FLEET-FOOT Fridays: Circumnavigating the San Francisco Bay Area

I'm headed up north to the San Francisco Bay Area. I've always wondered whether one can circumnavigate the Bay via bicycle. I know that you can do pretty well, using transit and bikes. Although I won't have a chance on this trip to do such a trip, there are plenty of resources.

While there is an organization that advocates for a complete, dedicated, bike and pedestrian trail encircling San Francisco and San Pablo Bays (i.e. the Bay Area), that trail--The Bay Trail-- is not finished. It's a mish-mash of dedicated trails, bike lanes, marked streets, and unmarked and unimproved (for bike use) streets and trails. That said, it's fairly extensive and you can view the entire 'trail' here.

If that doesn't work for you, the southern two thirds of the Bay Area are lined with rail lines. From San Francisco south, along the west side of San Francisco Bay, to San Jose, CalTrain offers commuter rail service. Heading up the east side of the Bay, Amtrak runs from San Jose north through Oakland to Martinez, where you can bike across the Carquinez Strait and continue around San Pablo Bay, via Vallejo and on into Marin County, before heading south to San Francisco. As well, BART, the area's rapid-rail network, runs from Fremont, on the east side of the Bay, a few miles north of San Jose, up to Oakland.

WHEELS Wednesdays: Road-Builders Make a Play for Transit Funds?

The American Society of Civil Engineers (road builders, basically) claims in a report that "deteriorating infrastructure" could cost America $3.1 trillion in lost productivity and economic growth. Smells like a play by the construction and road-building lobby to make a play for a shrinking pie of transportation money, in the hopes that they can throw the force of budget cuts on to public transit, Amtrak, bicycle-friendly improvements and the like. Decide for yourself. The Huffington Post published a lengthy piece about the original report here.

Here's an idea: Mandate carbon-emissions reductions for airport ground transportation on pain of losing federal improvement funds, and see how fast cities like L.A., that are light-years behind in linking the airport to the transit system, move to finally get serious about reducing combustion-engine traffic to and from the airport.

MULTI-MODAL Mondays: Lanes, Trains and Automobiles

Everyone is talking about the Los Angeles mayor's directive to build out a 1,680 mile bicycle path and lane network, the Daily News reports. Some folks are still wondering where the rush-hour car-lane projects for major east-west arteries Olympic and Pico Boulevards went, which might reduce congestion and carbon emissions, but that doesn't seem like a priority because the mayor didn't break his elbow driving in rush-hour traffic. He broke it while bicycling. Hey, whatever it takes.

However, it's appropriate that L.A. have a great bike network: much of L.A. is flat, and many arteries are quite wide--and so can support a shrinkage of car lanes to support a bicycle lane.

Metro already lifted a ban on bikes on trains (yes, L.A. has them). Now, if Amtrak would add extra space for bicycles on its weekend Surfliner service between L.A. and San Diego, bicyclists by the scores might not get stuck at intermediate stations. A year ago I spent a very chilly four hours at Oceanside's capacious train station, waiting through three trains to finally find space. Ahem....

FLEET-FOOT Fridays: Meta-Travel Searches--Many Are Clicked; Few Are Useful

The best 'search-of-searches' travel planners--sometimes called meta-travel planners--allow a search across varying modes of travel, from self-propelled to transit, even when offered by unaffiliated agencies or companies. So, for example, a search for schedule and fare information from a point on the one side of a city, such as London, New York or Denver, would bring up all of the information required using any and all modes (rather than just buses or just rail or just bicycles).

A superb example is London's Journey Planner; this is 'best of breed' when it comes to meta-searches. Not only does it search across travel modes (including bicycling routes to and from stops or stations), it also lays out the travel route via visually, via text and with additional clickable PDF maps for vicinity of each change of line or mode of travel. 

By contrast New York City's trip planner (offered by the transit agency, versus an umbrella group) does not include ferries, bicycling information, nor New Jersey Transit, one of the largest transit provides in the nation. HopStop does a little better, allowing searches across the region, but still allows only one combination-mode search (bus and rail), leaving you to run the same search over for each mode, and then do some combining on your own.

Close on London's heels, the San Francisco Bay Area offers Transit511, which better than the Big Apple's, but still doesn't include bicycles in its travel modes, and requires a complicated check-off of the plethora of transit agencies. Still, it's not bad.  The search outcome is well-presented, with maps for each mode or line change (although it's not as intuitive or user-friendly).

WHEELS Wednesdays: Bike-Sharing Gains Ground

Here and there, bike-sharing continues to gain ground. The well-known Paris, France program, called Velib, is popular. In Cambridge, Mass., according to Wicked Local, and in Newcastle, U.K., bike sharing is being initiated with some support. Long Beach, N.Y., a Long Island suburb of New York City, has approved a program, as well, Long Beach Patch reports. If you find a central bike-sharing reference...post it!

MULTI-MODAL Mondays: Aviation Blvd. Green Line Station-Wilshire/Western

This was a much easier ride than I thought -- and it only totals just under 20 miles. Start at the Aviation Blvd. Green Line station. Elevator down; escalator will send you to a bike-unfriendly exit. I'd love to see them repair the bike lane on Imperial Hwy., which is basically shot. But, it's a nice ride along the beach, past Vista Del Mar, and then a quick lunch stop in Marina Del Rey, at the Riverside shopping complex.

The bike path along Ballona Creek is excellent; the bike lane along Venice Blvd. is quite wide. I also took in the Eat Real shindig at the Helm's Bakery in Culver City on my way to the Wilshire/Western Purple Line Station.

FLEET-FOOT Fridays: How Does Vegas Compare?

