$4/gallon has had quite a snowball effect, and one of the rewards for pedestrians outside of car-free days and cities going glorious bonkers to build bike lanes is Google has finally offered walking directions as an option.

The maps above show the same starting and arriving points, but the one on the left is for driving directions and since July 22, 2008 there’s one on the right for walking directions. It’s almost amusing how logical the path becomes. Google says they’ll try to find you a route that’s direct, flat, and uses pedestrian pathways when they know about them, though only if you’re going less than 10 km/6.2 miles. I just found out I’ve been taking the ‘long way’ to my workplace 0.4 miles away.

I actually don’t see Public Transit as an option, which Google says they’ll now give step-by-step walking directions for the portion of your trip on foot. However, they do have public transit directions for mobile devices, and that’s best explained via their YouTube video.

Get an overall demonstration from their YouTube video - it’s worth the two minutes. You’ll notice that in more populated cities you can even view street-level photos of where you are at each turn.

For a city with such a reputation for bureaucracy, it’s perhaps a sign of the new times that Washington DC is the first city in the U.S. to have a modern, city-wide bike sharing program, open for use as of August 13, 2008. It’s the same system used in Barcelona, and inspired by the 20,000 bike/1400-station phenomenon in Paris.

Ok, so the SmartBikeDC program at 120 bikes and 10 stations pales by comparison to Paris, but that’s 120 bikes/10 stations more than any other bike sharing system in the country. The annual fee is $40 for unlimited use as long as you return the bike after 3 hours, being able to rent a bike immediately after. It’s a better deal than the one in Paris where only the first half hour is free. However, be sure to return it within 24 hours otherwise you’ll be stuck with a $550 invoice.

One question you may want to ask is why are the bikes arguably so darn ugly? Well, who wants to steal an ugly bike?

Check out the Washington Post article, DC Bike Sharing Kicks Into High Gear.

Image source: Trishswishs

If you think being advertised to is worth free zero-carbon rides through town, then EcoCabs is just for you. Rapidly spreading throughout Europe and North America, this Dublin-based shuttle service relies on pedal power with electric-battery assist. Passengers say the ride is surprisingly smooth with some acceleration kick. Some of the vitals:

Launched: April, 2008
Maximum number of passengers: 3
Top speed: 7 mph/12 km/h
Where: Dublin, Ireland, Toronto, Canada; New York, Chicago, Detroit, California…
Cost to passenger: Free as far as money goes, subject to full vehicle advertising and occasional flyers
Cost per vehicle: $13K

Click here to see videos of EcoCab in the media.

On the one hand, would it be disturbing to be surrounded by a swarm of corporate-branded vehicles? On the other hand, aren’t taxis, buses and subways going the same route anyway? A combination of free, fun and green is an awfully powerful combination to affect peoples’ behavior. What do you think?

What's a city that launches the world's largest bike sharing program, Velib ('free bike'... for the first 30 minutes), do for an encore? It announces the world's largest electric car sharing program, Autolib. However, unlike the wildly successful bike sharing program, it's unclear if this will result in more or less people driving. We'll soon find out.

The highlights:
- 4000 electric cars
- 700 pick-up points
- Drop off anywhere (a computerized system will let you know of available parking spots)
- Suggested monthly fee of $300-$400, including electricity.

The contracted company that will operate the progarm has yet to be chosen.

Image source: signonto.think.

Transit becoming cooler than cars? What's next?

It doesn't matter if it's by bus, subway, light rail, streetcar or commuter rail. It doesn't matter if it's in Minneapolis, Dallas, Seattle, San Francisco, Miami, New Jersey, Houston, Charlotte or Philadelphia. For the last ten years, mass transit ridership has been increasing (see NY Times survey), and significantly the last three months for obvious reasons.

Americans took 10.3 billion public transit trips in 2007, up 2.1% from 2006, but transit planners are expecting 5% growth in 2008, the largest in a decade amid the first yearly decline in gasoline use since 1991.

The NY Times illustrates this brilliantly in this vignette from their Gas Prices Send Surge of Riders to Mass Transit article:

Brayden Portillo, a freshman at the University of Colorado Denver, drove from his home in the northern suburbs to the downtown campus in his Jeep Cherokee the entire first semester of the school year, enjoying the rap and disco music blasting from his CD player.

He switched to the bus this semester because he was spending $40 a week on gas - half his salary as a part-time store clerk. "Finally, I thought this is stupid," he said, and he is using the savings to pay down a credit card debt.

What's next? The photo above displays the third option - the pedestrian. Covered a couple of entries ago here, progressive, creative residents in pedestrian-oriented communities are finding opportunities to achieve something they only dreamed about ten years ago... pedestrian-only streets.

Image source: Tram, car and pedestrian in Strasbourg, France by Jasperdo.

What's hot? Bicycles?!

