As of this moment – this moment being mid-afternoon on the U.S. East Coast – about 13,000 people were out riding bikes they’d checked out from 85 of the world’s largest bike-share systems. Mexico City’s network was the busiest. The young New York City system was finding its balance, with six bikes still on offer at the East 14th Street and Avenue B dock in Manhattan. Most of the systems in China, in the middle of the night, were quiet.

If you use a bike-share system, you likely rely on an app that gives you a real-time distribution of the bikes and empty docks in your area. Oliver O’Brien, a researcher with the Centre for Advanced Spatial Analysis at the University College London, has built a map that does this same thing, simultaneously, for bike-shares all over the world.

These 85 systems, with more to come, are among the largest in the world to provide real-time data on riders and bikes as they navigate the city (in all, there are now about 500 bike-share systems in the world, 300 of them releasing such data). For these 85 systems, that’s about 210,000 docks and 95,000 bikes. O’Brien’s map, which he unveiled this week at the Velo-Cityconference in Vienna, tracks each system for its real-time share of bikes in use, by dock. The data is automatically updated every two to 10 minutes from the operators.

Read More HERE:

I am incredibly excited to announce a project that I’ve been trying to keep under my hat for the last couple of months: The Queen City Bike Map!

The map is a project of Queen City Bike, our regional bicycle advocacy group, an effort to create a truly useful community-supported and community-created bike map… and I get the honor of pulling it together!!

The key to the design of this map will be not to explicitly recommend some streets over others like many city bike maps do, but rather to provide as much information as possible about road conditions like speed limits, surface quality, bicycle facilities, slope, and connectivity, allowing users to chart an informed course that’s matched to their inclinations and skill levels.

Read more HERE:

Picture this: you’re bicycling down a narrow street with parked cars on both sides. There are cars coming up behind you and they want to get by.

Do you squeeze as far right as you can, trying to make room for them? Do you take advantage of a gap in the parked cars to swerve closer to the curb while the cars pass you? Or do you move left, out into the middle of the lane, so that the cars can’t pass you until there’s a sufficient gap in oncoming traffic?

The savvy – and safe – cyclist moves to the left and takes the lane.

Whoa! I sense readers thinking, You deliberately block traffic? That’s a good way to get killed.

Actually, it’s the best way to stay safe.

In the example above, the cyclist who squeezes over closer to the parked cars and tries to make room for the cars behind, is merely inviting those drivers to pass dangerously close, as well as putting him/herself at risk from an opening car door.

The cyclist who swerves into the gap between parked cars has to swerve out of that gap, too – right in front of the driver who thinks he can get past if he just speeds up.

The cyclist who takes the lane, however, forces the drivers behind to wait until it’s safe to pass. By maintaining a steady line in the center of the lane, he leaves no question about whether or not there’s enough room for a car to squeak by without crossing the center line or going into the next lane.

The motorist’s alternative to either slowing down or changing lanes is to run the cyclist down. Scary thought, yes, but not a realistic option for all but a homicidal maniac who doesn’t mind witnesses to his crime. And, fortunately, there aren’t many of those around.

It’s more likely that a motorist who’s chafing at the bit will change lanes or cross the center line. He may do that unsafely, either cutting off someone in the next lane or forcing an oncoming vehicle off the road. That’s the motorist’s choice. So let him have the risk.

Taking the lane is not always comfortable, especially when motor traffic is heavy and fast and you must force motorists to a drastically slower speed. You’ll draw horns and, perhaps, some yells from irritated drivers. But the alternative on a road with narrow lanes is to have cars hurtling by six inches off your elbow. One driver who flinches away from oncoming traffic, one wind gust, a bump in the road or a pothole, and those six inches could disappear in a blink.

You have every right in the world to decide whether or not it’s safe for the car behind to share the lane with you. The motorist’s risk is small if he takes a gamble on squeezing by a bicycle. The cyclist carries the greater risk, so the cyclist makes the decisions. If you decide the lane is too narrow to share safely with overtaking vehicles, get out near the middle of the lane. Make it obvious to the motorists behind you that they’ll have to cross well over the centerline to pass.

In California, there’s a law requiring a slow-moving vehicle to pull onto the shoulder to let overtaking vehicles pass if more than five (I think: I haven’t checked the statute) are stacked up behind. It’s a good idea to observe this “California rule” when you’re the slow-moving vehicle. (And, if you’re climbing a hill, it’s a good excuse to take a break while the cars pass.)

The law in Iowa and most other states gives you the right to ride your bike on any road except the Interstates. And there are times when you should claim that right in no uncertain terms.

Written by bobmorgan

Author, bicycling advocate, and bike tourist, Bob Morgan has logged over 60,000 miles by bike in this century. He lives in Cedar Falls, Iowa, with his wife (and stoker on the tandem), Linda.