SPOKE magazine Issue Two

Spring 2015

m a g a z i n e for the cycling citizen of Philadelphia

Issue 002

FREE

BRAND NEW APARTMENTS

ALONG THE SCHUYLKILL BANKS

PROFESSIONALLY MANAGED

BY NHPMN MANGEMENT LLC

SCHEDULE A TOUR 215.282.3464 STUDIOS starting from $1,299

| 1-BEDROOMS

starting from $1,799

| 2-BEDROOMS

starting from $2,349

| 3-BEDROOMS starting from $3,329

editors ALEX VUOCOLO alex@spokemag.bike MATT BEVILACQUA matt@spokemag.bike creative director ELLIOTT LAMBORN elliott@spokemag.bike marketing director HILLARY WICKLINE hillary@spokemag.bike outreach manager KATIE BOHRI katie@spokemag.bike

contributing writers ANDREW ZALESKI, MICHELLE SIPICS, JAKE BLUMGART, BILL HANGLEY, CASSIE OWENS cover illustration TIM PACIFIC contributing artists JUSTIN DURNER, TIM PACIFIC, MOLLY JACKSON, MARY PELTZ, DAN LIDON, TAYARISHA POE send all inquiries to: spokemagazine@gmail.com our online home: WWW.SPOKEMAG.BIKE printed by Bartash Printing, Inc. Philadelphia, PA

ISSUE TWO

Table of Contents 8

Voting With Their Wheels

Has cycling reached its political moment?

Andrew Zaleski

11

Hard Times for Hard Surfaces

Why our bike lanes are in such bad repair Bill Hangley

14 Rough Count

Measuring cycling and what it means for policy Andrew Zaleski

18 Mood Indego

A guide to bike share’s major players Alex Vuocolo

20 22

A Brief History of Bike Share Matt Bevilacqua

Race to Inclusion

Bicycle advocacy’s diversity problem Cassie Owens

29

Happy Trails

The fraught politics of suburban bike trails Jake Blumgart

35

Hardheaded

Scientific context for the helmet debate Michelle Sipics

42

Exit Interview: Charles Carmalt

A conversation with Philly’s first bicycle and pedestrian coordinator Alex Vuocolo

spoke magazine

When it comes to making Philadelphia better for

people who bike, the low-hanging fruit is gone. Over the last quarter-century, successive mayors have added bike infrastructure piecemeal, fitting in lanes and trails where they required few, if any, alterations to roads or parking spaces. Most of the work involved splashing white paint on the sides of overbuilt boulevards.

This approach was opportunistic as opposed to strategic, and much of the system we now have reflects that. Bike lanes taper off. Unprotected lanes place cyclists next to traffic moving 40 miles per hour or more. Whole neighborhoods remain unconnected to the larger network.

It’s time, then, for cyclists and advocates to double down. We need more bike lanes on the overcrowded streets of South Philadelphia, where the largest percentage of riders live. We need the Parking Authority to enforce laws barring cars from parking in bike lanes — whether they do so during rush hour or on sleepy Sunday mornings. We need to complete the regional trail network that connects Philadelphia with its neighboring counties and cities. We need to impress upon the city’s leadership that cyclists are no longer a subculture and deserve more than an occasional bike lane here and there.

But to make it all happen, the conversation around cycling needs to deepen. People who ride, and especially those who depend cycling to get around,

must understand where politics and bikes intersect, how lanes are maintained, how cyclists are statistically measured, and how ideas turn into policy and infrastructure.

Our second issue features stories from the frontlines of these efforts. Jake Blumgart heads to the suburbs to look at the political struggle behind every new stretch of bike trail. Cassie Owens explores how and why bike advocates have faltered in connecting with a diverse constituency. Andrew Zaleski examines how cycling data factors into policy decisions. And Michelle Sipics looks at the science behind bike helmets and how it applies (or doesn’t) to the debate around mandatory helmet laws.

Like most sophomore efforts, our second issue aims to reinforce and expand SPOKE’s mission. As the cycling culture in our city grows, so too must its home for the best bike reporting in town.

Thank you for reading and riding,

Alex Vuocolo

Founding Editor

spoke magazine

WITH THEIR

WHEELS

Cycling has reached its political moment. Almost.

O

STORY BY ANDREW ZALESKI ILLUSTRATION BY MARY PELTZ ne Thursday evening in March, a crowd of between 150 and 200 people filed into the Race Street Room at the Friends Center, a Quaker meeting house not far from City Hall. At the front of the room was everyone running for the position Mayor Nutter will soon vacate. (Well, almost everyone. State Sen. Anthony Williams sent his policy director, Omar Woodward, in his stead.) What had drawn the crowd, and the attention of the 2015 mayoral candidates, was a debate over the state of public mobility in Philadelphia: biking, walking, public transit, and the relative ease, efficiency and safety of each.

spoke magazine Hosted by the Bicycle Coalition of Greater Philadelphia, the Better Mobility Mayoral Forum was certainly filled with the kind of talk typical of candidates more keen on offering platitudes than particulars. Still, at times, candidates’ answers on the question of improving multimodal transportation in Philadelphia, and cycling specifically, were incisive. It came as a happy change for the transitminded set who, as a bloc of residents, tend to see their concerns pushed aside in city elections.

references Centre Square, the space where City Hall now sits and originally intended as the “fifth square” to complement the four others — Rittenhouse, Washington, Logan and Franklin — around which William Penn based Philadelphia’s street grid.)

For Thompson and his fellow advocates, that means not only promoting Vision Zero as a hard political idea, but also grading candidates on their adherence to pushing for and pursuing initiatives that benefit cyclists. These include enforcing existing traffic laws, narrowing city streets, installing infrastructure on arterials like Washington Avenue, and implementing Even during conversations explicitly about the recommendations and violations passed in the transportation, candidates don’t hesitate to remind city’s Complete Streets bill in 2012. voters that they have other, greater priorities.

That bill itself marked a watershed moment for bicycling, in that it codified into law the rules that Democratic candidate and former city councilmember Jim drivers, cyclists and pedestrians must follow when sharing the road.

Kenney equated the growth of cycling with the growth of the Among other things, it introduced fines for cars parked in the bike city itself, saying, “Young people will come if we give them a less lane and made it a violation to open a door into traffic unless the expensive way to live in Philly, which means bikes.” Candidate coast is clear. Proper enforcement of Complete Streets, however, Melissa Murray Bailey, when asked about installing a protected continues to give headaches to advocates and ordinary riders alike. I bike lane along John F. Kennedy Boulevard from 15th Street to 30th mean, how many times have you seen a car parked in a bike lane and Street Station, voiced her support — and she’s a small-government not receive a ticket?

Republican. In fact, all the candidates affirmed their belief in some It’s also worth remembering the distance that can emerge form of Vision Zero, the concept that the high rate of cycling and between what candidates promise voters and the policies or projects pedestrian deaths due to automobile crashes can be reduced to zero. that elected politicians end up supporting. Of the major contenders As forum moderator and Philadelphia magazine deputy editor in the Democratic primary field, few have a proven record on cycling Patrick Kerkstra wrote the morning after the event, the forum was infrastructure. Outside of a few designated forums, mentions of the an indication that “the political calculus has changed, and City topic have been sparse.

Hall will likely be forced to reckon more seriously with question of Meanwhile, specific bike-oriented projects, whether real or pedestrian and cyclist safety in the future.” Cycling, in other words, hypothetical, have generally failed to earn hard-and-fast support has become a political question in Philadelphia. from the candidates. At the Better Mobility forum, for instance, “At this point in 2015, it’s just power in numbers,” says Andrew former district attorney Lynne Abraham balked at the idea of Susser, a manager at the Northern Liberties bicycle shop Trophy installing a bike lane on JFK Boulevard out of concern for the Bikes. “I’ve definitely noticed an increase safety of seniors living Of the major contenders in the Democratic in the area. At a debate in cyclists in all the neighborhoods... City Hall has to react to what’s happening in hosted by Next Great primary field, few have a proven record the city.” A veteran cyclist, Susser has been City earlier in March, on cycling infrastructure. pedaling on Philadelphia streets since Sen. Williams neglected 2005, and commuted from Elkins Park to to voice his support for classes every day during his four years at Temple University. expanding bike lanes due to equity concerns — a fair point, if a little Numbers are part of the reason cycling has managed to worm its muddled. Even during conversations explicitly about transportation, way into the consciousness of mayoral candidates. (It’s also, ahem, candidates don’t hesitate to remind voters that they have other, the reason why this magazine was founded.) As Philadelphia cyclists greater priorities. increased in number, a parallel — if not always unified — political So, has cycling arrived? Sort of. Susser keeps his optimism in movement slowly formed in order to advance their concerns. check by reminding himself that any improvements in cycling Next Great City, a local coalition of more than 100 community, infrastructure happen slowly, and that achievements continue to business and union organizations, has included access to trails and meet setbacks. The buffered bike lanes on Pine and Spruce streets bike lanes as one of its six policy recommendations for 2015. Among were a big win on the part of the Bicycle Coalition during Nutter’s the group’s main concerns under the rubric of cycling: improving first term. Several years later, however, Bill Greenlee managed connections from neighborhoods to bike lanes already laid down, in to push a bill through City Council that gave him and his fellow tandem with installing signage indicating to cyclists where lanes are councilmembers veto power over the installation of new bike lanes in the city. that remove a parking space or traffic lane.

“It is going to be a voting issue and we are going to make it a These conundrums, Thompson says, motivate the creation of voting issue,” says Geoff Kees Thompson, chair and cofounder of something like The 5th Square. After all, building bike lanes and The 5th Square, a new political action committee that launched in enforcing laws are proven to attract more cyclists to city streets.

January. His PAC aims to promote a progressive agenda centered “I just don’t think we have the political leadership in Philadelphia on transportation, urban planning and livability issues, chiefly that understands that,” he says. by supporting political candidates who do the same. (Its name

What keeps our lanes in such bad repair?

