Change I can believe in?

With the arrival warm weather you see a rapid explosion of century rides, rides that are 100 miles. The most prevalent are century rides designed to raise funds for a non-for profit. They all require a great deal of planning and logistics to execute these rides. But none more than the Bicycle Coalition of Greater Philadelphia Bike Philly ride. Which includes 20 miles of car free streets in Philadelphia and thousands of riders. Over the years there have been growing problems the expense of permits and police to control traffic and deal with street closures. The added problem was the entry of $50.00 per person, made this event impossible to participate for the majority of Philadelphia residents.

So the BCGP is working on a new solution, a Ciclovia or as it is more commonly none in the United States, Summer Streets. Having attended Summer Streets in New York City on several occasions this is a much better solution than yet another century ride. Summer Streets are not a bicycle ride, they are street fair that stretches over miles full of activities. Its open to the public, is draw for tourists, and by leaving key cross streets open has a limited impact on traffic. If they start early in the morning there may be a chance to ride through the empty streets like I did at 7am at New York City's Summer Streets, but by 10am the streets were packed with wall to wall for the entire 7 mile length. An amazing sight that you have to see to believe.

I wish the BCGP good luck and hope that they are able to find the sponsorship to make this Ciclovia a success. As well as a new Philadelphia tradition.

http://blog.bicyclecoalition.org/2012/05/important-announcement-concerning-bike.html

Stu Bykofksy Rides Again

 

It's official a bill on bicycle lanes that a minority of the city council tried to sneak past last year is back again in all its glory. Philadelphia City Council Bill 12037, a bill which will require all new bicycle lanes to get City Council approval first.  

This time the Bicycle Coalition of Greater Philadelphia chose to negotiate with the City Council. The committee got what it wanted a requirement that all bicycle lanes be approved by an ordinance by the City Council. The caveat being that this would only apply if the bicycle took a way a lane of traffic or parking. Which describes every bicycle lane installed in Philadelphia. In addition if the City Council fails to pass an ordinance approving than the bicycle lane has to be removed, within 8 months of the lane being installed.

All in all the terms of this bill way very heavily in the favor of the Philadelphia City Council and the Bicycle Coalition of Greater Philadelphia seemed rather quiet about this. Until the BCGP announced that had made a deal in which Councilman Squilla agreed to introduce a safe streets bill. That would make Philadelphia's traffic code conform to PA traffic code in several ways:

• Makes the penalty for a bike running a red light $100;
• Allows two bikes to ride abreast & repeals the mandatory side path rule;
• Prohibits opening a car door in a travel lane unless it is safe to do so;
• Prohibits parking in bike lanes.

A convenient fact that Stu Bykofsky has left out of his tale of biking Philadelphia, on a protected bicycle lane. So gloat all you want Stu, but this time the bikeheads and pedalphiles got a better deal out of the Philadelphia City Council that far exceeds what you think is a win.

Philadelphia City Council's Three Blind Mice

 It seems that three blind mice from the Philadelphia City Council are causing mischief. Philadelphia is a city rife with serious issues in need of the city councils urgent attention. A murder rate from guns at an average of one per day, a school district that is facing a financial short fall of 200 million dollar due to mismanagement, and 40,000 abandoned properties with millions of dollars in taxes uncollected. These properties have blighted neighborhoods and recently caused the death of two Philadelphia fire fighters.

Instead the three blind mice of the city council, MarkSquilla, Bill Greenlee, and, Ciy Council President Darrel Clarke are intent on revisiting the past. Trying to enact a policy requiring all bicycle lanes within Philadelphia to get city council approval. In May 2011 the city council tried to enact a similar policy, in an underhanded, but expected manner for Philadelphia politics. The bill was announced just days before the Memorial Day weekend and fast tracked to be voted on just after the holiday weekend. When the Bicycle Coalition of Greater Philadelphia mobilized its membership to speak at the meeting the time for the public to speak was moved up and when that didn’t work one council member tried to disqualify everyone who spoke against the bill by claiming they were members of the Bicycle Coalition were not part of the public.

A recent post on the BCGP website these council members are taking the same approach, with hearings to occur in late May, most likely using the identical bill from last year. This also means that we can expect more of the same hearing delays as last year. An aspect of this bill claims that it is trying to incorporate input from the local community. That is until the community disagrees with the politics and  lack of vision of city council members.

It's truly pathetic that the Philadelphia City Council continues to use bicycle infrastructure as way to distract from real issues that need to be addressed. 

A Challenge to Stu Bykofsky

The true face of he who must not be named.

Finally spring has arrived in Philadelphia with a clear signal to all. It's not the first red robin or flower, nor is it the crack of the bat as the Phillies warm up for their first home game at Citizens Bank Park. No its a column from Stu Bykofsky columnist and professional grumpy old man for the Philadelphia Daily News about bicycles and bicycle lanes in Philadelphia.

While the specific nature of Mr. Bykofsky's column about the 10^th St. bicycle lane in Chinatown and the upcoming bill City Council members are trying to sneak through again is a separate blog post to be addressed at a later date. It's the vehemence and unsubstantiated opinion that he masquerades as fact Specifically his statement of;

I do have a problem with bicyclists who ignore the rules of the road to which they are subject as vehicles under Pennsylvania law. That means stay off the sidewalks, ride in the direction of traffic, full stops at stop signs and no blowing through red lights, the last two being things that nearly every pedalphile does.

