RALEIGH -- The City Council gave its blessing Tuesday to a plan that would create bicycle lanes on Hillsborough Street.
The lanes still need to be approved by the N.C. Department of Transportation, which has official jurisdiction over the state road.
Raleigh has spent $9.9 million giving a section of Hillsborough Street near N.C. State University a facelift, with roundabouts and new streetscaping. But bicycle lanes were not included in the initial plans. However, several groups and bicycle enthusiasts pleaded their cause.
Read more: http://www.newsobserver.com/2010/04/21/446967/bike-lanes-get-one-ok-need-another.html#ixzz0ljffs584
Showing posts with label bicycle commute. Show all posts
Showing posts with label bicycle commute. Show all posts
Wednesday, April 21, 2010
Bike Lanes on Hillsborough Street?
From today's Raleigh News & Observer:
Friday, April 16, 2010
Smart Commute Challenge
Triangle bike / ped commuters, take note: the annual Smart Commute Challenge is under way. Please sign up and participate. Details are below.Meantime, check out the local randonneur and randonneur-in-training (above) who are already on board with the challenge. That's Branson and Aubrey featured on the Home Page, taking part in the photo contest. Way to represent!
The SmartCommute Challenge has begun! Pledge online to take a greener commute just once between April 15th and May 15th, and you will be entered to win one of two grand prizes of $1,500 each or many others! All you have to do is pledge to ride the bus, bike (either traditional bike or electric scooter – your choice!), walk, vanpool, carpool, or work from home at least once between April 15 – May 15.
To find out more or take the pledge visit www.SmartCommuteChallenge.org or keep reading! And don’t forget about the Free Emergency Ride Home program which guarantees you a ride home any day you use a smarter commute option!
Already a Smart Commuter? We’re raising the stakes with a new contest. Your participation this year will help your company’s chances to win the employer competition and be recognized as the Greenest Commuting Organization in the Triangle. You can also show off your commute AND your photography skills by entering this year’s photo contest.
Join the thousands of Triangle commuters who do something good for their wallets and the environment by not driving alone to work! Participation is easy. Visit www.SmartCommuteChallenge.org today and take the 2010 SmartCommute Challenge. All you have to do is pledge to ride the bus, bike (either traditional bike or electric scooter – your choice!), walk, vanpool, carpool, or work from home at least once between April 15 – May 15. You could win fabulous prizes, including cash, a foldable bike or a laptop!
Here’s how you can SmartCommute:
• Carpool - find a carpool partner at www.ShareTheRideNC.org
• Vanpool - join an existing vanpool or start a new one before May 30 and the first month’s fare is free!
• Ride the Bus – Call 485-RIDE to get help planning your bus commute or go to www.GoTriangle.org/ and use the new trip planner. If you pledge to try the bus we’ll send you a free regional day pass!
• Bike or walk – Find bike routes, information on how to rack your bike on the bus, walking trails and more at www.GoTriangle.org
• Telework – working from home even one day a week is a great way to reduce your impact on the environment, reduce stress and keep some money in the bank.
Wednesday, April 22, 2009
Friday, November 28, 2008
Urban biking: south Raleigh
Over on NewRaleigh.com the question was posed,
When I lived in Raleigh, like many cyclists, i reveled in the night ride home from downtown, which was a bit off-route, as i worked in an office over by Cary. On a good winter night, I'd warm up climbing Glenwood fixed, turn R on Hillsborough, L on Boylan. Enjoying the view from the railroad bridge--even more with the extra lights leading toward Christmas--while a freight banged and groaned through the "wye", below. Then on into Boylan Heights where odd stickers and obscure stencilings festoon the back sides of the stop signs. After a tip of the hat at the Mayor's home, turn R onto Cabarrus and down past the yard with the perennials, then the one with the urban chickens--if i'd had enough beer, i might crow like a rooster--past the glasswerks studio and through the narrow under the high trestle where the Amtrak from Richmond crosses in the early evening, and a few yards on the foot path.
