The Jimmy John's on Calhoun St. has had bike delivery guys for about ten years.  But I've noticed in recent weeks that they appear to be sending regular kitchen staff out on red bikes to make deliveries.  I'm still seeing dedicated bike delivery guys who put the food in backpacks, but the kitchen staff uses the red bike baskets.

 

Makes sense. If you assume that JJ's probably covers the cost of maintenance and repairs on bikes (belonging to either them or employees), they could pay $100+ after only two trips into a shop. With RedBike, you get unlimited 30 minute trips for just $80 per year. Makes expenses far more predictable.

The Jimmy John's on Calhoun St. has had bike delivery guys for about ten years.  But I've noticed in recent weeks that they appear to be sending regular kitchen staff out on red bikes to make deliveries.  I'm still seeing dedicated bike delivery guys who put the food in backpacks, but the kitchen staff uses the red bike baskets. 

 

I still remember how novel I thought it was that Jimmy Johns had bike delivery people when they first started doing it lol.

The Jimmy John's on Calhoun St. has had bike delivery guys for about ten years.  But I've noticed in recent weeks that they appear to be sending regular kitchen staff out on red bikes to make deliveries.  I'm still seeing dedicated bike delivery guys who put the food in backpacks, but the kitchen staff uses the red bike baskets.

 

Makes sense. If you assume that JJ's probably covers the cost of maintenance and repairs on bikes (belonging to either them or employees), they could pay $100+ after only two trips into a shop. With RedBike, you get unlimited 30 minute trips for just $80 per year. Makes expenses far more predictable.

 

I was a Jimmy John's bike delivery guy at the Athens store in 2004 and 2005.  I had my own bike but whoever was the bike delivery guy used the store's bike, which was a mountain bike with baskets attached to either side of the back wheel similar to what the red bikes have.  What was so obnoxious about that job was how many people ordered fountain drinks and we would actually deliver fountain drinks without any sort of special container.  There was a trick where you put two lids over the cup and it held the top of the cup tightly, then you tightly stapled the cup next to a sub in the bag and somehow they never spilled. 

 

I suspect what Jimmy John's is doing on Calhoun is they are sending idle kitchen workers out with close deliveries rather than waiting for their regular guys to get back.  Around 2008 I had a conversation in the store with one of their bike guys who was riding an old steel road bike with only rear gears which was a NYC delivery track bike adaptation appropriate for Cincinnati.  The guys they have delivering now are slow-pokes who ride on the sidewalks a lot.   

 

 

 

Did anyone "freak" because of how fast you were?

Did anyone "freak" because of how fast you were?

 

No.  The highlight of my bike delivery career was the day when Michael Moore, still basking in the Fahrenheit 411 afterglow spoke on Court St. in Athens a week or two before the 2004 election.  I had to get off the bike to walk it through the crowd and I intentionally didn't look up but I saw Michael Moore distracted mid-rant by some bike delivery guy pushing through the crowd about 10 feet in front of the stage. 

Quite disappointing when you have two grocery bags and the nearest station is .7 miles away...

^I like RedBike, but that overage fee policy is garbage.  Instead of requiring the customer to email them, they should just waive all overage fees for any bikes that are parked at that station when it gets repaired.  Or have someone pop by while delivering other bikes to jot down the numbers and handle it on the back end.  Or just assume that any bikes that don't show up after being checked out elsewhere are bikes that have been checked into this dock.  Or just waive the fees for the day across the entire system, in a fun "everybody wins because we screwed up" situation, since this seems to be a rare event.  Making customers contact you because your software failed is bad customer service.

Congrats Cincy & CLE 4 landing in Top Ten list of cities adding bike commuters!

http://www.gcbl.org/blog/2015/10/rust-belt-wheelers-lead-us-in-bike-commute-growth

How many folks on here ride to work at least 2 days a week?

Does RedBike count? If so then yes I do that.

guilty. at least twice a week.

Courier is reporting that Red Bike has had its 100,000th ride earlier this week. Almost exactly a month ago, at the year anniversary, it was at 88,400 rides. Almost 12000 rides in 30 days is about 400 a day! That's huge.

