popular logistics

Richard Peace of Bike Radar reports:

Numerous bike retailers in the United States are reporting a spike in sales on the back of the seemingly inexorable rise of gas prices at the pumps throughout the country.

In particular bike retailers are reportedly noticing a strong rise in commuter cycling queries – unusual in a market that is regarded as primarily a leisure and sports-based one. Recently the price at the pumps hit $3.60 a gallon and the net is full of reports from bike shops across the US noting the price squeeze effect on customers coming through their doors.

As William Yardley would have it, Portland is a hotbed, - not just of big brands (Nike, etc.) -

what is most distinctive about the emerging cycling industry here is the growing number of smaller businesses, whether bike frame builders or clothing makers, that often extol recycling as much as cycling, sustainability as much as success.

Like the local indie rock bands that insist they are apathetic about fame, many of the smaller local companies say craft, not money, is what drives them.

“All the frame builders I know got into this because they love bikes,” said Tony Pereira, a bike builder whose one-man operation has a 10-month waiting list, “not because they wanted to start a business.”

Mia Birk, a former city employee who helped lead Portland’s efforts to expand cycling in the 1990s, said the original goals were rooted in environmental and public health, not the economy.

“That wasn’t our driving force,” Ms. Birk said. “But it has been a result, and we’re comfortable saying it is a positive result.”

Ms. Birk now helps run a consulting firm, Alta Planning and Design, which advises other cities on how to become more bicycle-friendly. In a report for the City of Portland last year, the firm estimated that 600 to 800 people worked in the cycling industry in some form. A decade earlier, Ms. Birk said in an interview, the number would have been more like 200 and made up almost entirely of employees at retail bike stores.

April Streeter has this in yesterday’s Treehugger:

As a result of half a century of planning, Copenhagen has achieved a fabulous cycling goal - during the morning rush hour more bikes and mopeds pound the inner city streets than personal cars and buses. Just a bit more than a third of inhabitants get to work by bike every day - the other two thirds take public transport or a personal car. But the news gets even better - Copenhagen’s municipal government is increasing spending to improve bike lanes and paths and the bike travel experience.According to this survey, Copenhagen is behind places such as Amsterdam (where a claimed 40 percent of traffic moves by bike) and Portland, Oregon in providing the best inner-city biking experience. This may be true, but Copenhagen has got to be the stylish bike capital - especially with the bloggers at copenhagengirlsonbikes and cycleliciousness making it look so cool to ride.

City officials now want to increase cyclists to make up half of all commuters by 2015, as well as increase cyclists’ speeds by 10 percent while reducing the risk of injury. How will they do it? Partly by investing more - they added about 25 million Danish crowns (US$ 3.7 million) in 2007 to the yearly budget of 75 million crowns.

Already in the city, subway stops and other open spaces sport large bicycle parking stalls - the best are the covered double-decker stalls - and the city will build even more of these to encourage cyclists to park away from pedestrian and other traffic. They’ll also widen lanes to accommodate more bikes.

In addition, some heavily-trafficked lanes will sport a new bicycle pictogram to show that they get a special ‘green wave’ - traffic lights will be coordinated so cyclists who maintain speeds of about 20 kilometers/hour can just keep on moving.

Across Öresund in Sweden cyclists are not quite so pampered, but some good things are happening - in Gothenburg cyclists will soon be able to use the same Internet service cars have long had access to to create individual bike destination maps for all locations in the city. Via ::Ecoprofile

In Copenhagen Bicycles Overtake Cars (TreeHugger)

Update: Colville Andersen - of cycleliciousness notes in a comment to TreeHugger:

Great post. Thanks for the big up about our blogs.
One thing, however, the “survey” you link to is not a survey at all… it’s a commercial website writing a opinion piece about bike cities, without any real research.
Love the treehugger world. Keep up the good work.

MetaEfficient posts (post undated) on the  Matra MS1 Electric Bike:

[Show as slideshow]

This could be a great commuting machine — it’s an electric-powered bike designed by the French company Matra. The bike was recently introduced at the Paris Motorshow. It has a range of 60 miles, in addition to the mileage you add by using pedal power. It has a top speed of 30 miles per hour, but this is an artificial limit set on the motor.

It can be rigged to go faster, but officially, you’d have to get a license to drive it, because it would be considered a scooter. The bike also incorporates disc brakes and a regenerative braking system — nice.

This electric bike should be available for sale in Europe in the not-too-distant future, but no word on whether it’ll make it to the States. It will probably be priced around $5000.

Via: AutoblogGreen and Bikes In The Fast Lane

Link to Meta Efficient post.