by Erin Gustafson, via the Sierra Club

Bike shares are one of the fastest-growing modes of transportation in the country. Since the first U.S. bike-share system launched in 2008, the systems have spread like wildfire. Bike sharing allows users to rent bicycles from kiosks placed throughout a city and return them to any other location, creating a hassle-free way to get around. In just four years, 30 U.S. cities have launched bike shares, and many others have plans in the works.  This year alone, 8 new cities have created bike shares and with more set to launch before the end of the year, 2012 may prove to be the biggest year for bike shares yet. Look for your nearest bike share on this map.

Americans are looking for cleaner and more affordable transportation choices. As city centers are choked by automobile traffic, bike shares become an increasingly attractive option for getting around. In Capital Bikeshare’s 2011 Member Survey, more than 41 percent of users reported reducing their number of car trips after joining bike share. These users reported driving an average of 523 miles less per year after becoming a bike share member, which translates into avoiding releasing 487.7 pounds of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere per bike share user¹. In Capital Bikeshare’s first year alone, the system’s members saved more than 1,632 tons of carbon dioxide just by replacing car trips with bike trips. By reducing our dependency on driving and oil, bike shares can have a significant environmental benefit.

Biking also helps save money by reducing the amount you need to spend on car payments, insurance, and oil. Most bike share systems offer year-long, monthly, and short-term memberships with no additional fees for trips under 30 minutes. With year-long memberships usually priced around $75, the cost of bike share is still very low compared to other means of transportation. In a 2011 Member Survey, Capital Bikeshare users reported saving an average of $819 per year. Most of these savings came from avoiding costs related to driving like gas, parking, and vehicle maintenance. Others reported saving money by replacing taxi trips with bike-share rides.

Another benefit of bike shares is that they not only add another mode of transportation to the existing city fabric but also do so faster and more cheaply than many other transportation projects. Bike shares in cities like Minneapolis and Washington, D.C., took between 12 and 18 months to get up and running after being announced. That seems like the blink of an eye compared to the years and even decades that highway and public transit expansions often take. Though costs vary based on the size and location of the system, Minneapolis-St. Paul was able to implement the first 700-bike phase of their system, Nice Ride Minnesota, for $3.2 million. The cost of creating a single mile of urban highway averages $60 million, making bike sharing a relatively inexpensive way to relieve urban congestion.

Bike shares can also help boost the local economy.

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UpStart [uhp-stahrt] n. 1. A company or organization with innovative approaches to energy use, carbon pollution, resource consumption, and/or social equity, 2. A company or organization overcoming market barriers to build the new clean energy economy.

by Adam James

“Hello, my name is America, and I have a transportation problem.”

Everyone knows we are addicted to oil — even oil man George W. Bush said ”America is addicted to oil” – and that coming up with feasible alternatives to treat that addiction hasn’t been easy.

The biggest cause of our oil dependence is the transportation sector, making up a whopping 71% of total U.S. consumption. Transportation has always been a tough nut to crack, simply because abundant fossil fuels have given people a cheap, easy way to get from place to place.

Not surprisingly, the number of registered vehicles has steadily climbed over the years – currently clocking in at 254,212,610 according to the most recent data. In 2008, transportation overtook the industrial sector as the leading contributor to emissions. In 2010, vehicles pushed an incredible 75,000,000 metric tons of CO2 to the atmosphere.

Putting aside the emissions problem (but don’t worry, we’ll come back to it), we are putting an enormous strain on our infrastructure, our wallets and our sanity. About 26 percent of our bridges are “structurally deficient or functionally obsolete,” and when it comes to our roads the American Society of Civil Engineers notes that:

“Americans spend 4.2 billion hours a year stuck in traffic at a cost to the economy of $78.2 billion, or $710 per motorist. Poor conditions cost motorists $67 billion a year in repairs and operating costs. One-third of America’s major roads are in poor or mediocre condition and 45% of major urban highways are congested.”

According to ACSE, we currently have a shortfall of $116.3 billion needed to improve conditions. And given that building more roads often just encourages more driving and more congestion, simply constructing more infrastructure for automobiles isn’t the answer.

Bikeshares: The Methadone of Transportation

If only there was a way to save money, offset emissions, stimulate local economies, increase public health and spur the construction of smarter cities. Oh wait, there is. Enter Bikeshare programs. Bikesharing is not a new concept. But in recent years, we’ve seen an explosion of new business models in cities around the country.

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I love riding my bike. But clearly not as much as Guillaume Blanchet, who “lived” on his bicycle for 382 days in Montreal — cooking food, showering, shaving and reading his email.

Blanchet’s short film, “The Man Who Lived on His Bike,” is a delightful celebration of the bicycle. Perhaps it should mandatory viewing for members of the U.S. House of Representatives, who are now considering legislation that would cut funding for bicycle promotion programs in favor of building more highways?

THE MAN WHO LIVED ON HIS BIKE from Guillaume Blanchet on Vimeo.

by Jess Zimmerman in a Grist cross-post

Enough people thought this was a good idea that the ad made it into print. How did this ad meeting go? “We need to convince the youth to buy giant boat-cars.” “Okay, tell them bikes will cockblock them.” “Perfect, let’s call it a day.” Nice work, Don Draper.

GM has clearly been getting a lot of blowback for this ad, which presents biking as an embarrassment so profound you’ll want to hide your face from the sight of pretty girls. They’ve been falling over themselves to apologize on their Twitter feed. It’s tough for them! Reality sucks, guys.

UPDATE:  David in the comments directs us to the great response ad by Giant Bicycles:

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Building bike paths alone will not get people out of their cars in the U.S. and onto bicycles. To create a thriving bike culture in America’s cities, people must begin to view bicycling as Europeans do — not just as a way of exercising, but as a serious form of urban mass transportation.

– Elisabeth Rosenthal, in a Yale360 re-post

This spring, curiosity propelled me onto a New York City subway bound for Prospect Park West in Brooklyn, where a new bike path along the edge of Brooklyn’s largest park had angry residents worked up into a lather.

For those not familiar with the territory, Park Slope is one of New York City’s most prosperous and progressive neighborhoods, home to the famed Park Slope Food Cooperative and liberal U.S. Senator Charles Schumer. And yet… the creation of a simple green bike path — the kind that edges dozens of streets in Barcelona or Paris or Copenhagen — at the expense of one lane of car traffic and a few parking spaces evinced the kind of venom normally reserved here for The Tea Party.

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Cycling isn’t just good for your personal health, it’s also good for economic health. A new report by the University of Massachusetts Political Economy Research Institute finds that cycling projects create 11.4 jobs for every $1 million invested — 46% more the 7.8 jobs than car-only road projects.

[E]conomic benefits include tourism and recreation-related spending (which is a boon to businesses and increases local tax revenues), and a rise in real estate values. Other benefits include higher quality of life, environmental benefits such as buffer zones to protect water sources from pollution run-off, and mitigation of flood damage. A 2008 user survey of a multi-use trail in Pennsylvania showed that over 80 percent of users purchased “hard goods” such as bikes and cycling equipment in relation to their use of the trail, and some also pur- chase “soft goods” such as drinks and snacks at nearby establishments.

The trend is similar to what we see at farmer’s markets, where people have many times the number of interactions than they do at the grocery store (all while supporting local businesses). When cyclists move through properly-designed infrastructure for bikes, they’re more likely to interact with their surroundings and spend more money. Here’s an example from North Carolina:

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