Events, News & Blog

Study finds that e-bike riders get as much exercise as riders of regular bikes

Author 

E-bikers use their bikes more, go longer distances, and often substitute it for driving or transit.

Fans of electric bikes often say they are riding further than they used to on “analog” bikes, to use a retronym coined by Andrea Learned. I have written about my own Gazelle: “I am using it more often than I used my regular bike, and I am going longer distances. I suspect that, because of that, I am probably getting as much exercise as I did on my bike.” But it was all apocryphal, until now.

A new study, with a mouthful of a title, “Physical activity of electric bicycle users compared to conventional bicycle users and non-cyclists: Insights based on health and transport data from an online survey in seven European cities,” finds that in fact it is true: e-bikers take longer trips and get pretty much the same physical activity gains as analog cyclists.

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Golden Gate Bridge district gets $6M grant for new high-speed ferry

Author James Lanaras August 15, 2019

The Golden Gate Bridge, Highway and Transportation District has received a $5.9 million grant from the Federal Transit Administration for a new high-speed ferry.

The ferry will enhance service reliability for the district’s 2.5 million annual ferry riders.

The $5.9 million will comprise about 20 percent of the 500-passenger ferry’s $30 million cost. The district has applied for another federal grant of $18 million, and the new ferry is expected to be in service by early 2023.

Golden Gate Ferry trips have increased 34 percent since 2008, and they now serve 8,500 daily riders, 80 percent of them local commuters who might otherwise drive U.S. Highway 101 across the Golden Gate Bridge, according to the district.

The new high-speed ferry will be the eighth ferry in the district’s fleet. All seven current ferries are in use during summer, which stretches the ability to perform routine maintenance and challenges daily reliability of Golden Gate Ferry service, according to the district.

Rep. Jared Huffman, D-San Rafael, said the additional high-speed ferry will provide North Bay commuters with reliable transit options to San Francisco when Sonoma-Marin Area Rail Transit extends its line to Larkspur soon.

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The California Beach Cruiser Built a Bike Movement

Extreme climate change has arrived in America

Authors

LAKE HOPATCONG, N.J. — Before climate change thawed the winters of New Jersey, this lake hosted boisterous wintertime carnivals. As many as 15,000 skaters took part, and automobile owners would drive onto the thick ice. Thousands watched as local hockey clubs battled one another and the Skate Sailing Association of America held competitions, including one in 1926 that featured 21 iceboats on blades that sailed over a three-mile course.

In those days before widespread refrigeration, workers flocked here to harvest ice. They would carve blocks as much as two feet thick, float them to giant ice houses, sprinkle them with sawdust and load them onto rail cars bound for ice boxes in New York City and beyond.

New Jersey’s average temperatures have risen nearly 2 degrees Celsius since 1895 — double the average for the Lower 48 states.

“These winters do not exist anymore,” says Marty Kane, a lawyer and head of the Lake Hopatcong Foundation.

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Air travel is a huge contributor to climate change. A new global movement wants you to be ashamed to fly.

Author Umair Irfan

It was 2007, during a trip to visit her sister in Norway’s pristine Lofoten Islands, when Maja Rosén had an unsettling thought.

As she took in the breathtaking archipelago north of the Arctic Circle that is dotted with mountains, carved with fjords, and circled by sea eagles, she remembered she was looking at one of the fastest-warming regions of the planet.

And she realized that how she got there was part of the problem.

She’d carpooled with friends to Oslo from her home in Gothenburg, Sweden. The final leg was a short boat ride to the islands. And in between was a 500-mile flight from Oslo to Bodø.

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