Closing Date: December 16, 2012

This position will serve as the Capital Project Manager for the Montgomery County Annual Bikeways Program, in the Department of Transportation’s Division of Transportation Engineering Planning & Design Section. This position will oversee the budgeting and directing the construction of bicycle facilities, including bike lanes, multi-use trails, parking/end-of-trip facilities, pavement marking and signage plans for both safety and way finding.

Prepare and submit budget estimates, progress and cost tracking reports, manage, coordinate, and supervise the construction process from the conceptual development stage through final construction on time and within budget. Directs and/or participates in the inspection of bicycle facilities or other road projects to assure that approved design is executed and that construction meets established standards. Develops or directs the development of requests for proposals, scopes of services, bid packages, contracts, amendments and other documents for the selection and contracting of design and construction services. Position requires thorough knowledge of grading, drainage, paving (asphalt and concrete), pavement markings and signage, construction, retaining walls, and other construction scopes related to bicycle facilities. File for necessary permits for project or assists consultant or contractor to prepare documents to file. Compile and analyze bicycle planning, design, and program data with a focus on customer service, innovation, and continuous improvement. Coordinate new project development or major renovation with user agency to ensure that facility meets their requirements.

(Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Duties include, but are not limited to serving as the division’s central contact for public inquiries, initiating studies, constructing on-road and off-road bicycle facilities, participating in maintenance and operational matters, providing public information and updates on program events, construction projects/detours, and special projects/services, increasing social media/public outreach. Develop and maintain the bicycle program website and other forms of communications, including print and social media as well as video.

The job will also entail planning innovative bicycle infrastructure and safety improvements, including analyze staffing, implementation capabilities and bicycle facility needs for the County and prepare budget for the associated Capital Improvement Programs Annual Bikeways Program, Stand Alone CIP Bicycle related projects, and federal and state grants.

Position requires extensive engagement with the public, advocacy groups, various organizations consultants, citizen’s organizations, and public officials to resolve matters regarding the planning/design and construction of bicycle facilities. This position will also require attending meetings or performing work at locations outside the office if necessary.

For more information, visit: http://www.montgomerycountymd.gov/ohr/staffing/careers.html(Hat Tip: Young Professionals in Transportation)

TO APPLY  Send a one- or two-page letter describing why you are the person for the job with a resume to alex@bicyclecoalition.org

Position available February 1. Applications accepted until the position is filled.

Because there are better ways to get around, the Bicycle Coalition’s Development Director will lead three fundraising teams: major gifts, membership and stewardship/database. These organization-wide teams are working to meet our 2014 strategic plan goals of raising $250,000 in major gifts, doubling membership to 3600 households and engaging our donors in our mission.

We have grown from an annual budget of $200,000 to $1,000,000 in just a few years — mainly through grants and contracts. To sustain our growth, we need to grow the individual support that is the core of our past and future as a membership organization.

Financial support from individuals provides a reliable stream of unrestricted money for our work, demonstrates community support, and produces members who are our best advocates, volunteers and education ambassadors.

Please visit www.bicyclecoalition.org/jobs to apply. Position available February 1. Applications accepted until the position is filled.

PURPOSE AND GENERAL DESCRIPTION

Making bicycling better through advocacy and education, the Bicycle Coalition of Greater Philadelphia (BCGP) promotes biking as a healthy, low-cost, and environmentally-friendly form of transportation and recreation in ten counties in Southeast Pennsylvania, South Jersey and Delaware.

We believe in better ways to get around and:

• excellence in pursuit of our mission,
• a workplace where every person’s contribution is valued,
• representing the diversity of the community we serve,
• the joy of riding a bike, and
• working hard while still having time for family, friends and bike rides.

The Development Director will lead a team fundraising effort of board members, volunteers, the Executive Director and seven other staff from across the organization. (The Development Director directly supervises two staff.) Our fundraising is composed of three teams (major gifts, membership and stewardship/database) to achieve the goals of significantly increasing major gifts and membership laid out in the 2011-2014 Strategic Plan (you can find the plan at bicyclecoalition.org/about).

