Date:May 02, 2010

Event: Loop 1604 Peloton Ride

Location: Spectrum Club at Rogers Ranch

Entry Fees Per Route: $75.00:  $75.00

About the Race:

Ride like a professional! Join us for a fast 100 mile ride around San Antonio’s Loop 1604. Ride is escorted by SAPD motorcycle police. Three SAG vehicles will be on hand to provide nutriition at key points during the ride. Group will stay together as a peloton and ride at 20mph. Duration of the ride is approximately 5 hours. Also included is an event tshirt and post ride pizza party!

Flyer: http://www.brittonbikes.com/hcsa-events/loop-1604-ride/loop-1604.htm

Registration: http://www.active.com/triathlon/san-antonio-tx/san-antonio-peloton-ride-2010

Additional Info:

SAG vehicles will be available for riders needing to rest for a few miles. Rider will be transported ahead of the peloton to reconnect. Electrolyte replacement, water, bananas and gels or bars will also be provided.

Website: http://www.brittonbikes.com/hcsa-events/loop-1604-ride/loop-1604.htm

We were lucky enough to catch up with David Marks of Plano Fun Ride to ask some questions about their upcoming event happening on August 7, 2010

How long has the event been around and how did it start?

This is the second year of the event. I am a member of the Plano Sunrise Rotary. Several members of the Club ride and we thought that a bike ride
would be a great way to work in the community.

What was the motivation behind starting this event and who benefits from it?

We were looking for ways to support organizations in the community that we have not been able to support. This year, the Plano Fun Ride benefits Relief Nursery of Collin County, a child abuse prevention organization.
What is unique about Relief Nursery is the Prevention model it is based on. The organization looks to keep families intact, preventing the children from going into Foster Care by facilitating a safe family environment.

How have they been able to utilize the funds in the past?

The funds are used to support the organization’s Child abuse prevention program. Last year, we also were able to share the proceeds with the Plano Children’s Medical Clinic.

Logistically, can you give us an idea how many volunteers, finances and planning it takes to put on this event?

Our Steering Committee is made up of 5 key individuals, focusing on Sponsors, Volunteers, Route Planning, Event Logistics. This year was unique in that we planned for a longer set of routes into Collin County, but ran into key logistical issues that we could not overcome. We had to close our
67 and 47 mile routes this year. But hey, we are way ahead in planning for next year!

As we did last year, we are working within one municipality; Plano. This simplifies (but still not simple) the planning process. Our largest expense
is the Police participation. I’m not sure you can ever have enough volunteers. We have volunteers assigned to various duties including Planning,
Registration, Site Setup, Tear Down, Rest Stops, and Road Crew. In all, we have 57 volunteers, but anyone interested in helping, please contact us. We’ll put you to good use!

Which was the most rewarding experience throughout the years hosting this event?

This is the second year so it is hard to say. Each one is like your children, both different but you love them both. Last year we put on a
family ride and had two routes; 5 and 10 mile. Everyone had a great time (even though the rain cut the event short). This year we changed start/stop locations and expanded the routes to include a 31 mile ride. I would like to answer that question after this event.

What’s the average number of riders per year who finish the race?

Last year we had 159 riders, mostly families. This year we are planning for 300 riders with the expanded route. Next year when we expand further to include the 47 and 67 mile routes, we expect to double that again.

How many riders do you medically assist during the average race?

Last year we had one individual that had to be taken to the hospital for chest pains. It turned out to be nothing and he was OK.

What was the worst accident you had in this event?

We haven’t had one, and I would like to keep that record going.

What can folks do to support you and your mission?

The Relief Nursery of Collin County is working to keep families together. We offer a hand up, not a hand-out. Prevention is not only best for the
fabric of our society (keeping families together in a safe environment), but is it cost effective, as well. Each child that goes into Foster Care costs
the taxpayer $670 per month (payment to the Foster parents). That’s $16,000 per year for as long as the children are in foster care. The average Relief Nursery program duration is 17 months. At $4,600 per year, per family, the cost is $6,500 for the duration of the family’s Relief Nursery program. Foster care is paid with your tax dollars, Relief Nursery is funded through private funding, donations, and fundraisers such as this. Come on out and support the cause.

