Miami seeks bike-share vendor

The City of Miami has invited vendors to bid on creating a bicycle-rental program similar to Deco Bike in Miami Beach or the famous Velib in Paris, city bike coordinator Collin Worth told the county's Bicycle-Pedestrian Advisory Committee last night. With a nod to committee member Xavier Falconi, the Miami Beach transportation director, Worth said, "You guys are getting a lot of praise for that, and we want some, too."

Deco Bike appears to be successful -- with surprising local support. The Miami Beach Transportation & Parking Committee reported last month that the service was clocking around 11,500 bike rentals per week, and that 57 percent of the riders have phones in the 305 or 786 area code. There were 500 bikes deployed as of early May. The average rental time is 21 minutes, which the transportation committee interprets as meaning the bikes were rented for travel to specific destinations.

Commuters make bicycles their ride

When your friends say biking to work isn't doable in steamy South Florida, show them last night's feature story from South Florida's Channel 10. It's an engaging profile of three Miamians who bike to work daily: Roberio Bezerra, John Edward Smith, and Mickey Witte. See it here.

Hit-run driver kills cyclist

Found the story at MiamiHerald.com. Here's the location.

Don't let a flat ruin your ride

Another in Green Mobility Network's series of fix-a-flat workshops will be offered tomorrow (Saturday) at 11 a.m. at Mack Cycle & Fitness, 5995 Sunset Drive, South Miami. Make a $10 contribution to Green Mobility and when you finish the class the store will give you a spare inner tube, a set of tire levers and a water bottle. Your instructor tomorrow will be the personable Gary Mendenhall. Bring your bike for this hands-on class. It runs from 11 a.m. to 12:30 p.m.

Want to be happy? Bike to work

An upstate columnist spots interesting parallels in an article by the urbanologist Richard Florida. Here's a sample:

“Cycling to work also goes together with happiness. The percentage of cycling commuters is positively associated with levels of happiness and well-being, which we measure via Gallup surveys.”

Read more at the Gainesville Sun.

Mapping the Virginia Key trails

Grab a look at the cool online map of the Virginia Key mountain bike trails.

Consultants win grant as ciclovia specialists

Congratulations to Street Plans Collaborative, which landed a $45,000 grant today to create a handbook that will help communities everywhere plan and present festivals like Bike Miami Days or its durable ancestor, the Ciclovía, in Bogota, Colombia. The grant from the Fund for the Environment and Urban Life will be shared by Street Plans and the Alliance for Biking & Walking, which aims to bring out the handbook by November 2011. Their joint effort is to be called the Open Streets Project.

The next Bike Miami Days, incidentally, is planned for July 24 as part of a daylong celebration of Miami's history. Details to come.

Lanes to Key Largo almost complete

U.S. 1 a few miles south of Florida City.

Tom Burton reports that the widening of U.S. 1 between Florida City and Key Largo is almost complete:

The four-foot inside shoulder stripe is visible next to the concrete barrier with a 12-foot travel lane and 10 foot northbound hurricane evacuation lane. The new road is complete except for one mile, where there is two-way traffic; this should be finished by next year. I advise anyone bicycling this route to wear brightly colored clothing with traffic safety vest and bright lights.

These bikeable shoulders on U.S. 1 into the Florida Keys connect to the Overseas Heritage Trail, a multiuse path parallel to the highway that's a project of the Florida Department of Transportation. Thanks to trail overseer Monica Woll for the clarification.

Bike-helmet crusader dies

I recommend you get The Miami Herald today to read about Lynn Mintz's life and death. Here's the top of Ellie Brecher's article:

DEATHS | LYNN MINTZ, 65Loss motivated counselor, bike-safety crusader
BY ELINOR J. BRECHER ebrecher@MiamiHerald.com    

On March 7, 1984, a man driving a 1979 Ford knocked Lynn Mintz's world off its axis.   It was a Wednesday. Her 10-year-old daughter, Rebecca, was riding her bike to Sunset Elementary School, and collided with the car.   She wasn't wearing a helmet.  

Two days later, Lynn and her husband, psychologist Sanford Mintz, made the wrenching choice to disconnect life support — and to donate their younger child's organs to several recipients.  
As she began to regain her bearings, Lynn Mintz decided to campaign for bicycle safety, so that what happened to her family "should never happen again,'' her husband said.  

They organized bicycle rodeos, helped bring bike-safety classes into the public schools, and worked for Florida's 1997 mandatory under-16 helmet law.  . Mintz became a therapist, and specialized in counseling the victims of sexual abuse, many of them children.  

