Green Building Ride

MassBike and the Emerging Green Builders are putting on a sweet green architecture ride. This Satureday August 23rd join Boston’s Emerging Green Builders for a bike tour of green buildings in Boston!

Meet at the Children’s Museum at 9:30 and ride until 11:30.

Feel free to bring a bagged lunch to eat after on the Esplanade and get to know some other EGBers.

Boston’s Emerging Green Builders mission is to provide students and young professionals affordable and accessible resources for integration into the growing green building industry. See http://bostonnegb.ning.com.

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Street Talk Series: Transportation Reform For The US- Are Americans Ready?

“Transportation reform for the US- are Americans ready?”
Thu. Aug. 21, 7 – 8:30 pm
by Gary Toth, Director of Transportation Initiatives for the Project for Public Spaces
@ LivableStreets office space, 100 Sidney Street, Central Square, Cambridge [ map… ]

free and open to the public, donation suggested, beer/sodas provided compliments of Harpoon Brewery!

“The decisions engineers make will affect people’s lives. The street can’t be looked at as just a vessel for cars. It’s a place with many uses. What we want to do is try to help foster sustainable, livable communities,” Toth says.

That’s strong stuff coming from an engineer with 34 years experience inside the highway bureaucracy. And it’s not just a line he throws out to soothe angry citizens’ groups–Gary Toth during his tenure at NJDOT actually changed the way engineers think. In the old days, NJDOT would give most street widenings the green light, but Toth is dedicated to halting this vicious cycle. Instead of funneling all traffic from every residential and commercial property onto the strip, NJDOT is encouraging towns to create networks of streets with mixed-use developments, dispersing traffic over the whole system. The idea is to create livable corridors rather than endless sprawl. Sounds simple enough, but it’s actually a revolutionary change in suburban transportation and land use planning. He notes how Kentucky, Utah, Florida, Vermont and other states are joining New Jersey in seriously studying Context Sensitive Solutions–the discipline’s name for looking at streets and roads as something more than simply a way to move traffic. “It’s becoming a national movement with 20 or 25 states already showing some signs of getting away from the same old myopia.”

Gary has left NJDOT to focus on bigger transportation reform in America. He is an integral member of the T4America Coalition, which is working to shape the content of the next federal transportation bill. He is currently one of the eight instructors for USDOT’s “Training Course on Transportation and Land Use.” He is also a member of the Sustainable Urban Design Working Group of the American Public Transit Association and a member of the Strategic Highway Research Program’s Technical Coordinating Committee for Capacity. He was also part of the Sustainable Transportation Study Team charged with creating a conceptual plan for presentation to the US Congress, which ensures that the surface transportation system will continue to serve the needs of the U.S. throughout the 21st Century. Gary works part time for the Project for Public Spaces as Director of Transportation Initiatives.

Gary was featured in the article, “Rethinking the Urban Speedway,” (pdf) (For decades, highway engineers focused on designing wider, straighter, faster roads. Now, moving traffic quickly is no longer the sole goal), Governing Magazine, October 2005. “The traditional engineering solution to road problems is to make the road wider, straighter and faster,” Toth says. “Well, wider, straighter and faster is not always better.”

This event is sponsored by LivableStreets Alliance

Click here for more information

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FastForward Alley Cat

(click for larger)

Know this, films are fun to watch, but doing things films could be made from is even more fun.

The start time on this race was changed to allow people to see as many of the programs at the Bicycle Film Festival as possible. To do this race you can catch the first three shorts in Program 4, but you have to leave the theatre before or during Pedal. Pedal is an older film and I think a lot of people have already seen it, while Program 5 and 6 are chock full of newer and very relevant films. The race finishes at the ICA in time to catch both of those programs.

Fast riders will finish in just about 1 hour. There are a couple of hills. One of the proposed courses for the Boston 2009 NACCC bid will be featured in this race.

Race is free to anyone holding a Festival Pass (which gets you in to all the movies in the whole festival for $27, buy online: http://bicyclefilmfestival.com/2008_site/boston/), or $5 for anyone else.

Prizes/Awards at the Bikes Rock! Afterparty at Great Scott in Allston.

anyone who wants to volunteer to work a checkpoint, contact croth…

More here.

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Dot Bike Events

OTHER PLACES TO FIND DOTBIKE IN AUGUST

* Representative Marie St.-Fleur Community Hot Dog nights;

Tuesday August 12th 6-7:30 p.m. at St. Peter’s Teen Center 294 Bowdoin St.
Wednesday August 13th 6-7:30 p.m. at Project Hope 555 Dudley St.

DotBike will have demos, safety checks and giveaways at these events.

* Our monthly DotBike commute ride home Wednesday August 13th at 5:30 p.m. from the Boston Common down Dot Ave to Dorchester.
see http://dotbike.bostonbiker.org/dot-bike-ride-home/ for more info

* Boston Bike Friday August 22nd at 7:00 a.m.

Ride with DotBike and others with a police escort up Dorchester Ave. to City Hall Plaza for free breakfast and bike expo. See http://www.cityofboston.gov/bikes/bikefridays.asp to sign up or for more info.

For more information on all these and other upcoming events check out our event calendar at www.dotbike.org or email us at [email protected]

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DotBike Beach Ride

RIDE TO THE BEACH WITH DOTBIKE SATURDAY AUGUST 16TH at 10:30 AM.

The Dorchester Beach Festival is happening on Saturday August 16th from 11-4 at Malibu Beach in Savin Hill. Check out their web site for all the fun things to do and see: www.dorchesterbeachfestival.com

DotBike is leading a family friendly ride to the festival along the Neponset River and Harbor Trails. The ride is primarily on dedicated bike paths and low traffic streets. If you’ve never been on these paths you’re in for a treat.

There are two distance options.

* For a 4.5 mile ride meet us at 10:30 at the southern end of the Neponset River Trail near the intersection of Central Ave. and River St. in Milton.
* For a 3 mile ride meet us at 10:45 in Pope John Paul II park near the Hallet St. parking area.

At the festival DotBike will provide free valet parking for your bike, bike safety checks, giveaways and information on our efforts to close the gaps in the Harbor Trail. We will also be providing escorts by bike back to where you started.

And if you can’t make it to our ride at 10:30 but still want to ride to the festival we will have someone to meet you at Pope John Paul II park every hour on the half hour from 11:30 to 2:30 to provide an escort. Or you can check out our recommended routes on the map on our Beach festival page http://dotbike.bostonbiker.org/dotbike-dorchester-beach-festival/ or at the ‘Directions’ page of the beach festival site.

If you would like to volunteer to help us out or for more information on this event check out: http://dotbike.bostonbiker.org/dotbike-dorchester-beach-festival/, email [email protected] or call Andy at 781-367-9200.

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