Here's an interesting comparison, from the Las Vegas Sun newspaper, of Sin City and comparably-sized cities with regard to their transit options; let's hope they extend the casino-friendly monorail to McCarran International Airport someday to make Las Vegas earth-friendly, as well.

WHEELS Wednesdays: Progressives Whine About Bike Lanes?

How far behind is the U.S. in accommodating bicyclists? Way behind, according to this Yale piece. And The Atlantic magazine studied the issue and found it was, essentially, college towns that were friendliest toward bicycles. And--as Al Gore might say--another several million tons of pollutants head into our atmosphere, while we fight about it -- even in progressive Park Slope, Brooklyn, where normally progressive urbanites want to help the environment--just not in their neighborhood.

MULTI-MODAL Mondays: The Hubbub's About Transit Hubs

Transit hubs are the latest thing; from Anaheim in southern California to Greensboro in North Carolina, hubs to aggregate transit, taxicab, auto and bicycle transportation are being built by the scores. Driving these mostly publicly-funded projects is a need to make transportation more efficient, and less costly to both the environment and travelers' wallets.

Home to Disneyland, Anaheim also sees frequent train service via Metrolink and Amtrak, at its train station, across from the Angels baseball team's stadium. The massive construction project opening in just two years will expand the footprint of the station many times over, and provide a place for area buses, cabs and carpools, to meet train riders.

Greensboro is rehabbing an older building downtown to serve as its hub. Amtrak sends two trains a day through the city.

Other cities building hubs include Burbank, Calif. (airport), Calgary, Alberta; Kalamazoo, Mich., New York City (World Trade Center); St. Paul, Minn., Cincinnati, Ohio, and Nashville, Tenn.

SPECIAL: Mobile Bus Times Texted to Your Phone in L.A.

New apps help you find out when you're next bus is arriving. Here's one for the Android market in L.A. And, look for the blue "Next Stop" signs at L.A. Metro bus stops; type the stop-number on the sign, and text it 41411, to get the next bus time arrival. Cool!

WHEELS Wednesdays: New York's Gettin'em; Canada's Gettin' Rid Of'em

Guess which city is welcoming bike lanes? And guess which one is set to remove them? If you guessed some European or Canadian city for the first one, and a U.S. one for the second question....well, you'd be wrong.

New York City, according to DNAinfo.com (the Ameritrade founder's nifty news operation) is adding bike lane's to busy First and Second Avenues in Manhattan--the capital of traffic congestion (and Calgary; San Mateo, Calif., and Salem, Ore. are also adding lanes). Toronto, of all places--progressive, flat, Canadian--may be removing lanes on busy Jarvis Street, InsideToronto.com reported.

MULTI-MODAL Mondays: L.A. - The Ballona Creek Bike Path

Needless to say, the number of dedicated bike paths/bikways in the LA. Basin is fairly limited, relative to total roadway mileage. But, that is slowly changing. One of the bike-paths that has been around for a few years is a little far from my place in Burbank--it's the Ballona Creek bike-path that runs along the (mostly) concrete-sided path of Ballona Creek from near downtown Culver City, rougly10 miles to the ocean, where the creek spills into the sea, between Marina Del Rey and Playa Del Rey, two seaside neighborhoods quite close the Los Angeles International Airport (LAX).

The hope for this day-trip was to make it all the way from Burbank, via subway and bike, to the ocean, and then, using the beach trail to skirt LAX, grab the metro rail at Aviation Blvd. back; however, as is often the case in the summer in Los Angeles, once I got within a half-mile of the beach, the coast began to fog over, and the temperature plummeted by about 20 degrees, from a pleasant 85 to a less pleasant 65, plus a stiff breeze, making it feel even chillier. Normally, I wouldn't care, but I was dressed very lightly for the higher San Fernando Valley temps.

The trip began with a quick bike ride to Universal City station, a speedy seven-minute ride under the hill to Hollywood, and a series of streets recommended by the L.A. Bicycle Coalition to Venice Blvd., on which I traveled along the capacious Venice Blvd. bike lane, southwest toward Culver City. One lovely salad from Trader Joe's later, I resumed the finding the Ballona Creek trail -- even if you don't have a map, it's easy: just head south from downtown CC toward the Baldwin Hills--you can't miss them, as they loom over CC. The creek runs along the northern edge of the hills. However, there are specific access points to the bike path--you must enter at one of those access points: I entered at Duquesne, and rode southwest about 7 miles to Lincoln Blvd. (Route 1)--at that point, afternoon fog drove me back.

Turning around, I headed back the way I came. But at Venice Blvd., and Hauser Blvd., I turned north on Hauser into the Miracle Mile section, then headed east on Wilshire Blvd., for a very bumpy (slow lane is horrible condition) ride to Wilshire and Western, where I grabbed the Purple/Red Line subway, back to the Universal City.

Notes: Do not use Wilshire when traveling east west--choose a parallel street to the north or south--most of which go all the way through. Wilshire is not that busy on a weekend, but the slow lane is full of patches and potholes, and you may break your bike...or your back. The creek trail is charming and flat, and eventually goes near/through what remains of coastal wetlands. It's as pleasant a ride as you will find, off the beach, in developed L.A. Excellent benches, rest areas and nature/historical signage along the way make this a worthwhile route to travel. You can, of course, put your bike on one of the numerous bus-lines that cross this route, and shorten the total length and time of the ride.

FLEET-FOOT Fridays: Tour de France Stage 1

Too cool: the official site for the Tour de France provides up-to-the-minute information about the race, plus maps and more. If you want to know how this famous race fits into the 'grand tours' international racing scheme, click here, and scroll down to "Grand Tours" section. The race runs in stages, all over France.