If the state was killing a man that midnight, then one needed be ready to brake for a small handful of solemn vigil-ers huddled around candles against the chill, on the path just outside prison grounds, closely watched and kept at a safe distance, lest their prayers comfort the condemned. Nowadays, they do executions at 4am, because midnight wasn't cold enough to discourage prayers, i guess. Flash them a peace sign and cross Western Blvd. Only on execution nights will there be a chain stretched across the dark entrance--in case the post-middle-aged pray-ers charge the empty soccer field at midnight?
The quiet, straight run through darkness between the cold steel RR tracks and empty soccer fields was a great place to sprint, or enjoy the cool widespread glow of a full moon on the empty landscape at the edge of the old, but not yet entirely abandoned, Dorthea Dix mental hospital. L on campus, crossing high over the vines and RR tracks, then R, and along the edge of grassy "nut hill" while down below giant boilers howl up their stacks and huge white steam clouds erupted into the dry black winter sky, carrying the starchy aroma of sanitized linens. R under the thick boughs of the hospital's old oaks, and L before the hill bottom to exit campus past the unmanned fuel depot and the closed for the night drug rehab facility where, at noontime, students stretch their legs and reflected on program material over a smoke on their daily lunch walk to and from burger king. This cross-campus cut avoids traffic and also avoids the hill near the north end of Lake Wheeler Rd where one of the businesses (laundry?) seems to often vent enough ammonia to make one's eyes almost cry.
R, back into traffic on Lake Wheeler Rd, crossing and finally saying "good-night" to the RR tracks--them pointing to Rocky Mount and Richmond, and me headed home--past the fenced yard were a thousand gray cement lawn statues stand silently beneath a dull sodium lamp, their fantastic array of forms--angels, deer, women and dragons--made all but invisible by the camouflage of a uniform dull gray color, past the bright digital marquee of the now silent farmer's market the road dips slightly crossing the damp, ill-defined flood plain of tiny Walnut Creek, where they air is always ten degrees cooler--a welcome treat in the summer, and a grit your teeth and pedal plunge in the winter, then the steep climb up over I-40, with its own red and white light show. Lake Wheeler Rd narrows after the interstate and the NASCAR-mad "American Owned" convenience store where the clerk with the .38 on his hip sells Hugo Chavez's gasoline.
R on Sierra, into residential, past the 1960s-era single-family homes--each of unique architecture, unlike the new cookie cutters just ahead in my neighborhood--a cyclist through here earlier in the evening would smell a variety of suppers cooking in family-sized batches. Some nights now the windows and storm doors of these homes rattle violently with the joyous thunder of Salvation Music booming from the new Pentecostal mega-Church someone built just outside of this usually quiet neighborhood, or at least they often did in the first months after church construction--I imagine the parties involved must've discussed noise ordinances by now. R on Lineberry, spin downhill past the scads of new apartments where the woods used to be--dwellings attracting convenient city transit buses now, instead of wild deer. Up the last and biggest climb to turn left at the HOA-maintained sign on Isabella and carry me home on a trusty pair of stainless-steel spoked twenty-seven inch wheels.
—Adrian "la Paralysie" Hands
"When you’re perched above two wheels and coasting through the crisp fall air, what path, official or unofficial, do you find yourself drawn to?"
When I lived in Raleigh, like many cyclists, i reveled in the night ride home from downtown, which was a bit off-route, as i worked in an office over by Cary. On a good winter night, I'd warm up climbing Glenwood fixed, turn R on Hillsborough, L on Boylan. Enjoying the view from the railroad bridge--even more with the extra lights leading toward Christmas--while a freight banged and groaned through the "wye", below. Then on into Boylan Heights where odd stickers and obscure stencilings festoon the back sides of the stop signs. After a tip of the hat at the Mayor's home, turn R onto Cabarrus and down past the yard with the perennials, then the one with the urban chickens--if i'd had enough beer, i might crow like a rooster--past the glasswerks studio and through the narrow under the high trestle where the Amtrak from Richmond crosses in the early evening, and a few yards on the foot path.
