Minneapolis and some of the surrounding cities are about to embark on a little experiment in low-tech public transportation.

The city’s goal is to have 1,000 bikes at 75 self-service kiosks located around downtown, Uptown, and the university Members paying about $50 a year would be able to use the three-speed bikes for up to a half-hour at a time at no charge and drop them off wherever there’s a kiosk; non-members could buy a one-day pass for about $5 by sticking a credit card into one of the solar-powered stations.

Memberships would be sold on the Internet, and that’s also where users could see, in real time, whether a bike is available at a certain kiosk.

Something similar to this was tried a few years ago. Then the bikes were going to be free and special spots were set up where people could pick up and use the bright yellow bicycles as they pleased. You can guess how that turned out, pretty soon there weren’t a lot of yellow bicycles left.

But the new system promises locks and a radio chip tracking system to keep track of the bikes. The $50 a year fee sounds pretty reasonable, what remains to be seen is if people will actually sign up. It will be fun to keep an eye on this over the summer and see how it works out.

Seems that Minneapolis’ new Midtown Bike Center has drawn the ire of an Oklahoma politician.

A Minneapolis bicycling center had found itself on a list of “the year’s most outrageous federal spending” — in the same category as a census of Vermont barns and a mermaid mural in Racine, Wis.

The report, released Friday by U.S. Sen. Tom Coburn, R-Okla., prompted more than a few thoughts from Minnesota’s bike advocates.

The Senator is particularly upset that the bike center includes showers and a cafe. Guess he prefers his bicyclists sweaty and hungry.

This is a game that’s played almost every year by some senator or representative. Pick out a project that doesn’t have national significance, and hold it up to ridicule as a waste of funding. Closer examination almost always reveals a local reason for the project that gets left out of the national discussion. In the case of Minneapolis and bikes, it’s that Minneapolis ranks second in percentage of bike commuters and the Midtown Greenery is a model for how a bike trail system can be designed to meet the needs of both commuters and recreational users. Here in Minneapolis we need more projects like it, not less.

If senator Coburn recognized that, however, it would take away his little moment in the spotlight

Rechargeable batteries are showing up everywhere these days, from laptop computers to hybrid cars to cell phones. Anybody who can dramatically improve battery performance is going to make a lot of money, and from this article, it sounds like Toshiba has a leg up on the competition.

Toshiba has developed a new lithium-ion battery called SCiB (or Super Charge Ion Battery) which can charge to 90% capacity in 5 minutes. The life cycle of the new battery is more than 10 years even if it is rapidly charged and discharged many times. The battery is also much safer than other types of lithium ion batteries, which are potential fire hazards.
Toshiba will begin commercial production of the battery in March 2008. The company says the battery can be used in electric motorcycles and hybrid cars. Toshiba currently makes 150,000 cells a month, mostly for electric bicycles.

My three year old laptop takes about an hour to recharge after the battery falls to fifty percent, and has an expected life of five years. The thought of a battery that will help power a car or bicycle for ten years and charges in five minutes is a major step up from the current state of the art. And Toshiba isn’t talking about a research project, they’re planning on manufacturing in three months. that’s good news.

Since riding off on a bicycle could very well be the one thing left that President Bush could do that people would be in favor of, I guess it’s not too surprising that one of his last acts in office will involve bicycles.

The Bush administration plans to make it easier for mountain bikers to gain access to national parks and other public lands before the president - an avid cyclist himself - leaves office.

The National Park Service confirmed Tuesday that it is preparing a rule that will allow decisions about some mountain bike trails to be made by park managers instead of federal regulators in Washington, a process that can take years.

A park service spokesman said the rule would be proposed no later than Nov. 15 so it could be final before Bush leaves office. If adopted, the proposal would likely result in more mountain biking opportunities on public lands.

That’s going to leave the presence of bikes on trails previously closed to them up to the local managers. That’s obviously going to make some people happy and others upset. The things is, part of allowing park managers to make the decision is less public notice in the decision-making process. The Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility don’t think that’s such a good thing.

“This is a lame duck gift for our Mountain-Biker-in-Chief,” stated PEER Executive Director Jeff Ruch, noting that this proposed regulation is well past the proposed deadlines announced this summer by the White House Chief of Staff. “With all the troubles facing the country, the White House should be concerned about more than where the president can ride his bike.”

While PEER applauds getting more people out of their cars to bike on the paved and dirt roads of our parks, mountain biking on narrow trails may damage resources and conflict with visitor enjoyment. For this reason, the National Park Service adopted regulations for bicycles in 1987, during the Reagan administration, which allow mountain bikes on trails only after an individual park follows a stringent decision-making process that allows for closer scrutiny. The process requires notice of a proposed regulation in the Federal Register and publication of a special federal regulation. Several parks have adopted the necessary special regulations to allow bikes. Among the parks are Saguaro National Park, Arizona and Golden Gate National Recreation Area, California.

