Ride the BIKE-A-THON!

Join hundreds of riders for a meaningful and beautiful event on Sunday June 6th, 2010!

The Rides

Choose from one of three routes:

• 15 Mile Ride
• 25 Mile Ride
• 62 Mile Ride

Great options for everyone: families and children, new cyclists, daily commuters, fitness and distance trainers. These rides are fully supported with food, mechanics, maps, road markings, following vehicles, and more. Your ride will end at the Green Roots Festival where you’ll get fed and celebrated!

All 3 Bike-A-Thon rides on June 6th start and end in the big field in front of the Stony Brook T stop (Orange Line) at Boylston and Amory Streets, Jamaica Plain MA 02130.

For more info and to sign up check out the Bikes-not-Bombs site.

Here is a story from last night’s local news about the poor behavior of MBTA bus drivers.  I think we all could attest to some pretty reckless MBTA bus drivers.  The cool thing – if anything can be said to be cool related to reckless Bus drivers – is that this story was spurred by a cyclist who continued to follow through with her initial complaints by escalating and publicizing the problem.  You can read all about what led up to this on the ‘Zero Combustion’ blog.  For those of you who may have followed the struggle to get Glen Rd. plowed during the winter this strategy should sound familiar and hopefully this case will also result in a positive change for cyclists in the city and region.  The take home lesson is that old saw about the squeaky wheel.

Urban Adventours Open House this Saturday, February 20th from  12-5, at 103 Atlantic Avenue downtown.

We’re selling a TON of used bikes (quality ranging
from $100-1000) (our own fleet but also various *hybrids, high end road
bikes, cruisers, bruisers, kids’ bikes, women’s bikes, mountain’s, and more*!),
and we’re showing sneakpeeks of our new expanded space (2 doors down), the
new shop (full service repairs), and out hand-picked choices for our 2010
bike line. There will be giveaways, gift certificates for raffle, and
discounts on accessories and “I ‘bike’ ____” t-shirts. If anything,

Saturday will be 42 degrees and sunny, so why not come hang out in the North
End with us? We’ve got a great view of the boats in the harbor.

Yep, another opportunity to vote in MA.  This time the special election for the U.S. Senate.

If you haven’t decided who to vote for and bicycle related issues are important to you the information below in response to inquiries by a member of the Arlington Bicycle Advisory Committee may be of interest.

“Hi All – For the US senate election tomorrow, I queried Scott Brown and Martha Coakley to find out their positions or support for bicycle transportation in the Commonwealth and nationwide. I got a response back from Martha Coakley, but not from Scott Brown. I contacted Scott Brown in multiple manners by email and phone, but he neglected to respond with any statement of his support or his position.

The response below is from Martha Coakley’s campaign committee. She even mentioned the Minuteman Bikeway!”

From: Issues Issues <issues@marthacoakley.com>
To:
Sent: Sat, January 16, 2010 4:18:32 PM
Subject: Re: bicycle transportation: seeking Martha Coakley position for Bay State and nationwide

Dear Mr. Roth,

Thank you for writing into the campaign about this issue. We appreciate hearing from you.

As a person who cares very much about the environment and public health, Martha’s interests and priorities are in line with the Massachusetts cycling community. Martha cares deeply about developing alternative forms of energy and about energy conservation, both to promote a healthy environment and reduce our dependence on foreign oil. (see her energy & environment plan here: http://www.marthacoakley.com/about/Issues/details/22). She understands that a commitment to protecting the environment and a commitment to alternative forms of transportation certainly go hand-in-hand.

In short, Martha agrees that promoting cycling as a transportation alternative is good for the Commonwealth’s economy, businesses, environment, and public health. She is proud that Massachusetts is home to the most used rail-to-trail bikeway in the country (The Minuteman Trail) and she knows that we need to make main thoroughfares, not just dedicated bikeways, safer for all.

If she is victorious on Tuesday, she looks forward to working with your group and others with similar interests to see what kind of federal support and policies will be productive — for example, you mention wheel friendly draining gates. We admit that is not on our radar screen, which is why dialogue like this is so important.