It's not just the play on words of pedalphile, that's childish. It's his unproven and inflammatory statement how almost every cyclists does not stop at stop signs and run red lights. To which one can only say; ok Stu prove it. Provide a statically valid study which the results can be replicated. Or simply set a video camera on a tripod at a Philadelphia street corner that shows a high percentage of cyclists actively running red lights and stop signs within a given period of time. No editing and it must be stamped with a time code.

I'm sure Stu can convince some intern to do this, otherwise he should stick to yelling at clouds and telling small children to stay off his lawn.

An interview with the Philly Bike Party

Recently I wrote a post about the Philly Bike Party. Modeled after the San Jose Bike Party this a social ride about bikes and boom boxes. A night ride through Philadelphia with stops for dancing. Recently the creators of the Philly Bike Party, Steph and Karenina, were kind enough to answer some questions.

What inspired you to start holding Bike Parties in Philadelphia?

Steph and I met while working to organize Philly Naked Bike Ride 2011. We were both deeply impressed by the fact such a huge-seeming venture was really just a hand full of people who created a movement by simply putting up a website and using their own money to design and print some posters. It did, of course, take more than that to make it as well-oiled and fantastic as it is, but we saw first hand that it was possible.  During the Naked Bike Ride I could not get over how much fun I was having. I remarked out loud to no one in particular, "Wouldn't it be awesome if we could do this all the time?" and a girl on her bike responded, "Check out Bike Party!". I went home, read about San Jose's movement, , and fell instantly in love. At the PNBR wrap-up meeting I proposed the idea to Steph, and Philly Bike Party was officially born.

Did you work with the San Jose Bike Party to help create the Philly Bike Party and if yes what were some of the most important things you learned?

I emailed them to ask them for tips and the funniest part was how excited they were about it! It was this group of people who had been putting so much hard work and love into something they cared about for so long and suddenly someone 3,000 miles a way wanted to replicate it. They were bowled over by the possibility of making Bike Party coast to coast. Ultimately what we learned was:
a) Bike Party is very much an organic project - it's all about how much people want to do
b) it's totally place specific
c) you can't really teach someone how to do something until they try it out on their own.

At first they gave us all these details about how they organize their volunteers - and so far Steph and I are really the only regular ones! We have a few great people who have been able to chip in here and there, but so far it's mostly just the two of us handling the load. Since this is only the 2nd ride we're hoping that as popularity grows, so will support, but hey, if people don't want to help then they probably have more important things to do with their time, and most things in life should only happen if people want them to.

Do you have any themes you plan to incorporate into future rides?

For now we're sticking to more general themes. There are already so many rides that involve extra-special creativity (Tweed, Kinetic Sculpture Derby, even PNBR is starting to feature a lot of artistic expression) that we wanted to pare it down so that people didn't feel like they had to anything more than show up to have a good time. So, the first ride's theme was "Bike Party" because it was the first. This time it's Winter Edition/Feel the Love - it's cold out, so wear a jacket and come show Philly some love! But none of these require costumes. Personally, we like being able to dance in a our jeans and sneaks without being concerned about having enough paper mache or glitter.

What have you learned about planning Bike Parties since you first started?

1. Setting up a website is harder than we thought it would be, but Karenina has had a lot of fun learning how to do it!
2. We need a better speaker system and it needs to be well prepared in advance. We're still working on that so if anyone knows anything about hooking up a PA speaker to a car battery, we would love you forever!
3. Stay longer at each dancing spot - we were kind of anxious the first time and would only stay for a song or 2 at each spot so we finished in less than 2 hours. This time we'll have about 8 dancing spots and we'll be staying for 4 or 5 songs at each spot. :)
4. People who love bike and dancing will be there and they will love it, and it will be great.

How do you handle crowd control and littering?

Well, the only issue we had at the first ride was a drunk guy on roller-blades who thought it was fun to annoy cars by getting in front of them. That is NOT what we're about, so we're working on having "corrallers", to keep people in the corral aka the bike lanes. Littering hasn't been a problem yet!

If someone wants to get involved in planning rides how can they do that?

Please contact us!! karenina@phillybikeparty.org, steph@phillybikeparty.org. We could use help with: encouraging riders to stay in the bike lanes by riding on the outside of the column, hooking up speaker systems,

What do you do when you are not planning Bike Parties?

Haha I'm blushing - you're making me feel like a celebrity!
Steph is in her 3rd year of undergrad at Temple doing a double major in criminal justice and film/media arts. She also works 3 jobs: Dean's Office at Tyler School of Art, CVS, and the Print studio at Tyler. She also does a lot of work with the Temple section of Occupied Philly, volunteers for Alley Cats, helps with Philly Naked Bike Ride, helped organize the reprise of Critical Mass Philadelphia, and helps out with various projects at Neighborhood Bike Works.

Karenina is a law student at Temple, which eats most of her life. She also does all sorts of volunteering around the city for disadvantaged people including: case management and Spanish translation for Volunteers for the Indigent Program - a pro-bono legal org, fund raising for the Student Public Interest Program at Temple, volunteer recruitment for the local Volunteer Income Tax Assistance program run by the Campaign for Working Families, and is currently doing an internship at the City Law Department of Philadelphia. She is also a principal organizer for the Philly Naked Bike Ride and is involved with the Safe Streets Philadelphia efforts through the Philadelphia Bicycle Coalition.
Oh for fun? Hmm for fun....when we can we each sleep, we each ride bikes, we each try to see our friends when we can, and Karenina plays a lot of video games to calm her tired brain.

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