Factoring in proximity to bike lanes, street connectivity, topography, and commuter cycling rates, the Bike Score algorithm rated Minneapolis America's most bikeable city. Image: Walk Score

The people behind Walk Score, the real estate rating service that goes by the slogan “Drive Less, Live More,” are out with a new rating system, based on hard data, that should prove useful to prospective city dwellers: Bike Score.

The company launched the Bike Score website today, using its new algorithm to rank the ten most bikeable cities in the country. (We covered their release of city rankings for transit last month.) Minneapolis ran away with the top prize with a 79 percent bikeability rating. San Francisco tied Portland for number two, despite the fact that hilliness was a factor. D.C. and New York also placed highly (while the NYC core rates very highly on Bike Score, the bike lane deserts outside the center city score quite low).

The staff of Walk Score is made up of a whole lot of bike commuters. No wonder they were excited to launch a new bikeability ranking. Photo courtesy of Walk Score

In other bikeability rating news, the League of American Bicyclists released its 2012 list of Bicycle Friendly Communities today. There’s a lot of overlap between the BFCs and the Bike Score winners, but they are compiled use vastly different methodologies. For one thing, you won’t find two of the League’s top three cycling cities on the Bike Score list because Bike Score, so far, only looks at cities with populations over 200,000. Sorry, Boulder and Davis.

Colorado and Montana did well in the League’s rankings this year. Missoula and Durango moved up to gold, and the Colorado towns of Gunnison and Aspen made it onto the list for the first year, rolling in at the silver level. Look for your city on their updated BFC list [PDF].

The League bases its BFC choices on somewhat subjective criteria. They look for the “five Es”: engineering, education, encouragement, evaluation & planning, and enforcement. Decisions are made by staff and external reviewers, in consultation with local stakeholders.

Bike Score, on the other hand, is based on pure numbers. Individual addresses are rated on a scale of 0-100 based on four factors:

• the availability of bike infrastructure (with on-street and off-street facilities weighted differently)
• the hilliness of the area (the one factor a city can’t control)
• amenities and road connectivity
• the number of bike commuters (because “biking is social” and there’s safety in numbers, explained Walk Score’s chief technology officer and co-founder Matt Lerner)

To then determine the score for the city, the individual address scores are used to compute scores for each block, and then the block-by-block scores are weighted by population density.

“For every location in the city, we add up the number of meters of bike lane, and there’s a distance-to-K function so the closer you have a meter of bike lane, the more valuable it is, and we don’t give you any credit after about a mile out,” said Lerner. “For every address, we do that calculation. It’s a new metric that is really about a specific location, not about the city overall. So what we’re really measuring is, for average person in that city, how good is biking.”

Note: The capability to score your own home isn’t available on the website yet, as it is for Transit Score and Walk Score, but Lerner says they hope to enable that soon so real estate agents can use Bike Score to advertise the homes they have for sale, as they do now with the other two. Walk Score has an Apartment Search function that allows renters to search by nearby amenities, distance to transit, commute time, price, number of bedrooms – and, of course, Walk Score. It interfaces with craigslist to show the complete ad all in one place with the walk/bike/transit information.

Right now you can plug in any address in the country and get a Walk Score for it, but even once Bike Score’s full functionality is rolled out, it won’t be so widespread. “With Bike Score we have to go out and get bike lane data from each city,” Lerner said, “so it’s more of a manual process.” They’re taking votes via Twitter for the next cities they should score.

Image: SFBC, based on data from SFMTA

San Francisco’s streets are expected to fill with bike commuters tomorrow for the city’s 18th Bike to Work Day.

The city has more bike lanes, more people on bikes, and more political momentum for bike policy today than in years past. ”We definitely expect to see more people bicycling on Bike to Work Day this year than ever before,” said San Francisco Bicycle Coalition Executive Director Leah Shahum, “given that the number of people of biking every year has been increasing significantly — 71 percent over the last five years, given that it’s supposed to be really lovely warm weather, and given, most importantly, that the city has added more dedicated bike space in the last year than ever before.”

In San Francisco’s most visible display of bicycling growth, SFMTA Bike to Work Day morning commute counts show that bike traffic has risen steadily over recent years on Market Street, which the SFBC now calls the busiest bicycling street west of the Mississippi. Last year at the Van Ness Avenue intersection, bikes made up 75 percent of vehicle traffic as car traffic plummeted on the corridor.

Since the bike injunction was lifted in 2010, the SFMTA has striped bike lanes in locations around the city, including some of SF’s first physically protected routes. The parking-protected bike lanes on John F. Kennedy Drive in Golden Gate Park are “substantially complete” as of this week (save some finishing touches), according to the SFMTA. Construction is also nearly complete on a two-way bikeway on Cargo Way.

The 23 miles of bike lanes added by the SFMTA since August 2010 “really cover very diverse neighborhoods,” said Shahum.

Bike commuters tomorrow will benefit from new curbside, post-separated bike lanes on Division, Laguna Honda, Alemany and Cesar Chavez as well as the green lanes on Market. Buffered bike lanes have also been striped on Bayshore and Sloat, and new conventional lanes can be found on 17th, Folsom, Illinois, North Point, Townsend, Kirkham, Phelan, Holloway, Ocean, Portola, and McCoppin. The SFMTA also continues installing bike racks (in corrals and on sidewalks) and sharrows throughout the city.

“When there’s more dedicated bike space, time and time again we see more people bicycling, and we see a more diverse cross-section of people biking,” said Shahum. “We see more parents riding with their kids to school, we see more older folks riding to a farmer’s market, we see more of San Francisco’s work force biking downtown rather than heading in in their cars.”

Market Street commuters on Bike to Work Day last year. Photo: Aaron Bialick

Riding into City Hall tomorrow will be a large cast of city officials, including Mayor Ed Lee and all but one member of the Board of Supervisors. (D7 Supervisor Sean Elsbernd said he used to ride every year prior to his son’s birth, but bicycling is no longer “practically an option” as he needs to drop his wife and son off by car.)

Almost every member of the SFMTA Board of Directors (save Jerry Lee, who is out of town) will also be riding, according to Shahum, including Christina Rubke, Mayor Lee’s recent board nominee to replace Bruce Oka. Other officials expected to ride include SFMTA Director of Transportation Ed Reiskin, Department of Public Works Director Mohammed Nuru, SF Environment Director Melanie Nutter, and Carla Johnson, the new director of the Mayor’s Office on Disability.

The decision makers participating in tomorrow’s event will have to raise their commitment to safe cycling throughout the rest of the year to help the city reach its bike mode-share goals. As the SF Bay Guardian pointed out yesterday, while cycling is on the rise, the current rate of improvements is far from sufficient to meet the city’s goal of getting 20 percent of commuters on bikes by 2020 (it’s currently estimated at 3.5 percent).

Despite some recent high-profile project delays, Shahum said, “It’s really exciting to see that some of the problem areas that the mayor and others experienced riding last year are getting stepped up attention and are getting improvements now.” She noted that the long-awaited protected bikeways on Fell and Oak Streets are also headed to an SFMTA hearing next Friday, May 18.

Tomorrow morning, 11 commuter convoys will head to City Hall from various neighborhoods throughout the city, and 27 energizer stations will be set up along the way, half of which will have a “bike doctor” on hand to help commuters keep their bikes in shape. The SF-to-Google (SF2G) Peninsula convoy, which Shahum noted usually carries about 40 riders on its regular rides throughout the year, is expecting to be joined by 500 people (they had 400 last year).

At City Hall, Shahum said the SFBC will be highlighting the economic benefits that bicycling brings to the city, announcing six of the city’s top bike-friendly businesses chosen from “tons and tons” of applicants who are encouraging their employees to bike with incentive programs and secure bike parking.

“We’re hearing from so many people that there are employers who are deciding to move to or stay in San Francisco because their employees love living in a city, and they want to be able to bike and take transit,” she said.

Image: Mark Dreger/SFBC

As it happens, I spent the spring of 2010 living in a city that has a 20 percent bike mode split. Aarhus, Denmark’s second-largest city, with formidable hills and about 315,000 residents (1.2 million in the greater area), has been rolling out protected bike lanes over the past few decades and continues to promote bicycling through a campaign called “8,000 Reasons to Cycle.”

Like San Francisco, Aarhus is improving its bike infrastructure to catch up with the most successful cycling cities, like nearby Copenhagen, which has a citywide bicycling rate of 37 percent (and is shooting for 50 percent by 2015). You can check out Aarhus’s three-year Cycling Action Plan here [PDF].

The Aarhus campaign video provides a nice glimpse of what the “20 percent” vision would look like: groups of cyclists, young and old, using dignified, dedicated bicycle infrastructure everywhere you go. It also lists a few of the “8,000 reasons to cycle” (in case you’re wondering, “8000″ is the Aarhus postal code). Here are the translations from Danish:

• Reason #674: Big smiles
• Reason #762: Exercise and fresh air
• Reason #2,548: Faster through traffic
• Reason #6,237: Quality time with the kids
• Reason #94: CO2-neutral transport (well, that one’s in English)

All these reasons are great benefits of cycling, but what Aarhus, San Francisco, and many other cities around the world find time and time again is that the most important factor that gets people to bike more is safety — a convenient and seamless network of calm streets and protected cycling facilities.

San Francisco’s own progress is already highly visible during rush hour on Market Street, the busiest bicycling street west of the Mississippi, according to the SF Bike Coalition, where bicyclists make up as much as 75 percent of roadway traffic. That number only seems to have grown since the SFMTA has added green, post-separated bike lanes west of 8th Street and diverted car traffic off of Market.

Who knows — it could look something like Copenhagen on Bike to Work Day this Thursday.

Market Street. Photo: SFBC/Flickr

The SF Bicycle Coalition's Andy Thornley leads the Dutch-orange bike caravan on John F. Kennedy Drive. Photo: Aaron Bialick

This year’s celebration of the Dutch Queen’s Day in San Francisco was a bit special.

When the event’s 100-or-so celebrants traversed the city by bike in the second annual “Market-to-Mill” ride (Market Street to the Dutch windmill in Golden Gate Park, a.k.a the Bay to Beach route), the orange-clad caravan traveled through San Francisco’s first bicycle lanes designed with a Dutch standard of safety in mind.

Bart van Bolhuis, Consulate General of the Netherlands, told Streetsblog that riding the new parking-protected bike lanes on John F. Kennedy Drive felt like cycling in his home country. “Especially biking with 100 people dressed up in orange,” he added.

Bart van Bolhuis, Consulate General of the Netherlands. Photo: Aaron Bialick

A key feature of the JFK bikeway, Bolhuis pointed out, is the buffer area which separates bicycle riders from the door zone and provides space for people getting in and out of their cars. Most conventional bike lanes in San Francisco place riders in the path of opening car doors on one side and passing cars on the other. Drivers also make regular incursions into the bike lane to maneuver into parking spaces or double park. That creates an obstacle course that’s too stressful for most people to ride in. By placing bicyclists to the right of parked cars, JFK is the first street in San Francisco designed to accommodate car parking while eliminating those hazards.

“People have to feel safe on their bikes, and these kinds of bike lanes are very helpful,” said Bolhuis. “The most important thing is that it will create safety, and the feeling of safety, for other kinds of bicyclists as well — mothers with children, elderly people — and that’s something we have to establish in this city, not only for the brave, but also for the people who want to bike in nature, or to school.”

A parking-protected bike lane in Amsterdam. Photo: Amsterdamize/Flickr

Transportation planners in the Netherlands have been refining separated bikeway designs since they ramped up their implementation about 40 years ago. Today, bike trips account for 37 percent of all trips in Amsterdam (58 percent in the city center), and just about everyone who’s able to ride does so regularly.

