Advocacy

The Economic Benefits of Bicycle Infrastructure Investments

The League of American Bicyclists issued a study listing the numerous benefits gained by the bicycle industry. Key points taken directly from the study are:

• Today the national bicycling industry contributes an estimated $133 billion a year to the U.S. economy.
• Bike lanes can accommodate 7 to 12 times as many people per meter of lane per hour than car lanes and bicycles cause less wear on the pavement
• CalTrans is paying $75 million to repave, not rebuild, just three miles of Interstate 710 in Los Angeles. Thus, for the cost of repaving 3 miles of rough pavement on Interstate 710, CalTrans could sign and stripe 1,250 miles of California roads for bike lanes.
• Replacing a car trip with a bike trip saves individuals and society $2.73 per mile.

Read the entire report here.

by BikeSD Staff

Ride the City needs your suggestions

Ride the City is getting ready to officially launch in San Diego. However, the creators would like to get more feedback from San Diegan cyclists before the official launch. From our inbox, here is the request:

We've done some more work on Ride the City for San Diego. The changes include 1) Ride the City now takes elevation into consideration to put bicyclists on less hilly routes and 2) the bike shops are present. We'll improve any other bike lanes/greenways that aren't being routed as we get more feedback. We'd like to get more bicyclists to plug in routes, to try them in the real world, then to come back to Ride the City and (after plugging in the same from/to directions) to hit the "rate the route" button to tell us how it is.

In talking to other San Diegan cyclists, the main concern in riding in the city is the hills. Being surrounded by canyons making route planning quite the challenge. However, when we plugged in some route ideas using the "safer" drop down box to get the safest routes possible, the suggestions were not bad at all. There obviously is room for improvement, and so we offered suggestions using the "rate the route" link on Ride the City's website.

Some of the pros are that the site loads fast and calculates route suggestion pretty quickly as well. Unlike Google Maps, the default suggestion does not offer the freeway as an option to get around. This could be a very useful tool for all riders.

by BikeSD Staff

Would you like to contribute to BikeSD?

Is there some aspect of San Diego bike culture that you think is not addressed by bikesd.org? Would you be interested in writing about it on a regular basis? Contact us at admin (at) bikesd.org.

We are a group of bicyclists who live and work in San Diego, simply doing this to promote bicycling in San Diego. We'd like to reach as many people as possible. Join us!

by BikeSD Staff