How many port-a-potties do you have?

At the rest stops that do not have rest rooms, we will have two
port-a-potties. We will have three at the start/finish.

Any celebrities joining the ride/walk?

No

Additional stuff you would like to let folks know about this years ride?

Each time I go out on the routes to review the course, I get jazzed. The courses are really a nice ride. The beauty of the shorter family routes is
that parents can introduce their children to the joys of organized cycling in a semi-controlled environment. The longer route is for Tweeners. Kind of like us. Each rider get’s a free t-shirt and we’ll be grilling up free lunch for when you are done.

Thank you David for granting this quick interview and we hope we can catch up with everyone at the event.

Click here to view the event details for the Plano Fun Ride

By Catenya McHenry of KXAN.com
Click here for Original Article

AUSTIN (KXAN) – Texas state troopers are finding a new way to fight crime: Patrolling on bikes instead of in cars.

They now have a new perspective on crime, and a new way to fight it.

“You are there and able to see more. You obviously are a lot more quiet and not as obvious,” said Texas Department of Public Safety Sgt. Gabe Huber.

“It’s kind of like the difference between an old television and an HD,” says Eric Brackelsberg, DPS bike patrolman. “Your perspective is so much more vivid. It’s a whole new way of patrolling.”

In October 2009, DPS officials decided to take six officers out of their patrol cars to send them cycling, patrolling the Capitol complex on bikes . In less than a year the program is showing huge success. There are now 13 officers cycling the complex and more importantly, they’re presence and crime fighting is working.

“”It’s approximately a reduction of 50% of the crime, and the majority of crimes is crimes against property, criminal mischief, burglary to vehicles,” said patrol and security operations captain Laurencio Saenz.

From the time it takes an officer to walk to his patrol car, crank it up and arrive to a scene, a bike officer is likely already there. When the Capitol is in emergency mode on lockdown, cement barricades are activated blocking any cars from entering or exiting the Capitol complex. On a bike, officers don’t have to wait; they can bypass the barricades, take the sidewalks, ride between buildings arriving to a scene in just seconds. In a patrol car more than just a barricade can stand in the way.

“With the number of one way streets, the units [patrol cars] tend to get caught up in some of that traffic, whereas our bike patrol units are not confined to the streets alone,” said Sgt. Gabe Huber.

When Fausto Cardenas opened fire at the Capitol back in January 2010 , Eric Brakelsberg and his partner were two of the first responding officers.

“I was five or ten seconds behind him. We were able to beat all the units over there because of the circumstances,” said DPS bike patrolman Eric Brackelsberg.

The bike patrolman have the same jurisdiction as DPS’ patrol cars. They can issue tickets, make arrests, and assist EMS with minor and more serious medical calls. Cycling also allows Troopers to see and hear more and they are more accessible to the Capitol employees and its visitors.

“You could be riding by and somebody can holler at you, hey I need some help and you’re in a car, you have your window up or even just your engine noise of your own vehicle, you might not hear that person,” said Eric Brakelsberg.

Riding a bike has proved to be more cost-effective too. Officers say the expense of a patrol car, outfitted with computer and all the equipment officers need is about $30,000. That doesn’t include regular maintenance and gas. Putting an officer on a bike, is significantly less. Overall, Troopers say doing more with less is keeping the public safe, cutting down on crime and response time. Troopers patrol 24 hours a day, seven days a week.

Cindy Whitney

AMARILLO, TEXAS – ProNews 7 has been telling you about cycling advocate Cindy Whitney. She was tragicilly killed on US 87, just south of Canyon, by a driver not paying attention and reaching for his cell phone on Saturday morning. The 54-year-old was being safe riding with a group of cyclists, practicing for next weeks MS ride when she fell victim to a 24 year old who made one bad decision.

