Someone’s Sweetheart
The kind of text you DO NOT want to get from your sweetheart: “Car turned left in front. Hit car. Bike effed up. Phys. OK. Going to work.” — Barb Chamberlain (@barbchamberlain) April 8, 2017 This text set my heart racing Saturday morning at 10:14 a.m., just as I was preparing to set off on […]
Biking Is the Spice of Life
I have missed many things while driving for transportation thanks to a broken elbow (with recovery complicated by a frozen shoulder). To name just a few: Exercise (hello, +10 pounds) Sense of connection to my surroundings and the people along the way Flexibility — the ease with which I can change my mind, navigate to […]
Personal Privilege and Biking: It Takes More than a Bike Lane to Start Riding (2016 update)
A 2012 version of this post appeared on this blog. I updated it in 2014 for the Washington Bikes blog. This is yet another light update with some “as of 2016” notes. The way I used to tell the story of how I started bike commuting, it was an infrastructure story: I started riding because the […]
#30DaysofBiking: Halfway Mark Plus One
30 Days of Biking is going swimmingly this year — or is that a mixed metaphor of sorts? I’ve been on my bike every day so far and putting in lots of miles. I traveled for several days but it was for bike events so that made it easy to keep going. Here’s the round-up […]
Looking Back, Looking Ahead
An article in the New York Times on the psychology of change got me thinking about how the belief that we won’t change might set up the belief that we can’t change and how that affects our transportation choices. They are choices, you know. Just because we’ve all gone through the rite of passage that is the […]
It’s Still Time to Take Action and Contact Congress to Support Funding for Biking and Walking
It’s been a heavy week on Bike Style with pieces on street funding, the importance of transit, and engineering. We’ll soon return to the regularly scheduled programming with its mix of ride reports, cute gear, shopping, and other topics in addition to policy. But this is important. As recently discussed here, select members of the […]
Picture It: Faces of Transportation Photo Contest
When I say “bikes” or “transit” or “walking” the American Association of State Highway and Transportation Officials may not be the first organization that springs to mind. But each year they sponsor a “Faces of Transportation” photo contest and this year’s themes provide plenty of scope to capture pictures of active transportation. Building the Future: […]
We Engineered Ourselves into this Mess. Now We Need to Engineer our Way out of It.
There’s a problem in our debates about how streets are funded, a problem that lies partly in the assumptions about who pays and who benefits, with a root cause in the effects of design on how people use a transportation network. I pay through several mechanisms for local streets and roads and consume far less […]
When I Get Older: Why I Believe in a Multimodal System and Complete Streets
I’ve been dealing for over a decade with issues created as my parents aged, including transportation problems. My mother, who’s 90, has vascular dementia that has worsened over the past 12 years and my father is now showing signs of some type of dementia as well. One of the early triggers for recognizing my mom’s […]
Who Really Pays for Streets? We All Do.
If I had a dollar for every time I either hear or read that “people on bikes need to pay for streets” I could put in bike lanes all over Spokane, it seems at times. I see it on Facebook. I hear it from people. I read it in the media from people who should […]
How to Be a Good Guy/Gal on the Street
This post that you should share with all your friends via email, Facebook, Twitter, and personal conversation in (gasp!) real life was inspired by several influences. I’m modeling very directly on the first post so a shout-out to Anna North at Jezebel for providing inspiration and an outline to follow. Herewith, my source material, which […]
