Ring in the New Year on a community bike ride with Green Wheels this Friday at 5:30pm starting from the Arcata Plaza. Join fellow community members for a family-friendly ride around town before Arts Arcata. Bring friends, lights, helmet, and a bike!

Green Wheels will host a holiday community bike ride before Arts Arcata on Friday December 11 at 5:30pm starting from the Arcata Plaza. All ages welcome! Bring a helmet, lights, festivity, and friends.

Head to the Arcata Plaza for the next community bike ride Friday, November 13th at 5:30pm. Come mingle with your fellow community members for a family-friendly ride through town. Meet fellow cyclists and get some exercise before Arts Arcata. Bring a bike, helmet, lights, and friends! Rain or shine.

I have found out that PSU's Center for Transportation Studies up here in Portland has a seminar series.

Here's a  link to a presentation by Copenhagen bicycle planner Niels Jensen.

Their goal is 50% mode share by bike, and to get there, their main carrot is infrastructure including cycle tracks, but their bicycle plan includes sticks of parking pricing.

Streetsblog in NYC has a great post about the economic boost that bike infrastructure provides for our economy:

Since the impact of bike lanes on businesses has emerged as a peripheral issue in the New York City mayoral race, as well as one City Council contest (and counting), a post today from the Bicycle Coalition of Greater Philadelphia seems especially timely.

This morning I was making breakfast and a great story came on NPR Morning Edition about cyclists taking back the streets in Tijuana, Mexico - over 300 participants every Wednesday night helping to increase awareness of cycling - so cool!  Here is the link. 

A new medical study examines the association between active commuting and cardiovascular health and obesity.  The study appears in the current issue of Archives of Internal Medicine and a news summary of the findings can be found here.  The researchers found that people, particularly men, who walked or biked at least part way to work performed better on fitness tests and had a reduced likelihood of obesity.  This research supports what we have been talking about all along and highlighted in the latest Community Wheel - active transportation has positive effects on health!

Nice to see the often mild-mannered Humboldt Bay Bicycle Commuters Association taking strong stances for justice for all road users, and for keeping the bike lanes in downtown Arcata.

Thanks to Rick Knapp for closely following the Alan Bear Trial, and to Brett Gronenmeyer for weighing in on the bike lane issue.  Their Wheel People enewsletter, which covers both of those topics, is here.

The next preliminary hearing on the Alan Bear case is August 20.  The date that the City Council will hear the bike lane issue again has not yet been set.

The city council will decide on tomorrow night whether to keep the bike lane or not in the process of widening sidewalks on H Street.  In a split vote, the Arcata Transportation Safety Committee recommended eliminating the bike lane and maintianing parking on both sides of the street, as well as the two motor-vehicle through lanes.  A motion to instead keep the bike lane and eliminate parking on one side of the street failed by one vote.