Checking in; Bike Fort Worth

Apologies for not having posted in a while. School has gotten busy for me and will be for a few days more yet.

In the meantime, though, have a look, if you haven't already, at Bike Fort Worth, the (truly) comprehensive bike plan the city passed this past week. As you'll see, the city is not investing only in infrastructure but also in cyclist and motorist education, too. Here's an excerpt from Fort Worthology's overview of it:

Bike Fort Worth is a radical shift in transportation planning here in Fort Worth. Our current bike transportation network is a paltry 100 miles, most of which is off-street recreational trails and the rest being a handful of sharrow routes and a scant 6.4 miles of dedicated bike lanes. Bike Fort Worth will massively increase our bike network to nearly 1,000 miles - 224.7 miles of off-street trails, with the majority of the network shifting to on-street: 1.4 miles of bus & bike-only lanes in downtown, 218.3 miles of sharrow routes, and a huge 480.3 miles of dedicated bike lanes. The plan also calls for radical increases in the amount and quality of bike parking, minimum bike parking requirements in zoning, establishment of bike commuter facilities at transit hubs to tie into our bus, commuter rail, and planned modern streetcar systems, education programs for cyclists and drivers, new traffic ordinances to (among other things) require drivers to yield to bikes and to give at least 3 feet of clearance when passing, establishment of a city bike fleet for city staff use instead of cars in the urban core, establishment of bike counts, and much more. The plan calls for innovative solutions like Bicycle Boulevards, bike boxes, contra-flow lanes, physically separated cycle tracks, colored bike lanes, bike-only traffic signals, and more. The plan aims to triple or more bike commuting in Fort Worth by 2020, double or more the amount of all bike trips, reduce crashes by at least ten percent, and attain a Bicycle Friendly rating from the League of American Bicyclists (Austin is currently the only city in Texas with such a designation).

All this is estimated to cost around $158 million over the next ten years. It's clear to me, though, that Fort Worth has gone all in on this bike-friendly thing; it'll be more than a little interesting to see how other cities in the region respond to this.

Local blog round-up (Super Sunday edition)

An antique bike in New Orleans' French Quarter. Image found here.

In the spirit of Super Sunday, here at the top of this week's Local Blog Round-up you'll find some links to some prominent New Orleans cycling blogs. But Colts fans shouldn't despair; at the bottom of this post you'll find an equal number of Indianapolis cycling blogs.

N'awlins blogs: NolaCycle Bike Map Project, What I Saw Riding My Bike Around Today [UPDATE, Feb.8: have a look at What I Saw's chronicling of "mass high fivery" in the Quarter after the game], On the Rivet with Randy.



Hmm: "Local" and "blog" in the title are a bit troublesome, as they were last week. Ah, well. Things do happen elsewhere than the area cycling blogosphere that seem, to your correspondent, to be of interest or in some way pertain to that which we're about here at this site. So, like, Deal. And for my part, I'll come up with some permanent title for this feature that is more inclusive.

Friday's Eagle had this story about a talk given here in town by Randal O'Toole of the Cato Institute. According to the article, O'Toole's talk wasn't especially Wichita-centric; it was more of a general critique of recent tendencies in urban design to create a more walkable urban core, as well as the usual methods of encouraging businesses to build downtown and the financing of such projects. Cato's reputation as a libertarian think tank precedes it, so O'Toole's observations should have come as no surprise to his audience. Personally, I'm puzzled by O'Toole's implicit support of a car-centric infrastructure; that infrastructure is expensive to build and maintain and so requires lots of (taxpayer) money, not to mention government regulation: two things that good Libertarians would resist. I'd think that the bicycle would be an excellent choice for Official Vehicle of the Libertarian Party. But I do admit I was glad to see this bit in the article:

O'Toole encountered some pushback from members of the audience who said there are a lot of Wichitans who want more walkways and bike paths.

"I don't think it's a fad like you're saying," said resident Janice Bradley.

Even better is the give-and-take in the comments section. Those supportive of a more walkable downtown acquit themselves quite well there; they respond to O'Toole's defenders there with actual, well, arguments in favor of walkability.

Keep in mind that at a certain level, the comments are worth only what they are worth. Who knows, really, the extent to which the ideals of bike-friendliness, walkability, and all the rest are becoming more prominent ideas here in town. The fact remains, though, that people are making arguments on their behalf in public fora, and that is very much to the good.

I don't think Kansas City has a Cycle Chic blog yet, but via Kansas Cyclist comes an announcement of something that not even all Cycle Chic cities can claim: a Tweed Ride, to be held on April 3rd at Loose Park. As Randy notes, Tweed Rides are popping up in lots of places with fairly well-established cycling communities; the idea is to evoke something of the elegance of cycling from a century before and have a good time while doing so (and I also think I detect a humorous hitching onto of the Steampunk movement). The KC riders' organizers are pretty self-aware (pay very close attention to the prize categories, for example), but their larger purpose is, I think, the same as that of promoters of Cycle Chic and, thus, a serious one: Not only do you not need to be an athlete to ride a bike, you don't need to dress like one, either.