Cindy Whitney was the last bicyclist that anyone would think of when it came to a tragic fatality. She’ll be missed tremendously by us and certainly her family her husband Rod, and her daughter. “I think she was matriarch of cycling, the cycling community, and she helped organize many cycling events on and off the bike,” said Kenneth Graham from Old Tascosa Cycling and Friend of Cindy’s.

With this loss leaves the question of safety amongst motorist and cyclist, and the rules of what to do to be safe on the roads, starting with cell phones. ” It’s a reminder to all of us if were a bicyclist or not, these tools of communication are wonderful to have, but there hugely addictive and very distractive to motorist. We need to turn them off and put them down,” said Kenneth Graham.

Graham also has some rules for bicyclists, stressing the importance of wearing a helmet or riding in a group when out and about on the streets. Graham continued saying, “ride flowing with the traffic, ride in a straight line so motorist know what your intentions are. Use hand signals when changing lanes and making turns.”

And for motorists, Graham has some tips for you as well, so both groups can share the highway together accident free. “Pay attention why your behind the wheel, and get to your destinations safely and not have an accident. Put your cell phone down and keep both hands on the wheel as often as you can,” said Graham.

By Kale Steed of Connectamarillo.com
Click here for Original Article

Bartonville, Texas - Getting around the mextroplex of Dallas Ft. Worth is fairly easy if you go by car but, if by foot or bicycle — not so much. And it’s especially tough when inside the LBJ Freeway/I-20 loop because there are few dedicated bike lanes (OK, make that zero bike lanes) and limited walking paths outside parks and greenbelts. If you’re wanting to find a pedistrian-friendly stretch of road more than a 1/2 mile without a stop sign or light – forget about it, there just isn’t one. That’s why endurance bicyclists and runners alike seek the roads of less-urbanized towns outside the concrete jungle.

One of those towns is Bartonville, Texas (population 1,500) which is tucked away in the middle of the I-35W and I-35E corridor north of Lake Grapevine and south of Denton. The rural roads bordering and going through the town are wide, smooth and easily shared with cars, trucks, and the occasional tractor. There’s a gas station convenience store and a hamburger stand making it a perfect place to join friends for a long ride or run. Plus the townspeople are friendly.

Just perfect.

Unless it’s a group of more than 10. Then things aren’t so perfect or the town’s officials so friendly.

On June 15th the Bartonville City Council voted 4-0 to expand its definition of public events code to include races and rallies of 10 or more runners and cyclists during training. That’s right, to include training on public, tax payer supported roads. Here’s a link to the official code amendment on the city’s website: click here.

To be in compliance groups of 10 or more passing through need to pay $50 for a permit at least 45 days in advance.

Chief of Police, Dave Howell, declined to comment on the record beyond saying the change was made for “safety and enforcement issues.” Two phone calls and an email to the town’s mayor, Ron Robertson, have not been returned.

According to the Ft. Worth Star-Telegram, Mayor Pro Tem Carla Anderson opposed the change but missed the meeting. The posted agenda had notified residents only that the council might change the definition or a “race” or “rally,” not add group rides. “If there’s one thing people here complain about, it’s bicycles,” Anderson said.

Comments to the Star-Telegram article and cycling forums are decidedly against the new ordinance and chatter about cyclists either boycotting the town’s businesses or riding through Bartonville in defiance abound.

By Brian Brode of examiner.com
Click here for the Original Article

FORT WORTH — A bicyclist who was killed Wednesday after being hit on a service road was identified as Miguel Cano of Saginaw, according to the Tarrant County medical examiner’s website on Thursday.

Cano, 50, was pronounced dead at 7:13 p.m. at John Peter Smith Hospital in Fort Worth, according to the website.

Cano was on his bicycle when he was hit by a pickup about 6:15 p.m. on the westbound access road of Northwest Loop 820, about a half-mile west of Marine Creek Parkway, police reported.

Read more: http://www.star-telegram.com/2010/05/27/2220694/man-killed-on-bike-near-loop-820.html#ixzz0p8enZEcR

By MITCH MITCHELL
mitchmitchell@star-telegram.com

Dallas will hold an open house to discuss its 2011 Bike Plan on May 27.

