France proposes incentive for bicycle commuting

Last week, Le Monde reported on a new Plan Vélo announced by the French Minister of Transport, Frédéric Cuvillier.  The plan, in fact, seems quite modest, but it includes an interesting idea.  The government wants to encourage employers to offer a financial incentive to employees who bike to work.

© rmounts

Under the program, Employers who sign up would pay bicycle commuting employees 25 cents (a quarter of a euro) per kilometer travelled.  So, for example, someone whose round-trip commute was 10 km per day would receive 2.50 euros, or 12.50 euros a week and 50 euros a month.

It’s not a lot, but if I were still working and lived in France (mixed emotions there), it would probably get me to ride to work.  I can think of several nice things I could buy with an extra 50 euros a month.  And maybe even a new bike every couple of years.

The incentive to the employers would be a reduction of certain employee-related payments currently made to the government.  The Transport Ministry estimates receipts from these payments would drop by about 110 million euros, an amount representing the public cost of the bicycle commuting proposal.  In addition to the incentive proposal, the Plan Vélo would encourage local governments to take advantage of a “tool box” of measures to facilitate bicycle use in urban areas.

As a measure to do something serious to reduce automobile use and carbon emissions, this Plan Vélo seems terribly limited.  In 2012, the Sarkozy government announced a similar plan with a target of having bicycles account for 10 percent of commuting trips by 2020.  According to the Le Monde article, bicycle commuting currently accounts for just 2 percent of such trips.   The Hollande government doesn't seem to be proposing any targets.   Still, the financial incentive idea is intriguing.  Assuming the government goes ahead and adopts the program, I’ll be interested to see how many employers sign up and what the response is among employees.

A new deal for cyclists in Italian cities?

Positive news from Italy this time.  The association representing Italian cities is proposing some really interesting ideas to make life easier for urban cyclists.  Earlier this week, the Associazione Nazionale Comuni Italiani (ANCI; National Association of Italian Municipalities) presented a set of draft ideas to the Minister of Infrastructure and Transport, Maurizio Lupi.

© Agence France Presse

Maybe the most remarkable of their proposals would be a change in the burden of proof in case of accidents.  In legal disputes. the "less vulnerable" vehicle would need to show that it was not responsible for damage to the "more vulnerable" vehicle, or injury to the latter's driver.  As a cyclist, it's amazing to think that if I was hit --god forbid! -- by a car in, say, Milan, the legal focus would be on the driver to show that he or she wasn't at fault.  What better way to get motorists pay more attention to cyclists.

Some other ANCI proposals would:

• Allow for bike lanes along the right side of each direction of roadways;

• Require, in certain cases, an additional light on traffic signals for cyclists giving them a head start in making right turns;

• Allow cyclists to travel in both directions on one-way streets; and

• Require apartment building owners to provide bicycle parking areas.

The city officials are taking advantage of the fact that the transportation committee in the Chamber of Deputies is preparing to revise the national traffic code (Codice della strada) and that the Minister will be submitting his ideas for revisions sometime before the end of the year.

It's thought that the bicycle measures stand a good chance of being included in the code revisions since the same officials proposing the ideas would be responsible for their implementation.

Following the Loire: Day One

Day One from Saint-Étienne to Feurs (24 July 2013)

I started with a short detour to Cycles Marcon on the rue Bergson; the street is a major thoroughfare running north in the middle of the city.  I'd forgotten to pack my cycling gloves.  The evening before, I'd found a nearly new store near the hotel called Cyclable specializing in "city bicycle riding."  I'm pleased to see new stores like this, and hope it's part of a successful trend (I came across another Cyclable branch in Orléans.)  But apparently city bicycle riders don't bother with gloves.  Cycles Marcon was a real bicycle store and I found what I needed.

Leaving Saint-Étienne, I'd planned to ride to Aurec-sur-Loire.  This was where I'd left off riding two years ago when I'd started at the source of the Loire at le Gerbier de Jonc and rode the first 200 kilometers.  But I should have studied the map better; and it should have been a topo map.  Saint-Étienne is set in a kind of bowl of hills.  A few, more or less flat routes lead out but they're mostly heavily-traveled roadways.  Probably for this reason Google maps directs a cyclist to take to the hills.  But Google maps may not know the cyclist is carrying 20 pounds of baggage.

