Fort Worth’s bike-share launch chronicled in photos

Steve Reisman, a cyclist and excellent photographer who has been chronicling Fort Worth’s emerging bicycling scene, was on hand with his cameras on Monday, Earth Day, to photograph the launch of the city’s bike-sharing system, the first in North Texas.
Three hundred volunteers delivered the 300 bike-share bicycles to 28 docking stations throughout the city.
Steve emailed to me 23 of his photos for use in Jim’s Bike Blog. Here is a gallery of the photos.

Fort Worth launches bike-share system

What a splendid way to celebrate Earth Day: helping to launch a bike-sharing system in Fort Worth!
As the sun crept over the eastern horizon, 300 volunteers began converging on a warehouse on the city’s near south side where 300 Trek bikes were lined up for delivery to 28 docking stations throughout the city.

Fort Worth Bike Sharing bikes awaiting delivery by volunteers

I and a handful of hardy souls walked from our south side homes to the Chat Room, a pub that is the rendezvous point for the nocturnal excursions of the Fort Worth Night Riders.
Fueled up with coffee provided by a bicycling neighbor who roasts and grinds his own beans, we hiked to the warehouse where the bikes had been assembled and stored.
Once we had checked in and been assigned a bike, Mark Troxler, a founder of the Night Riders, was on hand with a crew of veteran urban cyclists to coordinate the delivery of the bikes.

Mark Troxler coordinating the delivery of the bike-share bikes

We rolled out in small groups at regular intervals and rode downtown to Burnett Park for the official launch ceremony.
“All of you resonate the message that there is an acceptance of bicycles as an alternative,” Mike Brennan, a south side neighbor, bicyclist and chairman of the Fort Worth Bike Sharing board, told the assembled volunteers.
Added Fort Worth’s bicycling mayor, Betsy Price: “This is a great day for Fort Worth … And what a great day for a ride!”

Fort Worth’s bicycling mayor, Betsy Price, addresses the assembled volunteers

I and some south side friends were part of the group delivering bikes to docking stations on the near south side. Our ride was short — only to the south side of the T&P railway station on the southern edge of downtown.
But, as the mayor said, it was a great day for a ride. Balmy spring weather, camaraderie with 300 like-minded people and a couple of post-ride beers. I can’t think of a better way to have celebrated Earth Day.

Cowtown becoming a bike town

It’s one of those who-woulda-thunk-it moments: Fort Worth, one of the most conservative of Texas cities and a place where cars and pickups still rule the road, is about to implement a bicycle-sharing program!

Bike-docking station at South Main Street and East Daggett Avenue

In fact, Fort Worth is beating Austin, known as a liberal enclave in a very red state, in establishing a bike-share system. Austin hopes to have one in place later this year.
Fort Worth, in an area where some folks are still suspicious of bikes as precursors of socialism, plans to launch its B-Cycle system on Monday, Earth Day, with 28 rental stations and 300 bikes. Two to five more docking stations are to be added this summer.
I and 299 other volunteers will report on Monday morning to a warehouse on the city’s near south side, where the bicycles have been assembled and stored, to select a bike and ride it downtown for an official launch ceremony. Then we will deliver the bikes to their designated stations.

Bike-docking station at Magnolia and Hurley avenues

I rode my own bike around Fort Worth earlier this week to check out some of the bike-share stations, a half-dozen of which are on the near south side, which has become the focal point of the city’s burgeoning bicycle culture.
Fort Worth will have the first bike-share system in North Texas — beating Dallas — but following Houston and San Antonio.
Fort Worth’s system will be run by a nonprofit organization, Fort Worth Bike Sharing, and will use specially designed Trek bicycles, each equipped with a commodious front metal basket at the front.

Bike-docking station at Magnolia Avenue and Henderson Street

The program was made possible by a $1 million Federal Transit Administration grant to the Fort Worth Transportation Authority (The T) last July to buy the bikes and equipment for the docking stations.
B-Cycle, based in Madison, Wis., was chosen as the equipment vendor. B-Cycle provides the equipment and software for the bike-share systems in San Antonio and Houston, as well as for Denver and other U.S. cities.
When I and my family moved to Fort Worth at the end of 1986 after 16 years living overseas, the city had some nice pedestrian and bike trails along the Trinity River, but little else in terms of biking infrastructure or a culture of like-minded people.

Downtown bike-docking station in front of the Omni Hotel

But over the past few years, Fort Worth has made tremendous strides in its effort to become a “bike-friendly community” in the eyes of the League of American Bicyclists by 2015.
The City Council approved a comprehensive bicycle transportation plan in 2010, the Trinity River trails are continually expanded and improved, funky cycling groups like the Night Riders and Bicycle Betties have taken to the streets, major thoroughfares have been striped with bike lanes, and we have a bike-riding mayor who holds regular “rolling town halls” from the saddle of her bicycle.
And now a bike-share program.
Who woulda thunk it!

Bike-docking station at Stir Crazy Baked Goods and site of a Saturday urban market

Bicycle a tool of Afghan women’s lib?

