25th — so action is needed this week!

For more information on how rescissions work, visit our Advocacy Advance report Rescissions and Restoration: Fighting for Priority. For more information on your state’s rescission amount see this chart.

~Jeff Peel
State & Local Advocacy Coordinator

Los Angeles, the second largest and debatably most auto-centric city in the United States, is reaching out towards cyclists and making an effort to transform the city to make room for bikes.  To reaffirm this point, L.A. hosted a bicycle safety summit this morning, August 16. This step towards bicycle-friendliness comes after Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa was hit by a car while on his bike. The accident crash resulted in a shattered elbow and a new push to increase safety for bicyclists.

The Mayor made a formal announcement on You Tube that included his personal crash, the need for improvement in L.A.’s bicycle infrastructure, and his intention to focus on this subject — starting with this morning’s bike safety summit. He also wrote that, “Eventually we plan to build a network of 1,663 miles of bikeways. I encourage everyone to take a look at the plan and give input.” Villaraigosa envisions Los Angeles’ climate and landscape as an ideal place for cyclists. The Mayor hopes that today’s discussion and upcoming bicycle plan updates will maximize what the city has going for it.

~Carly Sieff
League Bicycle Friendly America Program Assistant

Technology is amazing and typically makes everything easier – information sharing, photo sharing, video sharing, and now bike sharing! Bike sharing by iphone joins the extensive list of bike-sharing systems already in place. Just in the past couple of years we have seen a boom in cities adopting bike share systems as an additional public transportation option – some of the more popular are Paris; Montreal; Washington, D.C.; Denver; Minneapolis; Chicago; and the list keeps growing. Cities are not the only ones on top of this boom, businesses are implementing systems, and even colleges and universities are getting in the game.   Some systems allow people passing by to swipe their credit card and  ride off, while others require a little planning ahead but can be just as convenient.  Coming this fall to the Big Apple is bike sharing by iphone called Sobi.  Soon a user will be able to locate an available bike with the simple touch of a phone. I once thought bike riding was as simple as it could get, but with these innovations in bike share systems I am starting to believe it can be even simpler.

~Alison Dewey
League Bicycle Friendly America Program Specialist