BU Bikes

Just FYI — all you red light blasting bikers out there:

I’ve gotten a few reports of cops pulling over bikers who have been blowing the reds at the BU Bridge.  The ticket they’ve handed a friend of mine was a warning, but with the threat of $150 (!).  Not sure if this was BPD or BUPD, I’ll update if more information comes to light.

Now, whether you agree with this style of enforcement or not, this intersection is a particularly hairy one (and is affectionately called “the knuckle”): with MBTA buses, the Green Line, train tracks (careful…),  cross traffic that connects Brookline to Cambridge to that extended part of Boston known as A-B, tons of kamakaze peds and undergraduate bikers, and dangers with the bridge infrastructure of metal joints and crumbly pavement.  This intersection should be respected, along with the laws of the road. 

So heads up, all you BU Bikers!  After the Mayor’s Safety Summit just two weeks ago where we stressed road-friendliness and the need for helmets and respect, and which took place just down the street from here, it seems as if BPD is playing with the idea of enforcing the law.

Ride Safe, Ride Easy, and Stop for this Red!

Mike Mann, a BU geography graduate student, is in the process of building a bicycle frame out of bamboo, which looks absolutely stunning so far:

Keep posted for updates on Mike’s bamboo bike on his website.

I’ve been asking myself this question ever since I arrived here in January for BU’s internship program. Still clinging to my love-hate relationships with Boston and its pothole-chiseled streets, I haven’t been able to draw a definitive conclusion.

The end of the Parisian winter (if you can call it that; it only snowed 2 inches of snow since early January) has brought the steady return of bikes to the streets. Although this traffic was well represented during throughout January, February, and March, a dramatic increase has gone hand-in-hand the climbing temperatures.

Designated bike paths on the sidewalks or the side of the streets make passage along major boulevards and avenues relatively safe. These recent developments in addition to the city’s renowned bike-sharing program, Velib’, have been pet projects for Paris’s vert mayor, Bertrand Delanoë.

According to the program’s website, Velib’ consists of more than 20,000 bicycles (each equipped with a basket, light, and adjustable seat) located a stations separated by 300 meters throughout Paris. The first half and hour of use is free, but afterward it costs one euro per 30 minutes. Sadly, payment is only compatible with French credit cards, so I haven’t been able to try it for myself. Otherwise, Velib’s prices and reliability have revolutionized Paris’ biking scene. More than half of the bikes on the streets are a direct product of it.

But as a Boston biker I’ve found myself ambivalent toward Velib’ and the city’s cycling atmosphere. Spotting middle-aged women decked out in furs, pearls, and heels peddling their hearts out on those trademark grey bikes definitely makes it seem as though more Parisians have taken up a set of wheels. At the same time, I wonder whether this reform hasn’t been at the expense of a more vibrant biking culture. Framed within a “chicken or the egg” question, it appears as though the French capital’s top-down, bureaucratic approach has prevented grassroots cycling advocacy or activity from flourishing.

In the States, particularly Boston, people tend to opt for lifestyle choices rather than merely doing things. For instance, A person becomes a biker rather than someone who bikes from time to time. Consequentially, Boston is home to active groups and bodies such as Boston Bikes, BU Bikes, Mass Bikes, etc.

This dynamic doesn’t seem to carry much currency for the Parisians. The variety of bikes appears less diverse and not as many people can be seen leisurely peddling around after work or on the weekend. For them, biking is simply another way to get around town. Even in this regard, the bicycle is left in the dust compared to other modes of transportation. With 4.5 million passengers daily and over 16 subway lines, Paris’ metro is the undisputable king, and more independent-minded travelers prefer motos.

Neither of these factors is very strong in Boston (sorry, MBTA and Vespa aficionados), making room for pedestrians and cyclists. Amid rumors that Boston will be launching a bike-share comparable to Velib’ this summer, I wonder what the effect would be. Whether such a program would soak up the current culture or whether it could integrate a wider demographic will be decided if the city follows through with the measure.

Ever wonder what kind of food you’d eat or people you’d meet on a six-month bicycle journey through Asia?

Don’t miss BU SPH student Sage Cohen’s multimedia slide-show presentation of her incredible 6-month-long bicycle journey from from Kyrgyzstan To Kathmandu through the beautiful and rugged terrain of Central Asia!

Thursday, March 18th
Refreshments@6:30pm
Presentation@7:00-9:00pm
George Sherman Union, 775 Comm. Ave. Conference Auditorium (2nd Floor)

For BU students, we’ve taken care of a good chunk of donations for you so Arrive Early! We can promise FREE ADMISSION for the first 40 BU Students to present their BUID!