I

STORY BY BILL HANGLEY

f you’re wondering why so many Philadelphia streets and bike lanes seem so sad and raggedy lately, remember the old adage about good deeds never going unpunished.

“The budget has been really hammered by this federal

have been a boon to everyone who walks or rolls through the city. But they have come at a cost. Over the last five years, the repaving of streets, including bike lanes, has slowed dramatically.

“The thing is,” Stuart said, “the Streets Department doesn’t have enough money. They know that. It’s not their fault.”

Bike lanes get no particular special treatment from

mandate: Every time they touch the streets, they have

the Streets Department. They’re just another part of the

to replace every single curb cut,” said Sarah Clark Stuart,

roadway, repaved along with the entire street according

deputy director of the Bicycle Coalition of Greater

to a rotating schedule. Ideally, along with routine pothole-

Philadelphia. “That’s a logical and important requirement,

filling, every road should get a fresh face every 7-10 years.

but it’s a huge cost.”

With 2,500 miles of roadway, that means the city should

For the modern Philly curb cut — those wide, smooth,

resurface more than 100 miles’ worth annually.

gently graded ramps with the knobby red treads — thank

Since 2009, it has managed only a fraction of that.

the Americans with Disabilities Act, a landmark federal

According to Streets Department figures, more than

law that has reshaped the nation’s infrastructure to

half the department’s budget has gone to curb cuts over

make it more accessible for the physically handicapped.

the last half-decade. Rina Cutler, former head of the

To keep in compliance with the law, the Philadelphia

Mayor’s Office of Transportation and Utilities, called the

Streets Department has spent the last five years replacing

improvements “a very serious unfunded mandate for

thousands of curb cuts citywide, largely at its own

everyone,” according to a 2009 story in the Philadelphia

expense.

Inquirer. The department’s resurfacing backlog has grown

The upgrades, a few puddle-prone intersections aside,

to some 900 miles, more than a third of the city’s total.

spoke magazine

Other fiscal forces have hurt the department, including tight post-recession budgets and high snow removal costs. The upshot is hard times for hard surfaces: Last year (2013-14), the city managed to repave only 25 miles of road.

Why is bike infrastructure tethered to repaving in the first place? Well, it isn’t in every case. The Streets Department sometimes does touch up worn-down bike lanes separately from resurfacing projects. The 22nd Street bike lane, for example, got this treatment a few years back. You can tell today by spotting the slightly overlapping old and new bike symbols that mark the center of the lane.

There is good cause, however, to repairing or installing new lanes at the same time as a resurfacing project.

“When a road gets resurfaced, it’s an opportunity,” said Charles Carmalt, the city’s first official pedestrian and bicycle coordinator, who retired earlier this year. “Basically it’s a very small cost in a repaving project to change the roadway markings, but to change the roadway markings when you don’t have a resurfacing project can be very difficult.”

Adding new roadway markings has a sort of ripple effect. Once you plug in a bike lane, car

they’re all wearing down.”

Stuart expects better days ahead, estimating that the city will repave as many as 60 miles of roadway this year. Fewer curb cuts are now needed, and the budget has more dollars for resurfacing.

How many of the city’s 200 miles of bike lanes will get that treatment is uncertain.

Stuart urged cyclists to contact the city and their City Council representatives to report problems and lobby for upgrades.

“We’ve been working pretty hard to try to ascertain which bike lanes will get replaced or where new ones will go in,” Stuart said. “But it’s still a work in progress.”

A Note on Potholes If the city can’t necessarily repave streets on

lanes need to shift over as well. This requires

a moment’s notice, it will respond to reports of

grinding out the old markings, which weakens

potholes. This usually happens within three days,

the pavement, Carmalt said.

Streets officials say. To make that happen, Tweet (@

Touching up the paint on an existing lane is

Philly311), dial 311, or log onto the city’s pothole

easier than adding a new lane, but there’s still

website (potholes.phila.gov). Be sure to send

the issue of funding. The fact that Philadelphia

pictures.

built out its bike network to such a large

“That’s what the Streets Department wants,”

extent over the last few decades is certainly

Stuart said. “They don’t go out and survey streets for

a welcome step forward — but repainting

potholes. They respond to potholes. The more that

all of those lanes now requires an outsized

bicyclists report them, the faster they’ll respond.”

commitment.

“The backlog of markings has increased,”

Potholes on state highways can also be reported to the Pennsylvania Department of

Carmalt said. “As lines get older, they begin to

Transportation at @511paphilly on Twitter. The

wear much more rapidly. We installed a lot of

Bike Coalition (@bcgp) also recommends tweeting

bike lanes in the 1990s to early 2000s and

to the #pothole hashtag.

ASK A...

BIKE COP Name: Alphonso Jett Age: 41 Bike cop for: 14.5 years Patrols in: “Mainly 15th and Market streets.

East and west of that location” What is the hardest part about enforcing the law from atop a bicycle?

“The vehicles, because it’s a safety issue when you try to pull a vehicle over. When we see a car blow a red light, or blow a stop sign, or driving recklessly, you have to take the bike and get close enough to the car to make contact with the driver. And that can be dangerous. They can actually swerve the car and knock you off the bike.”

What’s the most common rule of the road that drivers break?

“The most you’ll see is disregarding the stop sign. Nobody makes complete stops at stop signs. I’ve found that when you’re a bike officer, you see more stuff than you would see if you were in a car. Everybody’s in a rush downtown, everybody worries about themselves and where they have to be, and there’s no regard for safety. Being a bike officer, you see that more.”

How about cyclists?

“I would say riding on the pavement. That’s really dangerous for pedestrians. I get a lot of people who say, ‘You ride on the pavement.’ Well, I ride on the pavement because my job is to look inside the stores and make sure nobody’s getting robbed. You ride on the pavement to look in the stores, the stores see you, and they feel comfortable. It’s part of your patrol as a bike officer.”

What needs to be done in order to get drivers and cyclists to share the road safely?

“Honestly, I don’t see nothing like that happening anytime soon. Both parties are so aggressive. Drivers of vehicles don’t care about bikes. They even try to speed past cyclists and never give them the right of way. I see cars, they don’t give me the right of way, and I’m in full uniform. I can imagine how it is for regular cyclists. On the same note, you’ll have a cyclist who thinks he can zip in and out of traffic because he’s on a bike, but not pay attention to the old lady who’s crossing the street. There has to be a lot of awareness — signs posted to slow down or pay attention to pedestrians. But that’s a real tough question. I don’t know where to begin with that.”

If you could change one thing about Philadelphia’s streets, what would it be?

“I would love to not see as many traffic lights. There are traffic lights on every single corner, which slows down traffic, which is the root of people’s frustration.

You’re in the line, you get to the light: red. You stop at the next corner: red. Red, red, red. You’re simmering trying to get where you have to go.”

spoke magazine

ROUGH COUNT How cycling data does and doesn’t lead to more bike lanes STORY BY ANDREW ZALESKI

F

ive bridges span the Schuylkill River near Center City, and since 2005 the Bicycle Coalition of Greater Philadelphia has counted bike traffic on all of them. In that time, cycling rates have increased by 260 percent — 870 bikes crossed the river per hour during peak times in 2013, according to the Coalition’s count — but the strongest show of cycling takes place on the South Street Bridge, and for one reason: It’s the most bike friendly.

By contrast, bicycle traffic on the Market Street Bridge has fallen. Per the Coalition’s 2014 report, the reason is obvious: “Ridership on all bridges shows a direct correlation with the quality of bicycling infrastructure.”

Therefore, the presence of bike lanes and bike racks tends to increase the number of cyclists counted during the annual tallies.

But does the equation work in reverse? Does counting data — trends in ridership gleaned from tallying cyclists during rush hour on weekday mornings — ever dictate

where new cycling infrastructure gets built?

“You’re never going to find a one-to-one linear path between any piece of data and a transportation investment,” says Greg Krykewycz, who manages transit, bicycle and pedestrian planning for the Delaware Valley Regional Planning Commission (DVRPC). “Where the data comes in is in giving us a really nice way to understand usage, and then we can figure out whether we were right or not after we build the infrastructure.”

In other words, cycling infrastructure hews closely to a “Field of Dreams” methodology: If you build bike lanes, cyclists will use them. More lanes attract more cyclists, which in turn could potentially attract even more lanes.

Of course, it’s not like any of this goes through ordinary people’s minds as they pedal out on their daily commutes.

“We generally find that when you build bike facilities, the bike traffic generally doubles. But we’re looking at trends as opposed to, ‘Well, a bike facility should go here,’” says John Boyle, research director at the Bicycle Coalition.

“The reason that you put a bike lane on 10th Street as opposed to 11th Street, it often doesn’t come down to

how many people are bicycling on each street. It’s more about what’s compatible.”

Sometimes it comes down to plugging the holes in existing cycling infrastructure. This is a job for Jeannette Brugger, a senior transportation planner with the Philadelphia City Planning Commission and the city’s new lead pedestrian and bicycle coordinator. Bike lanes are built when roads are repaved, Brugger explains. This happens in small segments that don’t always align with cycling infrastructure goals.

“Two to three times a year, with lists from PennDOT” — the Pennsylvania Department of Transportation — “we look on the bike/ped plan where the priority infrastructure gaps are, and then we say what’s going to be paved this year or on the horizon,” Brugger says. “We see where those overlaps are and try to build them into the plan.”

On occasion, cycling data fits into the mix. Last September, the Mayor’s Office of Transportation and Utilities received a $300,000 grant from the Commonwealth Financing Authority’s Multimodal

Transportation Fund to fill in cycling infrastructure gaps. Brugger says that local count data played a role in allocating the state money.

