If you are commuting by car right now for 5 miles or less, you can afford a bike to make the same trip on. The reality is that gas gotten more experience and the savings of riding a bike even for short trips adds up.

Let's look at some numbers.

The Supplement Scenario: Here we assume that a bike supplements a car that you plan to keep and drive, and that the savings of riding a bike will come purely from saved case. Using an online calculator, you can quickly estimate your annual fuel cost for a trip. If you travel 1.5 miles each way, 5 days a week, 50 weeks a year (you take some vacation, right?), that's 750 miles per year, spent on that short commute. If you get 20 miles per gallon and gas cost $4.00 gallon, then your cost of gas for that commute is $150 for one year. For five years that's $750.  continue reading »

As reported in today's Palladium-Item, the Cardinal Greenway has received a $900,000 grant from the Indiana Department of Natural Resources:

The Indiana Department of Natural Resources will distribute the money to 28 projects, resulting in 104 miles of new trails and land being bought for an anticipated 26 miles of future trail development. Currently the state trail system covers about 400 miles.

Two local projects get a big boost through the state money. The Cardinal Greenway in northwest Wayne County receives $900,000 and Whitewater Canal Trails near Metamora $300,000.

New bike-carrying racks have arrived for Rose Transit buses and they have been installed!
There will be a public celebration at the City Building (South entrance) on Monday, April 14th at 10am. Take an early lunch and ride on over to show your support for this great development in alternative transportation for Richmond.

Recreational cyclists in Richmond now have a new online resource to organize their rides and events. Earlier this week long time rider Pat Williams launched the Richmond Cycling Google group, which members can use as an e-mail list, while also easily jointly creating web pages and sharing files and photos.

Pat had previously coordinated an e-mail list of about 50 recreational riders. Members of the group often gather for rides on Tuesday and Thursday evenings as well as weekend rides. See the new Richmond Cycling site for details.

This group complements the existing Bike Richmond group which focuses on bikes as transportation and also uses Google Groups.

This blog entry is a repository of personal "action items" that I suggest when I give my talk entitled "Going Local: Building a Self-Reliant Richmond, Indiana," first presented in its current form in November, 2007. As I say in the talk:

• You may already know a lot of this stuff
• I don't like telling people how to live, and I very much still aspire to practice some of these things myself, so I don't offer these up with any sort of moral authority
• This can be thought of as a menu of possibilities, rather than a list of imperatives or instructions

If you're not completely sure why it might be a good thing for Richmond to become self-reliant or why these action items might help, then please invite me to give the talk for your group or organization. It's chock full of great information about the energy crisis, climate change, the economy, and the implications for life in Richmond and Wayne County, Indiana. I also tell some jokes.

Now, on to the list, which is largely centered on reducing our dependence on and usage of fossil fuels:  continue reading »

Cardinal Greenway project lands more state dollars - [Palladium-Item News]

The Indiana Department of Transportation (INDOT) has awarded more than $20 million in Transportation Enhancement (TE) funds statewide for projects such as multi-use trails, streetscape improvements and historic bridge rehabilitations. That figure includes project money for a portion of the Cardinal Greenway in Wayne County.

The project also includes signage, a trailhead and bicycle racks. The new portion of the trail will connect to the rest of the 70-mile Cardinal Greenway Trail that stretches through five Indiana counties.

Multi-use trails are gaining popularity in many Indiana communities, and the state’s 10-year goal is to have a trail within 15 minutes of every Hoosier.  continue reading »

At 10 AM this morning, the Cycling and Fitness Warehouse will open its doors for business in Richmond. This large, just renovated facility is ideally located near Richmond Ave trailhead of the Cardinal Greenway. Cyclists who have been meeting every Tuesday and Thursday to ride from K-Mart at 5:30, will now depart from this more central location, starting tonight.  continue reading »

Today I was looking at the differences between two soft shell rain pants I have and thought I'd write up a little comparative review.

One pair is called Cold Fusion from Beyond, aka the Stealth Commuting Rain Pants. The other is Foxwear Rain Pants.

They are both custom-made out of similar materials, but the pants from Beyond end up costing nearly twice as much.  continue reading »

There's been increasing press lately about bicycling as transportation.

The difference between riding for recreation and transportation matters a great deal for the construction of the bikes, although few bikes focused directly on transportation are seen the US.

Here's a quiz of sorts to show how recreation vs. transportation attitudes lead to different bike designs. Follow along and see which style of bike matches you!

At the end if the quiz, there are some photos and details highlighting some features available on transportation bikes.  continue reading »

As a part of my work on the committees that are implementing the Comprehensive Plan that Richmond recently developed, I created a list (with some help from Mark) of some transportation goals that have a focus on alternative transportation (read: goals that don't celebrate car culture). Here's what I came up with, in no particular order:

1.Improve funding and infrastructure for public transportation, pursue newer public transportation services like the Smart Jitney (door-to-door route-deviation microbus service)  continue reading »