Google Maps ‘Bike There’

Occasionally we try to spotlight different groups of people - often cycling advocacy groups - from around the world. We recently covered groups in Australia and Hungary.

‘What is The Elm City’, you say? Why it’s New Haven, Connecticut (wiki), of course.

Elm City Cycling is:

a group of more than 400 advocates who work to make New Haven a better place for bicycling and walking. We keep in touch with each other through a yahoo listserv, and through monthly public meetings on the 2nd Monday of every month.

Up to the right you’ll see a mini-screenshot of their website, which is very cool. Click through and have a look around.

We’re all strapped for resources - money/time/etc., so getting a good-looking website together can be challenging, but I have a feeling that having a top-notch website can be a great motivator and recruiter - so any time spent towards this end is probably a good time investment. Software like WordPress - which is free, and is the software running this website - can really help. Just my opinion, of course.

One of the many issues Elm City Cycling has been working on is ‘intermodal connections’ - that is, being able to do part of your journey on bike, and part via bus, train, subway, etc. - so you need connections that can accommodate your other forms of transport. Train transit systems seem to move a bit slower than their bus counterparts in terms of accommodating bicycles - check out the ridiculous ‘bikes on seats’ picture at this post. Updates here.

Keep up the good work, y’all!

That’s Budapest, Hungary. And it’s just the latest example of how this bicycling thing is a worldwide movement:

Budapest’s local government is planning to equip area metro and HÉV (commuter rail) stations with “parking lots” for bicycles, reports tabloid Blikk. Following the example of the “park and ride” (P+R) parking lots put in place for automobiles, the “B+R parking lots” would make it possible to reach metro or HÉV lines by bicycle and continue the journey via public transport.

According to Hungarian Bicycle Club (Magyar Kerékpáros Klub) chairman János László, the bike parking spaces could end up being as popular in Budapest as in some other large cities in Europe, where virtually every metro station is equipped with organized facilities for storing bicycles. Lászlo added that success for such a project in Budapest would depend on commuters feeling secure in parking their bicycles.

I do have some mixed feelings about bicycle infrastructure development. For instance, in this case, it seems like the mass transit system may have an easier time in decreasing service because bicycling might be able to fill the gap. In my eyes, this development is of dubious benefit. I want to increase cycling and get cars off the road, but I’m not too interested in decreasing mass transit. We’ll have to figure that out as we go.

On a semi-related note, whenever I think of Hungary or Budapest, I think of the movie Kontroll, which is set in the Budapest Metro. Great movie.