Ways To Go In The Bronx

For a short local ride, one of my favorite destinations has become Concrete Plant Park.  For one thing, I just love the idea that someone converted an old factory to a park.  Better yet, whoever conceived of the park was absolutely brilliant in actually incorporating the old machinery into a recreation area.

The concrete path you see is a bike/pedestrian path that is being extended along the Bronx River.  With the old cement plant on one side of the river, and some old brick factory and warehouse buildings on the other, the park feels rather like an old New England mill town, especially in the spring and fall.

What is also interesting is that every kind of transportation, except for aviation, intersects there:

Motorized vehicles are not allowed on the path.  But, just outside of the park and under the railroad trestle (where, if you look closely, you can see a passing New York City transit train) is the bridge for Westchester Avenue.  And, when I was there the other day, motorboats stuttered over the surprisingly choppy water.

I understand that the Parks Department plans to extend the path along the entire length of the Bronx River to Westchester County, a distance of about ten miles.  That would definitely make for one of the more interesting urban bike lanes. Actually, it already is:  We just need more of it.

Let The Profits Roll In

From Knox Gardner

 According to economic surveys, the price of gasoline is dropping, however slightly.  Still, it begs the question of how long prices will stay down, and when and by how much prices will rise again.  If the long-term trajectory for gas prices is upward, I have to wonder what it will do to the way people commute and travel, and how they will shop and entertain themselves.  While gasoline prices in the US are still nowhere near the levels in Europe and Japan, long-term increases will, I think, impact Americans' way of life even more than Europeans' or Japanese people's lifestyles because so much of this country's landscape and infrastructure is designed for the automobile.

Now, I don't expect people who are accustomed to driving a couple of days to their favorite vacation spots to suddenly take up bicycle touring.  However, there seem to be signs that more people, particularly the young, are doing that.  Almost any time I take a ride outside of New York City, or take a road or a path that leads out of it, I see couples or groups riding bicycles laden with panniers and, in some cases, camping equipment.  I am also noticing more and more families (or fathers and sons or mothers and daughters) riding on the paths and trails.

If more of us ride our bicycles, that could actually become a tourist economy unto itself, as it has in places like Portland.  In fact, Elly Blue, a bicyclist, activist and writer based in Portland, makes such an argument.  She points out that 78 percent of visitors to the city say that its bicycle-friendly reputation played a role in their decision to travel there.  She also shows how such tours as RAGBRAI pour money into local economies--which, I imagine, has a real impact in states like Iowa, which ranks 47th among the 50 states in tourism.  Even in New York City, a ride like the Five Borough Bike can boost revenues for restaurants, stores and hotels as thousands of people come in from other states and abroad to join local cyclists for the ride.

So...Will Tourist Bureaux establish committees on bicycle touring?  Stranger things have happened!

Springing Ahead

I try not to seem jaded, or to be condescending to the younger generation. ;-)  However, when you've spent enough time with anything--including bicycles and bicycling--you realize that there really is "nothing new under the sun."  To wit:

Add http://patentpending.blogs.com/patent_pending_blog/2007/01/first_front_sus.htmlcaption

About twenty years ago, suspension was the great "new" development in bicycles.  But, as you can see, it had been done a century earlier.  It was revived at various times:  If you're a bit older than I am, you may have ridden a Schwinn or Columbia balloon-tired bike with a big spring on the front fork.

What will they re-discover next?