Things have been very quiet here at Slow Bike Miami for some time now due to me being busy having started a new college degree. Summer has arrived, though, so it’s time to get on the bike and ride to our heart’s content.

Slow Bike Miami will be re-starting with semi-regular posts as of next week. I had thought of merging this with my regular blog (which you can find at DMPerez.com), but I’ll keep them separate for now. If you want to know more about the other things I geek about, by all means feel free to drop by DMPerez.com and see what I write about there.

Catch you here next week, and we’ll go riding together. Well, after I get a new seat for my bike. But I’ll say more about that later.

Rumors of me giving up my bike are greatly exaggerated.

I’m around, but my first semester back in university has been very busy. On top of that, having had my bike stolen left me grounded for a few weeks, though that isn’t the case anymore. However, I have realized that I need to reduce the amount of projects I have going in order to better follow through with them.

In the very near future (read: as soon as I get some time from school), I will be migrating Slow Bike Miami from its own website into a consolidated part of my personal site, DMPerez.com. I’ve already directed readers there for the last two posts I made, so I might as well just make it official. By doing this, I can blog more easily about my bike adventures alongside my regular blog posts about all the other stuff I’m into.

If you arrive here by going to www.SlowBikeMiami.com, that URL will redirect to the proper category on my blog. If you read this via the RSS feed, I will likewise redirect so you don’t miss anything. The disruption should be minimal, if all goes well.

And to make this more than just a newscast, let me introduce to you all my new bicycle, a metallic blue Electra Townie!

Yes, I like Electras. 

This morning, when I left the house and passed by where I park my bike, I realized that it wasn’t there: Elam was stolen overnight.

You can read the fuller account of the event at my personal blog.

Needless to say, I am angry and sad. I barely had four months with my bike and I had yet to get back on the bus-n-bike routine after it was hit by a bus three weeks ago.

A police report has been filed and all local area bike shops notified. We’ll see what happens.

At least for the time being, one half of Slow Bike Miami is sans bike, and thus on hiatus.

Last weekend, on Sunday, January 17, 44-year old Christopher Lecanne was killed in a hit-and-run accident while he bicycled on Key Biscayne, a popular area for road cyclists. The driver of the car was under the influence and after hitting Lecanne, dragged his mangled bike for about 4 miles before it became dislodged from under his car. He was arrested and charged, though a few days ago he posted bail and is currently out of jail.

The event has touched a nerve in the Miami cycling community and seems to be turning into that tragic catalyst that may fuel some actual changes in the city/cities/county of Miami. At least one hopes so.

I wrote an editorial for TransitMiami.com entitled The Tragic Catalyst. I hope it is the last such editorial I ever have to write.

There will be a Memorial Ride for Mr. Lecanne this Sunday on Key Biscayne. My wife and I won’t be attending because we’re both down with a nasty cold, but we certainly extend our sympathies and prayers to the Lecanne family and will be there with the great bicycling community of Miami in spirit.

I’ve been away from Slow Bike Miami for a bit because I needed a break and because I needed to just go ride my bike and remind myself why I love this after tackling some fairly weighty subjects here.

Along the way 2010 came around and I made a resolution to go car-lite/car-free during this year!

Today I took the first step towards that resolution, and had a most unfortunate accident as my bike rolled off the bus bike rack and was hit by the bus. You can read all the sordid details on my personal blog.

I’ll keep riding, but obviously Elam will need to visit the bike shop for a couple of days first. I’ll keep you updated.

Yesterday morning I took the scenic route back home from the synagogue, going down all of Lincoln Road Mall, to the Oceanwalk Promenade, then up 5th St before heading home (see the MapMyRide.com Map). On a whim, I decided to count all the bikes I came across my way, whether parked or with riders. Everyone knows we have a lot of bicyclists here in the Beach, but I wanted to have a very rough headcount. It was 10 AM, and the temp was in the mid 50s, so I figured I would see only those out exercising, and those on their way to/from/already at work.

When all was said and done, I counted 146 bikes, including me, with about 85 of them being spotted just along Lincoln Rd. I am no urban statisticians, but that seemed like a lot of bikes for a 3/4-mile long stretch, let alone for the 2.5 miles of my entire trip. And that fills me with joy.

Check out these pics.

