RTD bus service changes are now in effect. Check the new schedules before riding the bus - http://t.co/TvhQiPjlvW

The City of Boulder needs YOUR face!

We’re collecting portraits of Boulderites, past and present, to include on the decorative glass panels in the new bus stop shelter at southbound Broadway and 16th Street/Euclid Avenue. The Carnegie Branch Library for Local History is supplying numerous historic photographs, but portraits of current Boulder residents are also needed!

Please come have your picture taken at any of the three available dates and locations to participate in this community art project! 

• The Boulder Farmers’ Market, 13th Street between Arapahoe Avenue and Canyon Boulevard, on Saturday, April 20, from 9 a.m. to noon.
• The bridge inside the Main Boulder Public Library, 1001 Arapahoe Ave., on Monday, April 22, from 4 to 7 p.m.
• The southbound Broadway bus stop at 16th Street/Euclid Avenue on Thursday, April 25, from 4 to 7 p.m. If there is inclement weather, this site will be moved to the bridge inside the Main Boulder Public Library.

For more information about the community art project, contact Noreen Walsh at walshn@bouldercolorado.gov.

The City of Boulder is putting together a feedback panel of “interested but concerned” cyclists, and would like you to participate!

We want to hear from everyone, but we are especially interested in hearing from women of all ages.

Be actively involved in making Boulder’s bike system more safe and complete.

Please contact us today: Marni Ratzel Ratzelm@bouldercolorado.gov

Anna Nord Norda@bouldercolorado.gov

Visit www.BoulderTMP.net to learn more about the City of Boulder Transportation Master Plan Update and ways to get involved!

Community Bicycle Share in Boulder

Boulder B-cycle has funding for 10 new stations in 2013.Where do you think they should go? Let us know at InspireBoulder.com

B-Cycle is Boulder’s public bike share program. B-cycle was built to make getting around your city easier. It’s for people on the go. Whether you’re grabbing coffee or commuting to work, B-cycle is a quick, easy, and cheap alternative to being stuck in a car. B-cycle is a next-gen bike sharing system. In layman’s terms: B-cycles are there when you want one and gone when you don’t. Just swipe your card, grab a bike, and get to where you’re going.

Currently, there are 21 B-Cycle stations around town. Station locations are chosen based on the following criteria:
• Near pedestrian and bicycle infrastructure, transit, and/or eGo car locations
• Great visibility from a variety of transportation modes
• Near high residential and employment density
• Near existing annual members
• Near a destination
• ¼- ½ mile from existing or planned B-stations
• Environmental factors (hills, flood plains, etc.)

Where would you like to see a B-cycle station? Visit InspireBoulder.com let us know what you think and see what locations other people are suggesting.

Winter Bike To Work Day is tomorrow! (Wednesday Jan. 23^rd )

Boulder is celebrating its fifth annual winter bike to work day to reward those who ride their bike all or part of the way to work, school or another destination around town.

Ride your bike and receive a FREE Breakfast at the following locations:

Alfalfas at 1651 Broadway St
Community Cycles at 2805 Wilderness place, Suite 100 
(just north of the Goose Creek path west of the Foothills Parkway underpass)
CU Bike Program at the Broadway underpass at Euclid Avenue/University Memorial Center (UMC)
Dushanbe Teahouse at 1770 13th Street
Ideal Market at 1275 Alpine Avenue
Moe’s Broadway Bagel at 2650 Broadway
Moe’s Bagels on Arapahoe at 3075 Arapahoe
Moe’s Bagels 28th Street at 3267 28th Street
Page Two at 6565 Gunpark Drive in Gunbarrel
Pedal to Properties at 1948 Pearl Street
Rally Sport Health and Fitness at 2727 29th Street

If you’re still not registered Sign Up Today!

The January 2013 RTD service changes are now in effect.

Learn how the changes affect your bus routes and schedules at http://bit.ly/13eOXEE.

All RTD bus routes listed have undergone some change in service, such as schedule adjustments, service improvements or reductions, school service changes, etc.

For those who want to learn to ride safely and comfortably, check out the Community Cycles Winter Riding Workshop on Saturday, Jan. 12, 2013 from 9 to 11 a.m. To register and for more information, visit www.communitycycles.org.

Check out additional winter cycling tips from Bicycle Colorado. 