Bicycling in San Francisco could some day feel as safe and normal as it does in the Netherlands if the city continues providing more protected bike lanes and traffic-calmed streets in the coming years. The SFMTA consulted Dutch bicycle planners last September to get ideas for improving three of San Francisco’s most important bicycling corridors (the JFK project wasn’t included). The agency is currently developing plans to administer some of those recommendations, the first of which will be on the Wiggle.

“San Francisco, more than most American cities, has the potential to model the successes of places such as the Netherlands and Denmark, where they have invested in great bicycling infrastructure for people ages 8 to 80, and where it’s paying off with healthier, happier people traveling more easily and safely,” said San Francisco Bicycle Coalition Executive Director Leah Shahum, who spent an eight-month sabbatical living in Amsterdam. “With our temperate climate, compact city layout, and strong biking culture, San Francisco is poised to move in this direction. The new, physically separated bikeways on JFK Drive are an example of how San Francisco is committing itself to being a great bicycling city for people of all ages and backgrounds, not just the hearty few.”

“This really is about ensuring greater access on our streets for San Francisco’s diverse population, who is biking more and more,” she added.

The JFK bikeway, which Shahum noted could be looked to as a model for planners in other cities in the Bikes Belong Foundation’s Green Lane Project, seems to be quickly growing on San Franciscans and park visitors and has had a profound traffic-calming effect. More and more people — young and old, experienced riders and casual riders — can be seen using the lanes every day. As was the case in other American cities that have implemented protected bike lanes, drivers also appear to have grown accustomed to floating parking lanes, and the bike lanes are rarely, if ever, blocked by cars anymore.

Bolhuis did note that some visitors on JFK on a busy Saturday morning, like tour bus drivers and passengers, may still “have to be educated a bit” to keep them from parking in the buffer area and help them to be aware when crossing the bike lane. Still, he said, riding the lanes “feels really good.”

Photo: Aaron Bialick

The caravan makes a stop in the car-free zone of JFK. Photo: Aaron Bialick

Bike parking and celebration at the windmill. Photo: Aaron Bialick

Photo: Aaron Bialick

With the swaths of bikes parked at the windmill, you'd think you actually were in the Netherlands. Photo: Aaron Bialick

A mini-documentary out of Portland, Oregon showcases the vibrant bicycle culture the city enjoys, from “bike trains” of kids riding to school on traffic-calmed bike boulevards to a range of everyday people getting around by bike simply because it’s “accessible.”

As San Francisco strives to be the most bike-friendly city on the west coast, we can only hope it won’t be long before we see as many two-wheeling families on our streets.

H/T Ron Richings for the video, filmed by Kona Productions.

Nevius finally gets a handlebar perspective. Photo: Myleen Hollero/Orange Photography

It’s safe to assume that one year ago few bicycle riders who read the Chronicle would have ever imagined that Chuck Nevius would one day declare: “Bikes are the future. We need to do a better job of dealing with it.”

But that’s exactly what happened yesterday. Nevius’ sudden embrace of “the inevitable conclusion” is a milestone as bicycling becomes more and more mainstream in San Francisco.

“After all,” concedes Nevius, “more people than ever are pedaling the streets of San Francisco … riding a bike to work makes sense for even those who aren’t fanatic bike messenger types.”

You read that right. Not only did Nevius have an epiphany riding the Wiggle and write a column about it, but said he now uses a bicycle three times a week.

Nevius reintroduced himself into the urban wild just over a year ago after 20 years in captivity in Walnut Creek. If Chuck is an indicator species of cultural attitudes towards cycling as transportation, the experience has been nothing less than a metamorphosis from his windshield-perspective cocoon.

In the eyes of Nevius two years ago, San Francisco could never be a bicycle-friendly place, and to pursue such an idea would be to impose “the wishes of the few versus the needs of the many.” And in those days, daring to cross the street with him behind the wheel was just asking for it (now, it’s his bike lane you shouldn’t “cluelessly stroll into”).

Drivers, according to Nevius as late as January, were being “singled out because they own a car, drive in the city, and reliably pay their bills. And they are tired of being treated as the city’s cash cow.”

But now, it would seem he has since taken former Streetsblog reporter Matthew Roth’s suggestion and “ridden in that small crevice between the door zone and speeding traffic and wondered why a mode of travel you’ve chosen should feel so fraught with peril.”

After being “cut off, nearly hit, and honked at while riding in a bike lane,” Nevius has seen the light: ”Bicycling is for grown-ups. It’s time everyone acted like it.”

You might even spot him at Critical Mass tonight. After all, he says, it’s “mostly harmless good times.”

What better way to spend your Saturday than celebrating San Francisco’s bustling bicycle and music culture?

The Bicycle Music Festival will feature a caravan of 15 different musical artists performing on 100-percent bicycle powered equipment, starting with a party at Golden Gate Park’s Log Cabin Meadow before pedaling over to Showplace Triangle in Potrero Hill to dance the night away. And the music doesn’t stop on the ride – two on-bike performances will bring the sounds to the streets as the festival rolls by.

Check out the full schedule and more info on the website.

We’re taking the rest of today off. Have a great weekend! We’ll see you back here Monday.

Bicyclists on their way through the city are part of city life. They can, with ease, switch between being bicyclists and pedestrians. Photos by Jan Gehl.

Editor’s note: This is the final installment in our series this week featuring Danish architect and livable streets luminary Jan Gehl. The pieces are excerpts from his book, “Cities for People” published by Island Press. Donate to Streetsblog SF and you’ll qualify to win a copy of the book, courtesy of Island Press.

Bicyclists represent a different and somewhat rapid form of foot traffic, but in terms of sensory experiences, life and movement, they are part of the rest of city life. Naturally, bicyclists are welcome in support of the goal to promote lively, safe, sustainable and healthy cities. The following is about planning good cities for bicyclists, and is handled relatively narrowly and in direct relation to a discussion on the human dimension in city planning.

Around the world there are numerous cities where bicycles and bicycle traffic would be unrealistic. It is too cold and icy for bicycles in some areas, too hot in others. In some places the topography is too mountainous and steep for bicycles. Bicycle traffic is simply not a realistic option in those situations. Then there are surprises like San Francisco, where you might think bicycling would be impractical due to all the hills. However, the city has a strong and dedicated bicycle culture. Bicycling is also popular in many of the coldest and warmest cities, because, all things considered, even they have a great number of good bicycling days throughout the year.

The fact remains that a considerable number of cities worldwide have a structure, terrain and climate well suited for bicycle traffic. Over the years, many of these cities have thrown their lot in with traffic policies that prioritized car traffic and made bicycle traffic dangerous or completely impossible. In some places extensive car traffic has kept bicycle traffic from even getting started.

In many cities, bicycle traffic continues to be not much more than political sweet talk, and bicycle infrastructure typically consists of unconnected stretches of paths here and there rather than the object of a genuine, wholehearted and useful approach. The invitation to bicycle is far from convincing. Typically in these cities only one or two percent of daily trips to the city are by bicycle, and bicycle traffic is dominated by young, athletic men on racing bikes. There is a yawning gap from that situation to a dedicated bicycle city like Copenhagen, where 37 percent of traffic to and from work or school is by bicycle. Here bicycle traffic is more sedate, bicycles are more comfortable, the majority of cyclists are women, and bicycle traffic includes all age groups from school children to senior citizens.

At a time when fossil fuel, pollution and problems with climate and health are increasingly becoming a global challenge, giving higher priority to bicycle traffic would seem like an obvious step to take. We need good cities to bike in and there are a great many cities where it would be simple and cheap to upgrade bicycle traffic.

Bicycle traffic should be automatically integrated into an overall transport strategy. (Copenhagen).

If it is possible to take bicycles on the train, subway and by taxi, then travel can be combined over great distances. (Copenhagen)

A Whole Hearted Bicycle Policy

The cities that have successfully promoted bicycle traffic in recent decades can be tapped for good ideas and requirements for becoming a good bicycle city. Copenhagen is a compelling example of a city whose longstanding bicycle tradition came under threat from car traffic in the 1950s and 1960s. However, the oil crises in the 1970s were the catalyst for a targeted approach to inviting people to ride their bicycles more. And the message was received: today bicycles make up a considerable part of city traffic, and have helped keep vehicular traffic at an unusually low level compared to other large cities in Western Europe. The experiences from Copenhagen are used in the following to provide a platform for discussion about the good bicycle city.

In Copenhagen, a cohesive network for bicycles comprising all parts of the city has gradually been established. Traffic is so quiet on small side streets and residential streets in 15 and 30 km per hour/9 and 19 mph zones that a special cycle network is not necessary, but all major streets have one. On most streets, the network consists of bicycle paths along the sidewalks, typically using the curbstones as dividers toward the sidewalk, as well as parking and driving lanes. In some places bike lanes are not delimited by curbstones, but rather marked with painted stripes inside a row of parked cars, so that the cars protect the bicycles from motorized traffic. In fact, this system is known as “Copenhagen-style bicycle lanes.”

Another link in the city’s bicycle system is green bicycle routes, which are dedicated bike routes through city parks and along discontinued railway tracks. These paths are intended for bicycles in transit and are viewed  as a supplementary opportunity, a sightseeing possibility and a green option for bicycles. However, the main principle of bicycle policy is for bicycles to have room on ordinary streets, where just like the others in traffic, their owners have errands in shops, residences and offices. The principle is for bicycle traffic to be safe from door to door throughout the city.

Room for this comprehensive bicycle network has been largely gained by downsizing car traffic. Parking space and driving lanes have been gradually reduced, as traffic patterns have moved from car to bicycle traffic, and therefore bicycles needed more room. Most of the city’s major four-lane streets have been converted to two-lane streets with two bicycle paths, two sidewalks and a broad median strip intended to make it safer for pedestrians to cross the street. Roadside trees have been planted and traffic is two-way as before.

Bicycle paths are placed along sidewalks in the same direction as ve- hicular traffic, and are always on the right and thus “slow” side of vehicular traffic. That way all traffic groups know — more or less — where they have the bicycles, which is the safest system for all parties.

Bicycles as Part of Integrated Transport Thinking

The invitation to bike must mean that bicycle traffic is integrated into the overall transport strategy. It has to be possible to bring bikes on trains and the metro lines, and preferably in city buses so that it is possible to travel by combining bike trips with public transport. Taxis too must be able to transport bicycles when needed.

Another important link in an integrated transport policy is the possibility to park bicycles securely at stations and traffic hubs. Good bicycle parking options are also needed along streets in general, at schools, offices and dwellings. New offices and industrial buildings should include bicycle parking, changing rooms and showers for bicyclists as a natural part of their planning.

Traffic safety is a crucial element in overall bicycle strategies. A cohesive bicycle network protected by curbstones and parked cars is an important first step. Another key concern is the experienced and real safety of the city’s intersections. Copenhagen is working on several strategies. Large intersections have special bicycle lanes of blue asphalt and bicycle icons to remind drivers to watch out for bicycles. Intersections also have special light signals for bicycles, which typically give a green light to bicycle traffic six seconds before cars are allowed to move. Trucks and buses are required to have special bicycle mirrors and frequent media campaigns admonish drivers to watch out for bicycles, particularly at intersections.

Good bicycle cities know that good visibility at intersections is vital. In Denmark vehicles are not allowed to park closer than 10 meters/33 feet from an intersection for this very reason. The widespread American practice of allowing cars to “turn right on red” at intersections is unthinkable in cities that want to invite people to walk and bicycle.

The volume of bicycle traffic is one of the most significant safety factors for making bicycle systems safe. The more bicycles there are, the more it forces drivers to watch out for bicyclists and be constantly on guard. There is a considerable positive effect when bicycle traffic reaches a reasonable “critical mass.”

