L to R -- Jeff Ciabotti (Rails to Trails), Chris Scott (VBF), Senator Mark Warner, Barbara Duerk (VBF), Champe Burnley (VBF), Marianne Fowler (Rails to Trails)

Cyclists from across Virginia convened in Washington to meet with Virginia’s eleven congressmen as well as Senators Warner and Webb.  Meetings covered issues such as the upcoming transportation bill, Complete Streets, Safe Routes to School (extending this to include high school students), support for Congressman Bluemenaur’s Active Community Transportation Act, and of course, Rails-With-Trails.  

A number of citizens from across Virginia teamed up with VBF for these meetings –  bike retailers and manufacturers’ reps, mountain bikers and bike commuters, as well as cycling advocates.  The team offered a broad perspective on what is needed to improve cycling in Virgina.

Joining VBF for their meeting with Senator Mark Warner were the Rails to Trails Conservancy’s Senior VP of Federal Relations Marianne Fowler, and VP of Trail Development Jeff Ciabotti. 

“The Summit was a real success,” said VBF president Champe Burnley.  “We found most of the congressional offices very supportive of our requests to support active transportation in the Commonwealth.  I really feel optimistic that conditions in Virginia will continue to improve.”

A local bike club and some researchers at Virginia Tech have teamed up to build a web-based mapping survey to gather data on cyclists’ trips. Cyclists are being asked to enter their everyday routes. The data collected will be used by the Town of Blacksburg to plan bike and pedestrian infrastructure improvements.

The survey website was created by the Center for Geospatial Information Technology, with strong encouragement and support by the New River Valley Bicycle Association, who will help rally cyclists to enter their data.

VT News has the full story, “Geospatial researchers assist local planners through participatory mapping surveys.”

Recently we reported on another crowdsourced mapping project in Blacksburg, but now some Virginia Tech students, and free culture enthusiasts, have a mapping project of their own — putting all the campus bike routes into Open Street Map. To make it more of a party, there will be a raffle with some nice prizes, including an Android G1 phone. Here are the details, from Christopher Covington:

In order to improve and publicize untethered community infrastructure, an OpenStreetMap mapping day is being held tomorrow (Saturday) from 11:00am to 4:00pm with 1020 Torgersen Hall as a base camp. We would love to see you there. An Android G1 phone and several *nix books will be raffled off amongst interested participants.

See http://vtluug.org/osm for details. Longer descriptions of OSM and
the event goals follow.

OpenStreetMap is the Wikipedia of maps. Everyone can freely use, copy^, add to, and edit OpenStreetMap. Furthermore, while OpenStreetMap began with just streets, it has grown to include almost everything map feature imaginable.

Specific goals for Saturday’s event include:

• Complete coverage of campus paths
• Complete coverage of University Mall
• Parking and addresses in major apartment complexes
• Additional bicycle and pedestrian ways and points of interest
• Additional street updates (new roads, closed roads)

If you cannot make the event but are still interested, we encourage you to make additions and edits to OpenStreetMap independently. It is an open project that anyone can edit at any time.

OpenStreetMap is “copyleft” meaning copies and derivative works (such as OpenCycleMap) must allow others to copy and make derivative works of them, too, under the same terms.

This event is hosted by Free Culture at Virginia Tech and the Linux and
Unix Users Group at Virginia Tech.

Racers from Richmond Pro Cycling visit a school

A professional cycling team based in Richmond, Virginia has taken a new approach to professional level racing. Founded in 2008 by Craig Dodson, Richmond Pro Cycling (RPC) is a 501c(3) nonprofit organization. Their mission is to race competitively at the professional level, but do more than win races.  Dodson hopes that cycling can change lives.

During the race season, the team competes across the United States. But between races and a rigorous training calendar, Dodson demands much more than time in the saddle. Each of his racers, all in their twenties, are required to work toward three key goals.

“First is education. Each member has to be working on a four-year degree.” said Dodson.  His undergraduate riders maintain a 3.4 grade point average.  ”Second, each has to give around 150 hours of community service. Third, each must race at a professional level.”

RPC racers’ activities have ranged from tutoring inner city youth — seventeen at-risk students this year — to working with elementary and secondary school children on the benefits of exercise, fitness, and bike safety.  Dodson estimates that they’ve touched over 2000 youth lives since the team was formed, and has participated in dozens of school and community events.

RPC even found time to work with a local bike club to teach advanced group riding skills, after a rash of pace line accidents during the year.

One of RPC’s chief sponsors is The Faison School – Autism Center of Virginia (ACV), a nonprofit autism center dedicated to providing resources for children with autism spectrum disorders (ASDs) and their families.  The school is a public-private partnership with Virginia Commonwealth University, a major research center. RPC taught 9 of the school’s students how to ride bikes, and continued their hands-on development with the students over a five month period.