Winter Cycling Workshop
Saturday, Jan. 12, 2013
9 to 11 a.m.
2805 Wilderness Pl., Suite 1000
Boulder, CO 80301

• Cost: $10
• Cost for members: $5
• Work-trade available: No one will be turned away for lack of funds.

Reserve a spot at the Winter Cycling workshop.

Winter poses special challenges to the utilitarian cyclist. If you ride purely for fun and fitness, you may tend not to ride when it’s dark, cold and snowy. If your bike is your primary transportation, you don’t necessarily have this option. After all, you’ll still need groceries in February! But don’t worry, 80 percent of cyclists in Copenhagen, Denmark keep on biking all winter long, and you can too, with a little bit of extra knowledge and experience.

There are three main differences between fair weather and winter cycling: darkness, the cold, and snow and ice on the roads. In this workshop, we’ll cover what it takes to ride safely and comfortably in Boulder all winter long, from making sure you’ve got lights bright enough to see, not just be seen, to keeping your fingers, toes and nose from going numb. We’ll also talk about riding techniques to keep you upright on snowy and icy surfaces, and the additional maintenance your winter steed may require.

Winter riding may be challenging sometimes, but you’ll never have to scrape a windshield, and occasionally it’s downright magical. There’s nothing quite like riding home through a silent, snow-clad night as the flakes slowly drift by, and discovering a fox bounding along beside the trail.

This workshop will be led by Ann Haebig and Chris Ringer. For more info, check out the Winterbike Workshop Notes on the Flat Iron Bike blog.

RTD Service changes take effect on Sunday, Jan. 6

We want to remind you that this month’s RTD bus service changes take effect on Sunday, Jan. 6, 2013. For details, please see the Final January 2013 Service Changes brochure at stations, on buses and trains, or online.

League of American Bicyclists visit Boulder, Colorado

The Pursuit of Diamond Status: Boulder and Davis Say “I Do”

Earlier this month League President, Andy Clark, and I traveled to Boulder, Colo., and Davis, Calif. — but I was transported back to my college years in Germany.

Bicycling along the network of paths and bike lanes in these two Platinum-level Bicycle Friendly Communities, I was able to comfortably ride for miles and miles without the need to bike on a high-speed road to meet up with city staff at the town hall, grab some food with local bike advocates at a downtown restaurant or attend an evening function at a museum.

In Davis, I got nearly run over by a large group of junior high school students on bikes, trying to pedal to class in time. In Boulder, we witnessed a frolicking group of young men riding around town in the evening with a boom box on the rack and lights in their wheels. These two Platinum BFCs really seem to have it all — the infrastructure, the bike culture and a compact and mixed land use that allow destinations to be quickly reached by bike.

Can it get any better than this? Well, though a good number of people bike in Davis and Boulder, more than half of the residents in cities like Copenhagen in Denmark or Utrecht in the Netherlands have adopted the bicycle as their main form of transportation. To challenge our own top cycling cities to move beyond Platinum and compete with world-class cycling cities, the League developed a new Diamond-designation. Andy and I traveled to Boulder and Davis to kick off their Diamond challenge. (Next month, we’ll pedal that challenge in the third Platinum city: Portland, Ore.

Boulder received us with overcast skies but heart-felt enthusiasm. We checked out two bright red B-cycle bikes for the duration of our stay and got quite a few miles out of them. We met with local government officials and staff, community and advocacy representatives and were treated to a three-hour tour of the city. The Diamond challenge will require the local government and the community to work together to address any remaining obstacles to cycling to encourage an additional 5 percent of commuters to bike to work or school — for Diamond designation, a 15 percent bicycle mode share among the minimum requirements.

Go Boulder Manager Kathleen Bracke is confident the city is ready to step up: “The City of Boulder/GO Boulder is excited to continue our partnership with the League and the Boulder community to advance bicycling as a way of life and look forward to working together to achieve the new Diamond level Bike Friendly Community designation.”

Mayor Matt Appelbaum agreed: “Recognition by the League energizes us to aim even higher. Boulder is looking forward to celebrating as the first Diamond-level Bicycle Friendly community in the future.”

One of the highlights of our visit in Boulder was a tour of the newly constructed 42-acre Valmont Bike Park, which is a one-of-a-kind natural-surface facility that allows residents and visitors of all ages and abilities to practice their mountain biking, BMX and cyclocross-skills. Our B-cycle bikes were unfortunately not made for this type of facility (though some have tried!), otherwise I would have taken a spin on the inviting singletrack course.