The meeting at City Hall, from 5 to 8 p.m., with details available here.

The open house is co-sponsored by the North Central Texas Council of Governments, which has a whole mess of information about serious biking in North Texas, including information about next week’s Bike to Work Week.

If Great Britain can handle a prime minister who walks to work, why not give your bike a try. Or at the very least, take a moment to give us your thoughts on how Dallas ought to make itself more bike-friendly. We’re all ears, and on May 27, so is the city of Dallas.

By Michael Lindenberger of transportationblog.dallasnews.com
Click here for Original Article

In the battle over the Downtown Bicycle Boulevard, it’s pretty clear that the business interests won. So why won’t they just declare victory and be done with it?

Opponents showed up in force at last week’s Urban Transportation Commission and continued to blast the boulevard proposal, watered down as it is, as a looming disaster for businesses along Nueces and Rio Grande. And Austinites for Down town Mobility, on its websitewww.keepaustinmoving.org, complains that the “number of affected roads has doubled. One of our major concerns has always been the negative impact on the area if you divert traffic from one street to another. So in ‘compromise’ the city has decided to make traffic worse on two streets.” (Repeated calls to Nueces business owner Susan Harris, a leader of the group, have not been returned.)

It’s hard to figure out how that charge can be true, since the city has effectively decided to not do anything to Nueces. As noted in previous reports (see “Bump in the Road for Bike Boulevard,” April 9), initial thoughts of doing serious traffic calming on Nueces, the original target of the bike boulevard idea, were replaced with mere bike lanes on the northern and southernmost stretches, and “sharrows” (lanes marked with symbols reminding motorists to share the road) between Seventh and 13th. It’s true that the lanes will be “enhanced,” perhaps raised or marked with bright colors, but it’s hard to see how they’ll restrict traffic in any way. (Also, in fairness to staff, a major water main project on Nueces scheduled for 2011 nixes any traffic-calming projects for quite a while anyway.)

But sharrows? As Hill Abell, owner of Bicycle Sport Shop – and a supporter of the compromise – reminded the Urban Transportation Commission, sharrows are nothing. “A sharrow does not give me the right to take a lane if I’m on a bicycle,” Abell said. “I have the right to take that lane whether there is a sharrow on the road or not. … Sharrow or not, I can take the lane. I’m a vehicle, by the laws of Texas. And it would behoove the opponents of bicycling, or bicycle boulevards, to learn the laws of Texas as far as bicycles are concerned.” (Austinites for Downtown Mobility, for the record, has repeatedly emphasized that it is only opposed to the bike boulevard, not bicycle commuting.)

Bike boulevard opponents also brought accusations of dirty play into the mix. ADM’s Monica Thomason pleaded with bicyclists present to have a talk with their less rational compatriots about vandalism occurring at businesses on the corridor, particularly those with ADM yard signs. “Please tell these people to stop,” she said. “It started as simple sign vandalism. … It has now escalated to actual destruction of property. They’re spray-painting our property; they’re breaking fences; they’re sneaking onto the property in the evening.

“We thought … we could have an adult discussion, and that has not been the case.”

Abell fired back that the broader cycling community should not be tarred by the actions of a few idiots. Vandalism accusations are “a hard thing to prove,” Abell said, “and I’m offended that I, being a bicyclist, should be broadly swept into that group that would vandalize.”

Indeed, “evidence” of the vandalism posted on ADM’s website is inconclusive, at best. A video shows a cyclist riding up in the night and stomping on a business’ “Keep Austin Moving” sign, but photos of other damage – including graffiti that simply says “love” – don’t show a clear connection to the debate.

And Urban Transportation Commission Chair Richard MacKinnonreminded ADM that dirty tricks go both ways and complained of a “disinformation campaign” by boulevard opponents. “We do condemn the vandalism of property,” MacKinnon said. However, he said all commission members had received many e-mails with “bad information in it. And the bad information was almost duplicated from one letter to the next, talking about a bike boulevard that completely eliminated vehicle traffic. That doesn’t do any side any good, because people start to debate things that don’t exist. … What it started to feel to me like was the ‘death panels’ of bike boulevards.”

