Hour Car

While my bike is my main mode of transportation (and has been for the last 10 years) I am also a frequent user of the bus, light rail, other people's cars, and of course walking. Today I decided that the car was going to be the best use of my time and money. Twin Cities' Hour Car was there for the rescue.

Having lived in other cities that have car sharing programs (Chicago, NYC, Philly) this is the first time I actually have had the real need to use it. I needed to do a bunch of errands this morning and doing it by the other modes was just not going to work since I had to be in the office at 9:00 am. Car Sharing was the perfect solution for me today. For those individuals who are interesting in different ways to get around town check out these website and resources for a multi-modal approach to life: Hour Car, Commuter Connection, and Smart Trips.

Are shopping centers the answer?

The Bad Architect Website poses the question and has an answer on both sides. Yes:

Retailers and users are demanding public spaces, civic streets and squares in new developments. The internal agenda has become truly external, moving the focus away from controlled environments towards outside spaces and places.

New developments are creating a sense of place which is a natural extension to the city, not just a retail scheme, and through it, restoring and creating civic pride.

We have created destinations to get people back into city centres that were previously underused, with a rich mixture of retail and leisure that caters for the widest range of people, as well as offices, hotels and residential.

and No:

Shopping centres certainly provide jobs and activity, but they do so at the expense of virtually everything else, rather in the way that a forest planted only with conifers will sterilise the ground around it.

They suck the life out of the shopping areas nearby, creating a much larger regeneration challenge in their wake. Drive past the enormous Westfield shopping
centre in West London in a few months’ time, and doubtless the process of decline will have begun.

First Impressions

It has been a week and I have managed to ride to work, downtown, to St. Louis Park, and pretty much all around South Minneapolis. The first thing that struck me about riding around the Twin Cities, driver awareness. Coming from NYC where hitting cyclists and running over pedestrians is a daily event, the Twin Cities drivers are not out to run over every cyclist in their path to make it to their destination 5 seconds faster.

In NYC I was so use to drivers pulling out in front of me my muscle memory kicks in every time a car comes to a stop on a side street. So far, in the Twin Cities, these cars actually stop and wait for me to pass. Can you believe that.

On Saturday I was able to go to Trader Joes in St. Louis Park and 95% of the ride was on trails.

Two things I like about the trails: first, it really is a bike super highway. Second, they provide a great environment to ride in where all you have to worry about are the other trail users. Bike parking is every where (see pic above). Unlike NYC where getting a spot is like winning the lottery, the Twin Cities had plenty of bike parking around its commercial areas. It could do a lot better in residential areas.

Finally, it is getting cold. I had to hit the store today to get a base layer and a set of long underwear. I still need to get some smart wool socks for when the temps really start to drop. That is it for now.

Can New York Reinvent Itself?

Days after 9/11 the country and the world thought that New York City would be devastated. Most projected that it would be years before New York City got back on its feet. It shouldn't have been a real surprise that with in about six months NYC was getting back to normal.

Today, New York State and New York City are facing hard economic times. Just this past week Governor Patterson announced a huge budget deficit. Patterson stated that overspending by the state and Wall Street's meltdown will result in a $47 billion deficit over the next four years if nothing is done. Just a week prior to Patterson's announcement Mayor Bloomberg said the City's budget would swell by $500 million during the current fiscal year because of weakening tax revenues.


Joel Kotkin over at New Geography may have the answer that NYC needs: San Francisco. In his article he looks to San Francisco as a luxury city that reinvented itself after the dot.com meltdown. It may be time for NYC to diversify itself. The 9/11 recovery was fast because Wall Street recovered. Today it is different, the three main industries in NYC (finance, insurance, and real estate) are all on a major decline. I am hopeful that NYC will eventually pull out of this recession, but Mayor Bloomberg and Governor Patterson might want to start thinking differently about the industries that basically support the city and the state.

Images from the New Geography.

California Transportation

East Bay BRT


High Speed Trains


Assembly Report

Cycle Track

Is the cycle track the solution to bike safety? Cyclists have been advocating for years to be treated equally on the road. Does the cycle track, a physical separated lane, hurt or help that cause?

I have mixed feelings about cycle tracks. While they do provide safety for cyclists, does it not reinforce the idea that drivers then don't have to worry about cyclists on the road (they have their own lane I don't need to pay attention). Or would we rather have an approach that looks at street space as something that needs to be shared by all users, even if it is a complete or shared streets approach. I am torn on this issue because both have logical and real world applications.

I end up not loving the idea of the cycle track because it reinforces the idea that riding a bike needs to be treated separately than other users of the road. Of course we can continue to make accommodations to make cycling safer and easier, but at what social and cultural costs are we loosing out. Cycle tracks unfortunately reinforce the idea that a cyclist is less superior than an auto vehicle and should be treated as such.

Check out this post over at TC Streets for People.

Portland's Tri-Met System