As you can see by the graph, bicycle production is enjoying a renaissance, increasing in each of the last six years while car production has remained steady in growth. Much of the recent growth has been driven by the rise gas prices as well as in electric bike production, which has doubled to 21 million units in the last three years. Since 1970, bicycle output quadrupled while car production doubled.

The city of Copenhagen (pictured) plans to invest more than $200 million in bike facilities between 2006 and 2024, estimating that by 2015 half its residents will bike to work or school (36% do today). The city of Amsterdam will spend $160 million from 2006 to 2010 on bicycle infrastructure.

The U.S. government will spend $900 million a year for biking and pedestrian infrastructure for 2005 to 2009, doubling bicycle and pedestrian routes in the 50 largest cities.

Unfortunately, China's bike fleet declined by 35% from 670 million to 435 million 1995 to 2005, while car ownership more than doubled from 4.2 million to 8.9 million. Hopefully worldwide trends will catch up to China.

Read more here.

Image source: Zakkaliciousness

So what's the delivery truck equivalent of the bicycle? Look no further than Paris, the home of 20,000 shared bikes, and there you'll find La Petite Reine, a delivery company that utilizes a fleet of 60 Cargocycles.

With a delivery capacity of 400 lbs. and 50 cubic feet within an 18-mile delivery radius, La Petite Reine completes 2500 deliveries every day for larger corporate partners like DHL that can't access the more intimate street networks of more pedestrian-oriented downtowns.

'La Petite Reine' translates to 'Queen of the Road', the name given by the French to the bicycle. Founded in 2001, the company now serves Bordeaux, Rouen and Dijon.

Portland striving to be the U.S. bike capital

Already owning bragging rights to being the greenest city in the U.S. by one measure, Portland, Oregon believes it's the most bicycle-friendly city as well. Their evidence:

- In the 1970s the state passed a bicycle bill requiring that all facilities be built with bicycle and pedestrian accommodations.

- In the 1990s, city councilor Earl Blumenauer worked to establish a bike program in the city, who has since become the leading U.S. congressman speaking on behalf of bike and pedestrian-oriented cities.

- The average vehicle miles traveled per person dropped from 23 miles/person in the early '90s to 19 today, bucking national trends. Portland ranks 25th in national population, but 12th in terms of overall transit use. It's transit use is growing faster than auto use, and the population, again contradicting national trends.

- Bike advocates (via the organization Shift) are playing a major role in organizing the first Towards Carfree Cities conference in North America.

- At the Carfree conference the City will introduce Sunday Parkways, where six miles of streets are closed to auto traffic every Sunday from 8 am to 2 pm, Portland's version of Ciclovia, an international trend originating in Bogota, Columbia.

However, it'd be tough to claim to title outright without a bike sharing program like Washington DC is getting...

Update to recent entry: The city took a major step in claiming the U.S. bike capital status by achieving a Platinum Bicycle Friendly Community designation from the League of American Bicyclists, one of only two cities (along with Davis, CA) to achieve that designation.

While cities across Europe were growing their bike sharing programs, especially in Paris with 20,000 bikes and nearly a thousand stations, U.S. cities had yet to initiate even one. However, that's about to change May 2008 when Washington DC becomes the first U.S. city to establish a bike sharing program.

Clear Channel Outdoor and the DC Department of Transportation are launching Smartbike DC, a modest but important introduction to bike sharing in the U.S. - with 100 bikes and 10 stations. Clear Channel, an outdoor advertising company, provides the bike sharing system in exchange for advertising on 800 bus shelters. Their most successful program to date is in Barcelona (pictured), with 6000 bicycles and 400 stations.

It operates very similar to the widely known Paris system, with electronic locking, recognition and payment. The Smartbike website provides a step by step guide, FAQ and reveals a $40/year subscription, but no word yet on hourly rates. In Paris, the first half hour is free and you can leave it at any station with no extra charge.

San Francisco and Chicago bike sharing systems are next, and NYC experimented. More at MSNBC.

Thanks to Barbara Forlini for the reference.

Image source: Spacing Magazine

Pub on wheels

A year ago we profiled the conference bike from the Netherlands, which allowed seven people on one bike together - and have a 'conference' at the same time. Be it no surprise that the Dutch now bring us the Fietscafe (pictured above), or the PedalPub as it's known (and distributed) in the USA. If the world has a biking scene, it's hands down in the Netherlands.

This time instead of seven, there are fourteen people that can ride at the same time, each of them pedaling at their own leisure, with a roof, a bar counter, and a keg. To get the true spirit of it you'd have to check out a video and read a journalist's personal experience.

The inventors, the Van Laar brothers, have built 31 of these bikes ranging in price from $30,000-$40,000, offering different versions with models seating from seven to seventeen people, designed for wedding parties, women or the non-drinking crowd. It has a top speed of 8 mph going downhill.

Think of it as the ultimate alternative to the Hummer limousine.

Thanks to Luke Graven for the reference.