A new commercial is being made by the city for their awareness campaign, Street Sense. Street Sense is a continuing awareness campaign aimed at making Louisville’s streets safer for bicyclists and pedestrians. The idea is to simply reduce the number of accidents, injuries and fatalities. There is a video shoot happening Friday, May 21 and the more riders for this the better. Meet up at the gazebo on top of Dog Hill in Cherokee Park at about 6:45 and see what happens from there. Plan is to shoot the group riding together and then take a stroll through the park for a group ride. Shouldn’t take too long and it get’s you out riding with a good group of people. If you want to let everyone you know aware that you’ll be attending or not, there’s a Facebook event here.

Speaking of the city and government things… Democracy Sucks, one size does not fit all. Happy primary day, sheeps.

Michael from Presta vs Shrader posted this one on Facebook yesterday and I had to share. I’m always a fan of gorilla advocacy so to speak, if this even is so. The picture came from WashCycle, a bike advocacy site out of Washington D.C.

Speaking of Facebook, if you haven’t befriended, liked or whatevered Fuck Gas on there, hop to it!

Wednesday, September 30th 2009 marks one year after Jen Futrell was hit from behind on her bicycle. Jen died in the hospital 5 days later. There will be an event that will honor Jen starting at 4 pm in Tyler park. The Down Home Hospitality Cafe will host a massive potluck. Bring what you can, or just yourself. Groups that Jen would like to have tabling are welcome to come. (please bring your own table.) At 6pm there will be a memorial ride touring the highlands to remember various bicycle accidents to raise awareness about a need for harmony and consciousness on the road. The ride will end at Jen’s ghost bike on Baxter Ave. where there will be a vigil held.

Thanks to Ricky Irvine for the heads up on a transportation forum coming up in a couple weeks

“The ninth forum of the Sustainable City Series held by the Urban Design Studio focuses on transportation modes that promote more sustainable communities.” Sounds captivating doesn’t it?

This all goes down at Glassworks (815 W Market St, see the above pic), Tuesday, 26 May from 6 - 8:30 pm. Guest speakers include Barry Barker and Dirk Gowin. There’s still a handful of spots available so get em while you can.

Register here.

Pal to Fuck Gas, Ricky Irvine was invited to participate in the blog over at Consuming Louisville for their new feature, Big Ideas for Making Louisville Better. In great bicycle fashion he chose to address the lack of bike racks at Louisville area businesses. I second his opinions and think having racks everywhere you want to visit would greatly increase bike traffic. After all, you expect to find parking spaces everywhere you drive, why shouldn’t there be bike racks.

Check out Ricky’s Big Idea here, and you can find his own blog over at Dressed In Value.

I attended a meeting of sorts yesterday evening and I always heard if you don’t have anything nice to say then you shouldn’t say anything at all, but you can’t always believe what you hear right?

So yeah, there’s a seemingly well intentioned group of people, some more bike minded than others, now meeting on a regular basis with the idea of raising awareness for bicycle versus car interaction… from what I can tell. While I wish them all the best, I guess it’s just not my scene. More over, I was really hoping this was going to be a more direct action kind of “organization” as we’ll call them and not the sort of people discussing what is or is not allowed in terms of local government policies.

Overall the meeting brought about a lot of discussion on how a small group of people felt everyone should ride their bikes and how “we” could best promote “our” knowledge. For instance, riding in flip flops was a big concern. Really? As well, the big debut sounds like what will be a ride happening on Louisville’s biggest gridlock day known as Thunder Over Louisville. A giant fireworks and beer festival kicking off two weeks of buildup for the Kentucky Derby. For a group promoting the idea that bicycles should follow the same road rules as cars, a group ride (Considerate Mass as it was referred to) in miles of backed up traffic doesn’t sound too productive. Like I said, best of luck to them.

For more info check out bikesaretraffic.org

There’s a follow up meeting to the original meeting that I failed to meet up with everyone at pertaining to bike advocacy things here in Louisville. Make sense? No? Good. Regardless, it’s going down and I’m looking to make it although a daughter with the flu has my schedule this week a tad unpredictable.

