Many know about Back Alley Bikes/The Hub of Detroit. It was the City’s first Youth Earn-a-Bike program and it’s been around for over a decade now.

Youth Earn-A-Bike sessions are where youth ages 8-16 are able to earn a single bicycle of their choosing by building and repairing this bicycle with our qualified staff and volunteers for three (3) Earn-A-Bike sessions. Each session is approximately three (3) hours in length, and they are held on Saturday afternoons during the summer.

But there are other Earn-a-bike programs in other parts of the city, including the Mt. Elliott Makerspace located at 231 East Grand Boulevard at Lafayette in the Messiah Episcopal Church.

And the Mt. Elliott Makerspace has some other real interesting programs that focus on transportation, but more specifically:

Human-powered and alternative-energy-powered vehicles designed to enhance mobility, safety, and enjoyability. E.g. bicycles and bicycle trailers, alternative energy vehicles

They also bring in electronics as they build lights and music to create “Tron” bikes.

This video shows more of what they do. It includes a great quote, “I wasn’t getting enough exercise until I earned my bike.”

Detroit-based MASH Magazine is starting a bike club.

Haven’t heard of this publication? “MASH Magazine fuses modernism, beauty, high fashion, and design for the multicultural audience.”

Their recently published second issue includes the article, “Changing Gears: Detroit to go from four wheels to two.” It mentions the recent and forthcoming improvements that are making Detroit an even better place to ride.

The article also mentions their new summer group ride.

MASH is going to continue to encourage out young and fabulous women to partake in this wonderful past time – join us for a MASH ride.

The MASH Bike Club rides are from June 2nd though September 22nd on every other Saturday.

The ride meets at the LaSalle Garden Park at noon. The Park is between Linwood and 14th, just north of Grand Boulevard and a couple blocks west of Henry Ford Hospital.

State Representative Maureen Stapleton is hosting a transportation town hall meeting on Monday, March 11th at 6pm.

According to the Detroit Free Press, the discussion will be about “roads, transit and related infrastructure issues.”

Officials will speak with residents about roads and road funding — and as the Legislature considers establishing a regional transit authority in metro Detroit, they’ll discuss what such an agency would mean for southeast Michigan, organizers said.

Stapleton will host the meeting along with Rep. Fred Durhal Jr.; both are Detroit Democrats. Representatives from the Detroit-based advocacy group Transportation Riders United, the Michigan Department of Transportation, Wayne County and the County Road Association of Michigan will be on hand too.

The meeting will be held 6 p.m. Monday at Plymouth United Church of Christ, 600 E. Warren at I-75 in Detroit.

CRAM

It’s interesting that the County Road Association of Michigan (CRAM) will be present. They have been on the wrong side of some very good state legislation.

For instance, they were basically the only opposition to the national award winning Recreation Passport program which is now successfully funding our Michigan State Parks. They claimed it was unconstitutional in front of a combined Senate/House committee where legislators told them otherwise.

They also unsuccessfully tried amending the Complete Streets legislation by removing the long-standing requirement that a minimum of 1% of state road funding go toward non-motorized transportation. It is still among their legislative priorities to undo this 1% state funding requirement.

They are supportive of a terrible bill (HB 4021) that would divert state park funding to pay for roads and airports even though Michigan voters changed the state constitution to prevent such funding raids.

Ironically enough, it was bicyclists, including Edward N. Hines that led efforts to create county road commission in 1893 and 1894. Prior to changing the state constitution in 1894, it was unconstitutional for counties or county road commissions to build and maintain roads.

Riding the Riverfront Trail in Windsor

From bike lanes to riverfront trails, Windsor has had a big head start on Detroit. While that gap has narrowed over the past few years, they’re arguably still ahead. In fact they just got their Bicycle Friendly Community designation last year which Detroit applied for this year.

This CBC News article gives a glimpse of what they have and what they need to make Windsor more bikeable.

According to Windsor’s Bicycle and Pedestrian Master Plan, the city plans to eventually add approximately 46 kilometres of bikeways.

Every year since 2001, the city has annually spent $400,000 on cycling infrastructure and programs. That doesn’t count the lanes that are added during regular construction.

The goal of the master plan is to have bike lanes and pathways within a five minute radius of every Windsor neighbourhood. It will add up to 350 km of trails and bike routes when it’s done. The current tally is 177 km.

For a really interesting and dynamic look at their plans, check out this before-and-after map.

This is all the more reason why we need a cross-border connection for bicyclists.

Here is a video from the CBC article, Windsor focuses on commuter cycling, bike paths.

CBS Detroit recently reported on entrepreneurs developing a bike that automatically shifts.

The company’s idea and business plans won first-place honors on Friday, Feb. 10, in the Intercollegiate Business Plan Competition hosted by Eastern Michigan University’s Center for Entrepreneurship, and representatives were to present to the OU INC Investment Review Board at OU INC on Tuesday, Feb. 14, to win additional funding opportunities. Company co-founder Sean Simpson said the Ann Arbor Spark loan represents a key step forward in AutoBike’s efforts to provide casual bicyclists with a means to ride a bike at a steady cadence without having to push levers or turn knobs.

“Our technology allows even the most novice bicyclists to always be in the right gear, because instead of teaching the rider how to shift, we taught the bike how to,” the company’s Web site explains. “The AutoBike bicycle riding experience can best be described as a stress-free ride in the park.”

While the intention of this article is not to critique this technology but to critique the idea that some new bike technology is the answer to stress-free riding.

It isn’t.

Having an optimal cadence isn’t going to make riding in the product’s hometown of Troy “stress-free.” Implementing the non-motorized master plan the city of Troy paid for and put on the shelf would be a step in the right direction. Or building Complete Streets.

What’s primarily holding Metro Detroiters back from riding more is the condition of the riding environment and the perception that it’s not safe. We hear that all the time and it’s a common problem in many other cities across the U.S.

Detroit’s Golden Era of Bicycling

And consider the technology when bicycling was at its peak in Metro Detroit – the 1890s.

There were no gears to shift. Everyone rode fixed gears, and in most cases, the bikes didn’t even have brakes.

Why was bicycling so popular then? Detroit’s streets were quite welcoming to cyclists of all abilities and there were more dense land uses, which meant shorter distances between destinations.

If you want to see the Autobike, here’s a video they produced.

http://youtu.be/Cwo-Vr5DKK8

Looks like it’ll work in London, too.