Do the math...100,000 divided by 365 is 275~.  Divide that by 2 for round trips and you get the capacity of about three metro buses. So somehow three busloads of people biking on bikeshare bikes is transformative?

I'm curious Jake, do you actually like anything at all? 

Do the math...100,000 divided by 365 is 275~.  Divide that by 2 for round trips and you get the capacity of about three metro buses. So somehow three busloads of people biking on bikeshare bikes is transformative?

 

Why are you dividing that by two? Are you dividing the metro buses by two as well? I wasn't aware riding a bus once counted as a round trip. And Metro buses are not always full. Very rarely are they full except on certain routes during rush hour.

Do the math...100,000 divided by 365 is 275~.  Divide that by 2 for round trips and you get the capacity of about three metro buses. So somehow three busloads of people biking on bikeshare bikes is transformative?

 

RedBike is a great addition to Cincinnati, but to put things in perspective, Metro will hit it's 100,000th rider of the week sometime today (or possibly tomorrow morning because yesterday was Columbus Day)

I'm curious Jake, do you actually like anything at all? 

 

Everyone knows Jake loves the years 1991 to 1996.

I think it's more like 1985-1991, the first round of Jane's Addiction.

Ya gotsta understand [Jake] love da kids!

 

 

 

Do the math...100,000 divided by 365 is 275~.  Divide that by 2 for round trips and you get the capacity of about three metro buses. So somehow three busloads of people biking on bikeshare bikes is transformative?

 

RedBike is a great addition to Cincinnati, but to put things in perspective, Metro will hit it's 100,000th rider of the week sometime today (or possibly tomorrow morning because yesterday was Columbus Day)

 

 

Looking at this statistic I can't see how anyone can say that it's making a significant impact on life in this city.  I live and work in the uptown Red Bike zone and hardly ever see someone riding one.  I'm sure I've gone over a week several times over the past year without seeing anyone riding one near UC. 

 

I was suspicious of bikeshare's utility in Cincinnati after riding the super-heavy bikes in other cities, all of them much flatter than ours.  The fact is many people don't even ride lightweight $2,000 carbon fiber bikes up our hills -- bikes that weigh a quarter of what the red bikes weigh.  I have ridden my various bikes up these hills and the sometimes higher and steeper hills in Kentucky well over 1,000 times.  I'm not confident that I could ride one of the red bikes up Sycamore or one of the other steep streets.  It's not just the weight but the "wicked witch" frame geometry and the lack of toe clips.  I remember the first time I rode a red bike last year from the station near Skyline Chili up the Clifton Ave. hill in front of Good Samaritan Hospital...I worked up a disgusting sweat in just 10 minutes.  I don't even think about that hill when I'm riding a real bike. 

 

 

Jake I agree with you on the barrier that the hills put in place to making Red bike more than an inter-neighborhood circulator tool. However, I work downtown on the river, and see multiple bike every day at lunch in the riverfront parks, and while I'm walking home to over the rhine (and use it myself a couple times a week).

 

So is Red bike really a "transportation" tool, in the way that metro is? Maybe not. However, I would argue that as a fun, recreational tool that has brought people outside and allowed them to explore the downtown (and uptown) parts of the city, Red bike has succeeded. In terms of generated goodwill, and spin-off spending, I think that it has more than paid for itself.

Yesterday at the Issue 22 debate, Mayor Cranley reiterated his stance in opposing on-street bike lanes. He stated that bikes and cars should share the road and bike should not be prioritized over cars by having their own lane.

 

Here's the problem with requiring bikes to share the road with cars:

 

 

Drivers are irrational.

Such a stupid generalization, that there aren't any streets where a bike lane (added with or without removing a car lane) wouldn't snarl traffic.

 

And in case anyone thinks the above tweets are just sick humor: http://www.nytimes.com/2015/10/22/us/albuquerque-road-rage-death.html

Chris Wetterich has a nice write-up of Jeff Speck's visit to Cincinnati last week: http://www.bizjournals.com/cincinnati/blog/2015/10/bike-lanes-two-way-streets-parallel-parking-should.html

 

My takeaways: Harry Black might not have read the whole of Plan Cincinnati yet. He also views bike infrastructure as a "nice to have",  and insists that the additional money the city has taken on through debt will only go towards cars. Which is pretty ironic, seeing as cars do way more damage to roads than bikes do.