Thanks to everyone who came to the Massbike Winter Commuting Workshop we hosted last Thursday, and thanks to Shane Jordan of Massbike for coming out to teach us about bike safety in the wintertime!

Here’s Shane teaching basic hand-signaling
and showing the importance of using blinkies at night:

In case you missed the workshop and still want to learn some tips about riding in the winter, check out these excellent articles on winter riding Shane put together on his own personal blog, Bostonbiker.org:

Winter Riding In Boston: Pre-Winter

Winter Riding In Boston: Winter Bicycle Maintenance

Winter Riding In Boston:Dealing With the Cold

Winter Riding In Boston: Riding in the Snow

Are You Prepared to Ride This Winter?

If you stopped by the GSU today you might have noticed BU Sustainability was celebrated the launch of their new website with cake, free mugs, and a Trek Hybrid bike giveaway from Landry’s. If you missed the giveaway, you can still enter the giveaway by signing up for the BU CarbonRally team.

You may have also noticed the awesome solar-panel equipped recumbent tricycle that one cyclist traveled across the country with. I didn’t get a chance to speak to the owner of the bike, but I’ll probably hunt him down at some point to talk about bike touring across the U.S., something I intend on doing in the future.

I must say I’m a huge fan of visual statistics, so I couldn’t help but notice how striking 5,500 tons of garbage would look like piled on marsh plaza:

or, being a huge science nerd, what a glorious light show you’d see from space if Marsh Plaza had 44 spotlights:

It was also great to see this sweet feature on Galen, one of our club’s co-founders, who still remains very dear to BU Bikes:

So far, the site not only looks great but offers some excellent resources and information on how to go about creating a more sustainable BU. And how will the website launch help create a more sustainable BU? The homepage stresses waste reduction, which is largely within the power of our aggregate individual behavior. And as an economist will tell you, the power of incentives is not to be underestimated, as incentives are what drives our behavior. If we’re really serious about becoming sustainable, we’ve got to start changing our behavior, just as the “It’s what you do” slogan on the Sustainability website implies. By showing everyone some solid numbers and displaying them in a way that’s easy for anyone to understand, and if enough people shift behaviors we could potentially see a dramatic shift in behavior. For instance, just over the course of last semester I had begun to notice more people carrying around those free BU Sustainability mugs on a daily basis, including myself. I will be interested to see what the correlation in the number of paper/plastic cups used on-campus over the next few years will be as I see more and more of those BU Sustainability mugs around. Biking makes the most sense in a city like Boston, and for a large group of people to be biking or walking instead of driving or taking a bus can make a difference.

Speaking of sustainability and powerful visual statistics, I’m reminded of two powerful demonstrations of sustainability in the urban setting. The first one is a photo I put together from PARK(ing) Day 2009, which BU Bikes organized right here on Comm. Ave last semester, where we gathered people and bikes together to transform a space normally occupied by empty cars:

The second is this photo along the same lines of space efficiency and urban sustainability, demonstrating the amount of space required to transport the same number of people by car, bus, or bicycle:

There’s no doubt in my mind that Sustainability will continue to be the hot topic it is now for ages to come. So I’ve showed you how bikes can take up much less space, but maybe you’re wondering the other ways in which biking is sustainable. For an answer to that I will direct you all to an excellent blog post featured on Bostonbiker last summer by Adam Pieniazek titled “Why I Bike,” who states simply that a bicycle is the “Giver of freedom, energy, and life.”

On my way to class today, I noticed something strange; there were spray painted bike lanes on the outbound section of Comm. Ave where there was previously no bike lane, which could only have meant one thing: The city has begun the process of putting down bike lanes from Kenmore Square to the Public Garden. About a block later, my suspicions were confirmed:

Hurray! I didn’t get a chance to check out the other direction yet to see if they had starting painting the left-side bike lane or any bike boxes yet, but I’ll report back here when I do.

Looks like the brothers of BU’s chapter of Pi Kappa Alpha are biking their pants off on the GSU plaza. Since noon today, these fraternity brothers will be taking turns biking on trainers during their 24-hour “bike-a-thon” to raise money for Crohn’s Disease research.

So stop by to donate or give them a high-five today, tonight, or 4am tomorrow morning.

We debuted our brand new wheel truing stand at this past Friday’s Tool Shop, which we held outdoors with other student groups for America Recycles Day. Here’s Peter Wilson (CAS ’12) truing his front wheel with the guidance of our VP and bike mechanic Alex Boyd (CAS ’11):