On to the blogs, now:

Two bloggers went out in last weekend's snow and brought back pics. Over at Adventure Monkey, Eric went for a Sunday ride in the snow. Here's what he saw. Meanwhile, Robert of River City Cyclist went out with a friend along the Arkansas River path and later posted these pictures.

From Bike Topeka come two items of interest. First is another very nice write-up, this one in the Washburn Review, about Topeka's new Community Cycle Project. The other is that Topeka is participating in a pilot project, sponsored by the Kansas Department of Health and Environment, called the Capital City Wellness Project; part of that project is called the Bikes for Wellness Program. Cyclists who have a program sticker on their helmets can show this sticker at participating businesses and receive discounts for their goods. I would think that something like this would be easy and inexpensive to implement here in Wichita--and not necessarily through government agencies, either . . .

Speaking of bicycle collectives, Wichita's own version of that enterprise extends an invitation to Riders of Rohan's two-year anniversary celebration on February 26th.

And--as promised . . .

A scene from Indianapolis's burgeoning bike culture. Image found here.

Indy bike blogs are very hard to come by--surprising, given the national reputation of The Indy Cog. I gathered via my bumping around that Indy cycling culture is about as nascent as Wichita's is. Having said that, though, if folks from Indy happen to find their way here and know of some good cycling blogs, by all means be sure to let me know in comments. Urban Indy is not, strictly speaking, a bike blog, but one interested in livability issues; meanwhile, there's Indy Bikehiker, the blog of a self-described "theological jackalope" (a Wesleyan-oriented advocate of peace-and-justice issues) who also happens to be an avid cyclist.

That's all for this week. Enjoy the game!

The Daily Commute III: Things thought and observed--and a Thank You

The astute among my readers have no doubt noticed that for a blog called "Cycling in Wichita," there's been precious little posting about cycling here since I began posting again. Now that the new semester has begun and my bike is up and running, I should be able to post more regularly about things I see while I'm out and about. Yesterday I rode out for the first time this semester, about which more later.

A couple of words about my commutes this spring. Yes: it's plural. I teach at McConnell four days a week, but my schedule is such that only Tuesdays, for now, work well for me to ride there on my bicycle. I may add Mondays to the list after spring break (one of my afternoon classes will end then), but we'll have to see. I'll also need to change the route map I've linked to in the right gutter: It's the same up to where Mt. Vernon crosses I-135; from there, I now take the Canal path south to Pawnee, get on Minneapolis south to Wassal, then take the footbridge across I-135 to make use of the new-ish path that runs past Joyland and then Gypsum Creek to George Washington. It's longer than the old route but takes about the same amount of time because I don't have nearly as much traffic to contend with. On Fridays I tutor in Andover, and beginning this semester (though not this Friday because the weather is supposed to be bad) I'll try out this route. I know it's not at all direct, but 13th in town is heavily trafficked in the mornings; besides, I'm in no hurry. I'll let you know how it goes.

Even though it was in the upper 20s or low 30s yesterday morning, I rode to work wearing cargo shorts, a lined windbreaker over a t-shirt, and gloves; aside from my ears getting cold, I was quite comfortable: It was sunny and there was no wind to speak of. I know, though, that such an outfit won't work on days when it's cold and the wind is blowing or it's raining. I saw a couple of other riders who looked like they were commuting to work, but judging from the gravel in the bike lanes over on Mt. Vernon, I imagine that winter weather reduces our numbers. Some drivers on the stretch of Mt. Vernon between Southeast and Broadway, on my afternoon commute, seemed a bit impatient with me as they passed (the street is pretty narrow there, and it was rush hour as well), but no one honked or cursed me or tried to injure me.

One nice addition since last summer: at the intersections of Mt. Vernon with Main and Water (each of those streets is one way in that part of town), there are now three-way stops at those intersections (Mt. Vernon traffic used to have preference there). The stops have the effect of slowing traffic a little more, thus benefiting cyclists in the lanes.

Just a quick visit for a moment to the Wichita front in the tensions between cyclists riding on streets and motorists: I spoke with two colleages yesterday at some length about my riding into work. Neither rides a bike to work (though one of them, in her college days thirty years ago, regularly rode from Wichita to El Dorado), but each is supportive of increasing cycling infrastructure on streets and to the rights of cyclists to be on the street in the absence of bike lanes. But, neither can abide cyclists who behave as though traffic laws don't apply to them but who, in the same breath, ask that motorists respect them. My colleagues, I repeat, are not opposed to seeing us on the street. They welcome us, in fact; they understand that, times becoming what they are becoming, having more cyclists on the road is a good thing. What they do not welcome is scofflaw behavior on the street.

Rather than wade into debates about Idaho Stops and such this morning, I just want to complicate the discussion a bit by suggesting that it's a mistake to turn the dynamic into a simple Us vs. Them debate. That leads to polarization, and we see how well that's working in Congress these days: after a while, no one is really listening to each other. Speaking frankly, cyclists' justifying running red lights by arguing things like cars are bigger than us sounds whiny, even if it is true. Semis are bigger than Mini Coopers; should that give Minis the right to, oh, drive underneath the trailer if they so desire? Cyclists are on much firmer ground when they assert that under the law, when they are on the street they, too, are operators of vehicles and should be regarded by others as such. But that also should mean that cyclists should behave as though they regard themselves as such, as subject to those same laws.