A Comfortable Network

It is also relevant to mention comfort and amenity value in terms of bicycle networks. Bicycle trips can be pleasant, interesting and free of unnecessary irritations, or they can be boring and difficult. Many of the criteria for good places to walk can be transferred to bicycle routes. It is important for bicycles to have enough room so that they won’t be pushed or crowded. Bicycle paths in Copenhagen vary in width from 1.7 to 4 meters/5.5 to 13 feet, with 2.5 meters/8.2 feet as the recommended minimum.

As bicycle traffic is gradually developed into a versatile, popular transport system, many new and wider bicycles appear on the street scene. These include three-wheeled transport bicycles for children and goods, handicap bicycles and bicycle taxis. All of these transport options require room, and senior bikers as well as the many parents who transport their children by bicycle need increased reassurance that they won’t be pushed and crowded. As bicycle traffic successfully develops  as an alternative transport system, more room is needed. Despite the new demands for more room, the bicycle continues to be the superior means of wheeled transport, which requires the smallest amount of room per person in the streets of the city.

A study conducted in Copenhagen in 2005 concluded that one of the city’s most pressing problems was heavy congestion on bicycle paths. The city council has since adopted an expansion of the width of bicycle paths in the most popular streets and is currently carrying out this policy.

Frequent interruptions are irritating and destroy the rhythm of the bicycle trip. Over the years Copenhagen has introduced several solutions to reduce the problem. Bicycle paths are often carried across minor side streets without interruption, which results in bicycle trips with fewer interruptions and lets drivers know they must wait. Introducing green waves for bicycles on selected street helps correspondingly to reduce irritating stops. In order to create these green bicycle waves, stoplights are set so that when bicycles bike at about 20 km/h (12.4 mph) they need not stop when they bike to and from the city during rush hour. That service used to be provided for cars. Another form of comfort and safety for bicyclists in Copenhagen is the city practice of snow removal. The bicycle lanes are always cleared before driving lanes to emphasize bicycle priority and the invitation to bike — despite the season.

Bicycle Cities and City Bicycles

In recent years, many cities have introduced various types of city bicycles that can be borrowed or rented from stands or depots. The idea is to reinforce bicycle traffic by making it easier for people to use bicycles for short trips in the city, while providing a collective bicycle system so that individuals do not need to buy, store and repair their own bicycles. Amsterdam’s white bicycle bike-share system came and disappeared quickly from the street scene in the 1970s. More stable and well organized systems were established in the 1990s, in Copenhagen, for example. Today Copenhagen has 2,000 city bicycles available at 110 bicycle stations in the city center. The bicycles are free, financed by advertisements. Users pay a coin deposit, which is returned when the borrowed bicycle is returned to one of the official bicycle racks. Copenhagen’s city bikes are used primarily by tourists, who can bicycle around town easily and safely, thanks to the well developed bicycle network. Copenhageners rarely borrow city bicycles, because they prefer their own bikes. In brief, the principle underlying city bikes in Copenhagen  is to enable inexperienced city bicyclists to ride around in a relatively safe bicycling environment.

City bike programs have by now been introduced in numerous European cities. In Paris, the pattern of use is different from that in Copenhagen. Under the Vélib program, city bicycles are used primarily by Parisians themselves. By renting a Vélib by the hour, week or year, they are able to ride a bike without the trouble of storing and maintaining it. The bicycle rental companies handle the bother in return for the rental fees they charge the bicyclists.

The idea of offering bicycles to bor- row or rent has spread rapidly (Lyon, France).

During 2008 the Vélib system in Paris was expanded to comprise 20,000 rental bikes parked in about 1,500 bicycle racks. In a very short time the Vélib bicycles have become a well-used service, primarily for short trips: 18 minutes on average. Here the idea is to enable many more or less experienced  bicyclists acquainted with the locality to bicycle in a network that is neither very safe nor well developed. Although there have been a number of accidents, the program has had the valuable result that more people now bicycle in Paris — on rental bikes and personal bikes. In only one year the number of trips on personal bicycles has doubled, an increase that has doubtless been inspired and reinforced by the bicycle traffic on the new Vélib bicycles. The Vélib bicycles accounted for one-third of all bicycle trips in Paris in 2008, and bicycles in total accounted for between 2 percent and 3 percent of all traffic in Paris.

Inspired by the development in Paris, among other cities, many new city bicycle systems are underway at this time, also in cities that have essentially no bicycle infrastructure or bicycle culture. The idea seems to be that easily accessible city bikes can kick-start development of more bicycle cities on the principle that first you send people out on city bicycles and then you gradually develop comfortable, safe bicycle networks. There are good reasons to be cautious about sending inexperienced bicyclists out on two wheels in cities where bicycle traffic and networks do not have the critical mass to allow city bikes to reinforce ongoing development. Bicycle traffic and traffic safety must be taken seriously, and experiences from good bicycle cities incorporated, before experimenting with cheap bicycle campaigns. City bikes must be a link in efforts to build and reinforce bicycle culture — not the spearhead.

On the Way to a New Bicycle Culture

A number of cities, particularly in Scandinavia, Germany and Holland have witnessed a considerable development in bicycle use in recent years. The number of bicyclists and bicycle trips grows gradually as it becomes more practical and safe to bicycle. Biking simply becomes the way to get around town. Bicycle traffic changes gradually from being a small group of death-defying bicycle enthusiasts to being a wide popular movement comprising all age groups and layers of society from members of Parliament and mayors to pensioners and school children.

Bicycle traffic changes character dramatically in the process. When there are many bicycles and many children and seniors among them, the tempo is more stately and safe for all parties. Racing bicycles and Tour de France gear is replaced  by more comfortable family bicycles and ordinary clothing. Cycling moves from being a sport and test of survival to being a practical way to get around town — for everyone.

This shift in culture from fast slalom bicycle trips between cars and many infringements of traffic regulations to a law-abiding stream of children, young people and seniors bicycling in a well-defined bicycle network has a big impact on society’s perception of bicycle traffic as a genuine alternative and reasonable supplement to other forms of transport. The shift in culture also brings bicycles more in line with pedestrians and city life in general, and is one more reason that bicycles have a natural place in this book about city life.

In New York City 300 km/180 miles of new bicycle paths were built from 2007 to 2009. A comprehensive program to introduce the idea of bicycling to New Yorkers was instituted at the same time. Car free “summer streets” are arranged in the summer months, so that residents of the city can experience the delights of walking and bicycling in comfort (Park Avenue, Manhattan, summer 2009).

Cities are wonderfully innovative in their efforts to strengthen a broader bicycle culture and demonstrate that bicycles are an obvious choice for almost everyone. Schools offer intensive bicycle training, companies and institutions compete to have the highest percentage of bicyclists among their employees, and information campaigns, bicycle weeks and car-free days are held. Many cities now open bicycle streets on Sunday in campaigns to develop bicycle culture. Sunday is a particularly good day for two reasons: car traffic is usually limited and people usually have more time for exercise and experiences. The idea of closing city streets to car traffic, turning them into temporary bicycle streets instead, has been popular in Central and South America for years. The extensive “Ciclovia” program in Bogotà, Columbia is one of the best known and best developed initiatives of this kind. In the post-millennium years, the idea of reinforcing bicycle traffic has spread to more and more of those cities where cars have dominated planning for decades.

Ambitious strategies have been developed to establish extensive bicycle networks in the large Australian cities Melbourne and Sydney. Planners in both cities are hard at work laying out new bicycle lanes and moving existing lanes away from traffic and into safer “Copenhagen-style bicycle lanes” where bicycles move inside the rows of parked cars. New York City planners are working on a new traffic plan that will make NYC one of the world’s most sustainable metropolises.

New York City’s building density, flat terrain and wide streets provide good opportunities for converting car traffic to bicycle traffic, and a new bicycle network of 3,000 km/1,800 miles of bike lanes is planned for the city’s five boroughs: Manhattan, Bronx, Queens, Brooklyn and Staten Island. Work on the new bicycle lanes started in 2007 and already in the course of 2007 – 2008 about one-quarter of the planned bicycle lanes have been established and significant growth in bicycle traffic is evident. In New York the idea of closing streets to car traffic on Sundays, which NYC calls “summer streets,” was introduced in 2008 as a popular link to the efforts to develop a new bicycle culture.

In the future, concern about sustainability, climate change and health will most certainly mean that increasingly more cities, like New York City, will double their efforts to develop a new culture for city life and movement. Increased bicycle traffic is an obvious answer to many of the problems cities struggle with worldwide.

Bicycles play an important role for transport and mobility in many developing countries.

Bicycling in Economically Developing Countries

Bicycle traffic already plays a key role in the overall traffic picture in many cities in economically developing countries. However, bicycle traffic is typically given poor and dangerous conditions. People bicycle by necessity, and individual mobility is often a prerequisite for being able to get to work and earn a living. In many cities bicycles or bicycle rickshaws handle the lion’s share of goods and people transport. Dhaka in Bangladesh has 12 million inhabitants, and the city’s 400,000 bicycle rickshaws ensure cheap sustainable transport as well as providing a modest but vital income to upwards of one million people.

Many of the cities that actually have extensive bicycle traffic today unfortunately also have forces at work to reduce bicycle traffic in favor of more room for vehicular traffic. In Dhaka, for example, bicycle taxis are considered a problem for the ongoing development of the city. Small motorcycles have replaced bicycles in many cities in Indonesia and Vietnam. Only a few decades ago, large Chinese cities were world famous for their volume of bicyclists, today bicycle traffic has in many cities almost disappeared from the street scene due to traffic reprioritization or even direct bans on bicycles.

In this category of cities, giving bicycle traffic a higher priority needs to be a key ingredient in a policy aimed to effectively utilize street space, reduce energy consumption and pollution, and provide mobility for the great majority of people who cannot afford cars. In addition, investing in bicycle infrastructure is affordable in comparison with other types of traffic investment.

New direction and reprioritizing of city policy is underway throughout the world. Fortunately, this includes prioritizing bicycle traffic in many cities in economically developing countries such as Mexico City and Bogota, Columbia.

A Bike-and-Roll rental station in front of the Hyatt Regency at Market and Spear.

I’ve been bicycling in San Francisco since the late 1970s so I vividly remember when almost all bicyclists could recognize each other on the streets of the city. There really weren’t that many of us even as recently as the beginning of the 1990s, just two decades ago. We’ve come a long way, and one of the less recognized aspects of this bicycling boom has been the incredible expansion of bike rentals and bicycling tourism.

I wrote a flyer back in 1986 calling for a “City of Panhandles” and one of the arguments I made in that largely unnoticed document was that a systematic effort to provide safe, separate bikeways crisscrossing the City would itself lead to a tourism boom. As it turns out, we’re experiencing a dramatic increase in tourists cycling even before we provide adequate infrastructure. San Francisco is just an incredibly beautiful place, and people come from all over the world to experience its beauty. Growing numbers of those visitors aren’t much interested in seeing it through windshields and are opting instead (or in addition) to rent bicycles.

There are three “big” companies doing bike rentals in SF: Bike and Roll, Blazing Saddles, and Bay City Bikes (a number of smaller places, like the BikeHut at Pier 40, also rent bikes). I recently spoke with Darryll White, owner of Bike and Roll, and he gave me some impressive aggregate numbers. Since 1995 the local bicycle rental business has grown from about $500,000 a year to over $10 million! The remarkable thing about this huge increase in tourist cycling is that about 90 percent of the rentals are heading to the Golden Gate Bridge and to Sausalito, where the City Council has erupted into battles over bike parking vs. car parking, even pondering charging fees to touring bicyclists. The Golden Gate Ferry service keeps at least four of its ferry runs going to accommodate the cycling tourists, which have hit peaks of 2,500 per day during recent summer months.

Blazing Saddles rents bikes and go-carts from its Hyde Street facility near Fisherman's Wharf.

