Green Options

With bike weddings, bike parades, hundreds of naked bicyclists, bike fashion shows, popular & interesting cargo bikes, and travelling bike pubs, Portland is #3 on this great bicycle city photo tours list.

Portland has great bicycle facilities (colored bike lanes, bike boxes at intersections, great bike signs, off-road bicycle paths, etc.), a large number of people using the bicycle for transportation, and a bike culture that brings the fun of bicycling to another level.

As a result of these factors and more, Portland was the first large city in the US to achieve the Platinum level Bike Friendly award from the League of American Bicyclists (LAB) — the Platinum level being the highest level possible (above Gold, Silver and Bronze). It is truly a world-class bicycle city now, and the amazing photos in this photo tour help to show that.

Home of the upcoming climate change conference, Copenhagen is #4 in this great bicycle city photo tour series. With about 55% of trips being by bicycle, Copenhagen is an amazing place to visit or live if you like bicycling.

The photos to follow give you a taste of this great bicycle city. From dogs on bikes to bikes on bikes, from bikes in ice to bike counters, enjoy these great bicycle photos.

From bicycle lovers to lovers on bikes, bike art to art on bikes, the largest bicycle sharing program in the world to some of the smallest bikers, enjoy this bicycle city photo tour of Paris, France!

Paris doesn’t have a long history as one of the best bicycle cities, but with the introduction of the largest bicycle sharing program in the world, bicycling in Paris has boomed and the city is becoming commonly associated with the bicycle now. Its whole culture is changing due to the bicycle’s increasing relevance in the city’s daily life.

Naked bicyclists, folding bikes, balloon bikes, and more — enjoy this bicycle photo tour of Barcelona.

The third B in a row, Barcelona is next on this list of great bicycle cities (right ahead of Basel, Switzerland and Bogota, Columbia). As a dense city with a wonderful climate, Barcelona is naturally a wonderful place for bicyclists. However, a lot has been done to make it more so. The biggest carrot encouraging bicycling, by far, is Barcelona’s relatively new bike sharing program — Bicing. This is perhaps the best or second best bike sharing program in the world. It is one of a new generation of sophisticated, smart bike sharing programs. Read more about it on page 2.

Beyond Bicing, the city is also working on creating new bicycling routes and bike parking and it hosts fun Bike Week celebrations every year in May. Also, it has been creating better infrastructure for bicyclists due to so many more people bicycling within the past few years. It is transforming itself into a truly world-leading bicycle city.

England is working to combine two of the world’s cleanest methods of transportation through a new initiative.

A handful of strongly funded programs are geared to get more people bicycling to and from rail stations in England.

The Optibike OB1 electric bike gets an equivalent of 2,287 MPG.* Could bikes like these be the future of transportation?

Ever wonder what happens when you cross the finest mountain bike components money can buy, an 850w brushless DC motor and a 20ah lithium-ion battery with motocross styling and sensibilities? You get the Optibike OB1, an electric bike that can get up to 45 miles on a nine-cent charge, and what is arguably the finest electric bicycle in the world.

In fact, the Optibike OB1 even found a spot in the California Academy of Sciences museum, touted as “the future of transportation.” There are only 24 OB1’s made per year. When one of them is bought, the owner becomes part of an elite club of enthusiastic riders. And for four fun-filled days in August, I was lucky enough to be a member of that club — or at least able to pretend like I was after being provided one for a short term test drive.

In a land where everyone else is a Superman in a red cape, being a bicycle repairman is something special indeed. I remember this brilliant Monty Python skit from my childhood, and it seems just as funny today. “See how he uses a spanner to tighten that nut!” It not only makes me most enthusiastic about the upcoming Monty Python reunion next month, but also really makes me

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My happy transportation moment of the week came when I stumbled across this most excellent song on the Muni Diaries. The rap was created for the Transit Authority of River City in Louisville, Kentucky to explain how to use the bike racks on their buses. The infectious chorus has been stuck in my head all week: “Bring it down, pull the bar, put it on, put it on, take it off, put it

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For some reason, when I think of products that need to ‘go green’, certain types of items tend to top the list.  Cleaning products.  Plastic children’s toys.  Paint and building materials.  Baby supplies.  Food.  Clothing.

Playing cards had not yet entered my mind.

So imagine my amused surprise the other day when, while shopping for a new deck of quality cards for bridge (my husband had even requested a plastic set), I stumbled across Bicycle’s new (launched in 2008) line of Eco Edition Playing Cards.

While there is almost certainly a good level of bandwagon-jumping greenwashing going on here, there is still much good to say about these cards.  According to Bicycle:

Our playing cards are crafted from sustainable forest paper, starch-based laminating glue and vegetable-based printing inks.  This pack of cards is recyclable.

I’m coming to the conclusion pretty fast that just about every hotel will eventually be walking the talk when it comes to going green – though some are walking slowly while others are galloping as if there isn’t a minute to waste. While ecotourism continues to grow internationally, more American companies are grasping that going green can save some green too, which is also a point I make in ECOpreneuring.

A recent trip to Milwaukee, Wisconsin (to enter a few food items in our Wisconsin State Fair) found my family and I bedding down at the Hotel Metro, a boutique, high-rise luxury 63 room hotel that features numerous green aspects, from energy efficient lighting to a rooftop hot tub spa kept clean by using a salt-water system, rather than chlorine. Metro Hotel is the first Milwaukee hotel to be certified by Travel Green Wisconsin, racking up 67 points in total.

A recent study concluded that it’s dangerous to text while driving.

What about texting while bicycling?

That’s also not advised, but a device from a company called PedalPower+ will charge your Blackberry while you ride. It also will charge your iPod.

The device, similar to the old school dynamo systems used to power headlamps via the back wheel of a bike, also stores generated power in a battery and will charge with [...]