Some of those motorists out there, they like seeing us out there; we make some of them feel guilty for not being out there themselves. Good. Especially in a town like Wichita, we can't afford to tick those people off.

Enough of that. On to some happier (if self-centered) news. One of my above-mentioned colleagues is involved in the College Hill Neighborhood Association and had, as she put it, a teeny-tiny hand in discussions regarding the Douglas Design District's recent streetscape proposal. As we talked about the plan and its likelihood of being implemented, she told me that in discussions someone used something I had written somewhere in support of its Complete Street design. It of course pleases and gratifies me to know that I contributed to that discussion in some small, positive way. I can't tell, just by looking at hit counters, who is reading and to what good or nefarious uses (or any use at all, for that matter) they put what they find here. This blog doesn't receive a lot of traffic to begin with, and much--perhaps the majority--of the traffic is not from Wichita. It's hard to know, therefore, whether this blog is doing what I intend for it here in the Air Capital (see the banner for a statement of that intention). I have a little evidence now that people are reading and thinking about this stuff. I am glad. And I thank you for reading.

Returning

The human body is not designed to go faster than fifteen miles per hour. Our sight, our ability to interpret things, to process things is bicycling speed. Anything higher is against human evolution. And I'm convinced that as people end up spending more of their lives at a human speed, they're going to be happier.

--Dan Burden, early-'70s cycling advocate, as quoted in Jeff Mapes, Pedaling Revolution, p. 28

Cycling in Wichita is back, though not (yet) with a vengeance. Too much catching up to do with regard to this blog's subject. However, I hope to begin doing some of that catching up this morning and afternoon and have a couple of posts up today.

I received Pedaling Revolution from my in-laws as a Christmas present and have been reading it. Much of it is familiar, but not all, and seeing as its tone is that of the passionate advocate, it preaches pretty directly to this particular choir. But the quoted passage is here as an indirect explanation for why this blog has languished for so long: Due to circumstances beyond my control having to do with my wife's health, I'd not been able to live my life at human speed--some days, at any speed. Regular riding, and blogging about it, became lesser concerns.

It's hard to type when one's fingers are crossed, but I think I can say that things are now such that I can update here on a more or less regular basis. It's good to be back.

Just what are we promoting here?

(That is, "we" as in "I" and "here" as in this space.)

Over at Carbon Trace recently, Andy has been looking a little more carefully at the vocabulary he employs as an advocate of cycling. In response to my first Front Porch Cycle Chic post, for example, he examines--and decides to ban from his vocabulary--the word "lifestyle" when discussing cycling. Then this past Saturday, he posts the at first startlingly-titled "I No Longer Like 'Commuting.'" Here's what he means:

I certainly commute to work by bicycle, and I recommend it to anyone willing to give it a try. But there is general cultural block that makes riding a bicycle to work seem terribly difficult — especially for women. How to dress. Fear of sweating. Time pressure. Social pressure. Traffic fear. All of these and more play a role in the perception that bicycle commuting is difficult.

I now think emphasizing bicycle commuting as a part of bicycle advocacy is a bad idea. It just throws up too many culturally-bound barriers and fears.

He decides that a better way to promote cycling is to emphasize its utility through his idea of "the 1-Mile Solution" (which I've also discussed).

At one level, I could easily say: Well, part of Andy's day job is teaching rhetoric--of course he's going to fret over little stuff like this, poor guy. But you know, MY day job is teaching English, so language is kind of a big deal with me, too. So, I got to thinking about the cause(s) that Cycling in Wichita speaks on behalf of and the language it uses in doing so. After all: I took up cycling at all primarily because of its usefulness for getting to and from work cheaply. I thought back to the conceiving of this blog when I was thinking about its title, some clunky versions of which would have included some form of "commute." I have spoken many, many times on behalf of the connectivity of already-existing bike paths so as to make them more useful to would-be bike-commuters, and on behalf of the inclusion of bike lanes in future planning to facilitate on-street cycling. Though I have been known to engage in riding just for the sheer pleasure of it (on Saturday, for example, I rode to the Old Town Farmers' market and then visited several of the Delano District's neighborhood garage sales for the best reason of all: Just Because), I barely mention recreational or sport cycling here. And finally, I'm doing a little thinking about a project, soon to be announced here, that I came up with specifically with the needs of bike-commuters in mind. So, I asked myself if all that may have caused some of the more casual visitors to this site to shy away from the idea of just cycling more, and to more places, than they might otherwise.

Short answer: I hope not.

As regular visitors here know, I don't post exclusively on the details of my own commute or on commuting generally. But I do have lots to say about re-framing the way cycling has historically been thought of here in favor of a more-inclusive view whose ultimate goal is a bike-friendlier city: the above-mentioned connectivity between already existing bike paths and more on-street cycling-specific infrastructure, yes; but also fundamental re-thinking about street design and development in general: how and where to design walkable (read: livable) urban environments--something I hope the good people of WDDC are giving thought to, of course, but so also should every neighborhood association. The less car-centric and more people-centric city planning is, the more livable a city becomes.

I don't know . . . maybe Cycling in Wichita is too narrow a title . . .