This past Wednesday I was buying food at the Heart of the City Farmers’ Market in UN Plaza and lo and behold, a mini-mass of 9 cyclists went rolling by on Market, heading westward. All of them were on Bike and Roll bikes, and I stopped to marvel at the sight. Imagine if there was a dedicated bikeway up Market that connected cyclists all the way to the Pacific Ocean? Talk about a tourist attraction! And since it would go right by the Haight-Ashbury, the museums in the park, as well as the Civic Center, imagine how heavily trafficked by cyclists from out of town this will be.

As it happens the SF Bike Coalition is now promoting a plan to Connect The City, a version of crosstown bikeways, including a dedicated bikeway that runs from the Embarcadero to the Pacific Ocean by way of Market Street, the Wiggle, and Golden Gate Park. It’s a wonder that the politically powerful tourism industry hasn’t thrown their weight behind it yet. The bicycle renaissance going on across the world has an important connection to San Francisco (Critical Mass was born here in 1992) and thousands of cyclists come here for the beauty, the food, and the politics. If San Francisco were creating dedicated bikeways, and presenting itself as a bicycling capital, tourism from near and far would only increase that much more.

The big three maintain a fleet of approximately 3500-4000 bikes and employ on average one mechanic per 100 bikes to keep those bikes rolling. New bike shops continue to open around town, showcasing the bicycle as one of the few growing business sectors that doesn’t require its workers to sit in front of computers all day, mining pixels. Commuters, messengers, and recreational riders have already radically expanded the use of our common public space by bicycles during the last twenty years. The challenge now is to really redesign the city’s streets to make safe, horticulturally and artistically designed bikeways as common as thoroughfares for cars. I’m not a big fan of capitalism or business, but it’s pretty obvious that if we build a beautiful system of bike boulevards, bicyclists will come to ride them by the tens of thousands. When they do, they spend a lot of money and keep a lot of our local economy going.

What could be simpler? Transform a citywide network of streets to promote daily bicycling, promote it to the global tourism industry, and get ready for the boom, doubling and tripling the huge expansion we’ve already seen. It would create good, local jobs to remake the streets (design, reconstruction, gardening, maintenance), more to accommodate the increase in local cycling (retail stores, rentals, bikesharing facilities, workshops), and then a further increase as the tourists pour in to cycle across San Francisco’s beautiful landscape (tour guides, rentals, mechanics, restaurants, hotels, cafes)… Whatever diminishing of car and gasoline sales might occur would be more than made up for by an ecologically healthy, economically relocalized, bicycle-centric boom that increases San Francisco’s global profile as a trendsetter and a tourist destination.

Sunday, February 27, 2011, the 28-kilometer Cicleopaseo in Quito, Ecuador, heading southward.

The Quito Ciclopaseo happens EVERY Sunday, takes up over 20 miles of roadway each time, and is usually attended by over 50,000 cyclists during its 9-2 hours.

I just spent a few days in Quito, Ecuador, a remarkably beautiful city of a couple million sprawling 40 kilometers north-to-south through a series of valleys and plateaus in the Andes, surrounded by snow-capped volcanoes and rugged green mountains. I interviewed Heleana Zambonino from Quito for Streetsblog a while back, and wanted to see for myself the dynamic bicycling scene she described.

One of several well designed ciclovias in Quito.

This "Ciclo-Q" sign indicates a long north-south bike route through Quito, mostly in dedicated ciclovias, though some of them are on sidewalks which cause predictable conflicts.

Here the Ciclovia bends through a major intersection by taking part of the nicely redesigned sidewalks.

Mashol, Pablo, me, and Frank, pausing in one of Quito's many beautiful parks.

In fact, the ecology of bicycling in Quito is quite well developed. In two days we visited five distinct entities, all busily promoting bicycling and urban transformation in various ways. The first day started with Frank, Mashol, and Pablo giving us a tour of the historic center. Frank runs a small bike rental and tour business called Cicleadas del Rey and he’s been involved in many aspects of Quito’s burgeoning bike culture. He graciously loaned us bikes for our days in Quito.

Frank coming out of Cicleadas del Rey on Avenida Amazonas in Quito.

After the historic tour, we rode back to the neighborhood where we started—Mariscal—and met Carlos Tacuri, a guy who started bicycle agitating in Quito when he was 14 (he’s now 32). He has a shop called Construbicis, the closest thing to a Bike Kitchen in Quito. He has designed his own frame (another paradoxical example of globalization: his bike frames are manufactured in Taiwan) and is now putting together local bikes there and he’s very open with his shop and tools.

Carlos Tacuri and me next to his float-bike, outside of Construbicis in Quito.

From Construbicis we rode on one of the well-designed ciclovias that connect three university campuses in this part of Quito. Another common right of way many bicyclists use when they need to are the separated lanes dedicated to high-speed crosstown bus lines. Quito has three different routes, (Trole Bus, Ecovia, Metrobus), all running mostly north and south, which is one of the odd things to get used to for a North American in Quito. When you look at local maps you see the city arrayed from left to right—the City sits in an Andean plateau with lots of hills and doesn’t extend that far from east to west, but quite far from north to south. The maps are very wide and confusingly put north to the right and south to the left—proving again how much our image of space is shaped by the visual representations we grow up with.

This is the dedicated lane space for the Trole and Ecovia buses, often poached by speeding bicyclists.

The Ecovia Bus.

We made our way through a nice neighborhood to a sleek bar-café called La Cleta (the Freewheel), where we met a group called ABC, who later sent me a short manifesto called “El Pueblo Bicicletero Ec.” We had a nice discussion, sitting around in their bar on seats made of old wheel frames framed by their sharp silhouette paintings on the walls.

Inside the "La Cleta" bar and cafe.

Having our political discussion at La Cleta... great folks!

It was clear that they felt the bike scene in Quito had been co-opted by the local government, and a new initiative was needed to reclaim the momentum for urban transformation. These guys were the more lefty radicals of the bunch we met. In a side room they have a radio station “Radio Pedal, 102.9 FM” and they had me record a station ID for them, which was fun.

Here’s a quote from their new manifesto called “El Pueblo Bicicletero Ecuatoriano” (Ecuatorian Bicycling People):

El Pueblo Bicicletro Ecuatoriano is a space of reflection and bicycle political action. We recognize ourselves as a people that bicycles—as women, as workers, as recreational riders, urban cyclists, boys and girls, elderly, everyday working people, and others that use bicycles to move themselves from one point to another in the city or the country. The bike is not used only as means of transport but is also used in diverse working activities. The bike is not merely a means of movement but also a tool of work, as well as an instrument of transformation and political contestation. The actual structure of the city dehumanizes completely the relationship between the people and Mother Nature (Pachamama), so now we are here to take seriously pedestrians, cyclists, and to take it as seriously as we have until now the indiscriminate use of cars.

That night I gave a public Talk at a local university loosely based on a short history of California bicycling I wrote recently, and that went over well, thanks to my partner Adriana’s capable translation. I showed slides of Critical Mass from around the world and talked about 19th century Good Roads agitation, rubber and slavery, and the resurgence of bikes and politics with CM in the 1990s.

Lunch at Ciclopolis, the biggest formal bike organization in Quito, responsible for managing the Cicleopaseo every Sunday.

The following day we went to Ciclopolis for lunch. Ciclopolis is in a nice two-story building in central Quito where they have a half dozen staffers, a fleet of bicycles, and a major organizational focus on sustaining and running Cicleopaseo, the weekly closure of a 28-kilometer route through Quito every Sunday 9-1, for cyclists and others to use recreationally. They also run a program called Todas en Bici, which offers training to women and children on how to ride bicycles in city streets. As it happened, after meeting Belen at lunch we passed her in a taxi on Saturday morning while she was conducting her training ride on a ciclovia in the city center.

Belen was running the Todas en Bici class for new women cyclists when we saw her next to our taxi on Saturday morning!

Clad in safety vests and helmets, these women were learning to navigate city traffic on a quiet Saturday morning in Quito.

We had a spirited discussion Friday around the lunch table about leadership, facilitation, co-optation, government, electoralism, NGO/nonprofits, and much more. They’re a great bunch, but perhaps a bit stuck in their role as managers of Cicleopaseo. The Ciclopaseo is a lot like San Francisco’s Sunday Streets, but it happens EVERY Sunday all year long, and requires several dozen “stations,” hundreds of street closures, and a great deal of logistical support. We had a peek at their phalanx of radios, red cross bikes, trailers, barricades, etc.

Ciclopaseo, Feb. 27, 2011, Quito, Ecuador.

Ciclopaseo, Feb. 27, 2011, Quito, Ecuador.

After that we rode south a long way to get to the HQ of Biciaccion, the organization from which Ciclopolis split in 2007. It is Biciaccion, along with the folks at ABC and others who originally organized Critical Mass in Quito, long before they all ended up in different and somewhat alienated groups. (Diego from Ciclopolis had been a part of that long history too, and showed me some images in a scrapbook of early bike agitation in Quito. A group called Accion Ecologica was the precursor to all the bike activism in Quito back in the 1990s.)

This flyer promoted an early Critical Mass ride in Quito, late 1990s.

Another 1990s action, these cyclists just parked along a highway to make their point directly to drivers!

Biciaccion is still going strong, with a fantastic website, and a series of campaigns around Ecuador to promote Cicleopaseos, bike training programs, ciclovias, and more. They also have a great website here.

There’s a complicated personal back story to some of the divisions among the Quito bicycling activists, including a broken marriage, competing electoral campaigns, and mutating organizational loyalties. But those dramas only underscore the healthy vitality and diversity of the bicycling community in Quito. In many respects they are far ahead of any city in the United States, even if they, like us, have a long way to go on our car-choked planet.

White bikes have made it here too... and for sure, death on the roads is easy and all too common, as Quito's streets are still choked with automobiles most of the time.

POSTSCRIPT: More South American news–

Heavy news from Porto Alegre, Brazil, where a bank executive drove at high speed through the February Critical Mass, sending almost a dozen to the hospital and mangling dozens of bikes. Video coverage and updates here.

On a lighter note, a massive Critical Mass took place in Buenos Aires, Argentina, even rolling on a local freeway. Video is up on Facebook.

Boneshakers in the 1870s.

“If the increase continues, the time is not very distant when not to own and ride a bicycle will be a confession that one is not able-bodied, is exceptionally awkward, or is hopelessly belated.”

—“The Bicycle Festival,” July 13, 1895 New York Times

The bicycle came to San Francisco during the last quarter of the 19th century. Like other places, it first developed based on wooden wheels, similar to those that were bearing stagecoaches and being drawn by horses. Horse-drawn streetcars were the predominant mode of transit in the 1870s, peaking in the 1880s, at a time when the individual horse was also still a major source of personal transportation.

Emperor Norton on a velocipede

And then came the velocipede, an odd device that attracted some early adopters of the era. Here’s Emperor Norton, a fellow who was adept at self-marketing long before Facebook made it a basic survival skill!

The boneshakers were aptly named, running over heavily rutted streets on solid wooden wheels, eventually improved by coating the in solid rubber. The bicycle was not a transit option at that early stage, but a novelty, and a device that attracted the adventurous few who were ready to break with the limits of human powered locomotion. In “The Winged Heel” column in the San Francisco Chronicle of January 25, 1879, the writer fully grasps the possibilities:

“The bicycle ranks among those gifts of science to man, by which he is enabled to supplement his own puny powers with the exhaustic forces around him. He sits in the saddle, and all nature is but a four-footed beast to do his bidding. Why should he go a foot, while he can ride a mustang of steel, who knows his rider and never needs a lasso?.. The exhilaration of bicycling must be felt to be appreciated. With the wind singing in your ears, and the mind as well as body in a higher plane, there is an ecstasy of triumph over inertia, gravitation, and the other lazy ties that bind us. You are traveling! Not being traveled.”

(I have to admit a great appreciation for that last aphorism, echoing through time a later motto of Processed World magazine that I helped produce in the 1980s: Are you doing the processing? Or are you being processed?)

