“America’s century-old love affair with the automobile may be coming to an end. The U.S. fleet has apparently peaked and started to decline. In 2009, the 14 million cars scrapped exceeded the 10 million new cars sold, shrinking the U.S. fleet by 4 million, or nearly 2 percent in one year. While this is widely associated with the recession, it is in fact caused by several converging forces.” – Lester Brown, President of Earth Policy Institute
See the rest of the post on treehugger.
Muscle Powered will be having our first board meeting of 2010 this week on Wednesday, January 20th at 6:30 PM in the Doppelgangers back room. If you are a Muscle Powered member, or just interested in learning more about what we do, you are invited to attend!
The agenda will include the election of the 2010 board members, 2010 Potential Projects, and miscellaneous administrative items.
Doppelgangers is located at 302 N Carson Street at the West Proctor intersection.
Muscle Powered has embarked on a project to make Carson City, NV a Bicycle Friendly Community (BFC). A BFC is a designation awarded by the League of American Bicyclists to communities that have proven to posses safe accommodations for cycling, and that encourage people to bike for transportation and recreation.
2010 BFC kick-off meeting
On January 6th, we had the official 2010 BFC kick-off meeting. In attendance (pictured above left to right) were Denis Coyne, Bill Story, Dan Allison, Mark Kimbrough, Tim Rowe, Ty Polastri, Jeff Moser (me), and Anne Macquarie. This group of people represents Muscle Powered, the State of Nevada Bicycle Advisory Board, and the Lake Tahoe Bicycle Coalition (some of the folks mentioned here represent multiple entities). Ty Polastri from the Lake Tahoe Bicycle Coalition has been through this drill before, and was largely responsible for South Lake Tahoe earning a Bronze Award as an BFC. Ty has been instrumental in laying out the road map for us to proceed, and we’ve already made progress on completing the first step. A few of us have already discussed BFC with Carson City Mayor Bob Crowell, and he is enthusiastically behind the idea!
The BFC application will provide a comprehensive picture of our community by asking questions across five categories often referred to as the “Five Es”. These categories are Engineering, Education, Encouragement, Enforcement, and Evaluation & Planning. A community must demonstrate achievements in these areas in order to be considered for an award. Communities with more significant achievements in these areas receive superior awards.
It is important for communities to strive to become bicycle friendly, as bicyclists are an indicator of a healthy, vibrant community. A few of the benefits of the BFC program are:
* Health benefits from increased physical activity
* Less traffic congestion
* Improved air quality
* Bicycle facilities provide both transportation and recreation, and serve all ages and incomes
* Bicycle tourism stimulates local economies
Currently, there are no official Bicycle Friendly Communities in Nevada. In fact, Nevada is one of the only western states that does not have a community with this designation! It is Muscle Powered’s opinion that Carson City has what it takes to become Nevada’s first official BFC.
More information about Bicycle Friendly Communities can be found on the League of American Bicyclists’ website at www.bikeleague.org/programs/bicyclefriendlyamerica/.
I’m sure we’ll need more help as this project progresses. Stay tuned for further developments!
Chas Macquarie provided this update on the potential freeway bicycle trail.
As most people familiar with the Freeway Trail saga know, NDOT was forced to design and construct a multiuse trail on Phase 1 of the freeway from Silver Oak Dr. (formerly Broadleaf) to Hwy 50. However, there are sections that are bike lanes on two streets – Retail Court and Russell Way adjacent to the new Boys and Girls Club. As part of the deal the City cut with NDOT, NDOT is not required to construct a trail on subsequent phases of the freeway, though they did construct the east-west link that connects the linear ditch trail to Butti Way where it joins up with the trail the City paved on the south side of 5th Street. So there is now a good east-west trail across Carson City east of Roop Street. NDOT also agreed to design the freeway so that it did not preclude the future addition of a trail “to the extent practicable”.
Here is a very well written blog post on alternative fueled cars as not being a solution to climate change, and other things we care about: http://ridinginriverside.blogspot.com/2010/01/you-cannot-have-your-car-and-your.html.
“…instead of pursuing unproven technologies in a desperate last-ditch attempt to hang on to the way of life we’ve been living for the last 50 or so years, why don’t we look ahead and try to build a better world.”
I got this link from StreetsBlog, which if you don’t already follow it, is a great resource for transportation alternatives since it collects some of the best blog posts from Internet.
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