This week’s round-up focuses on the positive impact cycling can have on various subsets of the population, and a look at a great scheme that aims to let people give something back by getting involved in the planning and implementation of cycling infrastructure.
Rutland Cycles have collated data from student travel surveys carried out by twenty of the UK’s top universities in an attempt to show how students can get fit, save money, and reduce their carbon footprint. We’ve highlighted a few good sections, and you can find the full thing here.
Complimenting the graphic nicely is a story on The Culture Cheat Sheet website, which explores the best cities in America for cycle commuting. We wrote in Volume 11 about Google’s efforts to make Silicon Valley more cycle-friendly, and it seems to be working! San Francisco made number 2 on the list: “3.4% of commuters bike there, and the city had the highest percentage of bicycle commuters in 2000 before being overtaken by Portland”.
Incidentally, Americans commute much less by bike than the British: a mere 0.6% compared to our 2.8%.
The Guardian wrote this week about a scheme being operated in London by cycling charity The Bike Project. They repair donated bikes and distribute them to asylum seekers who are forced to live extremely frugally, often on the sidelines of society.
Their aim is twofold, firstly to teach them a new skill which will enhance their mobility, secondly to increase their access to important resources – ” charities, lawyers, healthcare, education, social centres and more”. Approximately 27,000 bikes are abandoned in London each year, and this scheme aims to put them to good use.
The gallery on their website is inspiring – you can see the people involved with the scheme fixing and maintaining bikes, and at various stages of having learned to ride.
GRACQ, a Belgian cycling organisation, posted pictures on their Facebook feed of an intriguing new piece of architecture in the Dutch city of Alphen aan den Rijn. The apple-themed building is not only visually striking, but also practical: it has space for 1,000 bikes:
The banner on the GRACQ Facebook page directed us to another interesting site – My Bikeworld.
This is “a participatory action for citizens that offers you the opportunity to accelerate the implementation of a safer and more pleasant environment for cyclists”, and invites users to submit their suggestions for how to improve Belgian cycling infrastructure. On 15th August, the most highly voted suggestions will be presented to a jury of mobility experts, with the view of eventually implementing them.
We love a good bit of crowd-sourcing!
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