“When we had to decide where to put the infrastructure that will be funded by this $300,000, we looked at DVRPC count data,” she says. Most of the funding will go toward repainting existing bike lanes and installing new bike infrastructure in the Center City area.

Overall, though, cycling data is still too new to accurately predict where corresponding infrastructure should go.

“We have [car] traffic data going back 50 years, and we have an understanding as an industry how that data trends over time and how to use it,” Krykewycz says.

“We don’t have that on the cycling side. All of this data tells part of the story, but we don’t have the ability yet to understand how many more people are going to bike on a street if you add a bike lane. That’s what we’re working our way up toward.”

1906 South Street, Philadelphia, PA. 19146 215-545-BOOK(2665)

Open

7

Days a Week

Involved in a Crash?

Do

Don’t Stay calm and get help • Go to a safe place and call 911

Do not be confrontational • With the driver(s) or police

Document everything • Tags of the car that hit you, driver’s license & insurance, pictures of the scene, witness contact info, and your bike helmet and injuries

Do not make statements • First consult your attorney and get the contact information for the adjuster and claim number

Consult an attorney • As soon as possible, contact Piscitello Law and report the incident to your insurance company See our website for more info: yourcyclingrights.com

Do not alter evidence • Don’t get your bike fixed— Take pictures and hold onto your bike, parts, and helmet for future inspection

GREENSTREET coffee co.

WWW.GREENSTREETCOFFEE.COM

FAIRWEAR ROUTE 38

American-Made Commuter Shirts

SEPTA.ORG/SUSTAIN

FAIRWEAR.CO

Mood Indego

But while Indego — that’s the official name — is likely to become well known locally, many Philadelphians

BY ALEX VUOCOLO

I

still do not understand who, exactly, runs the system

t took nearly eight years of planning and strained anticipation, but bike share has finally arrived in Philadelphia. As of April 23, there are more than 600 bikes and 60 docking stations scattered across Center City, University City, and parts of the surrounding neighborhoods.

and how. In part, this is because bike share programs in general rely on a number of different partners with different roles. Obscuring matters further, no two cities have the same exact setup.

With that in mind, I present SPOKE’s user guide to the main players behind Indego: who they are, what they do, and how Philly’s model differs from those of other cities.

THE OWNER

THE SUPPLIER

Philadelphia bike share is municipally owned. This does not mean the city government handles day-to-day operations — that job is contracted out to a private company called Bicycle Transit Systems (BTS). However, the city does work with BTS to meet contractual obligations, such as keeping the bikes in good repair, and to dictate how the system will expand in the coming years. Revenue from memberships and one-off users, in addition to funding from other sources like advertising and sponsorship, goes toward paying a fixed rate to BTS.

Bike share systems, like other kinds of public infrastructure, still depend on the private sector for materials.

Instead of truckloads of concrete or gravel, the product is a fully realized system with proprietary software, docking stations and bikes.

Philly’s funding plan is not uncommon, though other cities have taken a mix of different approaches to bike share ownership. New York City and Miami, for example, have privately owned systems, while Denver and Minneapolis entrust theirs to non-profit groups that run the show in partnerships with the municipality and advocacy groups.

Philadelphia takes after Washington, D.C. and Boston in that it actually owns its system and contracts out the operations.

How is a supplier chosen?

Philadelphia sent out a request for proposals back in 2013. The winner, B-Cycle, is one of the largest bike share companies in the country. It supplies bikes to programs in 24 cities, from Savannah to Fargo to Salt Lake City.

In Philadelphia, B-Cycle will install the stations, stock them with bikes, and leave the rest to the operator, providing extra parts and software updates when needed. Indego is the first bike share system in the midAtlantic region to use B-Cycle.

THE OPERATOR For average users, a bike share operator is arguably the most important part of the picture. Operators oversee the system, which means they feel the pressure to make sure things run smoothly. Unlike, say, a subway operator, there are no schedules to keep or tickets to tear. Instead, a bike share operator’s job is to keep the system balanced. As bikes pile up at the more popular stations, the operator must physically move them from one dock to another so that rides are always available across the city. Operators also maintain and repair the bikes, provide customer service, and work with the city to expand the system over time.

Bicycle Transit Systems, which beat out five other companies for the contract following the 2013 RFP, is only two years old. Formed by veterans of the then-troubled Portland, Ore. company Alta Bike Share (now called Motivate and reportedly seeing better days), BTS launched just before Philadelphia got serious about bike share. As luck would have it, the company is headquartered here.

A contract manager at the Mayor’s Office of Transportation and Utilities will work with BTS to meet requirements and goals in the contract. These include keeping the docking stations balanced, maintaining the bikes and software, and making sure the system is accessible to all Philadelphians.

If the requirements are exceeded, BTS has the opportunity to earn a bonus over its fixed fee. The city can also lower the fee if requirements are not met.

THE SPONSOR This is who accounts for the shiny, color-coded part of bike share that gets the most attention.

The title sponsor is really just a long-term advertiser who earns the naming rights for its contribution. It also happens to pay for a substantial portion of bike share’s operating costs.

In Philadelphia — a land of hospitals and universities — Independence Blue Cross will commit $1.7 million a year for five years in return for the naming rights. (“Indego” is a portmanteau of “independence” and “go.”

Geddit?) Chicago’s system also found a sponsor in its local arm of the health insurance giant, though many cities have gone with major financial institutions, such as New York with Citibank and London with Barclays. No word yet on whether Indego membership will raise or lower your deductibles.

A Brief History of Bike Share TEXT BY MATT BEVILACQUA

ILLUSTRATIONS BY MOLLY JACKSON

1965: The first bike share experiment takes off in Amsterdam thanks to Provo, a Dutch counterculture group.

Most of the white-painted bikes in the Witte Fietsen program end up stolen or at the bottom of canals.

1995: Copenhagen (who else?) delivers the first modern bike share system, Bycyklen, which operates based on refundable coin deposits.

Thievery remains high, however, until‌

1996: At the U.K.’s University of Portsmouth, students start to use a bike share system that relies on magnetic stripe cards, electronic docking stations and other technological improvements to curtail theft. Cities across Europe jump on the bike share bandwagon throughout the next decade.

August 2008: Taking an environmental cue from then-mayor John Hickenlooper, Denver rolls out 1,000 short-term rental bikes for the Democratic National Convention. This plants the seeds for B-Cycle, the first successful bike share system in a major U.S. city.

September 2010: After an initial dud called SmartBike, Washington, D.C. welcomes a much larger, more sophisticated system, Capital Bikeshare. Springboarding off of D.C.’s success, bike share launches in more than 40 U.S. cities over the next four years.

May 2013: Citi Bike, the largest bike share system in North America at the time of its launch, gets rolling after considerable debate and typical New York City hand-wringing. Welcoming Indego to Philadelphia this past April wasn’t nearly so rough.

spoke magazine

RACE TO INCLUSION Plenty of Philly cyclists aren’t white, yuppie or male.

Why does it feel like they’re invisible?

J

STORY BY CASSIE OWENS

PHOTOS BY TAYARISHA POE

ohn Petty is drinking tea and telling stories in the basement room of Chapterhouse Cafe & Gallery on 9th Street. The topic: race, ethnicity and bicycling. He talks about the moment when Katie Monroe, outreach manager for the Bicycle Coalition of Greater Philadelphia, approached him, a black cycling enthusiast, about ways the City could make sure its new bike share program reaches communities of color.

“As a member of the African-American community, as a cyclist, she was hoping I’d have some insight,” Petty recalls. “Poor thing. It’s just as much a quandary to me as to anybody else.”

In April, Philadelphia joined the growing roster of bike share cities with the launch of Indego. City officials, including Mayor Nutter, as well as representatives from advocacy groups like the Bicycle Coalition, have repeatedly made a point to say that the program will reach minorities and the underprivileged. “Those who stand to gain the most from a new low-cost form of transportation are those with low income,” Andrew Stober, chief of staff at the Mayor’s Office of

Transportation and Utilities, tells SPOKE. This isn’t just a matter of social justice and good optics. In a city where 63 percent of residents are people of color and 27 percent live below the poverty line, it’s only smart business to make Indego inclusive. But servicing low-income and minority urbanites is something North American bike share systems have yet to master.

A 2014 Mineta Transportation Institute study found that while bike share programs have become more mindful of equity concerns, their reach among underserved populations remains slight. Fortythree percent of programs in the study responded that equity had

played a role in their current siting, though only 11 percent said it would be considered in future station placement. Thirty-seven percent of Minneapolis and Saint Paul residents live in households that make $35,000 or less, but only 19 percent of the Twin Cities’ bike share memberships come from that demographic. Salt Lake City’s GREENbike reported that zero percent of its members made less than $10,000 per year, a bracket that represents 12 percent of the city’s population. Washington, D.C.’s population is half black, yet only 3 percent of members in its highly touted Capital Bikeshare program were black in 2013.

“In some cities, I think communities outside of the downtown have been an afterthought in bike share rollout,” Monroe tells SPOKE. “Like, ‘Okay, we’re going to launch our system and later we’ll tell people about it. We’re just going to let it work downtown until we get everything under control and then we’ll worry about neighborhoods.’ ” News outlets such as CityLab, Fast Company and the National Journal have pointed to Philly as the first city that could buck this trend. Indego received grants stipulating as much: The JPB

“In some cities, I think communities outside of the downtown have been an afterthought in bike share roll-out.”

Foundation, a national organization focused on quality-of-life issues affecting the poor, donated $3 million to help bring the system’s diversity goals to fruition. An important aspect to all this effort is the hope that not only will it prove successful, but that it will also develop into best practices for other cities to follow.

To say that a lot is riding on Indego would be an understatement.

Who Really Bikes, and Where?

Petty fell in love with bikes when many cyclists do, during childhood. As a kid he’d roam around, covering all the distance his parents would allow, first on the sidewalk in front the house, then around the driveway, then on the road until, he recalls, he got to zoom across the whole city from his Southwest Philadelphia home. “That was my first independence,” he says.

