The Spirit of Hope Church in Detroit’s North Corktown neighborhood is seeking contributions to help build a bike rack that suits the church’s gothic architecture.

Despite the growing population of cyclists, Spirit of Hope Church is without bike parking. Give them the kick they need to commission a local metal artists to hook them up.

They are seeking $287 by October 4th to match the $287 they’ve already raised from the Soup at Spaulding.

Soup at Spaulding has also raised money for a new bike collective at the Fireweed Universe-City.

The Fireweed Universe City Bicycle Collective is a volunteer run, bicycle collective open to the Detroit Community. Our primary purpose is to foster a safe, educational and diverse environment that emphasizes pedal powered options for safe and environmentally responsible transportation in order to provide community members with the facilities and tools, as well as the skills and knowledge to help make cycling an essential part of their everyday lives.

Fireweed Universe-City located near Seven Mile Road and Woodward Avenue.

It seems like these Detroit Soup events are a great means for raising funds and supporting some of the smaller projects that can really help cycling in Detroit.

To learn more about these events, Model D TV has recently covered this growing Soup concept.

This Friday, October 1st at 5 PM is the first Tweed Run in Detroit. The group is meeting at the corner of Warren and Trumbull.

What’s a Tweed Run?

According to the main web site (out of London?), it’s “a metropolitan bicycle ride with a bit of style.” And everyone wears tweed. The Tweed Run gallery has numerous photos to give some idea of what to expect.

Now that Detroit poster is pretty darn cool, but that’s not how Detroit cyclists looked in the 1890’s. Detroit wheelmen wore Greek fisherman hats and wore black. They also tended to have larger mustaches, at least in the photos we’ve seen.

But whether you dress more like a Detroit Wheelman or a tweedster this Friday, you’re probably going to be just fine.

If you haven’t already picked up a copy of the recent Metro Times, do so immediately.

This issue includes a great, great story on a Detroit neighborhood cycling group called the East Side Riders. This group has become much more than just some guys biking around. They’re building community in a challenged neighborhood.

Here’s an excerpt:

In early summer, with the body count rising, [Georgia Johnson] called the local TV stations and newspapers and scheduled a press conference. To show that other residents in this sparsely populated part of town were behind her, she asked the guys she’d seen riding those outlandish bikes to appear in front of the cameras with her, to demonstrate community strength. They were the biggest group she’d see gathered in the area.

“They didn’t really have nobody to come out,” Mike says. “So they said, ‘Bring the bikes up there and we want y’all to represent the neighborhood.'” And the cameras saw the surreal sight of an elderly couple, a handful of concerned residents and a large crew of large men rolling up on these strange bicycles.

Before the East Side Riders showed up, it was left to such as 79-year-old William Johnson, Georgia’s husband, to slowly walk the long distances between houses and hand out fliers, one at a time.

Instead, the bike club took a stack of them, spread themselves out and covered the streets in a fraction of the time, leaving a copy at each house. Suddenly, CARA had a fast-moving, mobile unit at its disposal. “They were a godsend,” Georgia says. She was so thankful, she made everyone in the East Side Riders members of her group. Once again, the bikers were drawn into community service.

Now there was no doubt — the club had transformed into something bigger than before. And it became a point of pride among its members.

This is much welcomed news. While it’s great that hundreds show up for Detroit’s Critical Mass ride and thousands more are at Tour de Troit, but both groups are mostly white and often suburban. The Detroit cycling scene could definitely benefit from more diversity and more neighborhood clubs like the East Side Riders and Southwest Detroit’s Latino bike clubs.

And at this year’s Pro Walk/Pro Bike Conference, Romona Williams from the Metro St. Louis Coalition for Inclusion and Equity mentioned that bike lanes aren’t always welcomed in predominantly black St. Louis neighborhoods. Bicycling is too often seen as an early step towards white gentrification.

We have not yet heard of such a response in Detroit. Having a highly diverse bicycling culture might keep us from ever hearing it.

The article’s author was also on WDET’s Craig Fahle show last week. The podcast is on-line. The East Side Riders discussion begins at 1:36.

Well  over three thousand cyclists participated in yesterday’s Tour de Troit.

The Free Press coverage noted the fundraising aspect of the ride.

The Tour de Troit was organized to publicize the growing greenways network in Detroit and to raise funds for Corktown-Mexicantown Greenlink planned for 2011. The series of bike lanes and off-road pathways will connect the neighborhoods of Corktown and Mexicantown to each other and to the Detroit River.

