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  • New York’s bike commuters have doubled in four years

    Despite the best efforts of bike lane opponents and overprivileged New Yorker columnists, bike commuters in the Big Apple have increased by 102 percent since 2007, according to new figures from the New York Department of Transportation. Bicycle commuter numbers have almost quadrupled since 2001. Just imagine what it will look like when their bikeshare […]

  • Tis the season … for road rage

    Nothing says, “Happy Holidays,” like …Photo: Mikey WallyMichelle Poyourow, a transportation consultant in Portland, Ore., decided to ride down Hawthorne Blvd. for just a block. She was already on the defensive — it was a busy, fast road, and she was wearing a short skirt that day. Then it happened: “A big SUV came by […]

  • Prius is the only survivor of $3 million car crash

    A car crash in Japan that's being hailed as the most expensive ever, even though it totally wasn't, totaled eight Ferraris, a Lamborghini, and three Mercedes…es. (Ugh, I just looked it up and Mercedes looks like a fifth-declension noun with the nominative plural "Mercedes," so I can't even make up a cutesy Latinate plural, WHATEVER […]

  • Spandex wars: Chicago bike critic looks crappy in tights

    Photo: Steven VanceThe two-wheeled revolution has arrived in the Windy City, thanks to its bike-loving mayor, Rahm Emanuel. (Finally, a way to describe the man without calling him a potty mouth!) During his campaign, Emanuel pledged to build 100 miles of new separated bike lanes within five years. The first of them went in this summer. […]

  • New York City’s new plan to improve street safety: Throw haiku at it

    Janette Sadik-Khan, DOT commissioner of New York City seems to think the main challenge to street safety is not enough short poems. Thus, her new campaign: Making bikers and walkers safer through haiku. Not good haiku, either. Certainly not as good as the ones I can write! A sudden car door, Cyclist’s story rewritten. Fractured […]

  • Interactive map shows hybrid and electric car sales in your area

    See the map This interactive map from NPR, which shows hybrid and electric car sales figures across the U.S., is a handy way of calculating the hippie concentration of your area at a single glance. But it also might help predict which areas will get EV infrastructure soonest, because of high demand. Also, it's kind […]

  • After-school EV club is so much cooler than yearbook

    In Kansas City, Mo., high school students enrolled in the after-school program Minddrive are building an electric car. They meet three times every two weeks. They started with a decade-old Reynard Champ Car, and have turned it into an electric vehicle that will drive from Jacksonville, Fla., to San Diego, Calif., over their spring break. […]

  • Wheely, wheely thankful

    Photo: iamosIn last Sunday’s New York Times, columnist Mark Bittman compiled a list of people and things in the food movement he’s thankful for. The bicycle movement deserves its own list. Here’s a start: 1. I’m thankful for the power of bikes to enable people-powered protest movements. Bicycles have been playing a supporting role in […]

  • Sharing time: Tracking the ‘sharrow’ on city streets

    A sharrow in Baltimore. Photo: Elly BlueVisiting Seattle last weekend, it was impossible not to notice that its streets are absolutely covered in sharrows. “It’s almost like they polluted the streets with them,” said Tom Fucoloro, proprietor of the Seattle Bike Blog, who took me on a walk through the city’s Central District, pointing out […]

  • The last rider: Learning to win on a 100k bike ride

    David from Eugene passes a decaying farmouse on the Verboort Populaire.Photo: Elly Blue“I think the rain is really good for us as cyclists,” said my friend Maria Schur. We were in her car, headed to the Verboort Populaire, an annual 100-kilometer (about 62-mile) bicycle ride west of Portland, Ore. “It’s good for character development. It’s […]