He learned Norristown and Conshohocken as an adult by heading out to ride on trails. “First, I was a solo guy,” Petty says. “I would just go out and ride my bike. I started going to one of the local bike shops — Performance, as a matter of fact. Me and the guys developed a rapport.”

That camaraderie hooked Petty, inspiring him to join the Philadelphia Mountain Biking Association, the Bicycle Coalition, the Bicycle Club of Philadelphia, and Suburban Cyclists Unlimited. Then, at a bike-a-thon, he saw an older man wearing a red, black and green

John Petty joined Bikin’ Blazers, the local chapter of the National Brotherhood of Cyclists, in 2012 and today serves as its vice president.

spoke magazine jersey with the logo of the National Brotherhood of Cyclists, a coalition of African-American cycling clubs around the country.

“I said, ‘Yo, man! How do I get one of them jerseys?’ ” Petty says.

The man explained that he’d have to join a local chapter, which in Philly is called the Bikin’ Blazers. “I was a part of every other organization, and I had never even heard of Bikin’ Blazers,” Petty says.

“You can be in the cycling community and just not see a whole lot of black riders, let alone a black club, let alone a number of black clubs.”

Petty joined the Bikin’ Blazers in 2012 and today serves as its vice president.

Philadelphia’s imagined community of cyclists is really a collective of subcultures. Take the Bike Polo club that plays at the Cione Rec Center on Tuesdays and Sundays, or the list of recreational clubs that ride the region’s trails together, or shops like Ruedas Mexibike, or the Women Bike PHL movement. Some groups take a little bit of digging to find, but the community represents a range of interests and backgrounds despite the pervasive notion that Philly’s cycling enthusiasts are white, yuppie and male.

“I think there’s just a popular understanding and stereotype about cyclists that was maybe more true 10 years ago? I don’t know,” says Monroe, who founded Women Bike PHL in 2013 to connect with other non-dude cyclists. “As the community has gotten more diverse, expanded and been more inclusive, the popular understanding and the articles that get written don’t really catch up with that.”

The Bike Revolution workshop over at the Asian Arts Initiative teaches kids about safety, design and repair as students spruce up and trick out their own reclaimed bikes. “Initially, when we first started planning this, we wanted to make it fact that there are different cultures around bike culture,” says Michelle Nugent, who proposed and leads the course. “We don’t want our students to feel like they have to fit into one category. We definitely try to stress that biking isn’t just for one type of person.”

Why has the stereotype persisted? For one, it could be who tends to speak up. “The terms ‘invisible rider’ and ‘invisible cyclist’ have been in circulation for about 10 years,” Adonia Lugo wrote last year in an introduction to the League of American Bicyclists’ latest equity report. “In the bike world, we use them to refer politely to the individuals out there riding who have not made their way into policyoriented bike advocacy. These terms have given us a way to talk about low-income cyclists, immigrant populations, or other groups that bike advocates have found hard to reach.”

Bruce Woods, president of the National Brotherhood of Cyclists, says the lack of diversity in these circles might have to do with location. “We enjoy riding,” he says, “but as far as being involved in the politics and advocacy piece, where you would get press [and] attention behind certain legislation, where the issues of the bike share and bike lanes come to the forefront — we don’t typically have a voice there.” This is something organizations like the National Brotherhood and activists behind websites like InvisibleCyclist.com are working to change.

The misperception could also be owed to how people view the city’s bike commuters, or those who get to and from work on their bicycles as opposed to riding them for sport or pleasure.

“That’s who people see,” Petty says of the rush hour crowd. “Think about it. Mountain bike riders want to be out in the country, in the woods. Road riders can’t stand the stop and go of the city. Who does that leave?”

Bike commuting in Philly rose an incredible 260 percent between 2005 and 2013, according to the Bicycle Coalition. Yet based on 2010 Census data, nearly 8,000 bike commuters were white (including white Hispanics), while the total commuters of Asian, African American, Native American, Pacific Islander and other backgrounds numbered roughly 2,200. The survey counted approximately 1,300 Latino bike commuters of any race. Cyclists represent 2-3 percent of commuters for Asians, Latinos and whites in Philly, but only 0.3 percent of black commuters — a mere 770 African-American workers altogether.

“Looking at where [black people] are in great numbers in the sport, it is recreational,” Woods says. “Racing is very strong component.”

We produced a graph from 2009 National Household Travel Survey data that breaks down cycling by trip purpose within a rider’s respective racial group. As shown in the figure on page 26, commuting is highest among Hispanics.

“You can be in the cycling community and just not see a whole lot of black riders, let alone a black club, let alone a number of black clubs.”

“Non-Hispanic whites have the highest bike mode share among ethnic groups, but cycling rates are rising fastest among African Americans, Hispanics, and Asian Americans,” wrote the authors of a 2011 Rutgers University study. “Those three groups also account for an increasing share of total bike trips, rising from 16% in 2001 to 23% in 2009. Clearly, however, cycling is still dominated by non-Hispanic whites, who make 77% of all bike trips in the USA but account for only 66% of the population.”

A Problem of Placement “The blue dots? Nice!” Petty says, seeing a map of Indego’s proposed docking stations for the first time last winter. “I see it’s going south. Nice. Not as far west as I would prefer. Not as far west at all.

Not very far north at all...” On the final map, the northernmost bike share stations serve Temple University’s campus, the southernmost stations are at the bottom of Point Breeze, the farthest station to the west is at 44th and Walnut streets, and the most southwestern station is situated in Clark Park.

“It’s true: There are limitations for how it can go [at launch],” Monroe says. “Just because there’s not a station in a neighborhood in 2015, doesn’t mean it won’t be there in 2016. I wish we had enough resources to cover all of Philadelphia, but it’s just not financially feasible in the first year, and bike share doesn’t really work if you spread it out too far. It needs a certain density.” She would remind prospective Indego users that this is the first phase of a “multi-year process.”

Michelle Nugent, above, with students in the Asian Arts Initiative’s Bike Revolution program. Below, Erin DeCou of Neighborhood Bike Works, a nonprofit that holds bicycle education programs for underprivileged youth.

spoke magazine Cycling by trip purpose, by race

Home

Work

Medical/ Dental Services

School/ Daycare/ Activity

Shopping/ Errands

Social/ Recreational

Family/ Personal Business/ Obligations

Transport Someone

Meals

Other Reason

5.5% 12.1%

28.1%

26.4% 34.2%

34.9%

22.2% 2.1% 6.5%

57.4%

44.1%

45.8%

7.5%

5.5%

5.8% 7.1%

9.5%

44.1%

31.5% 35.7%

7.8% 3.7%

7.5%

11.1%

6.7%

11%

11.2%

7.4%

7.8% 3.9%

29.9%

10.0%

9.0%

18.3% 5.1%

7.8% 3.5% 7.5%

10.3%

40.8%

31.6%

41.7%

34.7%

43.4%

40.8%

33.5%

43.9%

46.3%

42.6%

41.2%

Refused to Say

Doesn’t Know

White

African American, Black

Asian Only

American Indian, Alaskan Native

Native Hawaiian, other Pacific

Multiracial

Hispanic/ Mexican

Other/ Specify

All

The city has formed the Better Bike Share Partnership with the National Association of City Transportation Officials, the Bicycle Coalition, and People for Bikes, a national advocacy group, to pool efforts around equity for the system. Focus group surveys, conducted for the partnership by Temple University’s Institute for Survey Research, inform many of Indego’s policies, from offering both 30day and pay-as-you-go pricing options, to making the monthly deal available for cash payment, to placing no added charges until a ride surpasses the one-hour mark. The JPB Foundation grant covers the installation of 20 stations in areas with high percentages of lowincome households, about a third of the stations overall.

Stober is quick to point out the metrics. “I think people think there’s a lot more gentrification occurring than it actually is,” he says.

“Those [20] stations are in places where at least 50 percent of the households live at or below 150 percent of the poverty level, or 80 percent of the households are at or below the Philadelphia household median income.”

So while one could easily argue that the Phase I stations are found only in “gentrifying” areas, they still stand to service thousands of low-income Philadelphians. Gentrification might resonate to some as widespread displacement by the block-full, but in many of these areas you’ll see new arrivals sharing the streets with families that have been there for years.

The Bicycle Coalition has also launched an “ambassador program”

Source: 2009 National Household Travel Survey

to work directly with community leaders and residents in North, West and South Philadelphia. The Coalition expects to hire approximately 20 of them, Monroe says, to spread the gospel of bike share through “word of mouth.”

“I trust that the [Bicycle Coalition] is doing all they can to push the edges out as far as possible, and I understand the constraints on a lot of this,” says Erin DeCou, executive director of Neighborhood Bike Works, a non-profit that provides a variety of bike education programs to underprivileged youth. “I wish it went further, especially in this first year. Because when you’re launching an equity campaign, you need accessibility to be there at the same time. There’s part of me that worries that by having those stations branch out later, it’ll hurt the equity piece.”

Philadelphia, the Inquirer reports, has the highest rate of deep poverty among the 10 most populous U.S. cities. (Deep poverty is defined as half of the federal poverty line or below, a category that counts almost 185,000 Philadelphians.) When asked about planning with consideration to widespread, persistent poverty in the city, Stober replies, “We have certainly not covered all of the parts of Philadelphia that are struggling with poverty, that is for sure.”

Petty, who has been pushing for more stations in underserved neighborhoods, balances his initial disappointment. “It’s a start,” he says. “The realist in me says ‘John, if you want this program to succeed, it first has to go where it’s most likely to succeed.’”

All Together Now As the weather breaks, outreach groups are getting ready to host group bike rides around Philadelphia. DeCou explains that cycling can be an excellent “leveling ground” if used with “intentionality.”