What was really of note to me was where these bikes were parked: all along Lincoln Rd, they were near the various restaurants that line the pedestrian mall, restaurants which, at 10 AM, were setting up for a day’s work. These were the bikes of the workers that power touristy Miami Beach, people who for whatever reason use their bikes as the main form of transportation. I mean, check out that last pic of the guy with the makeshift bike trailer! And he’s far from the only one I’ve seen with similar cargo contraptions around here. These are the folks that truly matter when we consider and plan for bicycle infrastructure, the folks whose main form of transportation is their bike. It’s good to keep in mind who we truly are advocating for.

A news article from New York was heavily making its way across the cycling blog/Twitter-verse yesterday, about some New York City bicyclists that repainted some bike lanes in Brooklyn. I vaguely registered the news item on my radar, but did not take a moment to read it until a friend of mine sent it to me by email. It was then I clicked and read it, and realized the Brooklyn area this happened in was Williamsburgh, a section that is full of Jews, specifically Hasidim (or as they are called in the  news, Ultra-Orthodox, a title I do not like at all). Oh boy.

NYPost.com: Hipsters repaint bike lanes in brush off to Hasids

I don’t know exactly what happened that those bike lanes in Williamsburgh were sandblasted away. I can only comment on what is said in the article, and even then I have to treat it as not entirely accurate. That said, there’s one part that really pressed my buttons:

Scantily clad hipster cyclists attracted to the Brooklyn neighborhood made it difficult, the Hasids said, to obey religious laws forbidding them from staring at members of the opposite sex in various states of undress. These riders also were disobeying the traffic laws, they complained.

Again, I have to assume that this is the paper embellishing things unless I actually hear it from someone who could corroborate that is precisely what was said. The thing is, it does sound like something they would say, and based on a Google News Search of recent news, and even some articles from a year ago, it would appear this is indeed cited as the reason.

Listen, I’m a Jew, a Shomer Shabbat, Kosher-keeping Orthodox (not a Hasid) Jew who rides a bike in South Beach, the hottest, trendiest, most trafficked area of Miami Beach. There is more than this city’s share of scantily clad people all around me that I pass by while I ride, or that pass by my house, the park, the yeshiva (the Torah school), the various synagogues, etc. Guess what, I’m under the same religious law forbidding me from looking at “members of the opposite sex in various states of undress,” and you know what I do? I don’t look. Yes, I slip up sometimes, but in general, I don’t look. I, me; I take the action, or decide to not take the action as the case may be. The onus of that Law is on me to not do it. There are also religious laws that govern how we should dress modestly, but again, those are on me; I can’t enforce those on anyone, Jewish or not.

Eliminating the bike lanes for this reason (and “disobeying the traffic laws” was an add-on, at least as the writer put it) is inane at best. Bicyclists are allowed full use of the road, so riders will continue to use the same avenues, bike lanes or not. Difference is, you just made it a bit more unsafe for them, and last I checked, that is also disallowed by halachah (religious Law). If it’s because they are not obeying traffic laws, have the same Shomerin Patrol educate them when they see them do things wrong, remind them that there are kids around they can hurt if they don’t ride according to the law, etc. But don’t attempt to have your neighborhood, where you are not the only one who lives there, shaped to your convenience; that’s just rude (and shame to those in City Hall that gave in to these demands for political reasons without any survey on the larger safety implications).

While I normally don’t condone acts where people take the law into their own hands, I can’t disagree with the bicyclists that repainted those bike lanes either. I’m not necessarily going to be behind a Naked Bike Ride going through the Hasidic neighborhood (that would be rude on the part of the cyclists as well), but the responsibility to not look at bicyclists in shorts, tanktops, etc is on you, the Jew. You are the one bound by the Law of Hashem, not them (Jewish bicyclists aside – and as far as those that are Jewish and not dressed modestly, well, there’s far more effective ways to establish that conversation than by stripping off/blocking the construction of new bike lanes). Take responsibility for your actions and take care of those around you, Jewish and Gentile; it is the mission that was entrusted to us by G-d, after all.

In saying that I seek to “Copenhagenize” Miami, what exactly does that mean? Copenhagen and Miami are very dissimilar cities, so how can one influence the other? And what is this “Bicycle Culture 2.0″ that I speak of? Think of them as keywords that convey in a tight package a lot of information about the change sought for Miami.