Hills just outside of Saint-Étienne

I'd planned on averaging roughly 22 -- 25 kph.  As it turned out, between the hills and a couple of wrong turns, I probably averaged half of that for the first couple of hours.  I was getting worried that it could end up being a very long day.  At a point just west of Firminy, a town known for a le Corbusier project, Google Maps brought me to La Côte Martin.  I was facing a barely-paved pathway, way too steep to ride.  I wondered who devises these routes?  Was it some kid back at Google headquarters in Mountain View, who had no idea of the roads in this part of the world, who wanted to send me up this hill?  This wasn't going to work.  Looking at the map again, I could see there wasn't really any alternative; If I was going to go to Aurec-sur-Loire, I would have to do a lot of climbing.  At that point, it was nearly 1 p.m. and I still had about 50 km to go.  I decided I'd have to compromise a little in my commitment to ride the full length of the river.  Just ahead, along a nice, flat road, was Le Pertuiset.  It was on the river.  I could pick up my Loire route there.  It would only be 7 km downstream from Aurec.

Vacation homes at Le Pertuiset on the Lac de Grangent

But on the bridge at Le Pertuiset I saw that the road was going up again.  The Grangent Dam is about 6 km downstream from the bridge and has flooded any possible route down close to the river banks.  To go north towards Feurs I needed to climb up the D108 above the west side of the Lac de Grangent, the lake behind the dam.  Sometimes, after all the fretting, a climb can turn out actually to be fun.  From Le Pertuiset to the top of the climb at Chambles is about 7 km.  Over that distance the road rises about 200 meters (about 650 feet), which means a gradient of a little less than 3 percent.  But I didn't know that when I was riding.  All the way up I worried that the road would get steeper around the next bend.  And, at the same time, I was continually relieved that it didn't.  Most of France was suffering from a heat wave that week, including the areas around Saint-Étienne.  But long stretches of this road were shaded; I don't recall ever breaking into much of a sweat.  I also don't recall encountering more than one or two cars; several other cyclists, yes, but few, if any, cars.  At the top I felt great.  Coming to France I believed I was in decent shape.  But I wouldn't know for sure until I started riding.  The steep roads out of Saint-Étienne and the decision to turn away from La Côte Martin had made me nervous.  Here, though, I rode without any real strain.  I could handle this.

After the descent from Chambles, most of the rest of route to Feurs followed flat, straight roads.  Between the Monts du Lyonais off to the east and the Monts du Forez to the west, the Loire has created a wide, rich valley for agriculture.  I rode through fields of wheat and corn and felt for a moment like I was back in Iowa where I grew up.

"Bonheur"

I took the pieces of my bicycle out of its travel case yesterday and put it back together.  I was staying with a friend in Paris and I'd found some shade in the courtyard of her apartment building; I was hurrying to be done before the temperatures went into the 90s.  (And here I'd thought I'd be escaping Washington D.C.'s heat when I got to Paris.)  At one point, I dropped a small screw.  I found it again right away, but it occured to me then how much this whole project depends on this seemingly fragile machine.  One piece missing or broken and all the planning is up in the air.

Maybe if I gave the bike a name it would feel more like part of the family and be on its best behavior.  But I've had it for nearly ten years without knowing it as anything other than "the Hampsten," so it's probably too late for that sort naming, personification thing.  In any case, as long as I don't lose critical pieces, the bike has always (knock on wood) been highly reliable.

So I'm off for a month or riding down the Loire River.  Last night, the apartment across the courtyard seemed to offer what I'm glad to take as an encouraging sign of what's ahead.

Grande Pioggia New York

Well, there was plenty of water involved in last Sunday's Gran Fondo New york, but it wasn't the Hudson.  It was the rain.  It seemed to have come, more or less, out of nowhere.  Last Thursday, when I packed, the weather report said sunny with temperatures in the mid- to high-60s.  And that was still pretty much the prediction on Friday and Saturday after we'd arrived in New York.  But Sunday morning, when I looked out the apartment window at about 5 a.m., the streets were wet.  The weather report now showed a chance of rain, but only 30 percent through the morning, with the probability going up to 50 percent about 2 p.m.  I figured that would be an incentive pushing me to get done.  So I set off, worried more about keeping warm, wearing DC Velo kit -- arm warmers, a vest and a long-sleeved windbreaker -- over the regulation chartreuse GFNY jersey.  On the George Washington Bridge I think we were mostly worried about getting underway.

But, as soon as we left the bridge's protection, we met light, chilly rain.  So much for the 70 percent change of no rain.  It was 100 percent the entire day.   Early on, I sort of wished for some mechanical failure to take me out without my having to think about it.  But that didn't happen and, in fact, I felt pretty good.  Then I thought, okay, I'll make it to Bear Mountain, the half-way point, and knowing after that that I was heading home should keep me going.  

It didn't.  At about mile 70, the Rockland County Boulders baseball stadium, I was wet to the skin and couldn't stop shivering.  I climbed off.  But at least I had lots of company.