 

In all, he seems to view the prospect of a big redesign of downtown streets (seeing where two-way streets and bike lanes can be done, for example) as just too big a hassle to worry about. Much easier to borrow money and pave roads for cars.

I've ridden thousands of miles on everything ranging from country roads to divided 4-lanes and can say it's extraordinarily rare for a passing car's side mirror to come within two feet of your elbow, let alone one foot.  I think a lot of people on bikes perceive that passing cars are much closer than they are.  I saw some bike advocate post a video online earlier this year where he whined about how close a car was to him, and on the video you could clearly see that there was at least 18" of clearance, maybe two feet.

 

This year I finally broke down and bought one of the super-bright rechargeable LED lights that cost about $90.  I had various LED lights in the past but not one of the super-bright blinking ones that came on the market in the past few years.  I sense that this light really makes a difference in cars noticing you both day and night.  People who are about to pull out from parallel parking spaces see the light coming in their side mirrors.  The light is so annoying that people just want to get away from you!  I also have one of the new rear red lights, which is much better than the tail lights from ten years ago, but if you want to be extra safe I'd get a second white headlight and mount it on the back facing backward. 

 

These new lights are a lot more expensive but they also come with much higher quality mounting brackets.  They don't slip like cheaper lights do or fly off when you hit some rough pavement.  Also the batteries last at least 3 hours on a full charge, which was the longest night ride I did this year.  They get a bit dimmer after about 30 minutes but then they seem to level off and maintain about 80% of their maximum brightness for several hours. 

 

 

 

If you're going to repave roads, you're going to put down new paint anyway. It does not cost any more to narrow lanes down to 10 ft. and add bike lanes. The cost of turning one-way streets back to two-way is also minimal.

 

"[City Manager] Black said he has not yet read the bicycle transportation plan nor is it on his immediate agenda."

 

Black has essentially stuck his fingers in his ears and said "I can't hear you, urbanists!"

The bike lane on Woolper as well as the bike lane on the Mill Creek bridge in South Cumminsville were both added after Cranley took office, but I assume that his office simply didn't know that those were in the works. 

 

The lanes on Woolper and Mitchell are only on the uphill side of the road, which means the lanes were hardly narrowed at all, but I see barely any use of either.

An interesting point Speck made at his Fall Forum speech was that when you convert streets from one-way to two-way, you in many cases eliminate the need for traffic signals in favor of 4-way stops.  When you have 4-way stops, you don't need turn lanes, so you can maintain if not increase curb parking, allow for bump-outs, planters, bus stops, bike lanes, protected intersections, etc.  Since the main cost of converting between one-way and two-way streets is redoing the traffic signals, that's a compelling argument. 

 

As far as capacity, the rule of thumb is that a street with one lane each direction can handle 10,000 vehicles per day (AADT).  No street inside OTR carries that much traffic other than Liberty (about 15,000), and even most downtown streets are in the 5,000-7,000 range due to being a comprehensive grid.  So ignoring the streetcar for the moment, you could legitimately convert every street in OTR to two-way (barring the ones that are so narrow there's only one through lane anyway) and remove every traffic signal except at intersections with Liberty and Central Parkway (plus the mess of Vine/McMicken/Findlay due to its complicated geometry and poor sight lines).  The highest count I could find in downtown (other than Central Parkway) is East 5th Street at 12,692, yet it's 7 lanes wide one-way.  2nd and 3rd Streets are similar.  The fears about gridlock and delays and "hurr durr war on cars!" is completely unfounded. 

As a pedestrian, I recently almost got run over by a bicyclist who was riding on the sidewalk in front of St. Louis Church at 8th & Walnut.  He was speeding and it was only luck that spared me.  He could've really harmed me in a major way.  I've also had close calls with bicyclists who don't observe traffic rules and run red lights.  It's not always easy to notice a bicyclist when you're walking in a crosswalk and mainly looking out for cars turning corners, much less so when they're speeding through red lights.  I can appreciate the dilemmas that bicyclists face but I wish some of them would be more careful and considerate of pedestrians.