Some new links you may be interested in

Pirates' Alley, in New Orleans' French Quarter. Imagine some spaces like this--a mix of shops, restaurants, and residences, through which automobile traffic is severely restricted--in Wichita's downtown, the Delano District, the 21st Street area, etc. A fella can dream, right? Image via the Project for Public Spaces, about which more below.

Over the past couple of days, I've run across various places and linked to them over in the right gutter. I don't have a real sense of how often those link lists even get looked at, much less used, so I wanted to round up a few of the more significant ones here.

First and foremost, I want to note for you the recent appearance of River City Cyclist in the still-small but expanding Wichita cycling-blog universe. Though it's still early in its existence, Robert, its creator, is thinking big: he even has a separate forum set up. I hope you'll link to him and pay him a visit.

As I mentioned a couple of days ago that I would do, the gutter now features a list of U.S. blogs in the style of the venerable Copenhagen Cycle Chic. Yes: the pretty-girls-on-bicycles aesthetic has its own immediate and obvious virtues; my larger intention in linking to them, though, as I said the other day, is to encourage Wichitans during these days of envisioning what a more livable city could look like to look at these images and ask ourselves, Why can't we have an urban core and a Delano District that foster this, too, along with paths and bike lanes from outlying areas into those areas--and not just on weekends? A city whose streets feel safe enough for women to ride bicycles in street clothes becomes a safer city, period [EDIT: Right on cue . . .]--and, not coincidentally, a city where people (and their employers) will want to live and work.

More imagination-candy: Take a gander at the Project for Public Spaces--a visual treat for those of us who look at all those wasted or underutilized lots and buildings in Downtown, the Delano District and elsewhere in the city and imagine what could be done with them. The concept is a simple one: Attractive, multi-use public spaces not only attract visitors; with the right planning, they attract businesses and residents, too. Located at or near transportation crossroads (in our city, that would be things like intersecting bus routes and bike lanes/paths), they can become the focal points for high-density development that, if done right, creates spaces where people genuinely live--like, for example, shop for food there and not have to leave the neighborhood to get groceries--and not just sleep in overpriced loft apartments.

At any rate, Project for Public Spaces is part of a small gathering of links over in the right gutter called "Community, Urbanism, Policy, Politics." If this sort of stuff is at all interesting to you, I hope you'll spend some time clicking and following links . . . and not forget to attend some meetings.

Douglas & Main bait

As you can't help but see, we're trying out the John Brown-on-a-bike image as a header for the blog. I've been surprised that each time I've used it, no one has commented on the image; I have no idea what that might mean. Meanwhile, lately I've been wanting to do something to enliven the blog's look. The Minima template is, well, minimum: on its own, it conveys exactly zero sense of what cycling in Wichita--the activity itself as well as the blog--is "about."

Too much? (Not just size (the image might need some cropping); I don't at all intend for it to convey the image that I or others on bikes are terrorizing the city; on the other hand, it appeals to me because of its implicit reference to advocacy for cycling issues.) Too joke-y? Not joke-y enough? Should it be more Wichita-centric? How do locals/Kansans see it? How do out-of-staters and foreigners (this blog somehow attracts a fair number of European visitors) read it?

Let me know in comments; I'd especially appreciate knowing if you're local or from out of town, if I don't already know that about you. If you'd prefer to e-mail me your comments, write me at "blogmeridian AT sbcglobal DOT net"

Hither and Yon #4

I have been away longer than intended. I had intended to spend only the Memorial Day weekend in Topeka but ended up staying until Sunday, helping my father-in-law, as part of a big landscaping project at the in-laws' house, move lots and lots of rocks ranging from "inch-and-a-half" gravel to rocks the approximate shape and only somewhat smaller than the state of Ohio. And summer school began yesterday. I think, though, that now I'll be able to maintain something like a regular posting schedule for most of the summer.

A round-up of items regarding cycling and other livability/sustainability issues:

**Regarding my recent post about community bike shops, Mike James of the Wichita Bicycle Collective noted both in comments and via an e-mail to me that it's a long-term goal of the Collective to establish just such a shop. If you have bikes, bike parts or, most importantly, time to donate to this project, write him at "mike AT wichitabicyclecollective DOT org."

**Via the Kansas Transportation Online community comes an announcement of a free webinar on Complete Streets on June 11. The full announcement follows:

FREE COMPLETE STREETS AND CSS WEBINAR
-> According to the May 19th issue of PBIC News, "ContextSensitiveSolutions.org and the Federal Highway Administration will present a free webinar on June 11, 2009, from 2:00-3:30 PM EST to discuss the role of Complete Streets in creating Context Sensitive Solutions (CSS) that provide safe and efficient transportation options for all users.
"The 1.5 hour-long webinar will provide an overview of the Federal Highways Administration perspective on Complete Streets, including a discussion on the importance of pedestrian and bicycle issues, and what federal programs and policies are available to support communities in their Complete Streets efforts."
Link to Join the Meeting: http://tinyurl.com/od5h9g
On the login page, enter as a guest by typing your full name and clicking the "Enter Room" button. Login to the conference at least 10 minutes prior to the start time to secure your space.
Phone Number to Join the Audio Portion of the Conference:
800-779-1509
Password: 4033692

**Some of you have mentioned seeing my letter to the editor in the Eagle that, at least online, appeared on Friday May 22. Here's the letter, in full:

Road partners

I hope Wichitans will come to consider cycling as not just for recreation but also as a legitimate and potentially significant mode of transportation in our city that should be planned for and encouraged accordingly. Streets that are safer for cyclists are safer for everyone who uses them, and fewer cars on the road mean reduced gas consumption and less noise, congestion and pollution.

