Biking Jobs: Bringing people together in the bicycle industry

Riding a bicycle is fun and it's a great way to get around. But for some people the bicycle is more than just a past time or a form of transportation--it's a job. From your neighborhood bike mechanic or local city bicycle planner, to the people who designed your bike frame, there are bike-related jobs all around... but not always easy to find. Today we're changing that.

Back in December 2007, before we launched Ride the City it was no piece of cake to get data from the City. For the bike route data, for example, we first had to track down which agency maintained the data. You'd think it'd be in the hands of the Department of Transportation (DOT) but actually at the time it was at the Department of City Planning. When we figured that out, we had to make a Freedom of Information Law (FOIL) request to City Planning because although the data was public, it wasn't freely accessible. We made the official FOIL request, then after some back/forth with City Planning, and a couple months, we got the data that allowed us to begin to work on Ride the City. By the way, City Planning was always incredibly helpful and the experience was quite pleasant. Nevertheless, getting public data just a few years ago was a pain in the neck. Fortunately, that's changing.

Just this week, NYCDOT added NYC bike route data to its data feeds. Now anyone with an Internet connection can get the free public data quickly. The data includes the type of bike facility that each line segment represents, and also whether it has certain car-free hours, is an on- or off-street bike facility, and comments with descriptive information (i.e. walk your bike). The included metadata also include a suggested symbology (e.g. green lines for separated Class I bike routes; red lines for Class II routes, etc).

Do you ever feel nervous about taking your bike into new neighborhoods? Are you afraid you might get stuck on a one-way street between an expressway on-ramp and a six-lane arterial? We know the feeling. That's why we're pleased to bring you the Ride the City Photo Scavenger Hunt as part of NYC Bike Month. Use Ride the City to find safe bike routes to parks and other exciting spots in all five boroughs throughout the month of May!

Plus, if you share photos of your bike with Ride the City, you can win some great prizes from our sponsors, Bicycle Habitat, Bespoke Bicycles, and Adeline Adeline.

Ever since we launched Ride the City, we've been getting requests for a mobile version of the application. Well, here it is: Link to iTunes Preview. The app costs $1.99 and is available for New York City; we will be rolling out apps for the other cities soon.

The app gives you most of the great functionality of the web application but in a pocket-sized, location-aware package (it also works on the iPod touch and iPad). Key features of the Ride the City - NYC iPhone app include:

• As on the website, the iPhone app steers you toward routes that maximize the use of bike lanes, bike paths, greenways, and other bike-friendly streets. Routes avoid high-traffic streets and steep climbs.
• You can select your preferred route sensitivity: direct, safe, or safer. Or you can change them on the fly.
• The directions are displayed on the map with an easy-to-read scrollable screen – perfect for double-checking your trip when taking a break.
• Find the nearest bike shops (and get directions to one) with just one touch.
• We've placed a Report an Error button prominently on the map so you can provide instant feedback to report a mistake on the map or to suggest a better way around.
• As on the website, Ride the City utilizes a CloudMade basemap that is sourced from OpenStreetMap, the volunteer community mapping project that is making a free map of the world.

Today we're bridging our West Coast cities of Seattle and San Diego with the launch of Ride the City - San Francisco. Now, in addition to Google's handy application, cyclists have one more tool to search for bike routes. Ride the City - SF includes only the City of San Francisco. Rather than roll out the entire Bay Area, we chose instead to focus on delivering a great product for SF. The surrounding counties will be coming soon.

Photo-illustration: Everett Bogue; Photos: Getty Images, iStockphoto
This morning New York Magazine chimed in on Bicycling magazine's rating of NYC as the eighth most bicycle-friendly city in the US: America's Top 50 Bike-Friendly Cities. (How about the rest of the Americas?)

I think it's interesting that my hometown of Eugene, Oregon came in at number five. It's difficult to compare NYC to a city like Eugene, which only has about a 150,000 residents, where taxis and pigeons are few. Eugene does have many on- and off-street bike paths, but in only the last three years NYC has rolled out 200 miles of bike lanes, according to NYC DOT. And they're planning to add another 30 miles this year. At this rate, we'll be in the top three before not too long. How's your city doing?

Happy Easter! Here's a treat that's good for any time of the year.

By the way, I came across this Easter bike ride outside of Chicago, the 29th annual Easter Ride. More Easter bunny bike rides would be nice.

We've got a little city called San Francisco ready for testing. If you want to check it out, run a few routes, and leave a little feedback, fill out our painless sign-up form here: http://www.ridethecity.com/sf-beta.

We've got the elevation sensitivity cranked up to 11 so please let us know how it's working out in practice. As always: rate the route early and often!

Photo by Martin Reis, aka Tino
Last fall I took a trip to Toronto to visit a couple friends and when I got there I was blown away by the number of bikes. There were loads of cyclists, bike parking lots everywhere and a general feeling that cycling is a heavily-used form of transportation. It’s crazy to think that although it’s just a stone’s throw from the U.S., bicycling in Toronto is significantly more popular. According to the 2009 City of Toronto Cycling Study, nearly 30 percent of Toronto residents age 15 and older used bicycles for utilitarian purposes, growing from 20 percent in 1999. Biking to work and school has increased to 16 percent of residents age 15 and older vs. 11 percent in 1999. This is a city that clearly sees bikes as a viable mode of transportation.

Our twitter stream has been ringing off the hook here at Ride the City HQ. In case you somehow missed the news: Google has released its long-awaited bike routing application.

As cyclists, we're beaming right now thinking about the number of people who will use Google's familiar interface to plot their first bike commute. That's always been our #1 goal at Ride the City -- to encourage people to ride bikes by helping them find a safer route.

We want to congratulate the Google Maps team on what looks to be a job extraordinarily well done. As Vaidila can attest, merging bike path data layer with a street data layer in a major metropolitan area is a laborious, painstaking process. And as I can attest, adjusting the weights of a dozen different criteria that factor into the routing calculation is similarly challenging.