IKEA's Christmas bonus was sure no turkey

In true IKEA style, employees at the furniture retailer's stores throughout the United States were all delivered a holiday bonus they'll have to unpack and assemble. It wasn't furniture, though, but bicycles, about 12,000 of them, all in a special design created for this purpose. Here's the story.

State to lower Brickell speed limits

State engineers agreed Tuesday to lower speed limits on busy Brickell Avenue and to add more marked crosswalks to construction that's due to begin in early January. It's a big victory for the blog Transit Miami and the South Florida Bike Coalition, which for four months have been asking District 6 of the Florida Department of Transportation (FDOT) to make the street safer for walkers who live and work in the growing financial district. The groups organized effectively among residents, property owners and public officials, eventually signaling they were ready to take the fight to Tallahassee if necessary.

At a public meeting a week ago, FDOT announced it was doing further traffic studies to see if lower speeds were justified. The following day, at a meeting of the Miami-Dade Metropolitan Planning Organization, District 6 Secretary Gus Pego was challenged to defend his engineers' adherence to 40 mph posted speeds in the residential part of the 1.6-mile project area. Now, FDOT says it will post 35 mph between SE 15th Road and the mouth of the Rickenbacker Causeway -- the same limit as the upper stretch of Brickell.

There's a good report about this all in today's Miami Herald.

Engineers document parking's cost

Every motorist likes free parking, and I'd bet nearly every merchant does, too, as long as it's free at the store's front door. But now comes a study by civil engineers at the University of California, Berkeley, that attempts to calculate who really pays for those millions of spaces waiting for someone to park in them.

"There's actually a larger infrastructure for parking than for roadways," said Mikhail Chester, lead author of the study. "This speaks to the sort of hidden infrastructure components that are there to store our vehicles when they're not moving."

As reported in the Knoxville Sentinel:

The group found that parking contributes to greenhouse gases like carbon dioxide, methane and nitrous oxide. In fact, the environmental cost of so many parking spaces can also raise the amount of carbon dioxide emitted per mile by as much as 10 percent for an average car. And, when calculated over the lifetime of a vehicle, the amount of other gases like sulfur dioxide can rise by as much as 25 percent and the amount of soot as much as 90 percent.

This matters to bicyclists because the public subsidy for parking encourages more driving, at the expense of other transport modes, including ours. Here's the newspaper's complete article. The authors' own discussion of their work was published in Environmental Research Letters.

Cyclists petition AAA

The petitions of some 51,000 bicyclists were delivered to the Orlando-area headquarters of the American Automobile Association today, asking AAA to support continued federal aid to building paths for walking and bicycling.  The petition campaign, organized by the Rails-to-Trails Conservancy, follows the efforts by AAA's Mid-Atlantic branch to oppose bicycle facilities in and around Washington, D.C. It's notable that 33,000 of the petition signers are AAA members.  For more on the campaign, visit Rails to Trails.

BPAC meets Wednesday

The Miami-Dade Bicycle-Pedestrian Advisory Committee holds its last regular meeting of 2010 at 5:30 p.m. Wednesday, Dec. 15, in the CITT Conference Room on the 10th floor at County Hall, 111 NW 1st St., Miami. The agenda includes a report from Miami-Dade Police Capt. Martha Singleton about law enforcement along the Rickenbacker Causeway.

New site serves Florida cyclists

Congratulations to Eddy and the gang at Miami Bike Report, a readable, info-packed site that quietly launched over the weekend. Lots of useful tools there and, it appears, some more to come.

Play it cool on the causeway, riders

The traffic law enforcement that some bicyclists ran into on the Rickenbacker Causeway over the past weekend is just the beginning. Miami bicycle coordinator Collin Worth reports today that enforcement will be greater over the next few weeks -- especially when police see pelotons spreading across multiple lanes of the road.

Capt. Martha Singleton of Miami-Dade Police will be at the Bicycle-Pedestrian Advisory Committee on Wednesday, Dec. 15, to discuss this new development and answer questions. The meeting is scheduled for the Transportation Trust conference room on the 10th floor at 111 NW First St.  Starting time is 5:30 p.m.

The causeway's popularity as a place to ride has contributed to this situation.  It's not unusual to see as many as a thousand riders on the causeway over the course of a weekend day in nice weather.  The tall William Powell Bridge provides one of the few climbing challenges for South Florida riders who seek a strenuous workout, and competitive cyclists especially like to train here.

Among Key Biscayne residents, though, we cyclists are often thought to be a colorful nuisance. An aide to County Commissioner Carlos Gimenez, widely considered cyclists' best friend at County Hall, said complaints about road-hogging by cyclists have been steadily growing.

If you're going to keep on riding the Rickenbacker, I urge you to be on your best behavior. Riding two abreast should be OK but you definitely shouldn't let your group fill the road. Stop signs do mean stop. As a class of Floridians who long have traveled under the slogan "Share the Road," let's show our neighbors that we actually mean it.

Deco Bike to debut in Miami Beach

Deco Bike, the long-awaited bike-share service in Miami Beach, is launching with a glittery party tonight at the Shore Club.  Here's their promo:


DECOBIKE Green Carpet Event Invitation from DECOBIKE on Vimeo.

The service is inspired by the Parisian Velib and other services that provide rental kiosks at key points through a city.  Users check out a bike with their credit card and return it to the same or another kiosk when they're done. Some of the Deco Bikes were being tried out last month during Bike Miami Days, and it appeared that riders liked them.  This should be a big hit with visitors to South Beach.

New faces on Miami-Dade advisory committee

Congratulations and best wishes to two new members of the Miami-Dade Bicycle/Pedestrian Advisory Committee.  Xavier Falconi, the transportation manager for the City of Miami Beach, was appointed by Mayor Matti Herrera-Bower to succeed Gabrielle Redfern, who left the group and now serves of the Citizens Transportation Advisory Committee.  Scott Fane, a Pinecrest accountant, was appointed by new County Commissioner Lynda Bell to succeed Eric Tullberg, an appointee of Bell's predecessor. 

Bike valet serves Basel Miami art-lovers

Here's the Green Mobility Network team at the bike valet operating this week for Art Basel Miami. The location is Panther Coffee, on NW 2nd Avenue, and the service is free. Mack Cycle and Fitness, of South Miami, is sponsoring the valet.

Florida cyclist touring the Everglades

Scott Little of Fort Lauderdale would like for you to see his review of options for touring the Everglades by bike. He's writing at Neil Gunton's site, Crazy Guy on A Bike, which I'm adding to the recommended links here so you can find  pleasure -- and perhaps useful hints -- in the many bike-adventure journals there.

We don't hear a great deal about bicycle touring in South Florida, despite our many attractions.  The emphasis here tends to be on training and large-group rides, with some recent growth of interest in bicycle commuting. I'm hoping we'll see new interest in touring as our two prime off-road paths, the M-Path and South Dade Trail, get integrated into the East Coast Greenway and more visitors include the bicycle in their Florida travel plans.