“If you ever see our ride programs going out, you’ll see 10-15 young people, a very diverse group of ages and races represented, with our staff and volunteers riding maybe from our shop at 40th Street down to Cobbs Creek Parkway,” she says. “It helps to bring people together of lots of different backgrounds… all united in this very simple, very fun activity of riding a bike.”

Starting in early April, the Bicycle Coalition hosted public demonstrations and test rides of the Indego system, in part to help introduce Philadelphians from across the spectrum to this brand

ASK A...

new service. (“We will definitely be there with Ambassadors!” Monroe wrote in an email at the time.) Indego hosted its launch ride later that month, with volunteers pedaling off from Eakins Oval to docking stations around the city.

Over at the Asian Arts Initiative, students are preparing their bikes for the June showcase, a graduation of sorts for their year of exploring (and making) bike culture. The plan: to host a bike parade with the Coalition’s Cadence Youth Cycling Foundation and make their way through Chinatown and Chinatown North in style.

“In my experience, I haven’t been able to find a group of Asian Americans who can rally for [higher representation in advocacy circles],” Nugent says at the Initiative’s workspace, where a handful of students prepare for the day’s lessons. “In order to do that, I think what we’re doing here is a good step.”

How about cyclists?

“Running red lights and riding on the sidewalk.

They’re shooting through red lights and causing

BIKE COP Name: Michael Gough Age: 48 Bike cop for: 18 years Patrols in: Center City

accidents, or almost hitting pedestrians. A lot of them ride up on the sidewalk, especially during rush hour. You have a lot of seniors that are walking on the sidewalk, and we get complaints that they get bumped or pushed.”

What needs to be done in order to get drivers and cyclists to share the road safely?

“I would say more public awareness through

What is the hardest part about enforcing the law from atop a bicycle?

radio, TV, or on the Internet. You can’t just

“Getting cars and vehicles to stop, especially if they

commercials, or hear about it, to know about it.”

have a string of green lights. The second hardest part is — when it’s rush hour and you have to get to certain calls — the traffic. Weaving in and out of traffic.”

tell people, sometimes. They have to see

If you could change one thing about Philadelphia’s streets, what would it be?

“I’d like to see, especially in the downtown area, more bike lanes on basically all the streets,

What’s the most common rule of the road that drivers break?

not only on certain elected streets. This way,

“Down here it’s illegal turns. Even though there

interfere [with car traffic]. If bikers have their

are tons of ‘no-turn’ signs posted, people tend to

own lane and it keeps the cars out, then they’re

make illegal turns. You don’t see too many people

not weaving in and out of traffic. It’s safer for

blowing lights in town.”

everybody.”

[cyclists] have their own lanes so they don’t

HAPPY TRAILS How suburbia learned to stop worrying and love the bike STORY BY JAKE BLUMGART PHOTOS BY DAN LIDON

spoke magazine

B

ill Spingler’s political career almost ended as soon opposition leader Laurie Dougherty described the horrors as it began. In 1991, he won an election to the wrought by the few fisherman who already traversed the Radnor Township Board of Commissioners by nine otherwise unused stretch of rail bed: “A neighbor on Hunt votes. Spingler was a Democrat in a majority-Republican Road found a hypodermic needle in the stream… We have Delaware County town, but it wasn’t partisan politics that experienced strangers on our private property.” Other nearly did him in. It was a bike trail. opponents argued that the trail would infringe upon their Many decades earlier the township hosted a property rights and waste taxpayer money. railroad spur operated by the Philadelphia Suburban Although a 1995 non-binding referendum on the Transportation Company, which once provided mass trail’s construction passed with 61 percent of the transit service to the city’s western suburbs. As postwar vote, opposition hardened. A lawsuit was filed to stop trends in car ownership spread, the company’s profits construction, which didn’t begin until 2004 as a result. In declined and its service shrank. In 1955, it closed this bit an interview that year, Spingler, who is still in office today of track and gave it to the Pennsylvania Department of as commission president, told the Philadelphia Inquirer, Transportation, which passed it on to Radnor Township “Half the people love me. Half the people hate me.” about 20 years later. Although All for a bike trail 2.4 miles long the money was there to and 19 feet wide.

“I said, ‘you shouldn’t let this transform the spur into “At this point, many of the a bike trail, the Board of homeowners have come full circle vocal minority stop us from Commissioners feared vocal and are advocates of the trail,” says progress.’ Then when I started opposition and sat on the land Jeffrey A. Knowles, regional advisor until Spingler was elected. for the Pennsylvania Department to do it, the shit hit the fan.”

Spingler wanted to turn of Conservation and Natural the unused land, then a Resources’ Bureau of Recreation weedy mess after decades of neglect, into a bicycle and Conservation. “They’ve seen the values increase for and pedestrian trail. But some who lived close to the their properties and they love having this recreational overgrown tract organized to defend their properties asset right in their backyard.” against a perceived threat of criminality and devaluation.

In a community of roughly 30,000, where a handful of NIMBY Battles of Yore votes could easily topple any politician, a small but forceful group of activists can stir up a lot of trouble. A gag rule Since the beginning of rails-to-trails efforts in the was issued to prevent discussion of the trail in commission 1960s, not-in-my-backyard (NIMBY) community groups meetings, but Spingler kept bringing it up anyway. He have often sprouted up and proved formidable foes. was then stripped of his chairmanship of the Parks and When first proposed in 1971, Seattle’s now-famous Recreation committee. Then-commission president Clinton Burke-Gilman Trail met ferocious opposition. Opponents A. Stuntebeck admitted, during a public shouting match, organized under the banner of the Property Rights that the move came in response to pressure from residents Committee and rallied around a narrative of criminal who lived along the proposed trail. invasion, using such slogans as “Hike in the Woods, Not in A longtime fellow commissioner, Curtis Nase, declared, My Yard” and “Welcome Hell’s Angels.” Three years ago in “I have never seen the township so divided over one issue, Orange County, Calif., an extension of the Santa Ana River and I’ve been a township resident for 40 years.” Signs lined Trail faced similar objections, prompting one opponent to Conestoga Road, reading, “Stop Spingler, No Bike Trail.” say that expanding the well-loved bikeway “is a terrible “I started bringing 100 people to every meeting about idea from a public safety standpoint. It’s ridiculously the trail for the 100 people who came out against the unsafe.” trail,” Spingler remembers. “I put out flyers and brought Here in the Philadelphia area, there may never be in people to the meetings. [I said], ‘you shouldn’t let this another opposition effort like the one that bedeviled vocal minority stop us from progress.’ Then when I started Radnor. Still, it is worth remembering that a vocal minority to do it, the shit hit the fan.” of determined opponents can drag the trail expansion The Friends of the Radnor Trail civic group, which process out for years. Plenty of opportunity for such supported the project, landed a $700,000 federal grant the resistance is on the horizon, considering the sheer number following year, but local buy-in was necessary to access of trail miles that advocates hope to build in the coming the money. Testifying before the commissioners in 1994, years.

The Pennypack Trail in Abington, Montgomery County.

Southeastern Pennsylvania is home to one of the largest bike trail networks in the nation, with years, even decades, of extensions ahead. What began as a handful of added miles in the 1970s has expanded continuously over the ensuing decades. In a recent attempt to create regional coherence, a coalition of cycling advocates, philanthropies and development organizations have rallied around expanding the network, dubbing it “the Circuit.”

When completed, the Circuit will surround the city and connect five Pennsylvania counties with four others in New Jersey, providing opportunities for recreation as well as non-car access to numerous employment hubs. Over three hundred of its projected 750 miles have already been built, with 50 more currently in progress. While major holes remain in the Circuit’s connectivity, residents of Southeastern Pennsylvania and New Jersey will be able to traverse much of the region by bike if and when the megatrail is finished.

The two biggest rallying cries for anti-trail NIMBYs are the twin shibboleths of neighborhood safety and property values. In both cases, advocates have hard evidence

to counter these claims. Fears of bike trails attracting a criminal element are the most visceral: In 1999, a Warrington bike trail was met with claims that it would lure drug dealers and perverts. Leaflets warned that the trail would “inevitably invite strangers and wanderers into the ‘back door’ of our neighborhoods.” Trails in Chadds Ford and Coatsville were stymied due to similar campaigns, the Inquirer noted at the time.

Not only has crime everywhere in the U.S. been falling for decades, but absolutely no link exists between bicycle trails and crime. In 1992, California’s Sonoma State University reported that “survey results from 15 other cities showed only a small number of minor infractions [on bike trails] including illegal motorized use of the trail, litter, and unleashed pets.” A 2000 study from Nebraska, a state with no trails at all a mere 10 years before, found that only 4 percent of respondents could report any thefts related to the trail, while 4.7 percent reported property damage. No violent crimes were reported. A 1995 report from the Colorado State Park service on the Denver metro area found that “[n]o public safety issues could be directly

spoke magazine linked to the trail.”

SPOKE has been unable to find a single study that links incidences of crime rising upon the completion of a trail.

In fact, Knowles says, “trails have been shown to increase security because when you get more people in an area, it gets to be safer.”

With regard to property values, studies show that trails are mostly an unalloyed good. In 2011, University of Cincinnati researchers found that house prices went up $9 for every foot closer they stood to a bicycle trail.

The average premium for those houses located 1,000 feet or less from the trail was $9,000. A few years earlier, a different researcher at the same university found that for each foot farther away a house stood from a trail, the value of adjacent properties decreased by $7.05.

University of Michigan researchers found that property owners perceived no difference in their ability to quickly and profitably sell their homes after a trail was built.

Again, SPOKE was unable to find any research not funded by explicitly anti-trail groups that found a substantially negative effect on property values.

“In the Radnor case, property values rose on average by $69,000 dollars,” says Sarah Clark Stuart, deputy director of the Bicycle Coalition of Greater Philadelphia and whose work has extensively dealt with trails. “In that case, the residents were extremely opposed to the trail. But once the trail was finally put in, they built gates [into their fences], hung their ‘For Sale’ signs, and put it on the listing that they were right next to the trail.”