If the state was killing a man that midnight, then one needed be ready to brake for a small handful of solemn vigil-ers huddled around candles against the chill, on the path just outside prison grounds, closely watched and kept at a safe distance, lest their prayers comfort the condemned. Nowadays, they do executions at 4am, because midnight wasn't cold enough to discourage prayers, i guess. Flash them a peace sign and cross Western Blvd. Only on execution nights will there be a chain stretched across the dark entrance--in case the post-middle-aged pray-ers charge the empty soccer field at midnight?
The quiet, straight run through darkness between the cold steel RR tracks and empty soccer fields was a great place to sprint, or enjoy the cool widespread glow of a full moon on the empty landscape at the edge of the old, but not yet entirely abandoned, Dorthea Dix mental hospital. L on campus, crossing high over the vines and RR tracks, then R, and along the edge of grassy "nut hill" while down below giant boilers howl up their stacks and huge white steam clouds erupted into the dry black winter sky, carrying the starchy aroma of sanitized linens. R under the thick boughs of the hospital's old oaks, and L before the hill bottom to exit campus past the unmanned fuel depot and the closed for the night drug rehab facility where, at noontime, students stretch their legs and reflected on program material over a smoke on their daily lunch walk to and from burger king. This cross-campus cut avoids traffic and also avoids the hill near the north end of Lake Wheeler Rd where one of the businesses (laundry?) seems to often vent enough ammonia to make one's eyes almost cry.
R, back into traffic on Lake Wheeler Rd, crossing and finally saying "good-night" to the RR tracks--them pointing to Rocky Mount and Richmond, and me headed home--past the fenced yard were a thousand gray cement lawn statues stand silently beneath a dull sodium lamp, their fantastic array of forms--angels, deer, women and dragons--made all but invisible by the camouflage of a uniform dull gray color, past the bright digital marquee of the now silent farmer's market the road dips slightly crossing the damp, ill-defined flood plain of tiny Walnut Creek, where they air is always ten degrees cooler--a welcome treat in the summer, and a grit your teeth and pedal plunge in the winter, then the steep climb up over I-40, with its own red and white light show. Lake Wheeler Rd narrows after the interstate and the NASCAR-mad "American Owned" convenience store where the clerk with the .38 on his hip sells Hugo Chavez's gasoline.
R on Sierra, into residential, past the 1960s-era single-family homes--each of unique architecture, unlike the new cookie cutters just ahead in my neighborhood--a cyclist through here earlier in the evening would smell a variety of suppers cooking in family-sized batches. Some nights now the windows and storm doors of these homes rattle violently with the joyous thunder of Salvation Music booming from the new Pentecostal mega-Church someone built just outside of this usually quiet neighborhood, or at least they often did in the first months after church construction--I imagine the parties involved must've discussed noise ordinances by now. R on Lineberry, spin downhill past the scads of new apartments where the woods used to be--dwellings attracting convenient city transit buses now, instead of wild deer. Up the last and biggest climb to turn left at the HOA-maintained sign on Isabella and carry me home on a trusty pair of stainless-steel spoked twenty-seven inch wheels.
—Adrian "la Paralysie" Hands
Friday, May 30, 2008
"Take the Lane"
From our local weekly paper, the Independent, comes one of the best cycling articles I've ever read. It focuses on bicycling techniques taught by NCBC rider and LAB board member Bruce Rosar.
Here's the lead:
And here's the full story.
The article is part of the Indy's "Medal to the Pedal" series which is focusing on two-wheeled travel in the Triangle. Thank you, Indy. Here's an excerpt about that series:
To see more of that series, go here.
Here's the lead:
"Take the lane." That's going to be my new motto. After practicing with Bruce Rosar for an hour, I am totally comfortable riding among the cars in the center of Cary. And I mean not just over on the side of the road but right out in the travel lane ahead of the Land Rovers and F-150s. Screw 'em if they're forced to slow down behind me.