Davis greeted us with a bike light in our hotel room from Davis Bicycles! and two shiny, black city-owned bicycles. Since I arrived a day early, I got the chance to witness the installation of a new bike corral downtown, which featured a prominently displayed QR code that, when scanned with a smart phone app, takes you to the city’s bicycle website. During our stay we got to meet with Mayor Joe Krovoza, council member Brett Lee and city staff. We also caught up with local bicycle advocates, and representatives from the business community, the University of California at Davis and the Capital Corridor Joint Powers Authority. And got a great tour of the city’s bike infrastructure from Davis Bicycles! members and active transportation coordinator David Kemp.

Fortunately our rather packed schedule allowed us to stop by a city council meeting to present the City of Davis with a Silver Bicycle Friendly Business award on our way from the Bicycle Advisory Commission meeting to the holiday festivities of the Davis Bike Club. But hands down the highlight of our visit in Davis was to see the Active 4 Me program in action at a local elementary school that tracks children that walk or bike to school through bar code technology. The system also automatically informs parents that their child has arrived safely at school, addressing a real or perceived parental safety concern.

“The League’s trip to Davis truly complemented a new renaissance of pro-bicycle energy in Davis,” Kemp said. “After meeting with our elected officials, the business community, city staff, UC Davis, and bicycle advocacy groups, Andy and Nicole provided our community the positive charge and constructive feedback we needed to advance our city to the next level: Diamond! Pair this with the new, Beyond Platinum – Bicycle Action Plan and we’ll strategically propel our community, over the next five years, to work together to make Davis a world-class Bicycle Friendly Community.”

The next step for Boulder and Davis toward Diamond status will be a public survey to allow the community to chime in on the comfort and convenience of the bicycle network, perceived safety and other issues that influence people’s daily transportation and recreation choices.

“Given the City of Boulder’s ethic of ‘continuous improvement,’ we appreciate the League’s challenge for communities like Boulder to reach beyond Platinum Level to the new Diamond designation,” said Director of Public Works for Transportation Tracy Winfree. “Diamonds aren’t a girl’s best friend; Diamond Designation is.”

Click here to learn more about the Beyond Platinum program.

Winter Cycling Workshop
Saturday, Jan. 12 
9 to 11 a.m.
2805 Wilderness Pl., Suite 1000
Boulder, CO 80301

Cost: $10
Cost for members: $5
Work-trade available: No one will be turned away for lack of funds.

Reserve a spot in the Winter Cycling workshop.

Winter poses special challenges to the utilitarian cyclist. If you ride purely for fun and fitness, you may tend not to ride when it’s dark, cold and snowy. If your bike is your primary transportation, you don’t necessarily have this option. After all, you’ll still need groceries in February! But don’t worry, 80 percent of cyclists in Copenhagen, Denmark keep on biking all winter long, and you can too, with a little bit of extra knowledge and experience.

There are three main differences between fair weather and winter cycling: darkness, the cold, and snow and ice on the roads. In this workshop, we’ll cover what it takes to ride safely and comfortably in Boulder all winter long, from making sure you’ve got lights bright enough to see, not just be seen, to keeping your fingers, toes and nose from going numb. We’ll also talk about riding techniques to keep you upright on snowy and icy surfaces, and the additional maintenance your winter steed may require.

Winter riding may be challenging sometimes, but you’ll never have to scrape a windshield, and occasionally it’s downright magical. There’s nothing quite like riding home through a silent, snow-clad night as the flakes slowly drift by, and discovering a fox bounding along beside the trail.

This workshop will be led by Ann Haebig and Chris Ringer. For more info, check out the Winterbike Workshop Notes on the Flat Iron Bike blog.

Join us for lunch tomorrow!

2012 GO Boulder Appreciation Luncheon
Looking Back and Looking Ahead
Thursday, Dec. 6
11:30 a.m. to 1 p.m.
Charlotte Houston Room
Boulder County Clerk and Recorder’s Office
1750 33rd St. in Boulder

Join us in sharing our 2012 accomplishments and opportunities for 2013!

• Special guest Andy Clarke from the League of American Bicyclists.
• Official update on US 36 Express Lanes and other construction projects!
• Lunch catered by Spice of Life.

Door Prizes ~  Networking ~  Community

Take the JUMP or HOP or B-cycle (new station at 33rd Street and Fisher Drive)!