This is an ambitious plan worthy of support:

 

http://www.bizjournals.com/cincinnati/blog/2015/12/how-soon-could-a-proposed-42-mile-city-bike-loop.html?ana=twt

 

Also does anyone know if there is some kind of bike path being built as part of the western MLK (near Hopple interchange) realignment? I thought I saw something on Facebook but can't find it again, wondering what the plan would be.

There's a "shared-use path" on the north side of the street from Clifton down to Central Parkway near the new Clifton Colony entrance.  I know they built the bottom leg of it to Central Parkway, and it may even be open, or at least passable, but I don't know how far up the hill it goes at this point. 

Yes it's being built all the way to Clifton Ave.  I think it will get a fair amount of use by all of the people who live in the Clifton Colony and Forum Apts, each of which have at least 500 residents. 

 

I believe that the "loop" described in this latest plan would create a path on the north side of this path from Clifton to Reading, but we can't be sure, because no specifics are given.  But doing that the right way would require them setting up a public easement right now on all of those empty lots, and we haven't heard any intention of doing that.  Also, it's possible to go east/west through this area much more easily on University, which is quieter and I think has less dramatic hills. 

Definitely need to complete the Central Parkway Bike Lanes then to connect to this.

 

Off topic, but this MLK shared use path could enter the City Garage TOD that's part of my Northside light rail plan: https://cincinnatiideas.wordpress.com/northside-light-rail/

I biked on Central Parkway through the Hopple area last week, and based on the striping which is almost finished, it doesn't look like they have any accommodation set up for extending the bike lanes through there.  I hope I'm wrong but I'm very doubtful. 

After the ramps near Cincinnati State close, there will be almost zero traffic on Central Parkway between Hopple and Ludlow.  They could restripe the thing for two lanes no problem. 

Definitely need to complete the Central Parkway Bike Lanes then to connect to this.

 

Off topic, but this MLK shared use path could enter the City Garage TOD that's part of my Northside light rail plan: https://cincinnatiideas.wordpress.com/northside-light-rail/

 

If you use the tunnels why not take them all the way down to Central Parkway and day light the streetcar on the parkway?

Definitely need to complete the Central Parkway Bike Lanes then to connect to this.

 

Off topic, but this MLK shared use path could enter the City Garage TOD that's part of my Northside light rail plan: https://cincinnatiideas.wordpress.com/northside-light-rail/

 

If you use the tunnels why not take them all the way down to Central Parkway and day light the streetcar on the parkway?

 

Cost- My thinking was if you only resurrect the tunnels from Mohawk northward and only have one underground station at Brighton you could save a lot of money than going the whole way in the tunnel to the old Race and Central Parkway station. And these streetcars would be traveling the entirety of the current route so you wouldn't need an extra fleet of streetcars and drivers to run a whole other line.

 

The other trade off I made is time/speed- a lot of people have been commenting that this route should go through the heart of Camp Washington on Colerain but I kept ithe right of way separate to make it time competitive to use it from Northside to downtown. Also, someone on a bus like the 17 could transfer in Northside to the streetcar to avoid going all the way through Uptown. This would only work if it was a fast ride into downtown.

Bicyclist hit from behind on Kellogg Ave. by driver who might have been high:

 

http://www.cincinnati.com/story/news/crime/2016/01/31/bicyclist-hospitalized-after-hit-skip/79611750/

 

 

A driver has to be seriously messed up in the head to hit bicyclists on divided 4-lane highways, super-2's, and other high speed state highways.  The visibility is always excellent on these kinds of roads because the curves are gradual.  There are also usually rumble strips. 

Sadly, the cyclist has passed away.

http://www.cincinnati.com/story/news/crime/2016/01/31/bicyclist-hospitalized-after-hit-skip/79611750/

 

This is a pretty upsetting event because it contrasts the ways two people chose to spend an unseasonably warm winter afternoon -- one went out to go enjoy the outdoors and get some exercise, another chose to spend the day getting high. 

