Comments on: Chicago: A City Whose Mayor Cares About Bicycling

By: da' Square Wheelman

da' Square Wheelman — Sun, 31 Dec 2006 19:15:39 +0000

The Bike Ambassadors are hired by the city and paid by The Chicagoland Bicycle Federation. In fact most of the staffing for bike initiatives are partnered in this way.

The BAs visit schools promoting safe biking, teach bike maintenance basics, as well as help local communities and neighborhoods advocate on all kinds of bike issues.

And don’t forget that with BikeWinter Chicago we have the Santa Cycle Rampage %)

http://bicycle-diaries.blogspot.com/2006/12/santas-on-rampage.html
http://bicycle-diaries.blogspot.com/2006/12/twas-night-before-xmas.html#comments

Happy New Year!

dsw

By: bicycle_poet

bicycle_poet — Sun, 31 Dec 2006 08:15:29 +0000

The article said:
>Chicago’s new $3 million downtown bike station was paid for with federal funds and is now privately run.

By: steveo

steveo — Mon, 11 Dec 2006 02:12:49 +0000

Exactly.

By: Aaron

Aaron — Mon, 11 Dec 2006 00:47:12 +0000

It wasn’t even a very pricey bike. It was like a $500 mountain bike. But the tabloid media decided it was the symbol of an out-of-touch billionaire mayor. I think this was all going down during the Gloomsberg post-9/11 “doomsday budget” smoking ban days. The city was in the middle of a giant PTSD nic fit. Anyway… someone stole the bike from the kid a few months later. No wonder Bloomberg hasn’t gone near a bike since.

By: steveo

steveo — Sun, 10 Dec 2006 18:27:46 +0000

You’ll recall that Bloomberg brought up cycling during a transit strike scare several years ago. He gave some kid a pricey bike which gave the general populace the impression that the billionaire mayor was out of touch.

(Or is my memory failing me?)

By: JK

JK — Sun, 10 Dec 2006 18:10:31 +0000

It would be great if Bloomberg was a cyclist. But Dep Mayor Dan Doctoroff is purported to be a semi-regular bike commuter from the UPW to City Hall via the Hudson Greenway.

Doctoroff’s portfolio includes the DOT, and he is the Dep Mayor most directly responsible for the physical city. He is also the force behind the announced expansion of the NYC bike network.

By: Aaron

Aaron — Sun, 10 Dec 2006 17:40:11 +0000

Hell, it would be nice if New York City had a mayor who simply mentioned bicycling.

By: Mitch

Mitch — Sun, 10 Dec 2006 02:54:30 +0000

It would be really nice if New York had a Mayor who was an avid bicyclist and bicycling advocate, but I don’t know how to make that happen. In Chicago, where Mayoral succession is by primogeniture, Daley’s fondness for bicycling is mainly a matter of dumb luck. Chicago has a vibrant bicycling culture, as does New York, but in neither city are the bikers strong enough to swing an election.

But Chicago’s bike scene does have much to admire. I am particularly impressed by their embrace of winter (see http://bikewinter.org/main.php), which includes an annual Critical Mass Polka Ride. And I was pleasantly shocked, on my last visit, to see bike racks *inside* mass transit stations. New York could easily do something similar for the bikes that now clutter the sidewalks outside some stations.

By: Paul Dorn

Paul Dorn — Sat, 09 Dec 2006 00:24:38 +0000

Sigh. Lucky Chicago. In San Francisco we get a lot of lip service from our mayor, despite the effective advocacy of the San Francisco Bicycle Coalition. What this illustrates is that visionary leadership is key to finding the resources needed to transform urban space. Absent visionary leadership, we get lip service to urban livability with vehicles continuing to monopolize public space.

By: Aaron

Aaron — Sat, 09 Dec 2006 00:09:56 +0000

Thanks for the copy edit/fact check. The article has been amended and improved thanks to your contribution.

Man, I wish New York City government had the same kind of open, collaborative, community-driven production processes that we have here online to create and refine the work product. I bet the city's biking community could be put to really good use, for example, in helping DOT design, build out and refine those 200 miles of new lanes.

By: Facts

Facts — Fri, 08 Dec 2006 23:36:19 +0000

Aaron writes: “There is no mention of New York City”

The article states: “Given its image as a tree-hugging coastal town, Portland might be expected to emphasize bicycle travel. …But similar things are happening in less likely places. … New York City, the national capital of subway-and-foot urbanism, recently announced a plan to increase bike lanes by 200 miles over the next three years.”

By: AD

AD — Fri, 08 Dec 2006 22:25:04 +0000

What does a bike ambassador do?