I urge our elected officials and planning commissions to be more proactive in developing, prioritizing and implementing projects that conceive of cyclists as full partners in our city's transportation network.

And, in case you're curious, here are the responses it garnered:

they can't even get their regular road planning together. you think they they will find a way to fit bicycles in comfortably? maybe when kellogg gets finished. ha.

-----

AMEN, mr [B.]!! critical mass next friday, donut whole @ 5:30

-----

Mr [B.], there are few people as self absorbed and self righteous as bicyclers. You and others like you belong on the sidewalks, not in the streets. I am fine with bike lanes but any bike on the street proper should be ticketed, impounded, and the rider left to walk home. This is Kansas, not a high density urban city, even buses can't make money on our density! Please stay out of my street, I will not drive quietly behind you!

-----

[in response to the above comment] drivers like you are the problem, not the cyclists. You call Mr. [B.] self absorbed and self righteous and then exhibit the very characteristics you accuse him of!

Under the laws of the state of Kansas, bicyclists have the same rights and responsibilities as drivers of vehicles. Perhaps you missed that chapter in the drivers handbook.

-----

... and another thing... cyclists can be ticketed for riding on the sidewalk unless there are signs specifically permiting it, like downtown. Sidewalks are for pedestrians (hence the word "walks"). Bicycles are considered vehicles under Kansas law.

One quick observation: even the most vocal objector to my letter writes, "I am fine with bike lanes." So, s/he and I have more in common with each other than s/he thinks we do. My alleged self-absorption and self-righteousness aside, if this is the worst that the Wichita comment-o-sphere can offer up by way of vitriol directed at cyclists, I'd say those of us interested in seeing a bike-friendlier Wichita may be further along in changing people's minds than we know.

"The Hobby Economy": Not just for your mama's basement anymore?

Deluded by grandeur, or a worker-bee in the new economy? Image found here.

Via Andrew Sullivan comes what is, in effect, an economic answer to--and justification for(!)--the question, "Why do we blog?": "Hobby Economy," by Rob Horning. You'll want to read the whole post, especially if, like me, you even find yourself wondering what good(s) (in all its senses) blogging on things like, oh, I don't know, riding a bicycle around Wichita contributes to the real-world commonweal. But what follows are some especially pithy passages that ask us to consider re-thinking traditional notions of economies, commodities, the relationship between labor and wages, etc. (Note: The passages are cut-and-pasted from Horning's post; all wording is his. Emphases, however, are mine.):

[T]he internet, as a relatively affordable and powerful means of production available to many noncapitalists, has perhaps started to make possible an alternative to wage legitimation of labor. Tyler Cowen, in a post from a month or so ago, responded to BusinessWeek economist Michael Mandel’s theory that the alleged productivity gains from the IT boom of the past decade and a half were illusory. Cowen writes, “My take is this: there was some productivity growth but much of it fell outside of the usual cash and revenue-generating nexus. Maybe you will live until 83 rather than 81.5 and your pain reliever will work better. In the meantime you will read blogs and gaze upon beautiful people using your Facebook account. Those are gains to consumer surplus, but they don’t prop until the revenue-generating sectors of the economy as one might have expected.” In other words, gains in productivity derived from things like the internet aren’t showing up as more money in our pockets, and they are not showing up as corporate profit, but they do exist in a kind of nascent alternative economy. The “consumer surplus” is being generated outside of capitalist structures, outside of the market, though it is still occurring within a capitalist, consumerist society. It’s being made through activity that has in the past been generally dismissed as hobby behavior—collaborative open-source projects, online content production and archiving, tagging information, sharing and organizing useful data, etc., etc. The internet amasses this effort, consolidates it, distributes the example and rewards of it, and draws more people into contributing.

[snip]

Weirdly, I feel fortunate to be able to be motivated to do all this work for free. The source of that motivation remains obscure to me, but it’s clearly a product of the (perhaps imaginary) audience the internet appears to marshal for my activity. Getting paid might even discourage me. Right now, I keep writing in part because my motives are obscure. They taunt and provoke me, make me restless and frustrated with procrastinating. If there was a cash payment involved, I’d know exactly why I was doing it, and would feel much better about procrastinating and putting in only the amount of time I thought I was being paid for. I suppose there’s a chance that I like not having a price attached to what I am doing here because it frees me from having to see how little it is really worth. But the more ambiguous rewards, those that the internet as a means of production allows for, seem to be more generative—one must keep trying different things to try to secure them.

[snip]
Re technological innovations on the Web such as open-source software:

Since no wages are paid to produce them, and they generally don’t cost anything once they are made, they are outside of the market; yet they exist, and innovation is clearly being harvested there. But the use of innovation and productivity to justify income inequality doesn’t hold up—innovation is taking place outside the income-distribution system; the winners in that system are gaming in in some other way—through financial chicanery recently.