And here's the full story.
The article is part of the Indy's "Medal to the Pedal" series which is focusing on two-wheeled travel in the Triangle. Thank you, Indy. Here's an excerpt about that series:
This year's summer guide carries the theme of "recession recreation," and the more we thought about it, the more we determined that the humble bicycle—invented decades before the automobile, and the livelihood of aviation pioneers Wilbur and Orville Wright—deserves special attention. As much fun as bikes can be, as Megan Stein reports on page 12, we propose that we think seriously about the bicycle as a daily tool. The benefits are obvious and enormous, and, as Bob Geary learns in our main feature (this page), you're never too rusty to get back on a bicycle.
To see more of that series, go here.
Thursday, May 15, 2008
N&O Editorial on Biking
Here's a follow-up editorial to Monday's N&O article. A notable quote:
The original article has been widely criticized on the local listservs for fear-mongering. My own opinion: the publicity is helpful, even if the reporter missed the mark.
A rash of car-bicycle accidents in the Triangle is a reminder that North Carolina's road-building standards make leisure or gas-saving bike riding risky at best and deadly at worst. At a time when biking to work or from there to a restaurant at lunchtime could save real money -- and when North Carolinians suffer from an epidemic of obesity -- it seems that the Department of Transportation would be paying extra attention to making state roadways cyclist-friendly.
The original article has been widely criticized on the local listservs for fear-mongering. My own opinion: the publicity is helpful, even if the reporter missed the mark.
Monday, May 12, 2008
Sunday, May 11, 2008
Time to park the car? Part 2
In case you haven't heard....it's Bike to Work Week. I've received e-mails about local events, listed below.
May 12th - 16th is National Bike to Work Week and is part of the 2008 SmartCommute Challenge. Celebrate with cycling events, free food, prizes, shop discounts, and group rides throughout the Triangle!
Click here for details on the events below:
RTP Cyclists’ After Work Get Together (Durham)
Tuesday, May 13, 5-7 pm
Cyclists’ Happy Hour (Durham)
Wednesday, May 14, 5 pm
Bike to Work Breakfast (Durham)
Friday, May 16, 7-9 am
Capital Area MPO’s Capitol Ride - sign up! (Raleigh)
Friday, May 16, 9 am
Capital Area MPO’s Bike to Work Breakfast (Raleigh)
Friday, May 16, 7:30-9:30 am
Bike to Work Breakfast (RTP)
Friday, May 16, 7-9 am
Ride of Silence (RTP)
Wednesday, May 21, 7 pm
Cycling Shop Discounts (thru Fri, May 16th)
Mention the SmartCommute Challenge when you shop at:
• Trek Bicycles of Raleigh
• Spin Cycle (Cary location)
• Cycle Logic
Cycling Resources
GoTriangle.org has helpful information on how to plan your route, pack your gear, cycle safely, and maintain your bike.
Encourage your friends to take the Challenge at SmartCommuteChallenge.org.
Friday, April 11, 2008
Bike to Work / Verse 1
May is Bike To Work Month and our good friend Yo Adrian has prepared a little song to motivate would-be bicycle commuters.
My only question: How did he get a look at my belly? I've done my best to keep it under wraps.
Oh the weather outside's delightful
And your belly's looking frightful
Gas prices have gone berserk
Bike to work, bike to work, bike to work
My only question: How did he get a look at my belly? I've done my best to keep it under wraps.
Friday, March 28, 2008
Raleigh Bicycle Planning Meeting
This just landed in my e-mailbox. Here's your chance to talk with Raleigh leaders.
The e-mail text:
The City of Raleigh is developing a Comprehensive Bicycle Plan that will guide future bicycle improvements in Raleigh and we want YOU to be part of the process.