Cycling in Golden Gate Park in the 1890s.

Lone cyclist in Union Square, 1880s. Courtesy San Francisco History Center, SF Public Library.

The second club nationally and the first on the west coast was the San Francisco Bicycle Club, founded on December 13, 1876. They petitioned the Park Commission for permission to ride their new-fangled devices in Golden Gate Park. Overcoming their astonishment that there was actually a club for wheelmen, the park commissioners allowed them to “enter Golden Gate Park at the Stanyan Street entrance to the South Drive before 7 a.m. only.” Intensive self-policing kept the wheelmen within the bounds of the concession, and before too long the “privileges were extended.” (“When San Francisco Was Teaching America to Ride a Bicycle,” by Ida L. Howard, San Francisco Chronicle, Feb. 26, 1905) But it was in the next decade that bicycling began its precipitous take-off.

“The Bay City Wheelmen [founded in 1884] was the first competition for the SF Bicycle Club. It raised enthusiasm to the highest pitch. Each man was eager to find opportunities for the keenest rivalry, for the honor of his club was at stake, and in those days wheeling was a clean sport. Sport for the true love of sport. There were none of the sordid motives which follow in the train of professionalism. To become a professional was to place one’s self outside of the social pale.”

Bay City Wheelmen at 21st and Shotwell, c. 1894.

The explosion of bicycling is easily traced in the production statistics over a scant ten years, from 1885 to 1895. Where six factories produced about 11,000 bicycles in 1885, there were 126 factories in the U.S. producing a half million bikes ten years later. (SF Chronicle, May 12, 1895)

The bike clubs organized century rides around the Bay Area and annual “Bike Meets” where the fastest cyclists would compete against each other before large audiences. One of the biggest ever was during the 4th of July weekend in 1893 when an estimated 20,000 spectators would jam a special track built at Central Park just south of City Hall to watch the scorchers as they hurtled around the loop.

Central Park at 8th and Market in 1896, site of bike racing track built special for Bike Meet in 1893.

Varney Bicycles sign on old Ferry Buildilng, c. 1880s.

Generally absent from most accounts of the bicycling boom in the 1890s is a closer look at the key ingredient that made it possible: rubber. Rubber was the magic ingredient that altered the transportation landscape, but not before it had already become an essential ingredient to much of the newly industrializing world. In his excellent book, The Thief at the End of the World: Rubber, Power, and the Seeds of Empire (Penguin: 2008), historian Joe Jackson describes the Rubber Age:

[During the 1860s] rubber had become essential for war. In addition to its many uses in railroads and steam engines, military catalogues of the era show new designs using rubber for shoes and boots, blankets, hats, coats, pontoon boats, bayonet guards, tents, ground sheets, canteens, powder flasks, haversacks, and buttons. Rubberized silk was used for military balloons. War also created a boom in reconstructive surgery using hard rubber teeth, nose pieces, and custom-molded prosthetics.

Jackson continues a hundred pages later:

The 1890s would be the decade of the bicycle. The seven million bicycles found worldwide in 1895 used most of the world’s rubber, a boom that would not have occurred if not for the invention of the “pneumatic rubber tyre.” Although there had been bicycles previously, they rode on solid rubber tires. These were puncture-resistant, a boom on roads where nails were frequently shed from horseshoes, but they lacked suspension, were hard to steer, and were an unpleasant ride. This changed by the late 1890s. The market was flooded with steel tubes, ball bearings, variable speed gears, and high-quality chains. Above all else, it was flooded with replaceable rubber tires and inner tubes, mass-produced in the factories of Dunlop in Birmingham, England; Michelin in Clermont-Ferrand, France; and Pirelli in Milan, Italy. The bicycle was cheap and popular. People suddenly had a means of freedom that had been unknown.

But where did this rubber come from? Synthetic rubber was not developed until WWI. Before that it was derived entirely from several species of latex-sweating trees, the finest of which was Hevea, found scattered throughout the Amazon. Two major regions of the world were permanently altered in the frenzied pursuit of rubber supplies: Amazonia and the Congo. In both cases, an extreme brutality was used, mutilating and murdering literally millions of people to produce the precious rubber, the whole process lashed by the rising demand in the U.S., Europe, and Japan created by the bicycling boom.

Five major tire and rubber companies emerged in the three decades after 1870, the three mentioned above and Goodyear and Goodrich in the U.S. North American rubber imports jumped from 8,109 tons in 1880 to 15,336 in 1890. From 1875 to 1900, the U.S. consumed half of all the rubber produced in the world. What was happening at the point of production? Joe Jackson spares us little in his description:

During the fifteen years of Belgian King Leopold’s stewardship, the population of the Congo Free State dropped from 25 million to 10 million—15 million dead for approximately 75,000 tons of rubber. That equaled one life per every 5 kilograms. In 1907, similar evils came to light on the Upper Amazon. The Putamayo is a vast area around a river of the same name, which runs through territory that was disputed between Peru and Colombia; the river joins the Amazon near the western border of Brazil… Slavers rounded up entire tribes and forced them to work on rubber plantations… Rubber baron Julio Cesar Araña’s company “systematically employed terror and torture against it native work force for higher profits. The Indians were beaten, mutilated, tortured, and killed as punishment for “laziness” or the amusement of bored overseers. Women and girls were raped, the elderly were killed when they could no longer work, and children’s brains were bashed out against trees. Morever, Araña registered his Peruvian Amazon Rubber Company in London, thus linking Britian, the world’s leading antislavery nation, with a firm that was enslaving Indians… Araña had manipulated the British cult of free trade like a maestro, equipping his company with a tame set of British directors who allowed easy access to London funding… The Huitoto, Boras, Andokes, and Ocainas were flogged till their bones showed. They were denied medical treatment, left to die, then eaten by the company’s dogs. They were castrated. They were tortured by fire by water, by being tied head-down, and by crucifixion. Their ears, fingers, arms, and legs were lopped off with machetes. Managers used them for target practice and set them afire with kerosene on the Saturday before Easter as human fireworks for the Saturday of Glory. Whole tribal groups were exterminated if they failed to produce sufficient rubber. Julio Araña’s peak production of 1.42 million pounds of smoked Putamayo rubber cost thirty thousand lives.

Meanwhile, bicycling was being embraced by women in unprecedented numbers, as many saw the device as their best means for at least a partial self-emancipation. Women’s clothing was changing, and social mores were too. In “Thousands Ride the Noiseless Bicycle,” in the San Francisco Chronicle (May 19, 1895), the shift is described:

In the Park the other day, out of forty wheelmen, thirty-five were appropriately dressed in knickerbockers of some sort, short coats and caps. It is the same way with women. The long skirt is being pretty generally discarded, and if a woman cannot wear either bloomers or a short skirt she might as well keep off the wheel… People used to ride only for pleasure. Now they ride instead of taking the cars, and own wheels instead of feeding horses and washing carriages. Doctors use the silent and inexpensive steed very extensively in making professional calls. For night calls it is always ready, and there is a considerable saving in hack hire, livery stable fees and coachman’s wages. The keepers of livery stables say the bicycle has cut into their business far more seriously than electric cars ever did.

A well-known riding teacher says that most of his women pupils take their first lessons in skirts on a woman’s wheel. They go out on the road this way from three to ten times. They they come back to him in bloomers, learn to mount and dismount from a man’s wheel, which is a great deal harder than the other way, and never again can be induced to ride a woman’s wheel. Girls who ride for pleasure like to ride with men, of course, and the only way to do it is to keep the pace they set. It cannot be done in skirts on a woman’s wheel, and a man, even a polite escort, cannot be expected to ride slow forever, and so it happens that men’s wheels grow more popular with women every day, and after awhile when people stop talking about it and the small boy stop hooting it will all be very charming and agreeable.

July 26, 1896 report on the Good Roads demonstration.

The mass of cyclists in San Francisco were not narrowly focused on bicycling alone. They became the backbone of a broad movement for improved streets and “Good Roads.” On July 25, 1896, thousands of cyclists filled the streets in the largest demonstration seen in the City’s history. Hank Chapot wrote a great article (pdf) about the Great Bicycle Protests of 1896, and here’s a brief excerpt:

San Francisco, though the third wealthiest city in the nation, was an aging boomtown. Streets were muddyor dusty, full of horseshit, and increasingly crisscrossed with a hodgepodge of streetcar tracks and cable slots, creating an unpredictable, hazardous mess. The city’s old dirt roads and cobblestone thoroughfares were originally laid down for a village of 40,000 were now serving a metropolis of 360,000.

On Saturday July 25th of 1896, after months of organizing by cyclists and good roads advocates, residents took to the streets in downtown San Francisco, inspired by the possibilities of the nation’s wonderful new machine, the bicycle. Enjoyed by perhaps 100,000 spectators, the parade ended in unanimously approved resolutions in favor of good roads, and a near riot at Kearny and Market.

A five-year wheelman named McGuire, speaking for the South Side Improvement Club stated: “The purpose for the march is three-fold; to show our strength, to celebrate the paving of Folsom Street and to protest against the conditions of San Francisco pavement in general and of Market Street in particular. If the united press of this city decides that Market Street must be repaved, it will be done in a year.” Asked if southsiders were offended that the grandstand would be north of Market, McGuire exclaimed, “Offended! No! We want the north side to be waked up.We south of Market folks are lively enough, but you people over the line are deader than Pharaoh!”

So as we continue to ride in a new bicycling renaissance in San Francisco more than a century later, we can take inspiration and lessons from our predecessors. A citywide system of dedicated bikeways is long overdue. Imagine how many would ride if there were safe thoroughfares to bicycle on that would make it the most pleasant and most direct way to get from anywhere in the city to anywhere else? Point A to point B, smelling the flowers, the clean air, hearing the birds, and enjoying your friends and neighbors… why not?

Cyclists near the Conservatory of Flowers, 1899. Courtesy San Francisco History Center, SF Public Library

“When you have attained a proficiency which enables you to take out your handkerchief, wipe your nose and replace the mouchoir in your pocket without slackening your pace, you have fairly graduated… For fun there is nothing like cycling, and before many years two or three family wheels will be as much a part of the ménage as the modern range and sewing machine are now.”
—San Francisco Chronicle, 1896

The wonderful filmmakers at California is a Place have done another short about bicycles in the Bay Area, this one focused on Godspeed Courier in San Francisco. As they did in Scrapertown, filmmakers Drea Cooper and Zackary Canepari have captured a small vignette of a distinctive addition to bicycling in California with a beautiful eye. Check it out on their website for better watching.

Justin Ancheta Performs at the 2010 Bicycle Music Festival Parade from John Hamilton on Vimeo.

Hundreds of people turned out over the weekend for the largest 100 percent bicycle-powered music festival in the world. This year's Bicycle Music Festival began with a day venue in Golden Gate Park, and ended with an evening of performances at Pavement to Park's Showplace Triangle. One of the big highlights was the LiveOnBike parade that wound its way through the streets of San Francisco featuring live bands. It was the first time the mobile concert ride had received an official parade permit from the city.

In the above video, Streetfilms' John Hamilton captures a great reggae tune from Justin Ancheta, who plays guitar and sings while maintaining a careful balancing act as he's pedaled around on a bicycle trailer/stage, with a human-powered band alongside.  Also, don't miss the performance by the Derailleurs at Showplace (below). Congratulations to organizer Paul Freedman, aka Fossil Fool of Rock the Bike (who you see in the video on his towering creation, El Arbol), and all his crew for making it such a success!

Visiting the ghostly motor city these days is an eye-opening and surprisingly inspiring experience. The city has fallen from more than 2 million residents a generation ago to around 800,000 today. A great deal of the land area where homes and factories once filled the blocks are now expansive vacant lots, masquerading as greenways in this wet June, filled with grasses and wildflowers. Some of these vacant lots have been converted into urban farms, but the larger majority is simply empty, reverting to some version of nature. Wild pheasants skitter across the vacant lots while songbirds, from bright red cardinals to brilliant yellow finches, fill the trees and bushes with their cheerful sounds.