[snip]

If our social production in our spare time on the internet is where we experience the true gains in our life—if that is where we notice marginal improvement, if that is where innovations beneficial to society are being developed more or less spontaneously (see Clay Shirky’s book)—a sensible society would permit us to spend more time doing that stuff. The market and wages don’t direct us to do it, but we do it anyway. Theoretically (and this is getting pretty techno-utopian), we will be able forgo wages (work less) in favor of such social production, since the rewards we get from online participation come cheap. Whether or not employers will be so flexible is another question—traditionally, according to Marx, employers must purchase our labor in blocks of time so as to squeeze surplus value out of us.

An important question is whether this nascent hobby economy now developing alongside the capitalist one has become symbiotic with capitalism—is it helping to perpetuate a system that would otherwise become intolerable without the outlet that it provides, while feeding traditional capitalism with innovations to keep it dynamic?

This last segment is especially intriguing to ponder, in that some descriptions of capitalism-as-system-of-power contend that that which could potentially challenge capital's hegemony becomes co-opted by it so as to render it harmless or, at least, less-threatening. Still, the Internet economy--the exchanging of information and ideas--is clearly the engine driving recent discussions popping up everywhere, it seems, about the need to re-think and, even, re-engineer most if not all of that which has made possible our consumerist economy (most philosophically at Front Porch Republic; pragmatically at any number of the newish urbanism blogs). It is way too early to know how this new economic model will effect real change, but the ubiquity of the 'Nets makes it clear that it will, and profoundly.

UPDATE: Karen of Delano Wichita kindly linked to this post and added both some links in the same vein and some ruminating on existentialist questions pertaining to the Delano District. Local folks--especially those interested in thinking about notions of neighborhood and community that aren't entirely contingent on state action (or lack thereof) or on the usual ways of thinking about economies--should pay a visit over there and, maybe, get inspired.

More catching up . . .

The poster-art for Art of the Bicycle, to be held this year on July 31. Image found here.

Some links of possible interest, some cycling-related, some not:

Cycling in Wichita has now joined the Streetsblog network of blogs. Streetsblog is part of the Livable Streets Initiative, a grassroots movement comprised of bloggers interested in urban transportation and infrastructure issues. I think what joining means practically for this blog is that they'll link to the occasional post here. So, like, cool.

Sunday's Eagle had a nice story by Denise Neil on Wichita's one-man local-blog aggregator (and very good friend of this blog and my other blog), Bobby Rozzell of Douglas and Main. Go and read, and note the passing reference to a blog kept by "a passionate cyclist." Given my long hiatus, I confess to cringing a bit when i read that . . .

That same article also makes reference to "a pack of opinionated Delano residents." The leader of that particular pack would be Karen of Delano Wichita: the place to go for news about the Delano and discussions of Delano-specific issues. The big news from her blog is that she and others have plans to begin a Farmers' Market in the neighborhood with a tentative opening date of the first Tuesday in June. If you're in the area and would like to express your interest in participating as a vendor or a shopper, visit Delano Wichita and/or write Jill Houtz at "jill DOT houtz AT gmail DOT com"

Here are two great new-to-me resources for loftier discussions of urbanism and community. Via Cordelia over at The Phenomenal Field comes Where's "Introducing Urbanism: Top Books for Curious Novices". The titles are accompanied by paragraph-length assessments of their respective merits. Meanwhile, via my friend and local blogger Russell Arben Fox of In Medias Res comes news of Front Porch Republic, a group blog where really, really smart people (Russell among them) write out of the common assumption that "scale, place, self-government, sustainability, limits, and variety are key terms with which any fruitful debate about our corporate future must contend." A good place to start, and certainly a set of ideas this blog has come to take as givens.

Over at Carbon Trace, Andrew interviews two Springfield, Missouri, bicycle patrolmen. Pictures and Fun Facts, including--who knew?--the fact that Cannondale builds a bike they sell exclusively to police departments. They like their gig:

“Officers on bicycles, from a public perception angle, are far more approachable than an officer in a car,” [Carl] Schwartze says. The public even approaches bicycle patrolmen more readily than officers on foot. There’s something about a bicycle that makes them seem all warm and fuzzy, I guess.

Unless you’re a criminal, that is. Their attitude shifts in an interesting direction.

“There’s nothing more fun than a foot pursuit on a bicycle,” Schwartze says, grinning broadly.

Heh.

Finally, just a quick note to thank you for reading. I was gratified to see visits here jump dramatically when I resumed posting--indeed, and curiously, the jump actually occurred the day before I started up again. But all that has less to do with me than it does with the fact that this town's cycling community has grown just in the brief span of time this blog has existed. The vast majority of visitors here come from either Douglas & Main (thanks again, Bobby) or Google searches for, well, blogs about cycling in Wichita. This little blog, haphazard and inadequate, is where they land. Here's hoping that it'll become more worthy of their visits here.

Some books on transportation and urban policy

At various times I've linked to posts by Matthew Yglesias that address the issues of city planning and mass transit. Today, he happens to have up a post with a short list of basic texts on these issues. I have this pipe dream that in my copious spare time I will pick up a copy of The Option of Urbanism and read it so that, when I write stuff on this subject, I won't feel as though I've had to, ahem, raise myself from my chair so as to extract what I've written. We'll see. But the price is certainly right.