Bike trails have also been shown to disproportionately attract the affluent. “Almost half of surveyed bicyclists earn more than $100,000 annually and 87% earn more than $50,000,” reads one report from the North Carolina Department of Transportation on users of the state’s Outer Banks trail.

Above, fences separate the Pennypack Trail from neighboring properties. On the opposite page, the Radnor Trail 11 years after its construction.

Easing Fears facts. ‘It’s simply not the case that people are going to ride their bikes 20 miles to come and steal an object from your house.’”

One-on-one meetings “avoid that angry mob mentality,” Clifford says, but public forums are still necessary. In his estimation, holding a community meeting and presenting plans doesn’t work very well. Montgomery County instead holds workshops where attendees can walk around to different stations and learn about different segments of the project, each represented by an who can answer questions. In this more “Once the trail was finally put in, they hung expert individualized setting, acrimonious exchanges are their ‘For Sale’ signs and put it on the listing limited and personal concerns can be addressed outside the context of a crowded room where the that they were right next to the trail.” loudest voices dominate.

For Radnor Township’s Spingler, such measures are always necessary because there will always be Opposition to the Perkiomen Trail from property concerns. owners was overcome by similar methods, according to “Nobody wants any change in local government,” Dave Clifford, a senior planner with the Montgomery Spingler says. “Whether it’s a trail, whether it’s a sidewalk, County Planning Commission. whether it’s university dorms, everybody wants everything “There would be two country representatives who to stay the same. It’s a constant battle. But once we were would go to the homeowners’ property,” Clifford says. able to get the trail done, now everybody loves trails. You “Basically, you address your concerns privately. ‘We are aren’t going to lose if you support trails.” going to come through with this project, but if you are NIMBY opposition to trails continues, although the kind of diehard trench warfare that defined the Radnor battle has not been seen again (or, at least, hasn’t been as well publicized). In Montgomery County, officials had to convince opponents that the Pennypack Trail would not harm their property values when it expanded last year and again this year. Chester County’s Chester Valley Trail encountered opposition, but county planners worked hard to assuage fears and it opened last year.

really against it and don’t want to see it, we can do a fence, we can do natural buffers.’ Sometimes you’ll just share the

257_GANS_Spoke_HlfPg_x1a.pdf

1

2/18/15

5:53 PM

ENJOY THE HIGHEST RATED AMERICAN GOLDEN LAGER AND WITH 125 YEARS OF BREWING TRADITION, NARRAGANSETT LAGER IS...

• The highest rated domestic premium lager according to Beer Advocate • The fastest growing American heritage lager • Top selling independent American heritage golden lager

A

SOLD ON M ER OR IT ON H RK MA D

E

8

1

A

SINCE

RS

90

TR

MADE ON

NARRAGANSETT LAGER IS THE CRAFT DRINKER’S HERITAGE LAGER

125 YE

MUST

BE

21

OR

Gansett.com

OLDER

TO

E N J O Y.

/Narragansettbeer

"

PLEASE

DRINK

@Gansettbeer

R E S P O N S I B LY.

/Gansettbeer

"Okay... so, I have to be honest: this ad is 100% selfish. I love working with my bike-friendly clients!"

I'm the type of person that will ride all the way across town, uphill, in the rain to meet you for a single home tour. Regardless it's totally up to you if we bike, walk, take transit or arrange for a vehicle. Feeling adventurous? I even have a tandem :^) Let's get rolling on this home search!

Call Kevin McGillicuddy TODAY to get started. kevin.mcgillicuddy@foxroach.com 267-270-5577 txt/vm

$200�Gift!

Main: 215-546-0550 210 W. Rittenhouse Sq Phila PA 19103

Mention seeing me in Spoke to receive a $200 gift certificate to spend at your favorite bike shop! This is an exclusive offer to clients using my services to buy or sell Offer Expires 9/1/2015. Certificate awarded at closing. real estate.

A member of the franchise system of BHH Affiliates, LLC

HARDHEADED The tricky science - and trickier politics - behind helmets STORY BY MICHELLE SIPICS ILLUSTRATION BY TIM PACIFIC PHOTOS BY ELLIOTT LAMBORN

T

he crash took less than five seconds. One moment I was riding along, half a block from the end of my commute. The next, a red SUV hit me with its passenger-side mirror. I wobbled, crashed and landed, hard, in the eastbound lane of Market Street. My head hit the pavement, knocking me out for a few seconds. I was still dazed when I came to. I remember that someone moved my bike. The SUV’s driver kept trying to lift me by my bleeding left arm.

spoke magazine It could have been much worse. I ended up with a lot of road rash and tendon damage. Still, the car following behind hadn’t run me over after I crashed. I hadn’t split my skull open when my head smacked against the asphalt.

Mostly, I felt grateful for my helmet.

Cyclists tend to have strong opinions on helmets.

Personal experience influences some, while others consider issues of convenience or would prefer to improve safety in different ways. It’s easy to find riders who say they will never ride without a helmet. It’s just as easy to find those who think helmets are a waste of time.

But for all the debate, there isn’t much discussion of how helmets are supposed to work, and how to determine whether they really do. Without that knowledge, the dialogue around helmets is missing a critical part of the picture.

Crash-Test Dummies I walked away from my own crash confident that my helmet had saved me from the hospital or worse. I hit my head hard enough to be knocked out. Without the helmet, there could have been some real, lasting damage.

Right?

The truth is, there’s no way to know what would have happened if I hadn’t worn a helmet. I can’t prove that I would have suffered a head injury. Unlikely as it may seem, it’s possible that I could have been in the same crash without a helmet and still walked away all right.

This uncertainty is what fuels most of the skepticism toward the effectiveness of bike helmets. Real-life crash data doesn’t have a control group for comparison. There was no “control” me riding to work by the same route, hit by the same SUV, with all other circumstances the same except the helmet.

“There isn’t a peer-reviewed paper where helmeted versus unhelmeted impacts have been studied to show how effective helmets were,” says Peter Cripton, a professor of mechanical engineering at the University of British Columbia. It’s easy to understand why: Scientists can’t ethically expose cyclists to the risks from a crash to find out whether helmets work, even if they could somehow set up helmeted and unhelmeted crashes that were otherwise exactly the same.

In the absence of helmet-less doppelgängers for every reported crash, researchers who have studied bike helmets to date have mostly used epidemiological data.

“Nobody expects to get hit in the head. But incidents happen, and if they do, you just have to think of the consequences.”

That means they take data from thousands of crashes and see how many riders were wearing helmets versus how many weren’t. Then they determine whether wearing a helmet correlates with a reduction in head injuries. By and large, that’s what the studies suggest.

“We focus on the facts, and we believe in the scientific evidence we see,” says Eric Richter, brand development manager for bikewear company Giro Sport Design.

“Helmets have been shown in reputable studies to reduce the most common head injuries associated with cycling by 45 to 85 percent, and we believe they’re one of the most effective ways you can reduce your chances of being injured in the event of a crash.”

To see the whole picture, it’s important to understand how a helmet is supposed to work. Despite decades of adjustments by manufacturers for comfort and aerodynamics, helmets work in a fundamentally simple way: They reduce the acceleration your head experiences when you whack it against something. Cripton, whose research group at the University of British Columbia focuses on reducing the impact of human injury, compares them to car airbags.

“In a crash, you hit your head on the airbag and the airbag deforms,” Cripton says. “The airbag is like a pillow and helps you to ride down the acceleration and reduce the potential that you’re going to have a skull fracture and a brain injury. That’s exactly how a helmet works.”

The outside of the helmet is a hard shell. The inside layer, made of polystyrene, is where the airbag-like effect occurs. “When you hit your head hard,” Cripton explains, “this layer compresses on impact and absorbs the energy needed to be absorbed so that you don’t get a skull fracture.”

Helmet certification tests are designed to measure this effect. A helmet is put on a head-like form, which is then dropped onto a hard surface (an anvil, essentially).

The helmet’s ability to manage the energy of the impact is tested by measuring acceleration. In the U.S., for the helmet to pass and be sold, the measured acceleration of the impact must be less than 300 g. This is the same “g” — a unit of gravity — that we reference when we talk about astronauts experiencing “zero g.”

It may surprise you to learn that helmets are certified based on a simple drop test. When we think about crashes, most of us picture a collision while riding or skidding out and sliding along the road. But most crashes

involve a fall to the pavement.

Consider just how easy it is to injure yourself by falling sideways while sitting still. “When we’re sitting on a bicycle, 1.5 to 2.0 meters is about the height our head is at, depending on the size of the rider,” Cripton says.

“Just falling off our bikes not wearing a helmet, if we hit our head, there’s a very high probability — it’s near 100 percent — of skull fracture and brain injury, and that goes down to less than 10 percent if we just wear a helmet.”

Cripton recently published the first peer-reviewed study comparing helmeted and unhelmeted impacts, using heads from crash-test dummies. He and his colleagues used the same methodology as helmet certification tests: dropping head-forms from certain heights onto anvils and measuring the acceleration on the head when a helmet was worn, then again without a helmet. Cripton was quick to note that each helmet was only used for one drop and then replaced, just as recommended for helmets that have undergone a crash.

The results were clear.

The researchers used Wearing a helmet significantly the Abbreviated Injury reduced the acceleration Score code, which is experienced by the dummy a scale running from heads, which translates to a 1 to 6. On this scale, significant reduction in injury 1 is a minor injury like risk. Even at a drop height a simple cut, and 6 is of only half a meter, based the maximum possible on Cripton’s calculations, injury code, for injuries an unhelmeted rider would that are currently have a 16 percent probability untreatable. The of a severe brain injury (see probability of a “severe sidebar). With a helmet, the brain injury” in the risk fell to less than 1 percent. study corresponds to a At and above the more risk of an AIS level 4 or realistic drop height of 1.5 higher brain injury. meters, the risk of serious brain injury without wearing a helmet was nearly 100 percent. Ultimately, the researchers concluded, bicycle helmets “changed the probability of severe brain injury from very likely to highly unlikely.”