“This is one of my favorite days in the city,” [Chris Frey] said. “It shows everybody Detroit is a wonderful city for cycling and there are a lot of things you can really only see by bike.”

It’s expected that over 30 miles of bike lanes will be added to the Corktown, Mexicantown, and West Vernor Business District by early next year. That’s in addition to the Michigan Avenue bikes being installed this Fall by MDOT.

The Detroit News coverage included some reaction from those who watched the procession of bikes.

Jan Rutzel and Pat Buckler marveled as scores of cyclists in bright gear zipped up and down Michigan Avenue today.

The buddies were on Rutzel’s porch on Wabash and became excited when told the cyclists were getting ready for a 30-mile tour of the city that included sweeps through some of Detroit’s most historic neighborhoods.

“That’s wonderful,” Rutzel said. “Anything that helps the city is thrilling.”

That’s one of the best parts of the Tour — the welcoming spectators along the route, especially the wide-eyed children. Many spectators took photos of the riders just as cyclists took photos of the city.

Of course 3,000 riders is quite a huge group. To give some perspective, the lead cyclists were already miles away at the Dequindre Cut while others were still leaving the start. As the first riders were coming off the Belle Isle Bridge, other riders were still going on the island — meaning the group was stretched over 6-miles.

An amazing showing for the Motor City!

Also, this wonderful video from MattMTB really shows just how many riders were on the streets of Detroit yesterday.

Just catching up on some Detroit biking stories in the news on World Car Free Day…

Critical Mass Detroit

Last month, Real Detroit Weekly had some coverage on Detroit’s Critical Mass ride.

Biking in from the suburbs may not be an easy task, but once you make it down to Detroit you realize how friendly the city can be on two wheels. Every last Friday of the month, an ever-growing group of bikers take back the streets for a little ride called Critical Mass.

This first paragraph highlights one major point. Detroit’s Critical Mass ride is fun and is becoming hugely popular — but it’s not about taking back the streets. Detroit bicyclists already have it quite good on the streets.

If this Critical Mass were about making a statement for cyclists rights, it would be in the suburbs during rush hour. It would be in Rochester Hills, Canton, and Sterling Heights.

The ride is more like a mini-Tour de Troit without the food and T-shirt — and there’s nothing wrong with that.

Conner Creek Greenway Update

Model D has a brief greenway construction update from Detroit’s east side.

The Riverfront Terminus of the Conner Creek Greenway is currently being built. This segment follows Clairpointe from Jefferson south to Maheras Gentry Park and includes bike lanes and landscaping along Clairpointe and a new trail and landscaping on the west side of the park. Construction is slated to be complete by end of October.

This summer, another segment of the greenway, one mile of bike lanes along St. Jean between Jefferson and Mack, was completed. The next stretch will run alongside Mt. Olivet Cemetery on Conner. The entire trail system is slated to be complete in 2013.

Motor City Road Diets

The Free Press has been publishing excerpts from John Gallagher’s new book, Reimagining Detroit. Gallagher discusses road diets and how they can lead to more bike lanes and improved pedestrian safety.

We almost never focus on the wide-open spaces of our main streets. Making Woodward, Jefferson, Gratiot, and the other spoke streets nine lanes wide (three lanes for traffic in each direction, one in the middle for turning, and a lane along either curb for parking) may have made sense in the 1950s when the city boasted a population near two million people.

But with Detroit’s population less than half its 1950s-era peak, these main streets now are absurdly overbuilt for the amount of traffic they carry.

Pedestrians, particularly seniors or parents with children in tow, find it all but impossible to cross one of these nine-line gulfs before the light changes. By narrowing the streets from three traffic lanes in each direction to two — by putting many of Detroit’s streets on a road diet — the city could make it easier for pedestrians to cross.

Since the 1950’s, Detroit’s urban freeway network also pulled many cars off these main roads as well, hence the great biking conditions.

Biking: a central theme

The Hamilton Spectator reported on this year’s Ontario Bike Summit. Jeff Olson from Alta Planning gave a little plug for Detroit.

A biking ‘guru’ who helped transform Portland into a cycling oasis has offered his expertise to Hamilton, a city he believes has “progressive potential.”

Jeff Olson, partner at Alta Planning and Design and a speaker at yesterday’s Ontario Bike Summit 2010 in Burlington, said a number of U.S. cities are using bicycles as a central theme in their shift from manufacturing hubs to modern urban centres. Included in that list are Buffalo, Dayton, Detroit and Cleveland.

Olson did some consulting on Detroit greenways last year and was truly awestruck by the biking potential.