Wild pheasant runs across empty lot in east Detroit.

Detroit, like everywhere in the U.S., was a big bicycling town during the 1890s. Lost to most of our memories now is the relationship between that bicycling boom in the late 19th century and the automobile industry that came to dominate personal transportation and 20th century industrial life.

In 1894 more than 250,000 bicycles were manufactured in the United States; 400,000 in 1895. In 1899, 312 bicycle factories, with capital worth $30 million and a production of 1.1 million machines, worked to satisfy enthusiasts. The bikes cost $100 plain and $125 fancy, a not inconsiderable sum of money at the time. But within 10 years the bicycling fade began to fade, replaced by newfangled motorized contraptions.

Many auto manufacturers got their start as bicycle makers, notably Dodge, whose namesake brothers produced bicycles until 1901 when they opened a machine shop in Detroit to make stove parts, and later auto parts. In 1910 they established The Dodge Brothers plant in Hamtramck, where they made engines and other parts for Ford and Olds. In 1913 they began making cars and by their deaths in 1920 their company was one of the largest in the industry.

Henry Ford with a bicycle in the early 1890s.

Henry Ford got his start making bicycles too, and when he came out with the quadricycle he set off a craze in Detroit. It wasn’t until 1902 that he got his first motorized vehicle going but it was so fast that he was afraid to drive it himself.

LisaRuth cruising through the empty fields of eastern Detroit.

In Detroit for the US Social Forum (I’ll have a report posted shortly at my blog) we spent some happy hours bicycling around the wide open city. An early stop was The Hub, Detroit’s most vibrant community bike shop, where one of the guys got excited by our questions and immediately pulled out their only copy of an old 1896 bicycling map of Detroit.

Ogling the 1896 map.

The full 1896 map of bike ways in Detroit, color coded.

The conditions for bicycling by color code.

Close-up on Downtown area of Detroit.

After three days at the Social Forum, more and more bicycles piled up on every lockable fence and pole in front of the big downtown convention center Cobo Hall (I’m sure it had never experienced so many convention goers arriving by bike), we helped our hosts promote Critical Mass on Friday night.

Bikes locked all over the front of Cobo Hall convention center in Detroit.

Detroit has had a small-ish Critical Mass going back some years, but this was its biggest ever, about 375 riders. A great route was planned and most followed, which took us downtown, along the riverfront, out into eastern Detroit, through the remarkable Heidelberg Project, and finally back into the center of the City. Here’s a gallery of shots.

Critical Mass rolls through the Heidelberg Project in eastern Detroit.

In eastern Detroit.

Rollling past Cobo Hall in downtown.

The arterial routes in and out of town are incredibly wide. This is Gratiot inbound.

Rolling back out of downtown towards the end of the ride.

One of the best parts of this Detroit Critical Mass was the enthusiastic reception by locals all along the way:

Enthusiastic fast food workers take an unauthorized break to cheer us on.

A front porch bbq greeted us with hoots and hollers.

Downtown bar patrons came out to cheer too.

These kids were climbing the fence with excitement.

Passersby greeted us everywhere.

Detroit is a city reinventing itself. After a generation of abandonment by business and capital, the residents who have stayed are fully engaged in a process of rethinking what their city should look like, who should have the power to make decisions about it, what kinds of work should be done, and so on. The bicycle is making a comeback too, and though it’s still at the beginning of a regenerative process, the roots are well implanted and it’s very exciting to see what develops in the years to come.

The next generation of Detroit bicyclists, already riding in Critical Mass!

Bicyclists -- and blue bike lanes and physically separated bikeways -- abound in Copenhagen, where biking makes up 37 percent of the trips to work and school. Photos by Leah Shahum

Editor's note: This is the first in a series of dispatches from Copenhagen and Amsterdam from Leah Shahum, the executive director of the San Francisco Bicycle Coalition who is on sabbatical in Europe. 

More than 1,000 bicycling leaders from nearly 60 countries are gathered in Copenhagen, Denmark to oooh and aaah, share and compare, and, above all else, challenge ourselves to step it up back home.

For a dozen of us from the Bay Area, the Velo-City Global Conference is a chance to experience the much-praised Copenhagen bicycling environment and to bring home ideas and inspiration at a time when our own region could be on the cusp of awakening to the benefits of great bicycling cities.

"In the Bay Area, people are starting to realize that this is the future, in terms of our development. And cycling is an integral part of that," says Corinne Winter, Executive Director of the Silicon Valley Bicycle Coalition.

In presentations from biking advocates from Europe, North America, South America, and Asia, it is clear that cities are now considered the most vital frontier for increasing and improving bicycling, particularly as more people move to urban areas.

"Cycling is the most obvious way to encourage more mobility no matter which corner of the earth you come from," says Bo Asmus Kjeldgaard, Copenhagen's Mayor of the Technical and Environmental Administration, who spoke to the eager crowd. "Copenhagen is just a drop in the ocean…but the power of our example is not to be missed. Cities need to look beyond their national borders and raise the bar worldwide."

Copenhagen clearly takes its role seriously as a pioneering bicycling city and wants to serve as a model for the rest of us. The numbers are impressive: 37 percent of Copenhageners ride bicycles to work and school, though the city's leadership is not satisfied with this and aims to increase that to 50 percent by 2015. More than 350 kilometers of physically separated bikeways grace the city's streets, and plans are underway to expand the already-impressive bicycling network with more dedicated bike space and improved intersections.

In an effort to better appreciate and recognize bicyclists, the City of Copenhagen recently added this railing at a busy intersection to allow cyclists to hold on while they wait for the light to change.

Even more compelling than the high numbers of people bicycling here is the normalcy of it all. A huge number of families with small children are riding, elderly people are riding, well-dressed professionals are riding. This is a country where Nobel Laureates and the Crown Prince ride bicycles for transportation.

The mainstreaming of bicycling is another prominent theme - and much-needed - theme of the Velo-City Conference. Along with the importance of great, on-the-ground bicycle facilities, conference goers from around the globe are highlighting the need to build the culture of bicycling in our communities so that riding is "as common as brushing your teeth," as Kjeldgaard describes Copenhagen today.

Andreas Rohl, Copenhagen's Bicycle Program Manager, is clearly not resting on the laurels of his city's impressive reputation, though, acknowledging that they need to do more to respect bicyclists. "We see you. Every cyclist counts," Rhol says. "It's very important for the city to show you are trying to promote bicycling."

Or, as Mikael Colville-Andersen does in his popular blog celebrating bicycle culture, we need to re-humanize urban cycling, or Copenhagenize it.

A great idea for Market Street in San Francisco?! This automated bicycle counter is positioned on one of Copenhagen's busiest bicycling roads and tracks the number of cyclists passing by (in the single direction) on a daily and annual basis. It shows that, as of 10:22a.m. on this sunny Monday morning, 2,572 people had biked by. This street regularly sees between 20,000 and 30,000 bicyclists a day.

Copenhagen's "green wave," which times traffic signals for smooth, easy bicycling is hugely popular among those who ride. On one street where the green wave was implemented, there are between 20,000 and 30,000 bicyclists riding each day. And there is even an automatic, electronic counter to show of the daily and annual number of riders on the busy stretch.

One of the biggest challenges today in Copenhagen, says Rohl, is congestion in the popular cycle tracks. So, what's their response? The city of Copenhagen is widening busy bikeways, replacing auto lanes with double-wides.

Most encouraging for me to learn at the conference so far is the fact that Copenhagen has not always been this good for bicycling, but rather, something they have worked at, particularly during the past 30 years. According to Rohl, bicycling numbers peaked in the 1950's but then backslid for decades as the car became more dominant and city planning paid less attention to two wheeled transportation.

In the early 1980's, grassroots activists demonstrated and demanded better bicycling conditions in Copenhagen, ultimately winning support from the decisionmakers who directed planners and engineers to re-focus on biking.

This is not dissimilar from where many American cities are today, particularly San Francisco. We have a solid base of people who bicycle, as Copenhagen did in the 80's, and we also know we could - and should - have so many more people choosing bicycling if conditions were improved. Today, politicians are starting to listen to us too, and transportation planners and engineers are stepping outside of their usual box to prioritize bicycling environment.

Copenhagen has not been without their challenges since then. Even though car ownership has increased a whopping 50 percent during the past 15 years, according to Rohl, bicycling is still the predominant way people move around the city, thanks to the investments in Copenhagen's welcoming and comfortable biking environment and promotion of bicycling as the fastest, easiest way to move around the city.

"Why the Danish people bike is not because they have honey running through their veins," says Gil Peñalosa, Executive Director of the Canadian nonprofit organization 8 - 80 Cities. "No. It's because they have a great infrastructure for biking. We do need the infrastructure more than anything else."

One of the conference's keynote speakers, Peñalosa travels the world advocating for more bikeable, livable communities and visited the Bay Area recently. He says he hopes the Velo-City Conference is a reality check for those of us in North America, pushing our Mayors not to compare ourselves with Atlanta and Houston, but rather to raise our standards by using Copenhagen as our benchmark.

"I hope people realize that there has never been a better moment to promote bicycling than now," he says. "We need to take bold steps, not baby steps…It's time that cycling grows up in North America."

Using an analogy of the U.S. soccer team playing against England in the World Cup match a few weeks ago, Penalosa says: "They [U.S. team] realized they could play. They went up that notch."

"In cycling, we have to go up that notch. I do think the U.S. has the capacity. We should stop coming up with excuses."

Bay Area bicycle advocates experience Copenhagen biking on a special tour arranged by the League of American Bicyclists. From left, Corinne Winter, Executive Director, Silicon Valley Bicycle Coalition; Andy Thornley, Program Director, San Francisco Bicycle Coalition; and Jodie Medeiros, Development Director, SFBC.

This new covered bike parking is specially designed to hold cargo bicycles, a growing segment of bikes in Copenhagen during the past five years. Today, 25 percent of all families with two children in Copenhagen own cargo bikes.

Mai Le leaves on a banh mi delivery. Photo: Mai Le

(Editor's note: This story originally appeared on the SFBC's blog)

Natalie Galatzer has been up working since 11:30 pm yesterday. By the time you read this, the petite, curly-haired, 26 year-old will have ridden her bike from her home in the Mission to her kitchen in the Marina, baked more than 70 pies, jumped back on her bike and delivered around the city. If you’re lucky, you may be eating one of her sweet or savory pies for lunch today.

Galatzer is one of San Francisco’s “entrepedalers,” a growing group of individuals who have made careers out of distributing food — and sometimes cooking it — from their bikes. 

When I met Galatzer last week I made the mistake of driving to meet her. I was 30 minutes late after struggling with a carshare which happened to be hidden down an alley behind a locked gate. Wearing her headphones and looking impeccably clean for someone who just baked dozens of pies from scratch, she met me out front.

“When do the parking meters turn on around here?” I asked, fumbling with coins. 

“I have no idea,” she replies with a laugh. “I’ve never driven here.”

Galatzer, like her fellow entrepedalers, has been getting lots of attention lately. The Bold Italic and Daily Candy have both written about her (significantly increasing her sales). Interest in San Francisco’s “street food via bicycle” scene is becoming more popular as passionate foodies in search of creative outlets, extra income, or a full time job take to the streets. Many of them don’t own cars. All of them love their bikes.

Natalie Galatzer shows off her baked goods. Photo: Amit Gupta

“Monday morning I decide on the sandwich of the week and shop for ingredients. Orders are in by Tuesday morning,” says Le. “When I get home from work on Tuesday I start prepping everything from scratch. Marinating meat, making the veggie paté, making mayo, pickling the daikon. It takes between two to six hours. I get up Wednesday, buy the bread from a special “French” Bui Phong bakery — because it’s the quintessential Ho Chi Minh baguette — turn on the oven and start working. I’m out the door by noon making deliveries. Once they’re done I get home, clean up, and start my computer work.”