In this short series, I’ll be defining the terms Bicycle Culture 2.0, Copenhagenize/Copenhagenizing and Miamize.

Miamize

This is, in essence, the result of the transformation discussed; Miamize is what we end up once new ideas of what our city can be with proper bicycling projects in place, what role an enhanced bike-friendly culture can play, and what future we want for Miami as a bikeable city are put into practice. Miamize is what we end up when we’ve taken the Copenhagenize lessons and applied them to our city, our realities of life, our culture. Copenhagenize

Miamize is the ultimate goal: the creation of an exemplary bikeable city that takes advantage of the fantastic year-round weather, flat terrain and dense urban areas in key tourist locations that we already have, and one that moves into the future with a clear and determined plan to develop the necessary components in safety and infrastructure to continue to increase the number of people on bicycles on the roads and the number of trips made by bike overall.

It can be done. It won’t be easy, but it can be done. The City of Miami proved how much could be achieved in a few short years when determination and a clear goal are the guiding lights. Now we must continue what was begun and expand that wave of progress to the rest of the Greater Miami area.

It’s time to Miamize.

In saying that I seek to “Copenhagenize” Miami, what exactly does that mean? Copenhagen and Miami are very dissimilar cities, so how can one influence the other? And what is this “Bicycle Culture 2.0″ that I speak of? Think of them as keywords that convey in a tight package a lot of information about the change sought for Miami.

In this short series, I’ll be defining the terms Bicycle Culture 2.0, Copenhagenize/Copenhagenizing and Miamize.

Copenhagenize/Copenhagenizing

It may sound presumptuous: “I want to Copenhagenize Miami.” But there is a reason to use the term. Yes, at its core it has to do with the fact that I’m looking to bring the author of Copenhagenize.com and founder of Copenhagenize Consulting to lecture in Miami. Mikael has a very good brand there and it serves to communicate with any who knows about his blog. But there is more, as even to Mikael, the term Copenhagenize has a meaning.

Aside from Amsterdam, Copenhagen, Denmark, is arguably Europe’s most bike-friendly big city; not only does a large percentage of its population use bicycles on a daily basis, it features an amazing network of bicycling infrastructure. It’s a dream for any urban bicyclist. But this wasn’t always the case.

In the 60s, Copenhagen was about as car-clogged a city as any other. It took a number of visionary politicians with gumption to go against the grain to lay the groundwork that would turn Denmark’s capital into a place where today about 55% of the population choose the bicycle for all trips, where 37% of trips by commuters to work and school are by bikes. Yes, Copenhagen had a bicycling legacy from before the post-WWII car boom to recall, but so does the USA (if on a smaller scale).

Modern bike-friendly Copenhagen didn’t happen, it was made, and that’s precisely what Mikael drives at with Copenhagenize.com and Copenhagenize Consulting: every city can be Copenhagenized–that is, taken through a process wherein it is turned into a bike-friendly place via political enactments that promote safe bicycling and build bike infrastructure that anyone can use.

As stated in Copenhagenize Consulting’s Vision:

Copenhagenizing is a way of describing how urban centres can tackle air and noise pollution, rising health care costs due to lifestyle illnesses and obesity as well as creating more liveable cities. Our goal is inspiring and advising others about how to reestablish the bicycle as a transport form by removing the label of cycling as only a sport or a child’s pastime. We do so by using the Copenhagenize Experience as a guide. In the 1960’s cycling was on the decline but we managed to turn that around thanks to visionary urban planning and political decisions.

And thus why the push to Copenhagenize Miami. We have already taken the first steps ourselves: creating the Bike Miami Days & Rides programs, drafting and getting approved the Miami Bicycle Master Plan (Miami Beach has a Bike Master Plan as well), both efforts that turned the City of Miami in only two years from one of Bicycling Magazine’s worst bicycling cities in the US to a stop in their BikeTown USA bike commuting program, an acknowledgment of progress. Now the push is on to move from plans to action.

Ultimately, though, the goal isn’t to become Copenhagen. We aren’t Copenhagen, we are Miami, and in Mikael’s own words, “We start with Copenhagenizing but really the goal is to [...] Miamize as soon as possible.”