While I'm at it: If anyone visiting here is interested in serious discussions of this topic, I have a short list of websites over in the right gutter under the heading of "Urbanism and Urban Policy." I've not begun a concerted search for sites in this field; as I've run across them, though, I add them to the list. Consider this an invitation to you to let me know in comments if you can recommend link-worthy sites, too.

I believe I've made this point before--well, okay: Yglesias has made it; I've just repeated it here--but it bears repeating yet again: While it's true that urban planning is a field dominated by politically-moderate and -liberal types, there's no inherent reason why conservatives should feel excluded from or disinterested in discussions in that field. Livable, more efficient cities are healthier, more economically-vibrant--that is, desirable--places to live: something all citizens of a city should be willing to work toward.

A non-cycling bleg

As part of my Composition II students' requirements for their research projects, I am requiring them to keep a blog whose posts deal with source material they encounter for their topics. The chief reason I want them to keep one is to try to make them more aware of audience as they write, to make "audience" less of an abstraction yammered about in the relative vacuum of the classroom and more of a reality, and engage with people who may be so kind as to leave them comments on their posts.

People like . . . ::looks around:: . . . people like you!

I'd like to encourage you to have a look at their blogs (here is a list, along with brief descriptions of their subjects). If you find one (or more) that interest you and you're so inclined, I hope you'll leave them comments, ask them questions, etc.

It takes a blogosphere to educate a class.

Thanks in advance for considering doing this. I'll be away from "here" for a few days; I'll return sometime early next week. Thanks as always for visiting and reading and commenting.

I'll be posting more, my pretties . . .

Image via Andrew.

This is mostly an excuse to post this iconic image of the antithesis of bike-commuting--and wouldn't you know it, it would be an image from the first thing most people think of when they think of Kansas.

(I suppose we should be fortunate that there is very little cycling in In Cold Blood . . . )

But, sans the grim visage, note that in this picture there are some things that today's Wichita bike-commuter can envy and perhaps even relate to: Miss Gulch's upright position; the practical rear rack, the fact that her environs are so safe she feels no need to wear a helmet; a wariness, if not loathing, of dogs little and big . . .

As Jacob Boheme says, to know good, one must also know good's opposite.

Anyway. To come either today or tomorrow: a report on this weekend's Readers' Rides and a rather haphazard round-up of links to things that, slothful cycle-blogger that I've been of late, I just hadn't gotten around to posting here.

Freewheelin'

I am stunned and pleased to share with my readers that Freewheelin', sponsors of the free bike-share program at both of this year's national nominating conventions for President, has identified this blog as a Favorite via Blog Catalog. Here, by the way, is Freewheelin's blog. Perhaps, to Freewheelin's mind, a bike-blog is a bike-blog is a bike-blog, and never were truer words spoken of the blog whose words you're reading now. But still.

As you probably know, several cities in this country, inspired by the overall success of Paris' year-old bike-share program, are experimenting with similar programs. Freewheelin', though, has some especially serious corporate support behind its efforts in the form of the HMO Humana; and it seems that, until or unless state and federal commitments to such projects--either directly through setting up such programs or indirectly through making streets bike-friendlier--municipalities and corporations will, for now, be the way to go in establishing them.

Anyway. I hope you'll go and visit Freewheelin'.

Back, and a couple of announcements

I'm back from my (really) extended weekend, and I hope your holiday was at least half as restful and pleasant and bratwurst-filled (there went the diet for a couple of days) as mine was.

While I was away, two folks informed me of new-to-me activities in the area that Wichita cyclists might appreciate knowing about:

Randy of Wichita's Coasters' Bicycle Club sent me this via e-mail:

4th Annual Midwest Bicycle Fest

Sunday, September 28th
10:00am - 4:00pm

Riggs Park, Haysville, KS

Free Family Fun!
Come Talk, View and Ride, Custom, Antique and Unusual Bicycles.
Contests, Door Prizes and People's Choice Awards.
Free Hot Dogs and BBQ.
Kids Crafts.
Win a custom Bicycle.
Ride the 7 Passenger Conference Bike and More

That sounds like great fun. I hope that some of you will be able to make it.

And, in case you didn't see this in the comments for the previous post, Michael posted this:

[J]ust wanted to let you know the Riders of Rohan meet every Friday at 7pm at The Vagabond on Douglas in Delano and ride all night. Kinda like critical mass but every week! and it's a gang... I'm traveling until October but the rest of the gang should still be meeting up. check it out, hope to see you there when i get back to town!

Orc- and Uruk-Hai-hunting on the streets of Wichita on Friday nights?? If I only had a sword . . . and a headlamp for my bike . . .

As for me, I'm way behind on blog-reading; as I run into things that seem post-worthy, they'll be making their appearance here later on

On holiday

Today's Wednesday, right?

Speaking for myself: As far as the concept of a "week" is concerned, while on sabbatical all that can go a wee bit awry from time to time. I'm more or less on schedule with the rest of the world this week because I've been following the Democratic National Convention and, wouldn't you know it, they've scheduled their speakers in accordance with--get this--the days of the week. So, yeah: Wednesday. But I swear to you that yesterday, for the first hour or so, I thought it was Saturday.