Galatzer has a full time job as a server at Noodle Theory. In exchange for closing the restaurant, the owner lets her use the kitchen. She arrives at midnight on Tuesday and puts in 12 hours of work before most of us have our lunch. Food for thought, as you eat one of her pies which has never been in a motorized vehicle. 

“What am I doing?” she asks no one in particular as she runs around the kitchen, getting pies ready to go. “I must be insane.”

Even her ingredients, many of which are grown in her own garden, arrive via bicycle.

As word of her pies spreads, Galatzer is finding herself loaded down with more and more product to deliver. She has hired a bike messenger to help with the full-sized pies, but is searching for the perfect bike basket for her increased deliveries. I ask her if she’d ever consider getting a car.

“Remember how long it took you to get here this morning? I drove one time and the time I spent looking for parking made it pointless. I spent most of the day’s income on meters,” she says.

Before I leave, Galatzer rings me up for two pies. The total is $8. I ask her why she isn’t charging more. “You get a dollar off because I didn’t deliver it to you,” she replies. I feel guilty when I devour them in less than 15 minutes. 

Back in the Mission, Brian Kimball, aka the Magic Curry Man, is strategizing a new curry cart. The beachcruiser+stovetop he currently navigates around the city is a single speed, which confines him to the city’s flatter neighborhoods.

”I want to start making it uphill into the Haight,” Kimball says. “So the new cart will have three gears.”

If you ever see Kimball on the street, you’ll be wondering why he isn’t aiming for more.

Kimball was laid-off from his job in November. With job opportunities scarce, he turned to his love of bikes and cooking for income. Inspired by a trip to Asia on which he encountered several types of food being served from bikes, motorcycles, scooters, and pushcarts, Kimball’s now making a living fulltime with the cart.

“My legs are pretty strong now,” he says with a laugh.

Brian on his curry cart bike. Photo: Lenaya Ponga

“They’re flat,” he says. “But they’re also home to a concentration of people that want this type of food. Hard economic times lead to creativity and new ideas are thriving in the Mission and SOMA where people appreciate risk-takers.”

“All of the bike lanes!” says Galatzer when asked the same question. “I always use bike lanes.”

“You could never do this in Los Angeles,” says Le, who navigates her tiny, step-thru Centurion 10-speed to make deliveries. “Everything is too spread-out there. This business is best in bike-friendly cities like Portland and Seattle. Arriving at and leaving each destination quickly by bike makes my business model possible.”

Sandwiches are one thing to deliver via bicycle, but curry is another. I ask Kimball if he’ll ever get a truck, like the Mission’s infamous taco trucks. 

“I’m determined not to move into trucks,” he says. “There’s a certain romance to the bike cart. It’s fun to roll up anywhere and start serving. I like the challenge of packing lots of food into a small mobile cart. It keeps things simple.”

Besides bikes, entrepedalers also require social networking. Most use Twitter to alert the public to their location. Galatzer actually has many customers at Twitter itself, and jokes about the times she tries to twitter from their headquarters and they have a network failure. I found one Twitter user, @TinaSarang, who has only one post on her account.

“Finally gave in to Twitter so that I can at least find out where the Creme Brulée cart is, ha ha,” she writes, referring to Kimball’s brother.

“My customers are mostly at start-ups, foodies that are tech-savvy on Twitter,” says Le who is typically spotted making deliveries around South Park.
As these entrepedalers get more customers — and more gears — you’ll be seeing more of them in a neighborhood near you.

“Last year when people would see us on the street their reaction was ‘what are you doing?’ Now we’re everywhere and people get it,” says Kimball. 

“San Franciscans are so supportive,” says Le. “Even with my 10 sandwich minimum per order requirement, some people want me to deliver just because they believe in what I am doing. I just want to share a delicious and authentic version of the banh mi. And ride my bike.”

A family enjoying the warm day and car-free streets. Photos: Matthew Roth.

San Jose kicked off its first ViaVelo Saturday with the opening of seven blocks of San Fernando Street downtown to bicycle riders, skaters, and pedestrians who enjoyed five hours of car-free space. Several hundred people showed up, many of them families and the burgeoning young fixed-gear crowd, riding bikes and socializing on a brilliant spring day.

San Jose joins San Francisco and San Mateo county (whose Streets Alive was mostly rained out last month) in hosting the increasingly popular events, which are modeled on the enormous ciclovia in Bogota, Colombia. San Francisco has held three of the nine Sunday Streets of 2010 and Oakland will premiere its first Oaklavia on June 27th.

Organizers of ViaVelo were upbeat about the turnout and the day's events, suggesting that if there is enough positive public feedback, the city would like to make the events a tradition next year.

"It's nice not having to worry about cars, to see families with their kids out, to see families happy and having fun, rather than worrying about how to cross the street or if it's safe to ride a bike," said John Brazil, Bike Coordinator for the San Jose Department of Transportation. "I know that all the organizers and many of the sponsors would like to see this continue, so hopefully the community will tell their elected officials they like it and it's a priority."

As one of the primary community partners involved in organizing ViaVelo, the San Jose Bike Party led various feeder rides to and from the event. Several rides from downtown went to points of interest along San Jose's extensive trail system.

"I love the fact that San Jose is becoming a bike city and putting so much focus on it," said Ian Emmons, a Bike Party organizer attending ViaVelo with his son. "I think we've got a ways to go before we catch up with Portland and 7 miles of closed streets, but we're working on it."

Bike builder Domenick Guida and his custom chopper.

"A lot of guys can relate to how much work goes into this. They know what goes into it and they notice the little details," he said.

Guida said he wished he had received more notice about the event from the sponsors, but assumed next years ViaVelos would be more inclusive. When asked how his work fit within the traditional bicycle advocacy efforts, he said, "It's all the same thing, they've all got two wheels."

One of the more surprising sights was the specter of four Mormon missionaries riding custom fixed-gear bicycles in their standard church attire. One of the missionaries, Dan Bishop, said he had been inspired to ride fixies after seeing bike messengers in San Francisco.

"Most times we get around faster than in cars. We have bus passes, but we usually ride," he said.

ViaVelo's founding sponsor was Mattson Technology, whose CEO Dave Dutton, extolled the value of cycling at a press conference during the event.

"Why is bicycling important? It unites families, it brings us all together, it helps us and the environment at the same time," said Dutton. "San Jose has done a lot of work in helping make it bike friendly. We now want to take advantage of that and make use of that so they can justify and do more."

Also at the press conference were San Jose Mayor Chuck Reed, Councilmembers Rose Herrera and Sam Liccardo, and Supervisors Dave Cortese and Ken Yeager. Silicon Valley Leadership Group CEO Carl Guardino said, "It's nice to see so many people pedaling what we preach, about getting out of four wheels and onto two wheels."

Standing behind the podium in his bicycle racing socks, Guardino tied the ViaVelo event in with last week's Bike to work Day and the upcoming publicity for cycling that will be generated by the Amgen Tour of California race.

"If we change it from just 'Bike to Work Day' to 'Bike to Work Every Day,' then we can change Silicon Valley around," he said.

Mattson's Dave Dutton with the microphone, flanked by San Jose DOT's Acting Director Hans Larson, San Jose's Chief Development Officer Paul Kruttko, Silicon Valley Leadership Group's Carl Guardino, Supervisor Dave Cortese, Silicon Valley Bicycle Coalition's Corinne Winter, and Mayor Chuck Reed.

Some of the many fixie kids using the grassy mounds for tricks.

Missionaries working the crowd on their fixies.

Dan Bishop doing track stands.

Let's just say right away that Critical Mass is a bike party, and the San Jose Bike Party has a lot more similarities to Critical Mass than differences. A half-dozen San Francisco and Berkeley Critical Mass veterans took a field trip to join the San Jose Bike Party on Friday night as it cruised through the heart of Silicon Valley. We piled onto a "Baby Bullet" Caltrain that got us into downtown Sunnyvale well before the 8 p.m. starting time. (Along the way we pondered how many cyclists it takes to make a Critical Mass and concluded that it takes enough to break into different factions that don't like each other!)

After leaving the train, we soon came upon a couple with a big couch on a bike trailer, their two dogs occupying the seats of honor, and a sound system ready to pump some tunes from within. As we approached the gathering point, not really sure how to distinguish one intersection from another along the sprawling avenues of the South Bay, we were excited to see feeder rides streaming in from all directions, numbering anywhere from a dozen to nearly 100. Riders gathering in a big parking lot, hanging with friends, energy and anticipation rising.

By the time we got rolling there were over 1,000 riders, and possibly twice that many. Unlike San Francisco, there weren't too many white hipsters in this ride. Most of the crowd was Latino and Asian youth on all manner of bikes from beaters to chrome low-riders, and a smaller number of "properly" garbed older white cyclists in yellow reflective clothing with helmets -- classic bike nerds, in other words.

A lot of folks come in groups and hang together throughout the ride.

We talked about how different it felt in terms of the demographics of the riders, refreshing for us old-time San Francisco cyclists. And given the relatively short life of this ride, and the fact that it's clearly growing fast, some of the most compelling reasons that we've remained enthusiastic Critical Mass riders for so many years were reaffirmed by the event. The hundreds of kids on this ride, ages 12-22, were all experiencing their environment in a new way. The material experience of a mass bike ride changes imaginations, changes how one conceives of urban (and in this case, surburban) space.

The origins of the Bike Party go back to a "get out the vote" ride in 2004, and then during the following year, individuals from the Silicon Valley Bicycle Coalition and other cycling activists discussed with each other how to stimulate a larger South Bay ride. Some folks had been tending the flames of a fledgling Critical Mass, but it sputtered out during the dark, rainy winter. On their website they explain how the San Jose Bike Party got started:

"Many conversations among involved riders led to the common conclusion that a ride styled after San Francisco's confrontational and controversial Critical Mass would not work well in the car-centric South Bay, but we never arrived at a full consensus of what a "San Jose Bike Party" should look like. All sat quiet and calm for a few years until a wonderful meeting of minds happened. In the summer of 2007, one of the original organizers of the 2004 and 2005 "Bike Party" Halloween rides met a new roommate who had helped organize a bike gang in San Diego and had ridden with LA's "Midnite Ridazz." Together, they determined to re-start the San Jose Bike Party idea..."

They decided to start it at 8:30 p.m. on the third Friday of the month, well after work and dinner, to pick a theme for each ride, and to have planned routes. This is quite similar to our approach in the early years of San Francisco's Critical Mass, except the starting time, which has always been at 6 here. The Bike Party has a tight coterie of volunteer organizers, and they appoint themselves and others to be "Birds." My main experience of them Friday night was the two or three times I had a yellow-vest clad monitor running past me flashing their bike light in people's eyes, yelling "stop! stop!" at a red light.

The San Jose ride's main difference from San Francisco's, besides having a self-designated organizing group who maintains close contact with police, is that it tends to stop at most intersections, and when the light turns red, not very many cyclists are inclined to keep streaming through. This is in contrast to our approach in SF, which was always premised on maintaining a dense Mass to preserve maximum safety for cyclists.

In Sunnyvale and Mountain View, the ride was pushed into the right lane of three northbound lanes on El Camino Real, with many police squad cars and some motorcycles riding herd on the cyclists. We split ourselves into dozens of small clots of cyclists, usually 10-50 riders each, and it was increasingly difficult to catch up with the riders ahead. After almost an hour of this odd experience, we did some turning and twisting before being herded by organizers into a mid-point parking lot for a regrouping stop.

Bean Powered at the San Jose Bike Party, here at the regrouping stop.