I used to ride out that way a fair bit.  It was never that fun because it's so boring, but it's one of the few open flat roads with very few stop lights and intersections around.  There's also a lot of nice roads going up the hill out of New Richmond, and this is the only way to get there with Old Kellogg being discontinuous.  Regular group rides died after ODOT put in the rumble strips on the white line.  Many of us argued against installing them because they act to trap the cyclist in the shoulder, making it much more difficult to avoid debris.  Large groups used to practice pacelining here, riding mostly in the right lane, which is plenty visible with a decent group of people, and the rumble strips put a stop to that.  Plus they only benefit motorist safety while marginally harming cyclist safety due to their jarring nature and tendency to hold water.  In this case, they didn't help anyone, sadly. 

Yeah the rumble strips are an annoyance...and potentially really dangerous if you have to swerve to avoid glass or gravel and or hit them while looking over your shoulder.  There is usually a lot of random stuff on the emergency shoulders of divided 4-lanes so I tend to ride pretty close to the white line, and in the case of KY 9 between I-275 and Newport usually on the white line in order to avoid the rumble strips.  Incidentally, KY 9 going south just south of I-275 is probably the single most dangerous spot to bike that I know of in the Cincinnati area.  The road curves left with a slip ramp merging from I-275 to the right.  Those dumb flippy reflectors are there to keep people from merging too quickly, but as a bicyclist, you end up getting deposited right between two lanes of 55mph traffic.  It's similar to crossing the Western Hills Viaduct top deck westbound, where traffic appears over your right shoulder from I-75 north, but there is much poorer visibility and speeds are much higher. 

 

 

 

 

The city has been sloooowly rebuilding curbs and sidewalks on Spring Grove Avenue between the Western Hills Viaduct and Hopple Street.  They're also adding curb bulb-outs at some intersections that will complicate if not preclude the installation of bike lanes in the future.  Even without bike lanes, it would make cycling in the parking lane which is mostly unused, especially in the evening, impossible.  I can't find any current engineering plans, but all of Spring Grove is part of the city's bike network plan.  I smell Cranley. 

SR 52 doesn't have rumble strips

^ Yes it does, between 9-Mile and Beckjord Road at least. 

Great to see this Enquirer op-ed urging the city to dust off the bicycle master plan that was shelved by the current administration.

 

http://www.cincinnati.com/story/opinion/contributors/2016/02/02/opinion-city-ignoring-plan-bike-safety/79704782/

Christopher Smitherman is introducing a motion to remove a portion of the protected bike lane on Central Parkway (from Liberty to Charlotte). While I highly doubt it has the votes to pass it will generate more noise.

 

http://city-egov.cincinnati-oh.gov/Webtop/ws/council/public/documents/Record?rpp=10&upp=0&m=9&order=native%28%27doc_no%2FDescend%27%29

 

MOTION, dated 2/18/2016 submitted by Councilmember Smitherman, I MOVE that the City Administration remove the protected bike lanes from the 1600 block to 2000 block on Central Parkway.

^ I drive or bike that stretch of Central Parkway every single weekday, morning and evening at rush hour, from downtown to Ravine or up through Findlay if I'm on my bike (I can manage to slowly get myself up West Clifton, but don't even want to think about biking up Ravine). I've never once had any problems with it, either in my car or on my bike. I can't even think of what Smitherman's problem with it might be, but removing the bike lane for that stretch would create an incredible dangerous situation for everyone involved, and I'd probably just take another route rather than deal with it.

Smitherman wants the bike lane removed so that he can yell and scream about "wasteful spending from City Council" and how "we spent $100,000 to put in bike lanes, and then we spent another $100,000 to rip them out a year later" (even though he is the one putting forward the motion to rip them out)! That's exactly the kind of tactic that Smitherman loves. Kind of like how he complained that Issue 9 and Issue 48 had "misleading language" even though it was his side that wrote the language.

This is, I believe, a bridge that will parallel the Beechmont Ave. bridge over the river.  Somebody correct me if I'm wrong. 

 

http://www.wcpo.com/news/insider/crucial-link-between-downtown-and-little-miami-scenic-trail-recommended-for-1m-in-capital-funding