The plan is intended to reflect the needs and wishes of the community; therefore, the City is asking for your input: the first public workshop will be held on April 2nd, 2008 at the Glen Eden Pilot Neighborhood Center (1500 Glen Eden Drive, Raleigh). Please stop by anytime between 4:00 – 7:00 PM to learn more about the project, talk to City staff and project consultants, and provide your input to the process. The City wants to hear the citizens' priorities for bicycle facilities and programs. Attached is an advertisement flyer for that meeting. Please feel free to distribute this so that all Raleigh citizens are informed.
In addition, please take a few minutes to fill out an online comment form for the project.
Online Comment Form Link: (http://www.surveymonkey.com/s.aspx?sm=xyxe0TrdbunTnFsUR7hp8w_3d_3d)
Please pass the word along to any and all cyclists in the Raleigh Area!
Thank you for your time. Happy and safe bicycling!
Would somebody please mention that there's no good way for most bikers to commute uptown on workdays? Nearly every route throws you in an uncomfortably heavy mix of motorists, while new construction and changes have mucked up once acceptable routes, like Oberlin Road.
We spend lots of money putting new parking garages uptown. Let's put an equal amount of thought in getting cyclists up there safely.
Here's another question for our planners: When do they plan to reopen the greenway trail that crosses Capital Boulevard near Yonkers Road? It's been closed for repairs for six months or more.
Tuesday, February 19, 2008
Red Means Go?
The car roared by three feet from my front wheel. 40 miles an hour- right across the crosswalk I was in- right through a light that had been red for over a minute. He never even got off the gas until he tapped his brakes halfway across the intersection. One second difference and I would have been killed. No doubt. It was- That. Close.
My friend Ed has blogged on The Daily Randonneur about DC drivers regarding red lights as "suggestions." RTP drivers aren't much better, but this was different. I imagine this driver was distracted on his cell, being asked to pick up 1% milk on his way home- or was that 2%- and his microwave dinner was getting cold. As my startled face blurred by, he realized how close he'd come to killing someone. Or at least, that's what I choose to believe.
The point is (and don't take this as fear-mongering) please keep your eyes open. Ride happy, but ride defensively. All the lights and reflective gear in the world don't matter when a careless driver is running late for supper.
Now please excuse me. I have some shorts to clean out.
Monday, January 14, 2008
Crushed crackers
Record-high gas prices and a near-record waistline encouraged me to step up my bike commuting for the New Year. My resolution is to ride to and from work 4 days a week. A couple of weeks into it, here's a report.
It's 7.7 miles each way. 80% of it is on the American Tobacco Trail (at right.) The ride to work often becomes an interval session, the ride home a cruise. Some positives: I don't have a strict dress code at work and there is a safe place inside to park my bike. The negatives: I don't have access to a shower, it's hard to run errands, and my saltine crackers get crushed during the ride in. (Trivia alert: Sunshine Bakery was once owned by the American Tobacco Company, the conglomerate supplied by the railroad that I now use for my commute.) Whenever I start getting tired and sore, I take a look at these numbers:
Add it all up and I'm logging an additional 60 miles a week, saving about $15 in fuel, plus I'm getting in some really good interval work. And eating lots of crushed crackers.
It's 7.7 miles each way. 80% of it is on the American Tobacco Trail (at right.) The ride to work often becomes an interval session, the ride home a cruise. Some positives: I don't have a strict dress code at work and there is a safe place inside to park my bike. The negatives: I don't have access to a shower, it's hard to run errands, and my saltine crackers get crushed during the ride in. (Trivia alert: Sunshine Bakery was once owned by the American Tobacco Company, the conglomerate supplied by the railroad that I now use for my commute.) Whenever I start getting tired and sore, I take a look at these numbers:
- Round trip by car, my commute takes 45 minutes. The car computer tells me I burn 1 gallon of gas. And the trip? Pretty frustrating.
- Round trip by bike, my commute takes 70 minutes. My heart rate monitor tells me I burn 900 calories. And the trip is a blast!
Add it all up and I'm logging an additional 60 miles a week, saving about $15 in fuel, plus I'm getting in some really good interval work. And eating lots of crushed crackers.
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