The organizers are anti-alcohol, but plenty of folks were nursing beers and flasks along the way. The folks with the Beaners wagon above had a cooler full of beers on their trailer. But no one was as inebriated as the drunk guy who spends each and every San Francisco Critical Mass bellowing at the top of his lungs.

Overall, the Bike Party captured a lot of the magic that Critical Mass does. I found it frustrating and self-defeating to not hold intersections long enough for larger groups of cyclists to pass through, but one of the characteristics of mass bike rides is how they each find their own comfort level and culture. At least a half dozen sound systems were on the ride, pumping funk, hip-hop and other popular tunes.

Given the participants in the ride, I doubt if the culture will remain the same for long. The youth culture in San Jose hasn't established its own voice in the Bay Area and it seems like the Bike Party might be a place where it could erupt.

The couch on wheels!

During the mid-point regrouping stop, Jason Meggs, who was the first person to bring a rolling couch on Critical Mass (in Berkeley in the early 1990s) approached the folks with the rolling couch and their dogs. When he mentioned he was a long-time Critical Mass rider, the couch pedalers were visibly dismayed. I spoke to a dozen different cyclists while riding and most of them were curious about our Critical Mass and knew little about it. So even though the webmaster and (perhaps) the main organizers choose to characterize San Francisco Critical Mass as confrontational and controversial, parroting the distorted accounts that have been broadcast far and wide in the mass media, the San Jose Bike Party is clearly influenced by Critical Mass, in spite of deliberate attempts to distance the event from its more notorious predecessor.

Still, they have to make the same disclaimers about real or potential participants that we often make here in San Francisco: "At Bike Party, we welcome all riders. However, the atmosphere can be diverse and chaotic, much like a rock concert. There are people who act badly, as you might see at any large event like a concert at Shoreline. We strongly discourage inappropriate behavior... Still, no one can fully control someone else's actions. Most people are generally respectful, friendly, and helpful."

Just like when we talk to the media and emphasize that they cannot get an interview until they come on a Critical Mass and experience it first-hand, the Bike Party describes itself this way: "We're one-half political party, one-half street party -- made up of all types of bicyclists and human-powered transportation advocates who celebrate and build community in a monthly ride that must be experienced to be understood."

Kindred spirits animate the ride. Describing it online they say:

Everything looks better from the seat of a bike. You can feel the wind on your face, the rhythm of the ground in your legs, you can feel your heart pumping, and the energy of your surroundings encompassing your body. On a bicycle, you can see the city, talk to strangers, escape the insulated bubbles of cars and feel free from the confines of cubicles. A bicycle is freedom, a bicycle is friendly, and a bicycle is life... Bicycling frees people from costly fees, stuffy cars, sedentary lifestyles, and dreadful commutes. Bike Party rides aim to teach riders the street skills and confidence they need to become daily riders on all kinds of roads.

We didn't make the whole ride, but returned to the Caltrain station to catch the last train before it was over. We all agreed it was great fun to join a neighboring ride, and we welcome the San Jose Bike Party as a member of the Critical Mass family of rides. From the huge and nearly city-sponsored Critical Mass that happens twice annually in Budapest, Hungary, to the thousands-strong rides in cities from Vancouver, BC to Rome, Italy, to Sao Paolo, Brazil and San Francisco, every urban area reinvents the idea of mass bike rides for its own context and needs. Congrats to our southern neighbors for opening up a vital space for social transformation. San Jose and the South Bay are part of the worldwide bicycling renaissance. Check it out next month, May 21, 8 p.m.

Streetsblog Editor Bryan Goebel, Board of Supervisors President David Chiu, and SFBC's Leah Shahum riding downtown on Bike to Work Day. Photo dustinj

"San Francisco has one of the most vibrant bike cultures in the nation and in spite of the injunction ridership is way up," said Bicycling Editor-in-Chief Loren Mooney.

Mooney said she has been following the progress of the injunction and has been excited by the recent improvements to the city's streets, such as the protected bicycle lane on Market Street. According to Mooney, San Francisco ranked as high as it did because of the city's bicycle culture and community and because of the hard work of the bicycle advocates in the face of adversity.

Two years ago, when Bicycling did its last ranking, the magazine segregated cities by size; San Francisco received an Honorable Mention behind Portland, Denver, and Seattle in the category of cities sized 500,000 to 1,000,000,

"Not only is San Francisco strong now, it will be great to see where they are in two years on our next list," said Mooney.

Mayor Gavin Newsom's spokesperson Brian Purchia said they were pleased to be the highest rated city in Calfornia. "With street improvements under way and working closely with the cycling community, our ranking is sure to rise."

San Francisco Bicycle Coalition Executive Director Leah Shahum was thrilled with the news. "Despite some unexpected roadblocks in the past few years, we are still experiencing unprecedented growth in the numbers of people choosing bicycling for transportation," said Shahum. "Today 53 percent more people are riding compared to just three years ago."

Added Shahum, "One of the things I'm most proud of in San Francisco is that bicyclists are still on the cutting edge of re-imagining and pushing the envelope on how our city's public space is valued. It's not a coincidence that greater support for bicycling is connected to this larger, broader movement for more livable streets."

Bicycling editors based the rankings in cities with populations of at least 100,000 and used factors such as cycling-friendly statistics (numbers of bike lanes and routes, bike racks, city projects completed and planned) and changes in these statistics and a city’s future plans since the last survey. They also gave credence to a city's bike culture, such as the number of bike commuters, cycling clubs, cycling events, and renowned bike shops. Editors also referenced the Bicycling and Walking in the United States 2010 Benchmarking Report prepared by the Alliance for Biking and Walking, the League of American Bicyclists’ Bicycle Friendly America project, and interviews with national and local advocates, bike shops, and other experts.

Heleana Zambonino conducting a basic bicycling skills class at Sunday Streets in Guadalajara, Mexico, Sept. 2009.

In Guadalajara last September I met dozens of cycling activists from around Mexico, and one remarkable woman from Quito, Ecuador, Heleana Zambonino. While riding in a big Critical Mass in Guadalajara, she told me about the cycling scene in Quito, and her organization CiclóPolis. Her story left me inspired and a bit embarrassed. They’ve accomplished a great deal more in a half dozen years in Quito than we have in 20 years in San Francisco!

Art from one of a half dozen thriving bike activist groups in Quito, Ecuador, Andando en Bici Carajo.

Todas en Bici logo.

Heleana Zambonino:

CC: What is the bicycling movement like in Quito, Ecuador right now? What are the regular events? What are the other advocacy organizations besides CiclóPolis, if any? Publications? Radio or TV shows?

HZ: The bikers movement in Quito city grew a lot during the last decade. Nowadays we have several advocacy organizations such as CiclóPolis, Biciacción, Andando en Bici Carajo (ABC), CicloPUCE, Ciclismo Politecnica, Cicletadas el Rey and SENDA among others. It is beautiful to see more urban cyclists on the roads. These organizations offer a wide range of activities. For example, CicloPUCE, which is the cycling club from Universidad Católica, goes on biking tours every weekend. They organize huge bike rides near Quito as well as other beautiful places in Ecuador. They go biking to the beach, on the high mountains and to the forest.

Inside the city there are weekly events such as bike polo offered by Bike Polo EC, Biciacción sponsors “Bicipaseos patrimoniales,” which are rides to the colonial treasures here in Quito (Quito is officially part of the Cultural Heritage of Mankind since 1972). They also lead a ride called “VDP” or Viernes De Pedales (Friday of Pedals) which is a Critical Mass that rides around the city making bikers visible in the face of traffic jams. ABC organizes the alleycat competitions and the “piques,” where the fastest biker wins the competition. They also support the ghost bike campaign to honor bikers killed while riding in the city. SENDA runs workshops to introduce women to mountain biking—they practice in Metropolitano Park which is one of the larger greenbelts we have in the city. At the end of 2009 Radio Pedal was launched, where cyclists have the opportunity to express their opinions, concerns and doubts about the predominant automobile addiction that Quito dwellers suffer from.

Bike culture graffiti in Quito.

The international movement to reduce CO2 in the atmosphere to 350 ppm or less was embraced by CiclóPolis too.

CC: What about the CicloVias (dedicated bike paths) in Quito? How were they decided on? Who pushed for them? Can you tell the story about how the first implementation was rejected by the cycling movement and the city had to rebuild new CicloVias? How were the new ones different from the first ones?

HZ: The CicloVias are another major achievement. Since the CicloPaseo started, more and more people decided to start biking through the everyday traffic jams. That became very, very dangerous, but it made more visible the need for a dedicated lane for bikes. This bike lane was born as a “Vida para Quito” project (this is a private governmental corporation that takes care of environmental quality). There were several disagreements while building the lane. The neighbors that love going by car to the corner store opposed it, so part of the bike lane was built on the sidewalk. Unfortunately this layout of the lane didn’t have another solution (Japon St., north of the city). The municipality decided that they would take advantage of the sidewalk to avoid disturbing motorists with bikes alongside. They also built a bike lane on the Amazon Ave. sidewalk, one of the main city arteries. Fortunately, there was so much pressure to make bikers visible, and the municipality did want to contribute to the bike movement, so they realized their mistake. They rebuilt the bike lane on the side of the road with its own traffic signals. This was a big win for us bikers. Then the CicloVias were extended further (both longer and covering more of the city), so we have more bike lanes that connect the north with the south and an east-west lane that connect the two major universities zones. It’s called “La inter U’s”

CC: Do you have Do-It-Yourself bike repair cooperatives or collectives? (In Italy they are called “ciclofficine”) Can you describe the cycling economy in Quito in terms of for-profit businesses, non-profit or anti-profit groups, and advocacy groups? Are there lots of old bikes in the trash, or is everything getting used and re-used?

HZ: Unfortunately here in Ecuador we don’t have any initiative like the ciclofficine or LA Bicycle Kitchen, but we have pretty good bike workshops such as Construbicis, managed by Carlos Tacuri. In this workshop you can recycle your bike. If you ask to do an internship you can help and learn about building bikes from start to finish. The cycling economy regrettably is a bump on the road if you want to bike. There is no non-profit or anti-profit organization that could help people to get a free bike. It is the next step I hope. People trash their bikes only when it is pure scrap. So it is difficult to find parts to recycle bikes. Everything with bikes is used until it really doesn’t work anymore.

CC: How do cyclists get along with pedestrians in Quito?

HZ: It is a pretty good relationship. Pedestrians and cyclists interact the most on Sundays during the CicloPaseo. There is a respectful attitude both ways. During regular days most people walk, bike and share the bus, the 65% that don’t own a private car.

CC: What are road conditions like in Quito? Are there dedicated bike boulevards during normal work days?

HZ: Well, road conditions throughout Ecuador are a shame. Quito is not an exception. Unhappily there are no bike boulevards, just the CicloVias. I wish there were just one.

CC: There is an oil industry in Ecuador. Do they campaign for cars and oil and against bicyclists? Do bicyclists make common cause with the indigenous protesting the exploitation of Amazonian lands for oil exploration? Can you describe any demonstrations like that?

Me wearing the CiclóPolis windbreaker, while Heleana helpfully displays my book, Nowtopia!

HZ: Correa had changed his mind dramatically. As the topic before, I’ll be writing about him… grrrrr….

CC: What’s the best time of year to come for a visit? (Visit SF in May or September-October!)

HZ: Well, Ecuador is a beautiful country. It has everything: rainforest, cloudforest, pristine beaches, mangroves, high mountains, active volcanoes and the uniqueness of the Galapagos Islands. In Quito you can find anything you want about South American art, colonial art, the most beautiful sights and mysterious paths to the pre-Columbian cultures and the magic of the land of the sun. I’m in love with the middle of the earth and its biological, cultural and ethnic diversity. I’m really short in words to describe it! And the best season—well, since we have just 2 seasons, summer and rainy summer… any time of the year is pretty to come.