Anyway. Today might as well be Friday for me, because after I keep my unofficial office hours today, I'll be heading out of town to make this holiday weekend, like, really, really long. I'll be away from "here" until after Labor Day--which will be, um, Tuesday I think. The day after Labor Day being Tuesday, I mean.

Let's just call this my personal little Year of Confusion.

Have a safe and relaxing weekend. And thanks for supporting this blog with your visits and comments.

Many thanks . . .

. . . to bike-blog extraordinaire Cyclelicious for the very very generous plug for this humble blog.

Welcome, visitors from thence. I hope you'll have a look around and enjoy some of what you find. And to my regular visitors, if you haven't already you'll want to make yourselves acquainted post-haste with that bike-blog by the Bay.

In which your correspondent finds himself at the tip of a blogosphere spearpoint

Image found here.

[UPDATE: Welcome to visitors from HuffPo's bike culture page. I hope you'll have a look around--especially if you're from the Wichita area.]

Like Byron (if one squints one's eyes in one very particular way), I awoke this morning and found myself famous--thanks to my bloggy friend Cordelia, who has placed me on said spearpoint:

AWB's [Academics Who Bike], we'll call them, because BA's or AB's (Biking Academics/ Academics Biking) takes away their Ph.D.'s. I wonder if this is a new phenomenon, or if academic types who already have blogs (and bikes) will be starting up new, subsidiary blogs to accommodate their interest in bike culture and bike commuting. (I should add that I mean "subsidiary" in the business sense, not in the sense of "less important.")

[snip]

Based upon my [two-blog] sample (cough), AWBs appear to have a strong desire to compartmentalize, hence a separate blog for this facet of their existence, yet express an equally or more powerful will to integrate the actual biking (but not the blog) into various facets of their lives, e.g. it's not '"about the bike;" it's about bike culture and environmental and social concerns, and about not getting squished. Well, okay, sometimes it is about the bike, but not in that spandexy sense.

Cordelia has so far identified this blog and Carbon Trace, the bike-blog of Andrew Cline, a professor of journalism at Missouri State University in Springfield, as fitting her definition above. For the curious, Rhetorica is Andrew's day-job blog.

I know of other bloggy academic types who also cycle to work but who don't have a separate blog for their cycling. So. This tip-of-the-spear thing is kinda cool, but it could also be that Andrew and I are just a bit nuts, starting up yet another blog as we are.

Still, if he's nuts, he's my kind of nuts: In this post, in which he notes with pleasure his being identified as part of the AWB phenomenon, Andrew explains his own bike-blog's origins and purpose in terms strikingly similar to those I used in Cycling in Wichita's inaugural post:

what I find more (rhetorically) interesting is the idea that we AWBs blog about biking as way to more fully integrate biking into our lives. Nail well struck. I do not need Carbon Trace to motivate me to commute on a bicycle. I’ve been doing that for four years.

What this blog does do (for me) is begin the process of making my biking political, i.e. not just practiced but practiced with a rhetorical intention. I intend to see a picture some day of public space in Springfield that resembles the one I recorded in Helsinki [scroll down his post to see it].

I do not mean political in the sense that I will try to exert political power to compel others to bike. Rather, I see Carbon Trace as a potential guide, resource, and bully pulpit with which to persuade my fellow Springfieldians to stop using so much gas and start burning more calories for the individual and communal good it would do.

Word.

I hope that readers will help Andrew and Cordelia and me identify other AWBs as well--academic types who have both a day-job blog and a bike-blog. We'll add them to the two-blog list we currently have.

Checking in

Sorry for the light posting here; I've been busy with academic work, and I've not had occasion to ride lately, aside from a trip to the WSU library on Wednesday. It was on the return home on that trip, on Murdoch at about 3 in the afternoon, that I had a couple of close calls with cars trying to pass me that could not move to their left because of traffic on that side. By that time of day, Murdoch had become busy. I'll have to find an alternate route for afternoons.

On the other hand: On July 4th weekend I filled up with gas in Topeka and drove down; I had half a tank of gas left. Here it is, the 8th of August, and I still have most of that gas left still. True, I've not had to leave the apartment much, period, but whenever possible I've ridden the bike. It's paid off in my not having to buy gas for over a month, as well as all that good-for-your-health, reducing-carbon-footprint do-gooder stuff. On Monday I'll have to drive out to El Dorado, but I don't foresee needing the car on anything like a regular basis until I resume teaching full-time in the spring (I'm on sabbatical this fall--hence the academic work I mentioned above). Even then, I hope to ride the bike to work at least twice a week.

So: that's the news from the banks of the Little Arkansas. I hope to be a bit more regular in my posting here after Monday.

Douglas and Main

Local folks may be interested to know about Douglas and Main, a brand-new blog run by Bobby Rozzell that functions as something like a clip-service of noteworthy posts on Wichita blogs. Bobby was kind enough to link to both this blog and good old Blog Meridian, and I'm grateful for that.

Go check it out, and be sure to let him know if you have a blog and he hasn't listed yours yet.

[Edit: I've corrected the spelling of Bobby's last name. Sorry about that.]