 Maybe there was more excitement around the finishing area when the earlier riders had come in.  But by the time the bus delivered us dropouts, it looked pretty sad.  The few people left were huddled under the tents trying to stay dry and moderately warm.  Riders straggled across the finish line.
Eventually, a truck ferrying back and forth to transport bikes down to those of us who'd dropped out, delivered mine.  By then it was 7:30 p.m.  I think we were just about the last group of riders taking the Weehawken Ferry over to Manhattan and a warm shower.  But despite all of that, I'll probably try again
next year.

River rides

I've had a lot of posts here about rivers.  This is another one, but a little different.  Sunday, I'll be riding my bicycle along the west side of the Hudson River from the George Washington Bridge up to Bear Mountain, then back down to Weehawken, New Jersey.  I'll be riding in the 4th annual "Grand Fondo New York."  The route is on the map below.  This is a semi-competitive race/ride modelled on similar events in Italy, France, and several other European countries.  Unfortunately, even though we're following a route whose challenging ups and downs were more or less created by the river, the event organizers have said virtually nothing about that body of water on our shoulders.  I suspect most of the time I'll be riding, as the wonderful French phrase has it, le nez dans le guidon (literally, "my nose in the handlebars"; figuratively, my nose to the grindstone).  But I'll try to report back later on whatever scenes along the way I'll be able to recall.

 

Two cities' plans for cycling

Washington D.C. wants 25 percent of all trips to be taken by walking or bicycle by the year 2032.  The Sustainable DC Plan doesn't include data on current bicycle use, but from commuting data it might be inferred that about 3 or 4 percent of current trips are by bike and about 12 percent are on foot.  So the District wants to see these two forms of getting around grow by about nine or ten percent over two decades.  If the two increase proportionately that would mean about an 8 percent increase in walking and a 2 or 3 percent increase in bicycle use.  That's over twenty years!  I don't know about walking, but that's a terribly modest objective for bicycle use, if it's any objective at all.

If the District was really interested in building bicycles into transportation plans it might look to Strasbourg, France, a city in the eastern part of the country on the border with Germany.

© Frederick Florin/Getty

Over the next ten years the Strasbourg metropolitan urban council will be creating a network of bicycle lanes consisting of three concentric rings and nine connecting spokes.  These will be dedicated lanes designed to allow riders to maintain speeds of at least 12 mph (20 kph).  They will be wide enough for two cyclists riding abreast.  Already in Strasbourg cycling accounts for 8 percent of all trips.  And they're aiming to increase that to 16 percent by 2025.

Certainly there are differences in culture and local experience with cycling.  But even allowing for that, one city seems to offer an example of how bicycles can be made a real part of transportation planning.  The other, despite the flourish of a "sustainability plan," seems to be treating them as an afterthought.

Sustainability in the District of Columbia

The government of the District of Columbia, the place where I live, wants to move the city toward "sustainability."  Last week, it released the "Sustainable DC Plan," which it says "lays out a path forward to make the District the healthiest, greenest, most livable city in the nation over the next 20 years."  That's an excellent objective, but ambitious to say the least.

This ambition drew praised from David Alpert in his Greater, Greater DC blog, a site I've only recently discovered and enjoy reading.  But I'm not so sure the City's Plan merits quite so much praise.  As they say, the longest journey begins with the first steps, and it's not clear  that the Plan includes any specific commitment to taking them.

For example, in the transportation area, by 2032, the City Plan wants three-quarters of all trips to be by public transit, bicycle or walking.  Currently, based on commuting data, those account for about 54 percent of trips.  In other words, in the next two decades the City needs to find ways to reduce trips by car from about 46 percent at present to 25 percent.  That seems a real challenge.  Yet, as Alpert notes, most of the measures the Plan describes are thing the City is already planning -- streetcars, more bike lanes, and more performance parking (charging more in more desirable locales).

Similarly, the Plan hopes to see 250,000 more people living in the District in 20 years.  But it doesn't appear to say anything about where they'll live or whether new housing will have any relationship to transit systems.

I suppose it's useful to put the idea of sustainability out there.  (Of course, as the Plan notes, this is about "greenness" and "livability," not autarky.)  Among other things, it gives smart growth advocates something to push towards.  But if it's going to be more than a campaign document for the mayor's possible reelection effort, it's going to need a lot of pushing to translate targets into projects.

Cycling made part of EU transportation plans

The map below the stuff of daydreams and maybe some day reality.  The map traces 14 bicycle routes up and down and back and forth across Europe.  Some are more developed than others, but all of them can be used for long-distance tourism or short trips, even commuting if one happens to be along your route to work.  I know something of Route 6, the one running from the Atlantic to the Black Sea.  Most of the route in France follows the Loire River and Lynda and I once rode a rented tandem along a few kilometers.