Also, we agree that having something on the website about this may have been useful, but at this late date with the election so close it won’t be possible to put your suggestion into action. Thanks for it nonetheless.

Thanks again for writing.

Please don’t forget to vote on Jan. 19.

Cordially,

The Martha Coakley for Senate Committee

So get out and vote if you haven’t already!

If you haven’t had a chance yet you should check out some of the photo’s posted in our flickr gallery – all taken and contributed by our fearless photographer Phil who has worked hard capturing the faces and rides of folks around our neighborhood.

Phil entered a few of his shots in a photo contest and has made it to the second round of voting.  So check them out below and click on the image to be taken to the voting site. The resolution is better at the contest site. Remember vote and vote often.  Voting closes December 31st.

Here’s my favorite a photo of a very practical Vivian on the DotBike art ride

And here are his four other entries.

There was a great turnout at the forum for the 8 at-large candidates for Boston City Council to discuss issues on city parks and open spaces.  At least 200 people packed into the Franklin Park Clubhouse, many of which were sporting bright high vis yellow outerwear and bike helmets.  The large turnout and the presence of all the candidates was a testament to the excellent job of organizing this event by Christine Poff, director of the Franklin Park Coalition, and Valerie Burns, director of Boston Natural Area Network, working together on behalf of the Boston Park Advocates and the 99 total organizations that signed on as co-sponsors, including Dot Bike.

I don’t want to single out any candidate as a particular favorite especially as the topic of this debate was not biking per se and I encourage you to look at the candidates positions on all the issues.  However, I will select a few ‘highlights’ for mention.

There was a charming question from one of the always-sharp B.O.L.D. teens in the audience who noted the dearth of bike racks available in the parks and asked how to get more.  One of the candidates, Doug Bennett, jumped right in with the bold statement that the way to solve the problem was to install more bike racks – one of several perhaps overly straightforward responses from this earnest  young Republican.

Stephen Murphy professed to be a cyclist, which was nice to hear.  He also stated that one of his goals was to establish a committed revenue stream/budget item for parks and open spaces although he didn’t say exactly how this might happen.

John Connolly promoted himself as the main bicycle advocate on the city council, mentioning bike lanes and the bike share program multiple times.  DotBike is still wondering if our neighborhood will see any benefits from the bike share program as currently envisioned.  Our fabulous Franklin Park would be one attractive site to consider as a recreational bike share hub.

One of Debbie and my favorite moments of the evening had nothing to do with cycling.  When Felix Arroyo, who had been fielding questions with poise and relative ease, was asked what he thought about the Asian Longhorn Beetle he was completely stumped.  After a few humorous remarks he made a great recovery by admitting he had no idea and that as a city councilor he would routinely seek out people with expertise to help him get the info he needed to make informed decisions.

Generally, all candidates had an encouraging perspective on the importance of multi-use open space and recreation.  So thanks again to the organizers and we could use more forums like this to keep our elected officials (or hopefuls) involved in the issues and problems that cyclists face every day.

You may have heard that there is an election coming up early next month that has some particular relevance for Boston citizens.  In addition to the well publicized mayoral election there are a number of City Council seats being contested this go round.

The good (and very hard working) folks at the Livable Streets Alliance developed a survey with 10 questions asking about ideas and positions on matters of sustainable transportation in Boston and sent this on September 30th to each of the City Council Candidates  asking for responses by October 15th (this coming Thursday at the time of this post).  DotBike as well as several other of the city bicycle, pedestrian and park advocacy groups signed on as co-sponsors of this effort.

So far they have received responses from only a single candidate, Chuck Turner – running for the District 7 seat, so we’ll give him a shout out for being the first respondent.  But there is still time for others to respond.  Keep checking here if your interested to see if other candidates have anything to contribute.

The candidates will be  asked about their responses at the upcoming Debate on Parks and Open Spaces taking place next Thursday October 22nd at 6:30 p.m. at the Franklin Park Golf Clubhouse.  Pam Cross, WCVB Channel 5 news anchor will moderate what will hopefully be an interesting conversation.