Market Street's green bike lane (Photo by SFGate)

While at the National Bike Summit, Leah Shahum the Executive Director for the San Francisco Bicycle Coalition shared an interesting story. After showing a photo of bicycle lanes on Market Street, she mentioned that Twitter was relocating their offices to this street and requested more of these bike lanes. They wanted to make it easier for their employees to bike to work.

In another session, it was noted that employee health insurance is lower in states with healthier employees. Getting more employees to walk and bike can reduce the cost of doing business.

And with that, the Observer and Eccentric published an article on Novi’s new non-motorized transportation plan.

It seemed fitting that as gas prices in metro Detroit approach $4 per gallon, the city of Novi moved forward with approval of its first non-motorized master plan.

Norm Cox, president of The Greenway Collaborative, which was the lead designer on the plan, said it is going to be years before the system is complete, but when done will change how people travel in the city.

“We think you will have a multi-faceted non-motorized system, one that works for the whole range of citizens and their preferences as to how they want to bike and walk around,” he said. “It will make a noticeable change in the quality of life for residents.”

And while Twitter might not relocate to Novi, some other tech firms just might — and having a more walkable and bikeable city is definitely a selling point.

StreetFilms has posted another really interesting video (below) showing improved bicycling infrastructure in cities like Portland, New York, and San Francisco. These cities have made huge investments in bike lanes, and now physically separated bike lanes. The result has been a large increase in choosing to bike for transportation.

One great quote from Congressman Earl Blumenauer.

It’s important that people have choices. They shouldn’t have to burn a gallon of gas to get a gallon of milk. Half of the trips that are taken everyday in America are within 20 minutes on a bike. A quarter of them are a 20 minute walk.