REPORTING RELATIONSHIPS AND WORK ENVIRONMENT

The Development Director reports to the Executive Director. The Development Director will:

• Work primarily out of the Bicycle Coalition office
• Occasionally work outdoors
• Travel to suburban evening meetings as well as several national events a year
• Work some evenings and weekends

DUTIES AND RESPONSIBILITIES

The Development Director will:

• Manage budgeting, planning and implementation for all fundraising, including major gifts, membership and stewardship
• In collaboration with the Executive Director and Development Committee of the Board of Directors, implement a major donor campaign raising $250,000 from 400 identified donors
• Develop and implement a membership campaign to double membership to 3600 households over two years
• Manage the stewardship of all gifts, including managing donor data in Salesforce, workflows for acknowledgement, new members, recruiting volunteers and member communications
• Supervise two fundraising staff and lead three staff-wide fundraising teams
• Manage the Bicycle Coalition’s communications plan in coordination with the Policy Director and the Education & Safety Director
• Support the Executive Director and Policy Directors’ work on grant applications and stewardship

ESSENTIAL QUALIFICATIONS

• A strong commitment to the Bicycle Coalition’s mission
• Three or more years of a demonstrated working knowledge of the principles and practices of philanthropy, especially raising money from individuals through membership/annual giving and major gifts
• Ability to communicate effectively with people of all ages, abilities, cultural groups, economic status or sexual orientation
• Ability to lead teams of volunteers and staff not under your direct supervision to achieve well-defined goals
• Experience in managing donor data in an organization-wide database
• Ability to complete work in an unstructured and informal environment with limited supervision
• Problem solving skills, creativity, flexibility and self-motivation
• A professional appearance and manner
• Experience with Microsoft Office
• A personal history of giving

DESIRABLE QUALIFICATIONS

• Experience in making major gift solicitations and coordinating the efforts of volunteers in making solicitations of up to $50,000
• Proven success in growing membership/annual fund giving, especially at an organization with a budget under $2 million
• Supervisory experience, especially leading teams that cross program areas
• Proven success in creating and managing direct mail campaigns
• Experience with online giving and an understanding of how online content and communications drive fundraising results
• Experience with Salesforce

This is an exempt position. Salary commensurate with experience.

The Bicycle Coalition is committed to providing equal employment opportunity for all persons regardless of race, color, religion, national origin, marital status, political affiliation, sexual orientation or gender identity, disability, sex or age.

(Source: via Gizmodo)

This strangely intriguing video was a submission to the Bike Shorts film competition.

Bicycle Sounds from Stephen Meierding on Vimeo.

A short film created using bicycle parts.

Created by Stephen Meierding
Opening Title Design: Mark Mccormic
Camera Assistants: Shelly Rangsiyakl, Johnny Huttenberger, Jesalee Go

Sustainable urban transport and development saves lives and improves quality of life. Learn how EMBARQ makes this happen

EMBARQ’s Approach to Health and Road Safety

(Source: Institution for Mechanical Engineers, UK)

[yframe url=’http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fNZR4zqC450′]

The video says it all.. Quite an awesome product.  Wondering if anyone in the Washington, DC managed to snag one of these bikes? If you are a proud owner of a Brampton and you are reading this, please drop a note (in the “Comments” section below) sharing your personal experience riding/owning this beauty. Though the bikes are made towards the Urban commuter market, it seems to be very versatile as shown in this BBC video.  Also to note is the fast growing popularity of these bikes – 30,000 units churned out of the Brampton factory per year – despite the steep price (around $1400 – $1600 as seen on the web).  It will be nice to know what it feels like to ride one of these.

(Source: AFP via Yahoo)

Copenhagen, one of the world’s most bicycle-friendly cities, has begun turning its extensive network of cycle paths into bike highways in an effort to push more commuters to leave their cars at home.