This isn’t to say that helmets are a one-step fix for cycling safety. Past certain heights and speeds, even helmeted riders have a high likelihood of trauma with a head impact (though in Cripton’s study, the risk is always higher for unhelmeted riders). Plenty of cycling injuries

spoke magazine involve something other than hitting your head. A helmet won’t protect against road rash or a broken arm. The most common cycling injuries vary based on location and the infrastructure available to riders. Arm fractures are universally common, and no one would claim a helmet helps prevent them. Still, if you do hit your head — or are involved in a collision with a motor vehicle, which statistically increases the risk of severe head injury — well, that’s the type of common cycling injury helmets were designed to address.

“Nobody expects to get hit in the head,” Cripton says.

“But accidents happen, or incidents happen, and if they do, you just have to think of the consequences.”

The Choices We Make Widespread helmet use is a fairly recent phenomenon.

Anyone who has watched a professional cycling race is familiar with the sea of bobbing helmets, but these only became a requirement after the death of unhelmeted rider Andrei Kivilev, who suffered a skull fracture following a collision in the 2003 Paris-Nice race. (In a press release following Kivilev’s death, the International Cycling Union noted that its proposal for mandatory helmets more than a decade earlier had been “rejected by a large majority of professional riders.”)

Outside of professional racing, helmet use varies widely but has grown in recent years. In its 2014 report, the Bicycle Coalition of Greater Philadelphia noted that among the cyclists it observed, 55 percent wore helmets — an increase of 95 percent since 2005.

Toni Saarela, a life sciences researcher, falls within that 55 percent. Saarela, who has been cycling since childhood and calls it one of his preferred forms of transportation, says he almost always wears a helmet.

“Why not?” he asks. “That’s really the reason. Close calls happen relatively often when biking among cars or in the bike lane. Of course you have to be careful, but sometimes it’s out of your hands, and then the helmet might come in handy.”

Saarela has also experienced a crash. Quite the opposite of my out-of-nowhere incident, he describes it like this: “You’re on your bike observing the thing unfold — your front wheel getting crushed under a car, in this case — realizing there’s nothing you can do to stop it.” A car ahead of him, traveling in the bike lane, had stopped. Its driver backed into him.

“I fell off my bike and rolled out of the way, and the car didn’t hit me,” Saarela says. “I wasn’t hurt. I took the bike to the shop and was riding again the next day.” Saarela points out that he didn’t hit his head in this particular crash.

Matt, a 43-year-old scientist who declined to give his last name to protect his privacy, has been cycling regularly for about 20 years. Around half that time was spent crosscountry mountain biking. He says he would never ride a mountain bike without a helmet, but doesn’t wear one for his daily commute in Philadelphia.

“Of course you have to be careful, but sometimes it’s out of your hands, and then the helmet might come in handy.”

“I know there are many pros and cons,” Matt says.

“But ultimately I believe that the best way to prevent bike commute accidents is not to make bikers more crash-proof, but to make cities, currently built around and for cars, more bike and pedestrian friendly. This means slowing down traffic and sharing the road.”

Matt notes that he’s had several crashes cycling in the city, ranging from incidents with trolley tracks to collisions with other cyclists. He says he has never been injured.

“A helmet gives me a false sense of safety, and it also induces a bias in car drivers’ perception, as they see me as less fragile,” he says.

Legal Matters Matt’s argument falls in line with those of many cycling organizations who say that requiring a helmet discourages people from riding bikes. Instead, these advocates say that governments should focus on making infrastructure safer for cyclists in the first place.

In one recent example, Carol Liu of the California State Senate introduced a bill to require adult cyclists in her state to wear helmets. In announcing the bill, Liu said the law would “help protect more people and make sure all riders benefit from the head protection that a helmet provides.” Dave Snyder, executive director of the California Bicycle Coalition, was quick to disagree.

“It’s inarguable that a helmet will protect your head in the event of a crash,” Snyder says. “They are at least partially effective. They might be very effective. But the point we are making is that a law that mandates helmet wearing will result in fewer people riding a bike. It will discourage the important safety improvements that must be made to really protect people, and that socially, the act of riding a bike will be more dangerous for those of us who are still riding.”

John Boyle, research director for the Bicycle Coalition of Greater Philadelphia, says his organization would also oppose such a law if one were on the table here.

“We strongly encourage people who ride bicycles to wear a helmet every time they ride,” Boyle says. “But we also believe that mandatory helmet laws would have a negative effect on bicycling.” (The helmet requirement in Liu’s bill was dropped in early April, according to advocacy website Streetsblog. Instead, the legislation now calls for the California Office of Traffic Safety to conduct a “comprehensive study of bicycle helmet use.”)

Boyle notes that several studies have shown helmet laws discourage cycling. One of the most frequently cited studies, published in The BMJ in 2006, reviewed cycling data from multiple jurisdictions around the world that had introduced helmet legislation. Studying locations where comprehensive cycling data was collected both before and after the implementation of these laws, author D.L. Robinson found that while helmet use increased, the number of people cycling went down.

“Before and after data show enforced helmet laws discourage cycling but produce no obvious response in percentage of head injuries,” Robinson wrote in the study’s summary. “This contradiction may be due to risk compensation, incorrect helmet wearing, reduced safety in numbers, or incorrect adjustment for confounders in casecontrol studies.”

“Helmet laws are an attempt to address safety,”

Boyle says. “But they’re not very good at doing that. Not as well as improving infrastructure, which is one of the key things to making bicycling safer, and also having more bicycles on the road.”

“Ultimately I believe that the best way to prevent bike commute accidents is not to make bikers more crash-proof, but to make cities more bike friendly.”

Interestingly, the Bicycle Coalition’s report also notes that streets with better bicycle lanes saw more helmet use.

Where does that leave a cyclist who just wants to get safely from point A to point B? Helmets work, but requiring them might discourage cycling. They significantly reduce the chances of severe brain injury if you hit your head, but can’t protect against all the possible injuries associated with crashes. Is it smarter to forget about helmets and focus on better cycling infrastructure for everyone?

Maybe the easier question is whether anything could actually change someone’s mind about wearing a helmet.

“I don’t know,” Matt says. “Maybe if my wife gave me an ultimatum.”

spoke magazine

ASK A...

BIKE COP Name: Allen C. Marsh Age: 42 Bike cop for: 6 years Patrols in: “The majority of my career I was patrolling the 12th District in Southwest Philadelphia. I’ve been in the 6th District in Center City for about 8.5 months now.”

What is the hardest part about enforcing the law from atop a bicycle?

“When doing car stops, people always try to get

bully you a little bit, try to get you out of the way. When I ride my personal bike, I notice it more. They tend to give me more respect because I am a police officer and I’m in full uniform. But if you’re just a regular citizen riding in the bike lane, they try to bully you off to the side of the road.”

How about cyclists?

“They tend to go against the flow of traffic. I don’t see too many people on the sidewalks anymore. For the most part, in my regular patrol, they do what they’re supposed to do.

And the only time I really see people going against the flow of traffic is when you have messengers trying to get somewhere real quick.”

away from you. They underestimate you being

What needs to be done in order to get drivers and cyclists to share the road safely?

able to get around as well as you can on a bike. I

“I think the problem, with drivers more so

can honestly say that of the 15 people who took

than anything, is just to be mindful that there

off on me, only three of them got away.”

are people on two wheels out there — that

What’s the most common rule of the road that drivers break?

you can hurt somebody.”

“For the most part, they don’t respect the bike

If you could change one thing about Philadelphia’s streets, what would it be?

lane. I see that firsthand all the time. They try to

“Potholes. Our streets are terrible.”

M E O H

RK O W

CAFE

TRAVEL

HOME

TR

AI N

Enjoy multimodal transport with a BROMPTON folding bike.

Available for 10 years and counting at

OPEN EVERYDAY 712 N.2nd St. | 215.592.1234 | info@trophybikes.com

spoke magazine

EXIT INTERVIEW: Charles Carmalt, Philadelphia’s first pedestrian and bicycle coordinator

BY ALEX VUOCOLO

O

utgoing Mayor Michael Nutter has cut many a red ribbon, more than a few of which marked the completion of new trail segments, bike lanes and pedestrian improvements.

These photo-ready moments reinforced Nutter’s image as a champion of a more walkable and bikeable Philadelphia. But while mayors make good spokespeople, a new generation of city officials worked behind the scenes to bring these projects to fruition.

Charles Carmalt, who retired earlier this spring, served in the Philadelphia Streets Department as the city’s first bicycle and pedestrian coordinator. Hired in 2008, he had a hand in many of the projects that took place over the last eight years. We sat down with Carmalt to look back at his time in government and talk about the position he came to shape.

This interview has been edited for clarity and length.

How did there come to be a bicycle and pedestrian coordinator position in Philadelphia?

When Mayor Nutter was running for office, he made a commitment that he would appoint such a person. Cities and states had pedestrian and bicycle coordinators largely because of the 1992 [Intermodal Surface Transportation Efficiency Act] that authorized how transportation dollars were spent. That law required that regional and state governments have bicycle/pedestrian coordinators. There was a requirement that Philadelphia have people doing this, but it wasn’t a formally designated position.

Philadelphia during the 1990s had two phenomenal people working for them, Tom Branigan and Gihon Jordan. But both had

PHOTO BY JUSTIN DURNER left city government by 2004, and there was sort of a void there.

Mayor Nutter was running for election. The Bicycle Coalition posed it to him that there should be a bicycle/pedestrian coordinator, and he promised to create one.

