BIKEPGH MESSAGE BOARD ARCHIVE

thanks! My favorite part of the press release is: BikePGH, as the local advocates, are regularly notified about these “bike ninjas.”

this is awesome. i think i posted in another thread a long time ago about a police department handing out lights to cyclists in lieu of tickets.

i still can't recall the city this was performed in... any other groups besides Bike-PGH handing these out?

Very cool. Was that you guys @ the corner of Forbes & Murray?

other groups: SFBC was the first one that i heard of that did it. other groups have done it too. the city where the police affixed lights was in portland (of course)

We were at schenley plaza on forbes across from the hilman library. it was super rad and affixed about 100 lights to people in about 2 hours. just about 2 lights per bike. some people rolled up without one or the other and we'd make sure they had both. it was exciting how many people were out riding, but kinda sad at how few were lit up. gave out a ton of maps and 101 guides as well.

Forbes and Bigelow actually.

beat ya

Any idea if Pitt's police offer any guidance in the way of bike tips?

While registering my bike at CMU's police department I noticed a nice thick booklet detailing how bicycles fit into the PA state code, with the laws written out and what they mean. It also had an extremely detailed guide on how to ride with cars (what to do in different situations, how to avoid crashes, general tips, etc).

Although, I must note that they didn't point it out to me at all. Only after I brought my second bike in to be registered did I even notice it sitting there.

As a new grad student at Pitt who registered a bike with them at the start of this semester:

When I registered my bike with the Pitt police, they mailed me this: http://www.pts.pitt.edu/Commuting/downloads/bike_map&brochure.pdf. And they forward BikePGH emails to all the people with registered bikes (so I heard about the light giveaway first that way, and they announced Transportation Exploration too). The problem with that: I think the registered bikes are the minority, and the people who realize they can register their bikes and do it are the people who probably already thought to get lights and get commuting info on their own. (Or maybe that's not true, but I do think it's fair to assume that the students who don't register their bikes are at least somewhat less likely to get the necessary information and education on their own.)

I only even knew that they had a bike registration program because I happened to see it on their website when I was looking for information their bike lockers (which are also not really publicized - people I've talked to on campus had never heard of them at all, and I only knew they were there because I read about them here).

As for students who have not registered bikes, the one example I have of information distributed to the whole university is that they recently posted an announcement about their new bike rental program on the main campus portal that all faculty and students sign into to do almost everything. That was cool, and the second sentence of the blurb gave a link to their general bike commuting info website, which gives the relevant laws (except that I really wish it mentioned salmoning - I have seen some truly terrifying cases of it in the past couple of days).

So it's a weird problem, because the info is all there, but it's just not getting to the people who really need it, because they aren't registered and/or because they don't know it's available and/or whatever. It may also be an issue of some people hearing this info but choosing to ignore it, whether because, say, someone once told them some bullshit about how salmoning was safer, or because they just don't believe that any of these laws are ever enforced, or whatever. It's just not clear what they should do to get this information out to the ones who really need it. They certainly could start enforcing those laws, but it would be nice if the problem could be solved another way so that people didn't have to have that negative sort of experience that might discourage riding.

I wonder what information the undergraduates get when they move in - I might ask some of the students I teach and see what they have heard.

Maybe BikePGH could get a presence at the various new student fairs that happen at the beginning of the year? Hmm. Or maybe there's somewhere even better to get their attention, IDK. Maybe a table with some annoyingly enthusiastic volunteers (ooh, pick me) and some enticing-looking candy to give away could hold their attention long enough to communicate the most important points. I know that BikePGH has made efforts in Oakland, though, so it may be a tougher problem, and the university itself probably needs to be louder about this stuff.

Yikes, sorry for that unnecessarily verbose post. I'm really just procrastinating since I have some real-life work that I don't want to do, so suddenly this thread seemed especially interesting and that post seemed extra-important, haha.

thanks pearmask, that was really helpful and insightful.

for the record, we are at the new student orientation,but at that point, many of the students there are from the burbs and kinda laugh at the idea of biking around. plus their parents are there and are like "no way." it's actually a good outreach to older students, staff and faculty. we also have a presence at pitt's bike safety day.

i agree tho, when you compare pitt's bicycle web page to other major university's pages, it is lacking a bit, but a fairly good start. but that photo that they use...yikes.

Pitt's page is pretty nice compared to Penn State's. youch. I do like the tone of Pitt's page, it makes it sound fun and approachable.

Here's a recap of last night:

http://bike-pgh.org/blog/2011/10/06/bikepgh-and-pitt-partner-to-give-away-100-lights-to-over-50-bicyclists-in-two-hours/

This is great! Great thinking everyone!

Personally, I've thought of a "helmet" giveaway. Everytime I see someone biking fast without a helmet in heavy traffic areas, I cringe......

Yeah, erok, that freshmen-from-the-'burbs situation is tricky. I know there is hope for them, because I was once a freshman from the 'burbs (although I also went to college in a much less cycling-friendly city), and here I am now, but I don't know what the solution really is.

Sort of on that note: you guys weren't at the new graduate student fair, were you? (I didn't think I saw any bike stuff there, but there's always a chance I was just oblivious.) If not, that might be a place where there would be more interest (increased by the fact that grad students are universally too broke to drive cars much and that they usually live further away), and maybe just as much need. The graduate student population has a really large proportion of international students, and I know that some of them are interested in commuting by bike but that some of them, especially those who have never driven cars before, end up getting really intimidated and confused because they have no idea what the rules of the road are (because why would they?). I think it's especially hard for people who don't know how to drive to find information since it's sometimes taken for granted that people already know how driving works.

Just as some anecdotal evidence of the need there, I know a student (who is not from here and has never driven) who somehow managed to ride her bike down the shoulder of the interstate the first day she bought it. She had no idea that was illegal until a cop stopped her. (It was sort of a funny story... but also truly terrifying, and theoretically preventable.) So yeah, just a thought.

Quite a few ninjas, young and old, out and about yesterday evening. when my light died, i became one of them.

with the success of this Light Giveaway at Pitt, could it be possible to expand this to one of the trails near downtown or southside? Possibly expand the contributor/donator options for either donating lights or a voucher to purchase at a discount lights from Thick, Iron City, REI, etc.?

that's a good idea. we do plan on doing this again.