Considered one of Europe’s two “bicycle capitals” along with Amsterdam, Copenhagen counts more bicycles than people and cycling is so popular that its numerous bike paths can become congested.

Two-wheeler traffic jams are especially regular on the main Noerrebrogade thoroughfare used by around 36,000 cyclists a day.

• The currently jammed bike paths will be widened up to four metres (yards) on either side of the road, which will itself will be reserved for buses only.
• The goal is to hike the percentage of suburban commuters cycling to and from the city from the 37 percent it is today to over 50 percent by 2015.
• Within the city, 55 percent of all commuters already travel by bike, according to the municipality.
• Already Copenhagen stands out among other European capitals for its cycling infrastructure, counting more than 390 kilometres (242 miles) of bike paths.
• Between 2006 and 2010, it spent 250 million kroner (33.6 million euros) in bike infrastructure and an extra 75 million kroner were allotted for 2011.
• The first two city-to-suburb bicycle highways are due to open at the end of 2011 and reach a distance of 15 kilometres from central Copenhagen, while a third, going as far as 20 kilometres from the capital’s centre, will be put into service in 2012.

Click here to read the entire story.

Related articles

• Copenhagen plans bike superhighways (grist.org)
• Copenhagen to build superhighway for bikes (americablog.com)
• How Portland Is Planning to Become the First World-class Bike City in America (alternet.org)
• Transition and solutions – Nov 28 (energybulletin.net)
• 10 Cool Bike Stories (planetsave.com)
• Copenhagen to Residents: “You’re Safer On a Bike Than On a Sofa” (treehugger.com)
• The Bay Area Versus Amsterdam: Which Cycling Mecca Is Tops? (treehugger.com)
• Experiencing Copenhagen and Denmark on Two Wheels (denmark-travel.suite101.com)
• The Bay Area Versus Amsterdam: Which Cycling Mecca Is Tops? (treehugger.com)
• Should Sidewalks and Bike Paths Have a Designated Slowpoke Lane? (treehugger.com)
• Blog – Cyclists Pedal Faster On Wednesdays, Reveals Smart Bike Data (technologyreview.com)

(Source: New York Times)

Click here for more details

ONE is wearing a couture gown, another just a pair of red underwear. One is lugging a huge bouquet of flowering rhododendrons on his shoulder, another a suckling pig. They are all riding bicycles in the middle of streets downtown, and they are all shown from behind, having passed by, headed toward some unknown destination — a party, a garden, a pig roast.

The photographs are by Bridget Fleming, 30, who moved to the Lower East Side from Australia in 2008. She is halfway through an ambitious project to capture downtown denizens riding on two wheels down each of the approximately 200 streets below 14th Street. She posts some of the photographs on a blog, Downtown From Behind, and hopes the project, which she describes as a glamorous ode to “the heartbeat of New York,” will culminate this spring with a gallery exhibition and Web site.

Image Courtesy: Downtown from Behind

Click here for more on this story and for the awesome interactive.

(Source: Washington Post)

Image Courtesy: Flickr via Apture

They don’t make much sense, yet for one more fleeting season at least, they are the rage in certain circles. Sort of dumb and super hip: the twin characteristics of many things in life.

We are talking about a bicycle. A very special kind of road bicycle, called a fixed-gear bike, or fixie for short.

A fixie has one speed, which makes it difficult to pedal uphill. A classic fixie has no brakes, which makes it difficult to slow on the downhill. A fixie has no freewheel, the part that makes coasting possible. Instead, the chain directly drives the rotation of the rear wheel, which means the pedals always turn while the bike moves.

What else do they have going for them?

Well, fixies are impractical, perverse throwbacks to a time more than a century ago, before the invention of the derailleur and the Tour de France, when the bicycle chain and the pneumatic tube were novelties, and the high-wheel penny-farthing “ordinary” bicycle had just been eclipsed by the chain-driven “safety” bike.

