Show #647 – March 15, 2024

Guests:  Mike Lydon; Dr. Ralph Buehler

A couple of quick notes – BIG congratulations to American Matteo Jorgenson from team Visma – Lease a Bike for winning Paris-Nice this past Sunday. What a race… the weather was awful, but the racing was daring and exciting.

And for those in NE Ohio who know the Detroit-Superior Bridge over the Flats, the streetcar deck below the bridge will be turned into a bike/ped path with a $7 million dollar grant awarded to Cuyahoga County by the U.S. Department of Transportation! Infrastructure dollars at work! Congratulations CLE!

Today’s episode features two very accomplished guests.

First up is Mike Lydon – and where to begin! Well, let’s see.. Mike is an internationally recognized planner, writer, speaker, and advocate for livable cities.

But wait, there’s more; in fact, so much more that I would direct you to his website, streetplans.com where there is a great description of what he does and the accolades, and projects he’s been part of are enumerated.

Mike Lydon seems to have been “born to” the profession of urban planning with a love for towns and cities from his childhood. His work has been acclaimed far and wide and he thinks about what we can do on both a micro and a macro level to realize better ways to make our cities livable and safe.

I want to make a correction to something I say early on in our conversation. I mistakenly stated the year that the store I opened in downtown Cleveland was 1997; nope, the year it was opened was actually 1989.

In the second half of the show, Dr. Ralph Buehler will be back to speak with us about his part in a study about what happened with cycling during and after the pandemic. Some of the findings might surprise you; some of them we already know; and, some of them give us insight into what we might expect in the future.

The COVID19 pandemic changed the way we behave in so many ways. We found ourselves learning a new way of moving about, and whether it was going to and coming from work, shopping for groceries, or just getting outside for pleasure, the impact of the worldwide need to alter the way we travel is a topic of great interest to my guest, Dr. Ralph Buehler.

Ralph joins me to discuss his findings, which were published recently in an article titled “COVID 19 Impacts on Cycling.”

It is concerning that young people are not learning to ride a bike – I didn’t expect that when we first started talking.  I hope you are teaching your children and grandchildren!

Transcript 3_15_2024

Show #405 – June 16, 2018

Guests: Keith Oberg, Mike Sule

It’s advocacy all the way down.

Bikes for the World‘s Keith Oberg goes back to the beginning of the organization’s founding and takes us through the process that has delivered 140,000 bikes around the globe, creating job, getting kids to school, delivering much needed health care, and taking care of the environment in the process.

Then, Mile Sule, Executive Director of Asheville on Bikes in Asheville, NC, explains “tactical urbanism” and the project that will help to determine how a street in the city will transformed to accommodate ALL traffic.

I also begin the show with a “commentary” on why some of the old, venerable bike rides are losing attendance and what we might be able to do to revive cycling culture for a younger generation.