Bike Business
January 21st, 2009 by Geoff 5 Comments
Today I looked out our window and saw someone delivering Grid, a new magazine about sustainablity in Philadelphia. It spurred me to write about some ideas that I care about.
If you know me, you know I am pretty passionate about solving urban problems, and that I am constantly cooking up schemes to this end.
One of these is to create neighborhood compost spots. I hypothesize that people can join the neighborhood compost co-op, get a key and drop off rotting vegetables in a centrally located, locked compost bin. Co-op members would take turns aerating the compost. Possible locations could include a small area in a city park or community garden. Locked. Community-run. Feel-good fun.
Needless to say, I have not gotten around to this initiative. Fortunately, it looks like the Pedal Co-op in Philadelphia is taking on the problem of urban composting. For $2.50, they will pick up a 3 gallon bag and delivery it to compost bins in a community garden. Currently they give the compost away to community gardens.
As an urban pedestrian, bike rider, and mostly mass-transit user, I have often dreamed of a car-less city. When people say I am crazy, I have always said, “If you remove the cars, other businesses and solutions will spring up to replace what the car does.” The Pedal Co-op is an example of the type of business that I mean. Human-powered delivery and transport would certainly flourish. Subways and trolleys would benefit. Cities would become more livable, and asthma rates would drop.
What else?
January 21st, 2009 at 2:32 pm
I love this.
January 21st, 2009 at 3:49 pm
You don’t even have to go that far. The same economic effect will come about if you just make decent and pervasive space for bicycles in everyday life. Cars don’t need to be banned, but the priority on cars removed. Wide bike lanes, on every road, places to park and lock everywhere you need to go. Of course this will choke off space for cars and make life by car much slower and more difficult than life by bicycle. The rest will take care of itself, but the city itself has to be committed to change, and the inconvenience that the transition will represent.
If you’ve never seen it before have a look at this lecture:
http://www.sfu.ca/city/city_pgm_video020.htm
Cycling for Everyone: A lecture by John Pucher, professor of planning and public policy, Rutgers University, May 15, 2008, in Vancouver speaking on how and why cycling can be a common mode of transportation for everybody, as evidenced by cities in the Netherlands, Denmark, and Germany.
January 21st, 2009 at 3:59 pm
Worm-based bins could expedite the Compost conversion. Great thoughts Geoff.
January 22nd, 2009 at 11:12 am
BBC podcast series on the bicycle in urban life:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/worldservice/documentaries/2009/01/090114_bicyclediaries_progone.shtml
February 12th, 2009 at 3:01 am
I have always had similar “dreams” of a car-less city, but I have dampened them down to hopes that someday I can take some kind of action to help remove parking from a section of broad street so that bikers can have their fair share of the road. It is a reasonable request considering the amount of bike traffic that passes through the city all the way from Temple’s campus to Washington Ave. It’s a huge community of students and business men and women who have their lives endangered by the way the streets are designed. The traffic in the centre city area is downright scary between frustrated drivers, people throwing their doors open without looking, careless Septa bus drivers, and no bike lanes. It is impossible to change the attitudes and behaviors of the people who drive their thousand pound machines so casually but you CAN open up Broad Street. This would be a move by the city to treat a bike as a legal vehicle (which it is) and also would show the bike community that the city cares about their safety.