And yet despite all that — or is it because of all that? — a fixie manages the neat trick of simultaneously communicating taste and rebellion.

Washington was a little behind the curve in adopting this fixie chic.  Some date the dawn of fixie chic to the 1986 movie “Quicksilver,” starring Kevin Bacon, which glorified fixie-riding messengers in New York.

Countercultural couriers and speed-demon messengers didn’t invent fixies. The inspiration was handed down to them by the obscure yet mighty gods of the velodrome, who race indoors on one-speed brakeless track bikes. Fixies take the track bike concept and relocate it to city streets.

A fixie map of Washington would center on a handful of neighborhoods. Your fixie is what gets you from your futon in Columbia Heights to your computer screen downtown, then on to peruse the produce and fiction in Logan and Dupont circles, finally delivering you to an outdoor table on U Street NW, a rope line on H Street NE or a bike polo match at Eastern Market. Fixies haven’t made it in a big way to the suburbs, and may never, for strictly topographical reasons. They aren’t good over long hilly distances.

Fixie riders also talk about achieving a sense of “flow” as they navigate streams of cars. They describe a kind of “dance” set to the rhythm of traffic lights. You can’t coast through life on a fixie.

The euphoric riding experience is achieved via the discipline of the fixie’s low technology. In zealous self-denial, a fixie rider experiences more with less. The reason you have to be super-aware of your surroundings and think ahead is because stopping can be a challenge. Fixie riders are like sharks, constant motion is an existential requirement.

Fixies are built for speed, but if you must slow down, one way to do it is to resist the pedal momentum with your leg muscles and knees. (Your poor knees.) Toe clips or cleats help you pull back on the pedals. A more dramatic recourse is the skip-stop, which involves leaning forward, hopping the rear wheel and locking one leg to start a skid when the rear wheel comes down. In the unlikely event your chain falls off, you will be a helpless, speeding missile with only a helmet for protection, if you wear one. Some do, some don’t.

To brake or not to brake is a debate within the fixie community to which conventional bikers can listen only with astonishment.

Riding without brakes gives an extra edge to the riding experience.

“It’s definitely more dangerous,” says David Waterman, 27, a high school math teacher locking his brakeless fixie one night outside the Black Cat on 14th Street, where seven of 15 bikes parked before the show are fixies. He prefers muscle power to skidding as a slowing strategy, because skidding wastes tires. But, he allows, “You look really cool when you skid.”

Click here to read the entire article.

(Source: Washington Post)

Today the Washington Post had an interesting article about the burgeoning bike scene in Los Angeles, California.   It was a surprise to learn that there is such a good environment for biking in a city that has been known for its congested traffic and notorious drivers.   Here are some extracts from Amanda Abrams’ special report to the Washington Post:

I should’ve been warned by the reaction of my sister, a 12-year L.A. resident and non-cyclist, when I told her I was planning to spend a few days riding around the city while visiting her. “No way,” she had said incredulously. “The cars here are insane. You have no idea.”

Ah, but I did have some ideas. In spite of its reputation as the country’s car mecca, I’d heard that L.A. was home to a burgeoning bike scene. And as a dedicated bicycle commuter in Washington, I figured “if they can do it, I can do it.”

Despite all the talk of L.A. being a sprawl of neighborhoods connected by freeways, and Angelenos’ perverse pride in living in a place where “no one walks,” it is, in fact, a genuine city. Close inspection of my road map showed an endless grid of quiet residential streets leading to bigger arterial roads, some of which, according to a Los Angeles Department of Transportation bike map, had bike lanes. Bingo. From there, it was no sweat to outline a variety of routes that could get me around the city without harm to life or limb.