Even though the routes have been mapped, much work remains.  Surfacing, signage, by-passes, connectors, the sorts of details needed to make the routes accessible and safe, which, in turn, can foster tourism-related businesses, like bed & breakfasts and bike touring companies.  This has already been the experience along the Loire where "La Loire à Vélo" is nearly as familiar a part of the valley's tourist landscape as the chateaux.  The European Cycling Federation (ECF) hopes to see the network completed by 2020.

Earlier this week, network supporters, and day dreamers like me, celebrated a decision by the E.U.'s Transport and Tourism Commission that should help make this possible.  The Commission voted to include the cycling network within funding guidelines for Europe's Trans-European Transport Network.  The vote means that cycling will be eligible for several kinds of EU financial help, including grants, loans, and loan guarantees.  The Commission's decision still has to be ratified by the EU Parliament next year.  And I suspect individual cycling projects will have to fight their way through national and local authorities.  Still, the ECF and others are celebrating because it gets them into the game.

Source: EuroVelo Network. http://www.eurovelo.org/routes/

 

Bergamo photos

It's past time to put up a post.  My Italian lessons have been keeping me busy and I keep finding that the time when I might write something gets used differently.  There's grocery shopping, exploring the Città Alta (Upper City), finding my way around Bergamo proper, and enjoying dinners with the Terzis and their friends.  That has been one of the really special things about this stay.

Anyway, I've been taking pictures here and there, nothing like the number I did during the Umbria photo workshop, but some to record the world seen from my apartment and a little of what I've seen as I've walked around.  So this post, and maybe more, will focus on photographs.

This was the view from my apartment window looking northeast.  The first week I was here, it rained and the temperatures dropped to the low to mid-30s. 

 The next morning when the sun came up, the mountains had what people were saying was the earliest snowfall in the mountains that they could remember.

 A few days later, we finally had sunshine.

 My apartment, the vantage point for the pictures above, is that box on the roof just in front of the bell tower on the church of Sant'Allesandro della Croce, the patron saint of Bergamo.  The pictures were taken from from the left side.  Fortunately, the last bells are at 9 p.m., I think; and they wait until 7 a.m. to restart.  This photo was taken from the wall surrounding the Città Alta, the oldest part of Bergamo.  The street layout in the Città Alta still shows the influence of the original Roman settlers and many of the major buildings -- churches and public buildings -- were built in the medieval and renaissance periods.

 All the rain has made bike rides difficult, but I finally got out last Wednesday afternoon.  I set off without having any particular route; I was riding into the Brembana Valley and hoped, after braving busy roads for a few kilometers, I might be rewarded with some small, lightly-traveled mountain roads.  Not quite.  I made it up to Zogno, here, about 15 km north of Bergamo.  I did manage to find some quiet side roads above the main road running along the river, but not enough of them.  I've now talked to a couple of avid riders who live in the area and know the climbs, so I'm hoping for something better next time out.

Seagull Century

Most of my focus yestereday was on the rear wheel of the bicycle in front of me.  The hundred miles of the Seagul Century goes by a lot quicker when you're in a pace line and yesterday that's where I was most of the time. 

The Seagull Century is a "show and go" ride organized by Salisbury University in Salisbury Marlyand and may be the flattest 100-mile bicycle ride in the U.S.  The organizers offer two different 100-mile routes; a few years ago the original route got too crowded with over 5,000 riders and they added a second.  There is also a shorter, 62-mile "metric century."  Riders start from the university campus in a mass of colorful jerseys and swirling bicycles funneled into the tunnel under Ocean Highway and formed into a long flowing line of cyclists off on their day's adventure.  The day is new, bodies are rested and feuled with last night's pasta, and there's lots of conversation in the peloton.  On a day with good weather like yesterday, the early October sunrise comes a little after 7 a.m.  There's mist hanging over some of the fields.

The day warmed up and the mist burned off pretty quickly, and the line of riders thinned out within an hour or so.  I rolled along nicely with a group of five or six to the second rest stop at about mile 45.  There were only two of us to the third stop at Assateague Island.  And I was on my own for most of the next 20 miles to the last stop and it wasn't fun.  But after stretching out on the grass and eating a bit, I was ready for the last portion, especially since it was only 16 miles.  Not too far down the road my last paceline of the day came by and I came in feeling really good.  Feeling much better than these guys.

I've done the ride now maybe eight or nine times, not every year becuse several years we've been away travelling.  But now that we have friends with a house in the area, who've given us pretty much a standing invitation, Lynda and I come more regularly.  It's now the default event for the Columbus Day weekend.