Bike Blog – Coral Way Gets Some Love

All that dreaming longingly about someday seeing bike lanes along Coral Way has finally paid off. Mike Lydon of Transit Miami wrote last week: “expect to see new bicycle lanes from SW 12th Avenue to SW 15th Road in the not-too-distant-future.” The lanes will span about 16 blocks. From there,…

Bike Blog – Survey Says, Part 2

Last week’s post covered the Bicycle Action Committee’s biking trends survey regarding local riding habits. Riders seemed to stay bicycle law savvy, though admittedly choose which moments to obey the rules. This week covers the geography of ridership, particularly the participants’ daily jaunts and where they want to see bike…

Bike Blog – Survey Says… Part 1

The last few weeks have been important for the drafting and solidification of the Master Plan for the Bicycle Action Committee. Amidst conceptualizations and revisions, a solid plan is in development to make sure that Miami is on an effective path to Bicycle Friendliness. An important factor for its development…

Bike Blog – Biking Boston

Greetings from Massachusetts! I don’t love to compare cities with awesome bicycle accommodations to Miami’s developing status, but I’ve been lucky enough to pedal around Boston this weekend and figured this would be a good chance to cover what’s going on outside of South Florida. I’ve not had the pleasure…

Bike Blog – Go, Go Green Pedicabs!

Carlos Lastres is a Miami native with one of the neatest jobs Downtown. His recently launched enterprise, Go Green Pedicabs, brings to Miami a service that is increasingly prevalent in hip cities around the world. The pedicab, a tricycle carriage way more posh than your hackneyed rickshaw, can take Downtown…

Bike Blog – Mayor Meets the Mass

Miami’s Saturday morning Critical Mass celebrated its second anniversary this weekend with a surprise visit from City of Miami Mayor Manny Diaz. The ride included a picnic at Peacock Park at which the Mayor greeted a posse of fifty bicyclists to partake in vegan cupcakes, freeze pops and cheerful bicycle…

Bike Blog – M-Path Revamp

The M-Path offers an often adventurous north and south passage. Broken pavement, unspecific route signs and herds of careening vehicles intersecting the path create challenging obstacles. Bicycling commuters cannot simply zone out in the monotony of traffic like their vehicular counterparts. Sporadic and inattentive cross traffic requires alertness; drivers often…

Bike Blog – Mayors Determine Bikes Rock

June’s U.S. Conference of Mayors gave some love to bicyclists across nation. There’s much we may anticipate based on their proclamations. Here’s the short version: The broadly named Transportation and Communications Committee drafted a resolution titled “Ensuring Bicycling is Integrated into National Transportation, Climate, Energy and Health Policy Initiatives.” This…

Bike Blog – Car-free and Caught in the Rain

This was probably the crappiest week so far this year to be a bicycle commuter. The timing was consistent everyday: show up to work with the sunrise and end work in time for the deluge. Apocalyptic thunderstorms helped me celebrate the end of each work day by holding out until…

Bike Blog – Improving Road Safety

Nothing says awesome like watching over forty cyclists form a train down Main Highway. This past Saturday’s Critical Mass made a parade of cruisers, fixed-gears, road and mountain bikes and set a steady pace from Vizcaya to Matheson Hammock. After diving into the suspiciously murky lagoon at Matheson, we dodged…

Give Bike Thieves A Helluva Time

To the punk who stole my bicycle from in front of the Downtown Courthouse: I won that bicycle in a contest and had only enjoyed it for two days before you figured you could use it for something better. Maybe you pawned it for crack. Maybe it wound up on…

City Manager Goes to Bat for Bikes

Good news! Last week, we wrote that the City of Miami is looking at places they can refit to be accommodating to bicycles. The Bike Blog plugged a few ideas, in particular Coral Way, which is up for resurfacing soon – a great opportunity to add bike lanes. It seems…

Your Turn: Bike Routes

The city of Miami’s Bicycle Action Committee is currently working on two maps, one that would be a kind of “user map” and the other a “future bike routes” map. The first of the two, a map showing current bike facilities in the city, isn’t a bad idea, per se…

Convert Coral Way for Bikes

In recent months, Miami Mayor Manny Diaz and District 3 Commissioner Joe Sanchez have shown increased interest in promoting bicycling in Miami. Last March, Mayor Diaz announced the formation of a new Bicycle Action Committee as part of his Green Commission, which Comm. Sanchez chairs. A month later, Comm. Sanchez…

Big Surprise: Miami Listed Among Worst Cycling Cities

Well, folks, guess which city recently won the distinction of a write-up from Bicycling magazine for being on of the three “worst cities for cycling?” Yeah, it’s not much of a surprise. Still, as bicycling slowly peddles its way up the agenda in Miami, a little bad publicity can’t hurt…

Petty Pedicabbery

For over a year now, eager entrepreneurs have lobbied the Miami Beach city government to allow pedicabs – bicycle rickshaws for hire – to operate on the Beach. Similar outfits are already busy ferrying people around in other South Florida cities – Fort Lauderdale, most notably – but, so far,…

We Like Bike!

It’s a bird! It’s a plane! No, wait — it’s a politician! So the citizens of Miami shouted to one another last Saturday as City Commissioner Joe Sanchez whizzed past them on a rusty old Raleigh mountain bike last Saturday, flanked by a motley crowd of riders that included Mr…

WLRN Radio Features Critical Mass

In case you missed it, South Florida NPR affiliate WLRN ran a short piece on Miami’ Critical Mass last Friday. Shannon Novak, a freelancer for the station, had showed up along with someone from the Herald’s Neighbors section (although it still hasn’t run in Neighbors, and we don’t know why)…

Three-Wheeled Bliss

Yeah yeah, you love your road bike. You love riding hunched over, craning your neck around to see what’s coming, you leather saddle sticking into your crotch like it’s trying to rob the family jewels. And bully for you. But secretly, in your heart of hearts, don’t you wish you…

Monthly Loose Cannon Race

Bicyclist James Wurm after the ‘Loose Cannons on the Run” race, basking in the glow of a dollar beer at PS14. A little while ago, the Bike Blog mentioned a new, bike-only beer special every Wednesday at PS14. The special, crated by local party promoted Joel Meinholz, still stands –…

Bikers Take on the State and Win

It may not be time to take out the aged scotch yet, but you can at least crack a celebratory cerveza this weekend, thanks to a ruling this week from the 1st District Court of Appeal in Tallahassee that said bicycle groups have the right to sue the Florida Department…