UPS has been using bikes in Portland for a couple of years now, so it’s good to see them now deployed in Silicon Valley for the Christmas season.

UPS, the mammoth delivery company, tackles it with hundreds of cargo jets, thousands of big rigs, tens of thousands of those familiar brown delivery vans — and Justin Hurst’s bike.

Hurst is one of about two dozen UPS workers who are pedaling up to homes in Silicon Valley this holiday season pulling trailers. Think of them as the special forces in UPS’s holiday battle to get what you want from there to here.

“People are like really happy to see us bike around,” says Hurst, 22, who rides a route in Palo Alto. “They like to see us not using cars.”

[UPS spokeswoman Rhoda] Daclison-Dickey says that in years past the company would rent additional trucks to handle the crush of the peak delivery season.

“It was no longer cost-effective to rent these big Budget trucks to deliver packages,” she says. “We had to figure out alternative ways to get people’s packages to them within the time frame we committed to.”

And so, the regional office bought a fleet of bicycles with trailers ($700 per set) to replace the rentals in San Jose, Santa Clara, Sunnyvale, Mountain View, Palo Alto, Menlo Park and Fremont.

Read more at the Mercury-News: UPS’s two-wheeled delivery secret.

Has anybody seen these UPS delivery bikes? Any photos?

Earlier this month, the Los Angeles City Council Transportation Committee considered a bicyclist anti-harassment ordinance and moved to add this ordinance to the city council agenda for the full council to consider, probably in January.

The actual motion presented by 11th District Council Member Bill Rosendahl is a request for the City Attorney to prepare and present to the Council an ordinance to prevent the harassment of bicyclists in the city of Los Angeles.

I believe anti harassment ordinances are a good thing for cyclists. It’s probably also a good thing that personal injury attorneys are already publicizing this proposed law (yeah, I know it’s in their best interests and they’re doing it to game search engines…) but I’m also a little amused that they seem to be almost salivating at the prospect of this law:

Tension between motorists and cyclists has been a special point of concern for California bicycle accident lawyers.

[…snip…]

Rosendahl’s proposed move is an encouraging one to Los Angeles bicycle accident lawyers.

Okay, add this to my Christmas list please. It’s a cookbook for endurance athletes.

The Athlete’s Plate: Real Food for High Performance promises to deliver tips on buying locally and organically grown foods to use in recipes to create “real food for high performance.” Chef and athlete Adam Kelinson has recipes for smoothies and juices; power snacks; soups, salads and dressings; carb-filled pastas, polenta, and noodle bowls; lean protein dishes featuring seafoods, poultry, pork, and savory vegetarian preparations; and desserts.

I was turned off by the FUD (Fear, Uncertainty and Doubt) in the introduction, in which Kelinson used my favorite snack company as an example of problems with manufactured foods (he highlights the national peanut salmonella outbreak from last winter, but we’ve had E. Coli and Salmonella problems with locally grown organic foods as well), but the recipes I was able to see look promising.

See also: Stuff I like: Bicycle Books.

Public transit data not just for Google Maps

Front Seat software launched City-Go-Round today, a new directory of applications to make transit easier to use.

Several public transit agencies have made their Google Transit data open to the public and developers have used this data to create their own transit applications.

City-Go-Round’s mission is to help make public transit more convenient. For example, an app that lets you know when your bus will arrive is way better than standing outside waiting for 20 minutes. A quick search tells you which local transit agencies have available apps.

Visitors also see a list of which transit agencies make their data publicly available to software developers and which agencies do not. “We are calling on transit agencies nationwide to open their data and follow the lead of the Open Government Directive issued this week by the White House,” said Mike Mathieu, Founder and Chairman of Front Seat. “City-Go-Round’s transit apps are a concrete example of how open data can improve citizens’ lives on a daily basis.”

Of 748 transit agencies in the U.S., only 84 provide their schedule data to software developers. The largest three transit agencies with no open data are: MTA New York City Transit, New Jersey Transit Corporation, and Metro-North Commuter Railroad Company in New York. Visitors to City-Go-Round can add their name to a request for open public transit data in their city.

In the San Francisco Bay Area, BART, SF Muni, Caltrain, the SF Bay ferries all make their data publically available. iPhone, mobile and web applications for these Bay Area transit providers include trip planners, real time arrival prediction apps, and even an app that uses GPS data to wake you from your nap. Schedule and real time arrivals are available for some of these through 511.org or by dialing 511 on your cell phone.

SF Bay Area transit agencies that don’t openly provide data for software development include SamTrans, VTA, AC Transit, ACE, Amtrak Capitol Corridor, and several other small transit agencies serving the region.

Front Seat Software also operates the popular Walk Score service to help people determine the walkability of a neighborhood.

More –>

* City-Go-Round.
* Transport For America: Walkscore innovators turn to improving public transportation.

Good morning. It’s a little chillier than usual in northern California this week. I even saw snow Monday morning on the hills around the Bay Area. It’s good to see a fair number of cyclists still riding in the morning chill during my commute.

Ads for feminine hygiene products frequently seem to feature women riding bicycles.

I’m playing with the intervalometer function of my HERO Cam. Any suggestions on improving this?

Sketchy bike / scooter hybrid.

Bike chain cuffflinks.

Warren and Noah are hard core cyclists. 🙂

On YouTube: collection of red light running scofflaws. And this too.

Bike Hugger David Schloss has a mancrush on a hot cyclist.

Christmas gift ideas from Bike Intelligencer: Bicycle DVDs that doesn’t list the usual suspects.

Lance Armstrong on the Daily Show.

“If I were driving a car, you’d still be stuck behind me.”

Urban cycle fashion and the cult of transportation.

Grist on justifying coffee.

The San Mateo County Sheriff often runs ‘enforcement actions’ on cyclists at the request of residents in Woodside, California, because, you know, cyclists are such a danger to themselves and other traffic.

Giant Bike’s CFO, Bonnie Tu, wants to end the male dominated world of the bike industry.

Sanyo Eneloop Bicycle wins CES innovation award. Watch for my review of this eBike in the next issue of Momentum Planet.

Etiquette poster for rapid transit in the Tokyo area.

The complete set includes graphics of people falling down drunk, applying makeup, and yacking on the phone while riding the subway. Alas, no rude cyclists are in the set. Loud cellphone yackers on the train bug me; women applying makeup doesn’t. Via copyranter.