By contrast, under the plan pushed by IMBA, each park manager could designate backcountry trails open to mountain bikes by making a simple notation in an internal document called a “compendium” which is available to the public upon request but receives no public notice or public comment prior to approval. Nor would a park manager prepare any environmental compliance under the National Environmental Policy Act or other laws prior to adoption.

If nothing else, this whole thing is a prime example of how the Bush Administration likes to take care of business. At the last minute, through the back door, and sweep it under the rug before anyone notices.

Are you attending one of the upcoming political conventions or live in one of the towns, Denver and St Paul, where they’re being held? If so, Bikes Belong has a deal for you:

Our goal is to get convention attendees to ride bikes during both conventions. We know that bikes will be perfect for short trips between hotels, convention centers, restaurants, and the convention arenas. We want delegates, officials, the media—10,000+ per convention—volunteers, and the presidential candidates themselves to develop a greater appreciation and respect for the role of bicycling in big cities … and beyond.

We will make these bikes available without charge.

The bikes will also be available to the general public.

Every participant will need to enroll, provide contact information, and secure the bike they borrow with a credit card.

We will provide a helmet to each user. Each bike will come equipped with a carrying bag or basket. Each bike will include a cyclecomputer to tally mileage. We will provide bike locks to those who request them. All of the bikes will be simple, upright city bikes—designed for comfortable, short trips.

I can’t say about Denver, but St Paul and the Twin Cities in general are well-suited to getting out and exploring by bicycle. There are lots of trails, and many city streets have a lane set aside for bikes. And if you’ve peddled to far, buses and light rail trains have room for bringing the bike along.

For more information and a look at the bikes, MSNBC has a video.

The Midtown Greenway is a bike trail that runs east-west through south Minneapolis from the Mississippi River to the Chain of Lakes at Uptown. Since being opened about five years ago, it’s quickly become a favorite route for bicycle commuters and people just out for a ride. There have even been several housing projects built along side, proudly advertising their easy access to the trail.

The midtown area near Lake Street and Chicago Avenue is about the half-way point of the trail, and two weeks ago the Midtown Bike Center opened up. it’s a full service facility for bicycle riders along the trail, with a small cafe, bike rentals, service and repairs, and even showers for riders. As you can see, the trail and the center were fairly busy on an otherwise quiet Sunday morning.

Minneapolis is already among the U.S. leaders in number of bicycle commuters, with the price of gas the way it is, more people will undoubtedly be considering the option of biking to work. With any luck, the Midtown bike center will serve as a model for the kind of facilities that will make biking in the city neven better in the future.

Minneapolis got a new bridge this week. Not in place of the collapsed 35W bridge and not for cars, but instead a bicycle and pedestrian’s bridge that takes bikers and hikers over Hiawatha Avenue and the light rail tracks, connecting the Midtown Greenway with the trails leading to the Mississippi River. It’s a major connecting piece for the trail that runs to Uptown and the Chain of Lakes, and a fairly big deal to anyone who bikes through south Minneapolis. The more ways planners find for bicycles and cars to avoid each other, the better.

Plus, it looks cool.

I’m a little late getting to this controversy, but didn’t run a cross it this morning. Seems a Bush Administration official said something incredibly stupid: shocking, I know, which also gives a bit of a clue into how these people think. In an interview a few weeks ago, Mary Peters, the Secretary of Transportation asserted that one reason we’re behind on maintaining bridges and highways is that the federal government is spending too much money on bicycle paths.

I guess that’s a real problem here in Minneapolis. The Twin Cities area has one of the best-developed systems of bike trails of any metropolitan area in the country. Now we know why the 35W bridge collapsed. It wasn’t years of neglect by politicians passing out favors for corporations and the wealthy while at the same time wailing about the “evils of big government” and cutting funds for anything that helped out society as a whole. It was those darn bicyclists.

Secretary Peter’s real attitude comes out late in the interview when she lists bike paths among projects that “really aren’t transportation-related.” Don’t tell that to people in the Twin Cities:

One of the many communities that benefit from federal dollars for bicyclists and pedestrians is the very one where the bridge collapsed. For the St. Paul, Minn., program Bike/Walk Twin Cities, administered by Transit for Livable Communities, $21.5 million of federal dough is being spent to create bike lanes, connect existing walking and biking trails with one another, and install signage to alert drivers of the presence of bicyclists and walkers. Despite the cold winters, Minneapolis is something of a biking Mecca, with 2.4 percent of all trips to work made by bike, significantly higher than the national average of 0.4 percent, according to Joan Pasiuk, program director of Bike/Walk Twin Cities.

It’s hard to argue that walking paths and bike trails are robbing federal coffers when states can’t even spend all the federal money they’ve received to repair bridges in the first place. In 2006, state departments of transportation sent back $1 billion in unspent bridge funds to the federal government, according to the Federal Highway Administration. “The fact that there is a billion dollars of bridge repair money sloshing around in the system not being spent suggests that it’s not the fault of bike trails,” says Clarke.

By the way, bicycle paths account for less than 1.5 per-cent of federal transportation spending. And everytime someone pedals a bike instead of driving to work or to the store, there’s one less car to compete with for everyone who is driving, and a little cleaner air for us all.