What did your day-to-day look like? With whom did you work inside and outside city government?

As the first coordinator, I had to figure out what I was going to do. There’s a learning curve, there’s a need to coordinate with lots of different people, and there are a lot of different issues that rose up.

The major way that projects have been implemented in Philadelphia is to piggyback a bicycle project into the normal routine paving of roadways. Part of my job was identifying where facilities should be located and then keeping abreast of when roads were going to be resurfaced. Some of those were state projects, some of those were city projects. We also took a look as best we could at all of the development applications to see what we could do to accommodate pedestrians and cyclists. Sometimes we did a good job. Sometimes we did not do a good job.

What was it like working in the Nutter administration?

As is often the case with government, in the beginning it was filled with energy. Lots of people were really excited to be here and have this opportunity to serve. But then things became more routine over time. [Nutter] is such a bright, thoughtful person that it’s always been good to be here. The hard part has been the lack of resources. That was particularly the case in the first three years,

from 2008 to 2011. The city was just hanging on. They were closing libraries, fire stations, laying off police. The Streets Department lost a lot of people from 2000 going forward.

I found it exciting, though. One of things I wasn’t expecting was working with people younger than my daughters. It’s kind of fun.

Was advocating for cycling a part of your job?

There’s a difference between a coordinator and an advocate. We have our advocate in the [Bicycle Coalition of Greater Philadelphia].

My job is more to figure out how to implement the things that the Coalition is advocating for.

So you weren’t necessarily a public advocate, but behind the scenes was it your role to make sure cycling issues were on the agenda?

Of course, that’s a major part of it: Not only making sure they’re on the agenda, but also helping people recognize why they’re on the agenda, why it’s important to do this. In most cases, we were tweaking the system and advocating for the inclusion of cycling into a project. I needed to be able to work with people and make sure they had trust in me.

I just came back from this trip where I met an old colleague who used to be the bicycle and pedestrian coordinator for the Oregon [Department of Transportation] for years and years. He’d been doing some counseling for young people who wanted to work in bicycle and pedestrian jobs, and he said to them: “It’s one thing to know what’s a good thing to do, and a completely different thing to figure how to convince people to do it.” If you come across too strong, you won’t get anything done. It’s really a matter of how to work your network, how to establish trust, how to build confidence, and how to slowly work at convincing people that this is the right thing to do.

What do you think the biggest victory for cyclists and pedestrians has been during your time at the Mayor’s Office of Transportation and Utilities?

hunks of metal with powerful engines in an environment that was designed for pedestrians. It’s not surprising, then, that bicyclists have to adjust their behavior and to do things that aren’t necessarily legal. But it’s one thing to do that and another to go 10 miles an hour into intersection without looking. That really upsets people, and that in turn creates opposition to bicycle facilities.

What is the attitude toward cyclists and their needs among those in City Hall? Is there a divide between the new and old political guards?

There’s a large number of people out there who don’t ride bicycles, don’t want to ride bicycles, and aren’t going to be supportive of bicycling, including people who work in the Streets Department and serve on City Council. It would be nice to have a few more advocates for bicycling on the Council. I think we have a lot of councilmembers who are supportive, but they’re not advocates. We have one real advocate up in North Philly [Councilmember Bobby Henon] who really wants more bike facilities, but he’s the exception.

What was your relationship with City Council? How often did you communicate with them?

Initially, not at all. We had been doing more communication recently. And it wasn’t that we didn’t let them know about this plan or that plan, but it also wasn’t like in Chicago where bicycle advocates meet with aldermen on regular basis in their districts to talk about what type of things they plan to do. We don’t do that, and maybe we should.

How has the City Council’s ability to effectively veto new bike lanes that remove a parking lane or travel lane affected the addition of new lanes? Can we expect more 22nd Street-like interferences in the future?

“Our biggest problem is not

that we’re not keeping up. Our

I think we’re dealing with a specific councilmember there, so I don’t think we’re going to have the same problem elsewhere. The real problem is that I didn’t know 22nd Street would be resurfaced until May of last year, and it was going to resurfaced in July. So there was no way I could go through the process that Council has created to establish the political support. It takes a year or two.

biggest problem is how we

Obviously we are very proud of Spruce and Pine streets. Everybody loves them. People still talk about how they’re such great facilities. Really they’re just a set of painted lines, and they’re not perfect, but they do provide access to cyclists. I think 13th Street was just as exciting. My biggest disappointment was 10th Street, where people in Chinatown rose up in opposition to a bike lane.

maintain what we have.”

In recent years, Philadelphia has fallen behind other large U.S. cities, such as New York and Boston, in adding new bike lanes.

What have been the logistical and political barriers to expanding the bike network?

Our biggest problem is not that we’re not keeping up. Our biggest problem is how we maintain what we have, and how we then do the more difficult projects. We ought to be devoting as much energy to maintaining or enhancing what we have out there rather than worrying about lots of new bike lanes just because we’re not implementing as many.

As I mentioned before, another big barrier is going to continue to be money. Washington, D.C., Austin, Texas, and New York City are able to spend a lot more money on bicycle facilities. New York has a whole group of people doing nothing but pedestrian projects.

Then they have a bicycle group, while we have three people doing bicycle and pedestrian work. Now, we want all of our engineers to be bicycle/pedestrian experts, but that’s not the same thing as getting new infrastructure on the ground.

My biggest problem in getting political support for projects is that bicyclists don’t seem to respect laws and they don’t behave in a rational fashion on the streets. You can do more for helping bicycling by riding your bike with a little respect than anything else. Now, most bicyclists are very reasonable, and most of our traffic regulations were written to address how we operate 1-10 ton

Why was there a lack of communication about the resurfacing?

That’s been a problem for quite a long time, in terms of finding out what the local paving schedule is. We’ve been working on the problem. I was actually shocked that [22nd Street] was being resurfaced. The Streets Department develops that list, unless it’s a state road. Allegheny Avenue, for example, is a state road. Most of our major and minor arterials are state jurisdiction. [Pennsylvania Department of Transportation officials] play with their region-wide and statewide resurfacing budget, and sometimes we get a long lead time, sometimes we get a short lead time.

What do you think the next administration needs to do to make Philadelphia a better city for bikes?

We’ve talked about maintaining the system we’ve got, and I think that’s absolutely urgent. It would be wonderful for them to find a way to reestablish a more aggressive paving program, but if they can’t do that, go back in every five years or so and mark the lanes so it’s understood they’re out there. Drivers tend to respect them, as long as they can see them. As the lane disappears, drivers begin driving in the lanes, which makes them disappear that much faster.

The other issue, and it’s not my expertise, but we need to keep encouraging people to be bicyclists. To some extent that job is done better outside government, but there’s still a role for the government to play.

SHOW US

YOUR T IPS

Have an idea for a story about cycling in the Philadelphia region?

Email us at

spokemagazine@gmail.com

SPOKE is a volunteer-run magazine Find us online at facebook.com/SPOKEMagPHL, tweet and gram us @SPOKE_mag, and visit our website at www.spokemag.bike for a list of upcoming events.

photo cred. Tayarisha Poe

Contributors Andrew Zaleski is freelance journalist and recent Philadelphia transplant. He writes about the intersection of technology, politics and cities for local and national publications. He is a regular contributor to Fortune magazine, Philadelphia City Paper and Politico Magazine.

Michelle Sipics is a freelance science writer and editor based in Philadelphia. She has written for SIAM News and the Boston Globe, and was a contributing author of a comprehensive history of vaccines. On the side, she also does a bit of code and tech consulting.

Bill Hangley is a Philadelphia native and freelance writer and editor. He is a reporter for the Philadelphia Public School Notebook and WHYY. He also screens readersubmitted jokes for Reader’s Digest.

Molly Storm Jackson is a recent grad of Rhode Island School of Design and currently lives in Oakland, Ca. She has drawn comics and illustrations for The Bold Italic, ThoughtSpot and elsewhere.

Cassie Owens, based in her native Philadelphia, reports on cities and culture. Her writing has appeared in Philadelphia City Paper, Next City, CNN.com and other publications.

Justin Durner left his native Maryland to study photography at The Art Institute of Philadelphia. He has since done location and studio photography for Reebok, ESPN The Magazine and the American Cancer Society.

Dan Lidon is a commercial and editorial photographer based in Philadelphia. His work has appeared in JUMP, Philly Beer Scene and elsewhere.

Jake Blumgart is a freelance reporter, researcher and editor based in Philadelphia. He writes about labor, transit, housing and urban issues for publications such as Next City, Slate and Al Jazeera America.

Mary Peltz is a Temple University alumni living in Brooklyn and working for SAS Software. She is artsy, and she is fartsy.

Tayarisha Poe is a Philadelphia-based photographer, filmmaker and writer.

Tim Pacific is an illustrator and designer formerly based in Philadelphia. He has contributed to publications such as Next City and Ask Magazine. He has also designed promotional materials for the Fairmount Park Conservancy and AIGA Philadelphia.

Join us on Sunday, June 7th to watch the UCI Women’s Road World Cup and the Men’s UCI America Tour race through some of Philadelphia’s favorite neighborhoods.

Great vantage points and family-fun can be found on Lemon Hill, in East Falls, Manayunk, and Roxborough throughout the day.

Ride where the pros ride. Register now for the Bicycling Open and experience the course before the pros. For more information and live streaming the day of the event, visit: philadelphiainternationalcyclingclassic.com Starting times, Sunday, June 7, 2015: The Bicycling Open: 6:45 am.

UCI World Cup Men’s Race: 8:00 am.

UCI World Cup Women’s Race: 12:30 pm.

City of

Philadelphia LIF E

LIBERTY

A N D Y O U TM

PHOTO: MARCO QUEZADA

World-class cycling in the City of Philadelphia.

Visit our Philadelphia stores at 20th & Callowhill and 9th & South St.