Speaking of unpredictable, I’m a fucking idiot… this to the effect of that ride I put together for this Friday, the N’Albany Naysayers Repeal, I won’t be there. I’ll be chilling with the family in a cabin somewhere outside of anything I can call recognizable. You guys have fun though, Leland has taken on the responsibility of getting your sheep ass lost in Indiana. Hope you have GPS on that rig…

So yeah, advocacy…

March 25, 2009
7:30 - 8:45 p
Louisville Free Public Library
301 York Street

Topics:

Participating in existing organized rides (polo, River City, L’ville Bicycling Club, Fuck Gas, etc.)
Planning a big street clogging bike ride this summer.
Throwing together an outdoor bike movie night.
Distributing leaflets on bicycle awareness at city events.
Advocating for more businesses with bike racks.
Helmet donations in a “Toys for Tots” fashion.
On-street parking “picnics”
Bike lane violation antics.
Developing a Fun! side to bicycle advocacy in Louisville.

Lastly, as I mentioned the other day, I’ve been a bit stressed and preoccupied with this one thing going on in my life… I can assure you there will be more info this week as I just need to get my head on straight and write a proper post on it. After all, it will probably be submissible in court. Fucking goons.

Kentucky House Bill 88 would make it easier to prosecute reckless drivers who hit pedestrians and bicyclists. By making it clear that Kentucky will not tolerate reckless driving, HB 88 will make our roads safer for everyone and will encourage walking and bicycling.

How to Help

To pass House Bill 88, we need Rep. John Tilley, who chairs the House Judiciary Committee, to take action on the bill at the Judiciary Committee next meeting. We’re utilizing three tactics to achieve this:

Click here to find out more.

Off to Louisville Bike Summit 2… updates to follow.

Update:

Made it through the better part of Bike Summit today. Would have updated this sooner but there was a lack of electrical outlets and internet access so here I sit. While I may delve deeper into this later, right now I’ll just go over some general impressions I walked away with.

First off, it’s good to see this dialogue happening in the city. There were likely 200 or so people in attendance and even a fair number that got there by bike. With that in mind, I would like to note the lack of proper bike racks at the facility. Bike Summit in a building with no bike rack - dialed.

Second, the city seems to be more concerned with making a name for itself in the recreation venue than attempting to keep riders out on the roads alive. With goals aimed at adding nearly 300 more miles of “bike routes” and a morning dedicated to the 100 mile “Louisville Loop” these goals don’t do too much for getting people to the grocery, school and work safely by bike. With this sort of aim Louisville seems destined to keep bicyclists and pedestrians at bay. Yes there is now a complete streets program implemented in all new road construction, but that does little to serve our existing network of dangerous roads.

Lastly, I have to address what is a level of ignorance that hopefully this sort of forum helps curb and allows Louisville and other cities to progress. This became especially clear while during the engineering break out session one of the workers noted how he had never even contemplated the issue of having to make a left turn while using bike lanes that are located on the far right of roadways… WTF? Like I said, hopefully this communication between riders and the people behind planning roads and what not will just make for a more bicycle and pedestrian friendly system in the end.

That really is the bottom line here. Creating a better system. Obviously the one the country has been going by is totally fucked and it seems government at every level is realizing this. As much as Louisville Bike Summit seems like an opportunity for city bureaucrats to pat themselves on the back for their efforts it does provide an opportunity and I am happy I took part in it.

As much as I hate it, I am beginning to look at more inside the system efforts as in the end the government are the ones handling the roads at the moment - obviously. Politics and all it’s bureaucratic disasters are such a downer and I really don’t know anyone here in Louisville that’s willing to go out with me a paint sharrows all over the city… speak up if you would.

Anyway, here is a look at holding motorists more accountable in comparison with Europe over at WalkBikeCT. Got pointed to this one via Twitter thanks to or buddies Streetsblog.net

Additionally, London has decided they’re going to encourage bicyclist to ride against the flow of traffic in an effort to increase the number of bike commuters this summer. Sounds fucked, but whatever works. You can read the story for that one here.