RPC has a unique business model, and with corporate sponsorship down in tight economy, supporting their programs has been a challenge.

Richmond Pro Cycling is kicking off a new fund raising effort to support their mission.  They  hope to have 1000 individuals contribute $50 to support their mission.

If you would like to learn more about their organization, or make a donation, send your tax deductible contribution to:

People Cycle
P.O. Box 14533
Richmond, VA 23221

or  visit:

http://www.richmondprocycling.com/

Boulder Bike Story from Bikes Belong on Vimeo.

Today, Sept. 22, is World Carfree Day. What’s the point? Private motor vehicles are the default transportation choice of most Americans. Carfree Day is an invitation, an opportunity, to give some other mode a try — preferably a clean, healthy, and fun mode like biking!

Don’t miss today’s post from Ride Solutions. There’s no questioning the prosperity that the automobile has brought us. But now we’re so dependent on it that we’re blowing our collective prosperity out our tailpipes! We need other options, especially for the 40% of all trips that are 2 miles or less.

This was posted to the New River Valley Bicycle Association listserv today by NRVBA president Beth Lohman:

Liz and I met with the Commonwealth’s Attorney, Brad Finch, to understand how the incident involving Bonnie Tinker occurred. We gave Mr. Finch an opportunity to describe the incident and the police findings, and we followed up with additional questions – some of which came from a few of you that emailed me independently. What follows is a summary of the incident.

There was one eye witness that observed the entire incident. Ms. Tinker and ***, the driver of the dump truck, were both headed north on West Campus Drive. The truck was in the main vehicle travel lane, and Ms. Tinker was in the bike lane. The witness stated that both vehicles, the bike and the truck, were traveling in their respective lanes, and that neither vehicle encroached on the other’s lane.

The truck was ahead of Ms. Tinker, but as Ms. Tinker descended the hill on West Campus Drive she caught up to the truck and became even with the truck. Without any visual cues as to a cause, the witness observed Ms. Tinker’s bike begin to wobble. Ms. Tinker’s bike moved left, bumping into the truck, then back to the right toward the curb. Then she moved back to the left into the truck and became entangled with the truck. All of this occurred well before the right turn onto Drillfield Drive.

The crash investigation teams were unable to determine the cause of the wobble (e.g., flat tire, broken spoke, hard application of front or rear brakes), because the bicycle was so badly damaged by the truck. While the speed of the truck was not an issue, the investigation did consider Ms. Tinker’s speed coming down the hill but drew no conclusions.

The Commonwealth’s Attorney’s Office has decided not to pursue charges against ***, because *** was operating his truck properly and the accident appears to have happened when Ms. Tinker lost control of her bicycle. Liz and I are confident that this decision was correct given the information from the investigation.

We took additional time to discuss the nature of this particular segment of West Campus Drive with Mr. Finch, where a bicyclist can gain quite a bit of speed descending the hill. As many of you know, the stretch between Washington Street and Drillfield Drive is about 1/3 mile long and consists of a steep descent, a bend in the road, multiple crosswalks (approximately nine), and multiple parking lot entrances (at least four). We asked Mr. Finch for recommendations that he may have in addressing the obvious and not so obvious safety issues with this stretch of the road.

As we have received a number of comments about specific concerns and hazards, the NRVBA will continue to look at this segment of the road. We will approach the university to discuss some of the issues and to make some recommendations. If you have specific comments or recommendations about this stretch of West Campus Drive, please feel free to submit them to me (ealohman@gmail.com) and Debby Freed, VT Alternative Transportation Manager (dfreed@vt.edu).

If you should have any questions or comments, please send them off line to me (ealohman@gmail.com) or Liz Hokanson (egrucker@vt.edu), and we’ll be glad to answer them. If you decide to respond to the listserv, please be considerate of the other listserv members. Avoid using derogatory language and keep any criticism constructive.

VBF welcomes, and encourages your comments below.

Please read Erik Qualman’s article that goes along with this video, where the statistics and their sources are listed for future reference.

Note: VBF is as guilty as most, but we are on Twitter.

Manif Spaciale friday august 7 2009 Roanoke VA USA from Car Less Brit on Vimeo.

The buzz leading up to it has been killing us, but Roanoke’s Manif Spaciale finally took place last Friday. What is a Manif Spaciale? The brainchild of Roanoke sparkplug River Laker (aka CarLessBrit), it’s a live demonstration of the spatial differences between bikes and cars — how much space they occupy, on the road and in our cities.

The Roanoke Times has the story. Be sure to check out CarLessBrit’s links above. Also check out the Manif Spaciale Facebook page, and follow CarLessBrit on Twitter.