jpreardon.com

May is Bike Month NYC. To get things started, Hal Ruzal and Kerri Martin take a look at how well New Yorkers lock up their rides.

There are several good locking tips in this video. One, however, isn’t that great. They show one bike that uses hose clamps to secure the quick release skewers. The bike in the video had both wheels locked up, so they were secure. Learn from my stupidity, don’t rely on hose clamps alone to keep your wheels out of the hands of bike thieves.

via Streetsblog

Washington D.C. will be the first U.S. city to have a widespread bike sharing program. Next month, SmartBike DC, will make 120 bikes available around the city. They hope have 1,000 shared bicycles on D.C. streets in the future.

Moving sucks. You have to find a bunch of boxes, throw all of your possessions in said boxes, rent a crappy truck, bribe your friends with beer (still cheap labor), put the cat somewhere for a couple hours– the list goes on. There must be a better way.

This video from StreetFilms shows how some Brooklyn residents made moving more fun by using bicycles–and a rickshaw–to eliminate the need for a crappy, rented moving van:

This photo by Bill Cunningham of The New York Times serves as a reminder that locking your bike to scaffolding is not a great idea. Check out the rest of the bike-themed slide show here: On The Street | On a Roll

The 34th Street Partnership is planning to create an attended bike parking area in Midtown. They have secured space on West 33rd Street and are seeking a sponsor to cover the operating expenses.

To help defray the operating expenses, perhaps the 34th Street Partnership should consider renting the space to a bike shop rather than looking for a sponsor. This would not only defray expenses, but also offer on site repair services.

I can’t decide if Hello Kitty bike tires are the ultimate in cycling kitsch or an excellent preventative measure against wheel theft. After all, is the common bike thief going to want to get caught riding around town on white-walled Hello Kitty tires?

Even if the cute factor of these tires is too much for you, check out Nirve’s site for some other excellent treads for your rig.

via Yo Kiddo! :: OhGizmo! :: engadget

NYU and Time’s Up! are working together to reclaim and repair bikes that are abandoned on the NYU campus. NYU sophomore, Emily Allen, and others won a $5,000 grant from NYU to start the program. The grant money goes towards buying parts used by Time’s Up! volunteers to get the bicycles road ready. Half of the refurbished bikes are sent back to the University to be given to students. I’m not sure what happens to the other bikes which are retained by Time’s Up. I assume they are used as parts or donated to people in need of transportation.

This is a great program that will keep some bikes out of the dump while encouraging cycling at the school. Nice work!

By the way, Time’s Up! will be loosing their East Houston Street meeting space in a few months. They are currently looking a new space, if you can help in any way, send an email to timesupspace@gmail.com.

When I saw my bike hanging wheelless from a sign post last week, several thoughts entered my head. Among those thoughts was why the prick that stole my wheels (requiring a wrench) didn’t just use a bic pen and steal the whole bike. At least they could have rode the thing somewhere rather than carrying the crappy old wheels around.

So, this is farewell to a my old bike. It served me well over the last 15 years as a mountain bike first then a stripped down urban vehicle. Goodbye old friend.

Its a New York City first. Some on-street car parking has been decommissioned in favor of bicycle parking near the Bedford Avenue subway stop in Williamsburg. This is a welcome change for cyclists since the area has been the scene of NYPD clipping incidents in the past (via). By creating this new area, bikes are locked out of people’s way on the sidewalk. It is good to see that the city is starting to provide an amount of bike parking commensurate with the number of cyclists. Let’s hope this is just the first of many bike parking zones.

City Room is running a series in which DOT Commissioner Janette Sadik-Khan answers reader questions. Commissioner Sadik-Khan has already posted parts one and two of her answers and will continue to post more throughout the week.

So far, the commissioner’s answers lean towards the reserved. However, she seems very willing to experiment with things. One example of this type of thinking is clear in this reference to the congestion pricing proposal:

We’re not trying to lock the city into anything for all time. We want to try it, see how it works and see if we need to change it.

It’s very refreshing to hear this coming from the DOT commissioner. This willingness to try new things is much more important than any single answer she can offer this early in her tenure. I wish her much luck in transforming the DOT into a more agile and responsive agency. It certainly sounds like she is on the right path.