Category: biking

Denver’s B-Cycle vs Minneapolis’ NiceRide, originally uploaded by edkohler.

I’ve been riding around downtown Denver on their Bcycle bike system bikes.
Based on my experience with NiceRide, here are my first impression
differences.

1. The pricing is similar, with a flat fee for 24 hour access, with extra
charges for keeping a bike out for longer for than 30 minutes. But, it costs
$6 rather than $5 for 24 hour access.

2. The bike baskets are far superior to the ones NiceRide uses.

3. Narrower wheels. They are a bit faster, but the NiceRide bikes roll over
anything.

4. Bike selection. Strangely, the Bcycle system asks you to select which
bike stall you’d like to check out from the kiosk screen. I like NiceRide’s
system, where you get a code that can then unlock a bike at the stall of
your choice. Although. I could get in the habit of specing out a bike before
paying.

Overall, I’m very pleased with Denver’s system. It’s making my night more
interesting.

Also, there is an app on Android called CityBikes that shows the status of
bike rental locations for 30 cities, including NiceRide. Geolocation.
Current inventory. Very cool.

Update: They close the kiosks at 11pm? I had to walk home! It’s not exactly 24 hour access if you can’t use the bikes from 11pm to 5am. Also, the CityBikes app didn’t pick up on this critical fact.

Hansi Johnson discovered a study (PDF) done by the Nelson Institute for Environmental Studies at UW-Madison (via the Bicycling Federation of Wisconsin) that attempted to quantify the value of biking on Wisconsin’s economy.

Wisconsin has some beautiful trails and awesome country roads that draw cyclists to the state. And it’s also home to some serious bike companies, including Trek, so it’s no surprise that the state benefits from biking. But check out this comparison:

Combined with previous estimates of the state’s bicycle manufacturing, sales, and services industry, this means bicycling generates more than $1.5 billion a year in total economic impact, according to the report. By comparison, deer hunting in the state generates $926 million, according to the International Association of Fish and Wildlife Agencies. And in a 2001 report, the Wisconsin Department of Tourism estimated the impact of snowmobiling to be just under $250 million.

They say that biking generates 13,200 jobs in Wisconsin. Jobs that correlate with healthy lifestyles. Cool stuff.

On a Twin Cities scale, it sure seems like the bike friendliness of Minneapolis brings money into the city. Friends and family routinely come to Minneapolis to ride from our house over to Lake Calhoun on the Midtown Greenway and around parts of the Grand Rounds while dropping cash at stops along the way including Sea Salt, Tin Fish, Freewheel Bike, and the Longfellow Grill.

It would be great to see just a little bit more work done on sections of the Grand Rounds running through North, Northeast, and downtown Minneapolis to make easily navigable and less-interrupted loops for riders. Some serious progress has been made in Northeast along St. Anthony Parkway in recent years, but it’s not quite where it needs to be to have, say, easily understood 10-mile tours. Once that’s in place, the volume of cyclists putting that trail to work will explode.

With a little effort, St. Paul could turn up their trails to a level that would draw cyclists (By cyclists, in this case I’m referring people who enjoy touring a city and stopping for a bite to eat along the way. Tourists.). Wheelock Parkway and Como Ave are close to bike friendly. Shepherd Road is great near downtown but weak up or downstream from there. Bike friendly city maps are nowhere to be found. Heading North-South across St. Paul on a bike remains the city’s weakest link. Phalen Parkway is a step in the right direction. From the capitol, it’s not clear that there are some pretty decent bike trails heading in different directions (Summit, Como, Phalen Parkway, Gateway Trail). Someone should turn this hub and spoke system into friendlier, navigable loops. That will bring the bikers with their wallets.

Trails.com does a nice job mapping out the various bike friendly trails around the country, including those in Minnesota. This helped me discover more trails than I knew were within an easy drive of Minneapolis. MNTrails.com is another good sources for trail info, although they list fewer trails as of this writing.

Registration (and in some cases, paid registration) is required to access detailed info or topo maps. However, once you have a trail’s name, you can normally throw that into Google to find a free source of trail info such as a dedicated website to that particular trail.

On Saturday, I checked out the Lake Wobegon Trail starting in St. Joseph, MN. That trail is around 75 minutes from Minneapolis, in great shape, and had very low bike traffic for a beautiful Saturday afternoon. I highly recommend it.

The Other Mike and biked around a good chunk of Northern Minnesota last week with stops in Duluth, Little Marais, Ely, Virginia, Hibbing, and back to Duluth. One day that started out difficult and turned very cool over time was from Little Marais to Ely. Little Marais is around 10 miles up the North Short from Silver Bay. There is nothing there but an intersection, and rumor has it that a local real estate magnate is buying up the land for a family compound.

From the Little Marais intersection, climbing away from Lake Superior is tedious.

There is no shoulder for much of the route, but little traffic. In areas where there is a shoulder, it tends to have a vibration cut-in to wake up the dozers. Unfortunately, that doesn’t make the shoulder particularly bike friendly.

The Knotted Pine is a hunting lodge and bar around 5 miles west of Isabella.

From this point, the road winds through deep woods and many lakes. This section was described to us as treacherous. Here’s a quick video of what this looks like in action:

The road is similar to this for around 30 miles with no gas stations or even bars, so be sure to take down a frozen pizza at the Knotted Pine before pushing off for Ely. I’d recommend this to anyone comfortable with riding single file. Mike and I passed through mid-day on a weekday, so may have avoided congestion issues. Two cars passing while biking may not fit all that well. It may also be worth avoiding during hunting season for a wide variety of reasons.

David Schueller doesn’t let below zero temps ruin his fun. In fact, he’s been biking on Lake Minnetonka in this weather.

How does he dress for it? Layers:

David’s spin: Two days at 20 below

And what do I wear on my feet?

In order: neoprene socks, mountain bike shoes with Time cleats, time trial shoe covers, medium weight booties, another pair medium weight booties, thick-ply paper towels wrapped around them, freezer bags and thick neoprene booties.

See? No big deal.

via Shek