(Source: Times Online, UK)

At last, specialist cycle clothing that does not make me look like I am wearing fancy dress

Two types of bicycle clothing: (left) Bspoke Holborn men's cycling jacket and (right) the cycle suit tailored by Russell Howarth from Dashing Tweeds. Photograph: PR (Image via Times Online, UK)

Cyclists world over had the problem with finding comfortable clothes that don’t make you look like an alien of a figure hugging ballerina and now the good folks at Transport for London have finally decided to take matters into their own hands.  An article by Peter Robins, that appeard on the TIMES UK-Ethical Living blog discussed this new solution offered by the Brits.  Here I present you some key sections of this wonderful article:

“Boris Johnson has made me a jacket. Or possibly it was Ken Livingstone. Whichever it was, they also made me some trousers, and one of those half-zipped semi-cardigan whatsits – I have yet to actually try those. Truly, if you want to understand the politics, in several senses, of what to wear on a bicycle these days, there are few better starting points than the Bspoke clothing range.

The Bspoke range, supported and to some extent pushed into existence by Transport for London, is designed to look like normal clothing while behaving like specialist cycle clothing. That’s not a need you might normally expect to concern a branch of the government, but it is a real need.

Cycling is not kind to normal clothes. Chains and saddles can do very bad things to trousers – wheels, I’m told, can do even worse things to skirts – and pedals have a way of hammering soles. Although a standard-paced pootle is not nearly as strenuous as non-cyclists might think, a hot day or a dash to an appointment can quickly fill a shirt with sweat. While you may need rain protection, you also need peripheral vision, so anything with a hood becomes an encumbrance.

On the other hand, cycling clothes are not kind to normal humans. All that close fitting – even if you avoid Lycra – and all those violent high-visibility colours will make you look, at best, like a Star Trek version of a building contractor. The cuts, in many cases, only seem entirely natural when you are hunched and pumping. Pockets, where they occur at all, are in weird places and either constricted or sack-like. What’s more, conspicuous cycle clothes turn you into an unambiguous, single-purposed cyclist, impossible for a passer-by or an irritated lorry driver to picture in any more sympathetic context.

All that could be tolerable for sport or leisure biking somewhere quiet, but not so much on a city street, and not if you’re going into an office – in the case of some designs, not even if you’re walking through an office to find somewhere to change. Not, in other words, if you want to incorporate a bike into your life as a regular mode of transport. And that is the point at which it becomes clear why TfL should have become interested in making jackets.

TfL, of course, is not the only organisation trying to liberate cyclists from Lycra; it has become quite a fashionable exercise. Many of the best publicised efforts, however –Dashing Tweeds’ designs, the Tweed Run, Rapha’s bewildering £3,500 men’s bicycle suit – draw on cycling’s turn-of-last-century heritage to self-consciously spectacular effect. They reject a 1960s sci-fi costume for a steampunk one. Dressing up as an Edwardian ninja, or for that matter as a bicycle messenger, does not strike me as being profoundly different from dressing up as part of the peloton. True, the clothes are not so repulsively unflattering, but it still feels like fancy dress. I don’t want to be in fancy dress.

Click here to read the entire article.  Oh, and don’t forget to register your comments after reading.

TransportGooru Musings: My exploration into the TfL website for information on Bspoke found the following: “bspoke is a versatile clothing collection that performs within an urban environment and yet has a timeless fashion for day/work wear.  Supported by Transport for London’s bike to work programme the bspoke team has designed two separate year round collections for men and women. Clothes combine performance fabrics with innovative detailing to make sure your daily commute is a safe and comfortable one.  However it is the attention to contemporary styling and silhouettes’ that makes bspoke unique amongst other leisure or sporting specific clothing.”

Hmm..Though I am not sure whether our American parliamentarians (rather Congressmen – for those who don’t know what the term Parliament means) would give some money to the USDOT for designing some sleek clothing for bikers in the upcoming transportation reauthorization bill,  I am positive that some of them avid bikers (like Rep. Oberstar & Rep. Bleumenauer) wouldn’t mind sporting such a sleek clothing line while biking around the US Capitol Building, sending a strong(but expensive) message promoting bicycling.  Now, that would be worth spending!