If you’re familiar with the Poudre River Trail, you know that there is a large gap between Fort Collins and Windsor.  There is a petition making the rounds that proposes to close this gap.  If the grant for this project is landed the Poudre trail will be connected between Arapaho Bend Natural Area and River Bluffs Open Space among other things.  So, make sure you sign the petition at the following link.

Read more here (yourgroupride.com)

The Bike Co-op is proud to announce two Fort Collins screenings of the feature length documentary With My Own Two Wheels.  Two Wheels weaves together the stories of five individuals across the globe into a single narrative about the bicycle as a vehicle for change. The documentary was shot on location in Zambia, Ghana, India, Guatemala and California.  Each screening will be followed by a question and answer session with the Producer/Co-director of the film Jacob Seigel-Boettner.

The screenings will take place at 7:00pm on December 7th and 8th at The Lyric Cinema Cafe.  Tickets for each night can be purchased before the event for $10 at the Bike Co-op or  The Lyric Cinema Cafe.  Tickets will also be available at the door for $15.  Seating is limited, so buy your ticket early.   Each ticket purchase includes a complimentary New Belgium Beer (For those of legal drinking age).  Hey, $10 for a movie and a beer!  Just try to find a better deal.

All proceeds raised from the two night event will help to support the Fort Collins Bike Co-op and World Bicycle Relief

Sponsored by Poudre Valley Health Systems and New Belgium Brewery.

Movie Trailer

City Council has asked City staff to write a Bicycle Safety Education Plan. They have also asked that this plan consider whether we should build a bicycle “safety town.” The plan is underway and will be completed in March of 2010.

For a preview of what a bicycle safety town might look like, take a look at these photos from Peoria, Illinois. This bike safety town, run by the Peoria Parks District is almost four acres in size and has close to 4,000 feet of bike lanes available. The parks districts runs classes for elementary school children and you can book the safety town for a birthday party during the summer. Seems to us the possibilities are endless!

For more photos of Peoria’s Bike Safety Town click here:  http://www.flickr.com/photos/expeditionplus/sets/72157625730513841/

By Rick Price, Ph.D. (Rick is the Safe Cycling Coordinator for the Bike Co-op; this column was published in the Fort Collins Coloradoan on January 3, 2011; Rick’s Smart Cycling columns appear the 1st and 3rd Mondays of every month in the Coloradoan)

Mia Birk’s book, “Joyride: Pedaling toward a Healthier Planet,” is a how-to manual for creating a first-class bicycle community. Both City Council and city staff would benefit from reading Birk as a way to put Fort Collins even more in the lead in this national movement.

Birk recounts a perfect storm of events when she became bicycle coordinator in Portland in 1993. Congress had just funded the first six-year federal transportation package that included a small allocation for “transportation enhancements.”
“Enhancements” were meant to fund transit, bicycling and walking facilities as Congress
attempted to counter the “roads only” policies of state departments of transportation. This enabled states and cities like Fort Collins and Portland to write bicycle plans and to hire bicycle coordinators.

In Portland in 1990, the Bicycle Transportation Alliance, or BTA, had been founded, and was to become one of the most active advocacy groups in the nation. Earl Blumenauer, now Congressman from Oregon’s 3rd Congressional District and founder of the Congressional Bike Caucus, was Portland’s Commissioner of Public Utilities. With Blumenauer’s support and with the backing of the BTA, Birk set out to make Portland, a city of 500,000 people, a friendlier place to ride a bicycle.

As she explains in “Joyride,”Birk had a series of revelations during the first years of her job that opened her eyes to the challenges she faced. Despite enjoying great support in the bicycle community, she noted that “if I spend my time preachin’ to the gospel choir, the bicycle revolution isn’t going to spread very far.” Additionally, when Portland’s traffic engineers suggested that rather than stripe bicycle lanes, they get the police to enforce the law to encourage more cyclists, she noted “the police won’t even talk to me (as bicycle coordinator),” let alone enforce the rules of the road to protect cyclists.

Another revelation came after her third bike-to-work day,when Birk asked herself, “is this helping to get more people out riding? Is my time best spent running events like his, or working on bikeway projects?” The answer, she found, was that she needed to mobilize the non-bicyclists in town, build bike paths and lanes and to become more of a catalyst in bringing people together to change the culture in order to get reluctant cyclists on their bikes. “It’s not enough to adopt a Bicycle Plan, she wrote, “we’ve got to retrain all the humans involved, both inside and outside government.”

So Birk began with neighborhood meetings at Denny’s. Then she met with the Lions Club. Once she was fully under way, she was meeting with “business groups, ethnic groups, neighborhood associations, school groups, churches” and, as she explains it, “pretty much anyone who” would listen in a series of 60 meetings across Portland.

The results of Birk’s work are impressive to the degree that “Joyride”should be required reading for anyone who wants to see bicycle ridership double in Fort Collins.