The City of Belmont, California recently eliminated a full width lane on Alameda de las Pulgas to calm traffic on this road to a school and make room for bike lanes. The school rush hour traffic jam for Tierra Linda Elementary and Carlmont High School along Alameda de las Pulgas resulted in howls for protests from residents in Belmont and neighboring San Carlos, who place more value on the convenience of motoring quickly to the freeway than they do on the lives and well being of the children traveling under human power to their schools. The wait time getting past the school drop off zones from eight minutes to a whopping 11 minutes after the bike lanes were added. Click here for Google Map of this location.

The City of Belmont will have a special meeting Thursday night to discuss the bike lanes on the Alameda. The meeting begins 7:30 PM in the Belmont City Council Chambers. Motorists screaming about delays and inconvenience are expected to show up in large numbers demanding a change back to multiple, fast lanes. To avoid looking like the selfish pinheads that they are, the motorists will disingenuously claim their slower speeds actually increase the danger for pedestrians and cyclists traveling along Alameda while increasing congestion and greenhouse gas emissions as they sit idling in traffic.

If bike users don’t speak up, the City of Belmont could well remove the bike lanes and go back to the bad old days. Please show up and speak up if you can to support cycling facilities in Belmont.

For more talking points, read these letters to the Editor by Pat Giorini and Steve Vanderlip.

Cycling author Robert Hurst has a new book that should be available sometime in the next month or two.

In The Cyclist’s Manifesto: The Case for Riding on Two Wheels Instead of Four, Hurst looks at the role that human powered transportation can play in this junction of history as energy resource scarcity comes into play.

As the energy monster emerges from the shadows and starts to reveal the furry edges of itself to a sleepy populace, Americans cling with renewed urgency to the ideal of the personal automobile.

In popular visions of the future, technology comes riding to the rescue of the American Way of Life, and the thought of having to drive less is exiled to the back alleys of the mind. The simplest solutions — those that don’t involve carrying a few tons of metal and plastic around everywhere we go — are banished from the discussion. It’s a colossal and perhaps fatal failure of imagination.

In his latest book, Hurst looks at the history of bicycling as sport and its future as a means of transportation.

It’s not yet available, but you can pre-order and look at a preview at Amazon: The Cyclist’s Manifesto: The Case for Riding on Two Wheels Instead of Four by Robert Hurst.

Hurst also wrote the popular and excellent The Art of Cycling: A Guide to Bicycling in 21st Century America. See also his Industrialized Cyclist blog.

Almond Elementary School in Los Altos, California became the first school in California using the innovative and successful Freiker “Frequent Biker” program that uses incentives and electronic tracking to encourage school children to ride their bikes.

The program began with a parade Tuesday afternoon in which children were outfitted with the Freiker tags, which are detected by the “Freikometer.” When the children ride their bikes under the Freikometer, it beeps at them while tallying their bike trip to school. The Freikometer is a solar-powered computer that reads an RFID tag taped to riders’ helmets. Each day, a Freiker rides past the Freikometer, and a buzzer sounds to indicate the ride has been logged. The Freikometer wirelessly uploads the rider data to the Freiker website daily, and the child or parent can log on to the website to see the number of rides accumulated. The Freikometer does the counting, and the prizes provide the motivation.

Los Altos parent Jon Simms learned of the Freiker program from co-workers at Sun Microsystem’s Broomfield campus in Colorado. He generated excitement with the school PTA and presented the idea with the PTA to Almond Elementary’s principal. After Simms met with Freiker chairperson Tricia Grafelman, Simms got cash and prize donations from Bicycle Outfitters, Palo Alto Bicycles, Monte Vista Velo, Jelly Belly, and several individuals to get the Freiker program up and running this spring. “In spite of the weak economy several people have really stepped up to give to this program,” says Simms.

Simms wants to show his community “the real potential of cycling” through the use of the Freiker program.

Freiker began at Crestview Elementary School in Boulder, Colorado in 2004. When the RFID “Freikometer” was introduced in 2006, participation skyrocketed, with 54,000 rides logged at Crestview fof the 2007-2008 school year. When a Freikometer was installed at Burlington Elementary School in Longmont, CO last year, students logged 1,000 trips on foot or bike in a single month. The Safe Routes Coordinator in Longmont, Buzz Feldman, tells me he’s seen children pushing their bikes through the snow so they can get credit for taking their bikes to school even in inclement weather.

Ten schools in four states are currently running the program, and the 100,000 trips made by the children at those schools have covered more than 150,000 miles (which is six times around the world).

The 20 teams making up the 2009 Tour de France were officially announced today. The 96th Tour de France begins July 4 in Monaco. Team Astana, which was banned from the 2008 Tour, received in invitation for 2009. USA teams on the list are Garmin-Chipotle and Columbia High Road, both of which participated last year.

Fuji Servetto (nee Saunier Duval) was the only ProTour team excluded from selection in the wake of doping scandals last year.

Germany
Team Milram (MRM)

Belgium
Quick Step (QST)
Silence – Lotto (SIL)

Denmark
Team Saxo Bank (SAX)

Spain
Caisse d’Epargne (GCE)
Euskaltel – Euskadi (EUS)

United States
Garmin – Slipstream (GRM)
Team Columbia – High Road (THR)

France
AG2R La Mondiale (ALM)
Agritubel (AGR)
BBox Bouygues Telecom (BTL)
Cofidis, Le Crédit en Ligne (COF)
Française des Jeux (FDJ)

Italy
Lampre – N.G.C. (LAM)
Liquigas (LIQ)
Kazakhstan
Astana (AST)

Netherlands
Rabobank (RAB)
Skil-Shimano (SKS)

Russia
Team Katusha (KAT)

Switzerland
Cervélo Test Team (CTT)