Lynn Gail Dardick Mintz, born in St. Louis, died of cancer at her South Miami home on June 6 — the day after her 65th birthday.

Act now to save bicycle funding

The next few days will be critical to efforts to improve our country's bicycle infrastructure.

A transportation bill being drafted for U.S Rep. John Mica of Florida is expected to curtail or even zero out federal programs that have spurred a decade of progress. The big target for elimination is Transportation Enhancements, which paid for many miles of the Overseas Heritage Trail in the Florida Keys -- just one example of the $67 million of TE bicycle or pedestrian projects in Miami-Dade or Monroe counties since 2001.

Here's a call for bicyclists to speak up and save these projects from Mica's ax. By signing this petition you can speak to your members of Congress on behalf of healthy, oil-saving bicycling. http://www.change.org/petitions/act-now-to-keep-walking-bicycling-in-transportation-picture

Sign and pass it along, won't you?

Souto proposes recharge stations along M-Path

Anticipating the day when electric cars will begin to replace gas and diesel vehicles on Miami-area streets, County Commissioner Javier Souto is calling for a study of county properties that might be used as recharging points. As possible locations, Souto suggests county parks, the South Dade Busway, and the Metrorail right-of-way into downtown Miami. I'll be eager to hear how that will go over with bicyclists, joggers, and youth sports leagues who are using those spaces in increasing numbers. As an avid user of the M-Path, in the shadow of the Metrorail, I'm certainly not enthusiastic about inviting cars into that space -- even if they were electric. So here's another idea: Rather than build on our too-scarce public green space, why not repurpose some of the empty gas stations around town?

The Souto proposal is on the agenda for the June 13 meeting of the County Commission's Regional Transportation Committee. The group meets at 9:30 a.m. in the commission chambers, 111 NW 1st St.

Miami installs parking posts

Here's one of the new bicycle parking racks being installed around town under a public health grant meant to encourage physical activity. This rack on SE 1st Street is conveniently near a store entrance, which will make it more useful than some others I saw today near Miami-Dade College's Wolfson Campus.

It's too bad this hitching post wasn't placed under the awning, so a user might wait out one of our tropical thunderstorms in the cafe next door and still find a dry saddle when the rain stopped. Such considerations will make the difference between unused street furniture and amenities that become valuable assets in a bicycle-friendly city.

At the same time, Miami and the county Health Department are to be commended for seizing the opportunity to acquire these racks. They really will help riders who need to park for short periods. And with just 85 installed so far, we can hope for more careful siting of the remainder.

Trail work resumes S of Kendall Dr.

Work crews began tearing up parking at Metrorail's Dadeland South station today to extend the M-Path further south. The new path south of Kendall Drive will be built out to Dadeland Boulevard, giving bicyclists a safer approach to the station and to the South Dade Trail.

Unused parking in the station's lot should make up for the lost angle parking, though two or three dozen drivers will have further to walk.

Tell your doubting friends: You can learn to ride

Maine bans texting while driving

With the stroke of Gov. Paul LePage's pen yesterday, Maine became the 33rd state to ban texting by drivers. All road users, whether bicyclists, drivers, or pedestrians, will be safer when the law takes effect in September. Most of those 33 states have acted during the three years that Florida lawmakers hemmed and hawed over similar proposals. What is it about Florida that prevents taking this step to end a deadly habit that is spreading by the week? Maine governor signs bill banning texting while driving; LaHood congratulates state for action

Dashboard Facebook a threat to us all

Bicyclists have had enough close calls with distracted drivers that most of us are keenly aware how deadly they can be. Probably, though, we mostly think about it while

A frame grab from BMW AG's planned anti-texting campaign.

we're riding. Please remember it the rest of the time, too: while at the wheel of your car and in conversation with friends -- and especially with anyone in politics or the automobile industry. I've just learned from the Wall Street Journal that Onstar, the inboard navigation and emergency communication system, is looking at an upgrade to bring Facebook updates to subscribers' dashboard screens -- as if any of us couldn't wait until we got home to see Buffy's OMG about Candy's hot new significant other.

Fortunately, as the Journal reports, the U.S. Department of Transportation isn't happy about social media invading drivers' mental space. Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood has campaigned hard to raise driver awareness that our eyes AND attention need to be on the road, not our cellphone. So let's all resist the lure of dashboard gadgetry, tell the car sales folk what we think of it, and tell our lawmakers that we support LaHood's efforts. What the National Safety Council told us about seat belts a generation ago is just as true in this case: The life you save may be your own.