The UTC took no vote, as members wanted to wait for the results of an economic impact study due May 11.

By LEE NICHOLS of AustinChronicle.com
Click here for the Original Article

The following is a guest post by Chip Seal of http://chipsea.blogspot.com/.  He has had several run in’s with the Ennis Police Department and here is his personal take on this situation:

—

I had learned to ride a bicycle in California, and rode it for thousands and thousands of miles in that state. So when I took up cycling again in Texas in 2006, I wanted to be sure I understood Texas bicycle specific law and how to safely navigate on a streetscape that had few wide lanes like had experienced in California.

Texas law was straightforward: In Texas, bicycles are vehicles, so they have the rights and duties of all other traffic. Texas cyclists have the statutory right to the roadway, (travel lane) and a duty to follow all the traffic rules like automobiles.

Four years later, and after traveling 12,000 miles in Texas traffic, I was confident that I understood what the Texas Transportation Code (TTC) said. The City of Ennis says that I don’t know what I am talking about.

The way they interpret the TTC, a cyclist in the City of Ennis must either abandon the roadway and ride on a shoulder any time other traffic comes by, or a cyclist can only operate on a roadway in a school zone. (The only place a cyclist can travel close to the maximum posted speed limit.) The Jury wasn’t clear as to which result they preferred.

One of the officers who ticketed me said under oath that he had only stopped two other cyclists in the past year, and neither of them for “impeding traffic”, the crime I am accused of. He also testified that I was the only operator of any type of vehicle that he had cited for impedance.

This surprised me, for there have been only a handful of cyclists in Ennis that I have seen over the past two years who were operating lawfully.

I was likewise surprised I had been the only illegal impeder he had ever seen! Indeed many common vehicles in and around Ennis cause other traffic to slow, but are commonly accepted and not considered “impeding”. For example, traffic is impeded all the time by folks making left turns, vehicles pulling a heavy load, driving below the speed limit when towing other vehicles, slowing to park or turn into a driveway, garbage collection trucks, mail delivery vehicles, and the operation of a farm or construction vehicles on the public streets whose primary purpose isn’t transportation.

I am therefore not fully convinced that my cycling has been treated like all the other vehicles by the City of Ennis. But maybe I am wrong about this. If so, I would expect any vehicle unable to keep up with automobiles, like farm equipment, will be ticketed if they venture into Ennis this year. It may be a new enforcement policy!

In fact, the roads in Ennis have ceased to be public roads if the severest interpretation of the jury is adopted. The only vehicles that would be allowed on the formally public streets of Ennis are those that have obtained prior approval from the government to drive on them, and are carrying documents that can prove that. No unregistered vehicles allowed.

The Fort Worth City Council approved a long-range plan Tuesday to make it easier for bicyclists to get around the city. Here are some highlights of the plan, known as Bike Fort Worth:

Goals

• Triple the number of bike lanes and trails to 1,100.
• Increase the number of bicycle commuters from 0.2 percent of the population to 0.6 percent.
• Decrease the number of car-bicycle fatalities by 10 percent.
• Attain designation as a Bicycle Friendly Community through the League of American Bicyclists.

Plan of action

• Adopt a “complete streets” policy so that new streets are built with room for cars, mass transit, pedestrians and bikes.
• Establish a bicycling education program to promote safe bicycling and interaction between cars and cyclists.
• Include the bike plan in the city’s Master Thoroughfare Plan. This will allow the city to set aside land for trails and bike lanes when it acquires land for future roads, and make it easier to apply for state and federal grants.
• Distribute an updated bicycle map and commuter guide.
• Ensure bicycle accommodation on all major transit corridors, station areas and transit hubs.
• Develop a bicycle and pedestrian transportation plan.
• Implement a zoning ordinance for bicycle parking.

By MIKE LEE – from http://www.star-telegram.com/local/story/1961439.html