American suffragist Susan B. Anthony famously said of the bicycle: It has “done more to emancipate women than any one thing in the world.”
“I rejoice every time I see a woman ride by on a wheel,” the feminist pioneer remarked in 1896. “It gives her a feeling of self-reliance and independence the moment she takes her seat: and away she goes, the picture of untrammeled womanhood.”
Perhaps the machine that helped liberate women in America and Europe in the 1880s could have the same effect in 21st-century Afghanistan.
At least one U.S. woman bicyclist thinks so.
Shannon Galpin, a 38-year-old former Pilates instructor from Breckenridge, Colo., has begun a project to nurture an infant bicycling culture among Afghan women through a nonprofit organization called Mountain2Mountain, which she founded in 2006 to aid women in conflict zones.
Galpin, who has ridden her mountain bike extensively throughout Afghanistan during visits that began in 2008, is headed for that country today with more than 40 duffel bags filled with cycling gear for the women’s and men’s national cycling teams, The New York Times reported.
The Times quoted Galpin as saying that current attitudes toward female cyclists in Afghanistan are similar to this in the United States in the late 1800s.
“Women were often deemed promiscuous if they rode bikes in the street,” Galpin said.
The newspapers cited Sue Macy, author of Wheels of Change: How Women Rode the Bicycle to Freedom, a book about the bike’s role in women’s rights. (See March 27, 2011, blog post, “Wheels of change.”)
Macy said that the sudden popularity of the “safety” bicycle, as opposed to the treacherous, high-wheeled “ordinary bike” that the safety superseded, changed how women dressed and engaged with the world.
“Since they couldn’t wear hoop skirts and corsets on a bike,” Macy was quoted as saying, “they started wearing bifurcated garments like bloomers. Instead of meeting a suitor in the parlor, they started riding around and meeting people without supervision.”
Galpin, reported the Times, hopes to influence similar changes in Afghanistan. But first the women need some proper equipment.
And that’s the reason for Galpin’s latest visit.

Lance Armstrong frequent target of Pulitzer Prize winner Steve Sack

A cartoon of disgraced cyclist Lance Armstrong was among the body of work that won this year’s Pulitzer Prize for Steve Sack of the Minneapolis StarTribune.
Armstrong, stripped of his seven consecutive Tour de France wins and banned from professional cycling for life for doping offenses, was a frequent target for Sack, 59, who has been the StarTribune’s editorial cartoonist since 1981.

A Steve Sack editorial cartoon of Lance Armstrong that was among his body of work that won a 2013 Pulitzer Prize

Sack would have a receptive audience for any cartoons about cycling. Minneapolis, after all, frequently ranks near the top of Bicycling magazine’s annual list of of the country’s 50 most bicycle-friendly cities.
The city has 92 miles of on-street bikeways and 85 miles of off-street bikeways, according to the official website of Minneapolis. It also has a bike-share program called Nice Ride and, despite challenging winter weather, more than 7,000 regular bike commuters.

From our own correspondent

Jim’s Bike Blog sometimes calls on the work of its foreign correspondent: Ben Peipert in Taiwan.
Ben, our oldest son, lives in Taipei, the Taiwanese capital. Last month, he attended the Taipei International Cycle Show, billed as Asia’s biggest showcase for makers of bicycles and cycling components.
This year’s 25th edition of the show — March 20-23 — featured 1,103 exhibitors, 291 from overseas and 812 from Taiwan. The number of exhibitors was slightly more than last year’s 1,092.
Ben, an excellent photographer and regular bike commuter in Taipei, reports that this year’s show was somewhat disappointing — photographically.
The 2013 show, he says, focused more on components and accessories than assembled bicycles. Brake cables and crank sets tend not to be as photogenic as brightly colored frames, which were featured in the 2011 show.
Nevertheless, Ben got some nice shots of the wares on display.

Globe-girdling cyclist honored in hometown, Pittsburgh

I’ve written several times in this blog about Frank Lenz, a round-the-world cyclist who went missing in 1894, and about David V. Herlihy, the author who chronicled Lenz’s ill-fated journey and the quest to find him in a 2010 book The Lost Cyclist.
David, who passed through Fort Worth last month and spent a night at our house, told me of his efforts to have Lenz honored in his hometown, Pittsburgh.

Logo for Lenz’s series in Outing magazine

The other day, he sent me a copy of an informational sign about Lenz that is to be placed on Pittsburgh’s Three Rivers Heritage Trail, 24 miles of pedestrian and biking trail along both sides of the Allegheny, Monongahela and Ohio rivers.
“On My 15, 1892, thronged by an adoring public,” the sign says of Lenz, “he left his home on Webster Avenue to circle the globe on a 57-pound Victor ‘safety’ with inflatable tires (the prototype of the present-day bicycle).
“Two years later, after pedaling some 15,000 miles on two continents, he vanished mysteriously in Turkey, just as he was nearing Europe for his last leg. Although his life was cut short, he helped spark a great bicycle boom and to establish the bicycle’s enduring utility and appeal.”

Sign honoring Lenz to be placed on Three Rivers Heritage Trail

Another bit of cycling news that emerged from David’s visit:
The man who was dispatched by Outing magazine to find out what had happened to Lenz, the magazine’s correspondent, was Will Sachtleben, who was from Alton, Ill., which is also my hometown.
Sachtleben had already completed a globe-girdling bicycling trip with Thomas Allen Jr., so he was a logical choice to search for Lenz.
During their own trip, Sachtleben and Allen had carried with them a newly introduced Kodak film camera, with which they chronicled their travels.

Allen and Sachtleben in London in 1890

Some 400 nitrate negatives that they shot ended up at UCLA, which has been scanning the negatives for eventual publication or display.
David reports that the UCLA technicians have nearly completed the scanning project and that the Hayner Public Library in Alton, which David visited after Fort Worth, “is very keen about putting up an exhibition of the UCLA images.”
I’m hoping to post a selection of the newly scanned images in this blog as soon as they become available.
Stay tuned.