BIKEPGH MESSAGE BOARD ARCHIVE

Thanks for posting this Bill. I would have missed it.

this article reminds me of a thought i've had prior:

sometimes when there are events running parallel to one another in town, on the various radio traffic reports an alert type PSA the day or two before will be heard, "hey, traffic downtown will be CRAZY with both the St. Patrick's Day parade and Penguins playoff game going on. Be sure to allow for extra drive time, as traffic will certainly be mucked up and snarling once you get close."

you never hear them suggest that folks park somewhere within a 2 or 3 mile radius of the event they're attending, and then ride their bikes in.

seems like it'd be a nice lil babystep to getting folks to understand how riding a bike could help them beat traffic. planting a seed, if you will.

just a thing that's come to mind

Jon Schmitz had an article regarding that a few days ago in the Post Gazette: LINK

First time I ever saw biking referred by a traffic reporter.

So, freeride, a group philosophically opposed to applying for grants, receives a grant for bike valet service, has to use volunteers, beg for tips, and can't keep its doors open to the pedaling public for even eight hours a week?

What exactly makes FreeRide opposed to grants?

The organization is mostly run and maintained by volunteers. So yes, an organization like that requires volunteers.

Their funding structure does not require "begging" for tips and they're one of the most financially secure collectives in this city.

They're also open to the public 40 hours a month, 48 for females/trans, and that's not including classes or volunteer night.

Have you ever been in there?

Repeatedly espoused dogma is for freeride to be "sustainable" and not use grants.

If the open shop was actually staffed on both occasions it's scheduled to be, Thursday from 6-10 and Saturday for four hours, my old school math says that adds to 32 hours a month. Staffing is an issue, so the shop is often not open.

WTF? Wednesdays are four hours a week and in a month that equals 16 hours. No one has been showing up on many Wednesday nights.

They were a financially secure cooperative.

I am (or was(I guess a Judge will be deciding that now)) on the Council/Board. I have all documents pertaining to freeride for the past few years.

You?

Not basing a businesses' core operating budget on grants seems like a pretty smart financial strategy to me

Ah, your math is right. But 4 + 4 still equals eight hours a week. Was your original statement just an indirect reference of them having staffing trouble?

It's every other Wednesday for WomenTrans.

I'm a volunteer with FreeRide, have been involved with them on and off for three years, know a lot of the other volunteer memberscouncil members. Don't have any ill-will towards any of them.

It seems like you have some unmet needs in relation to them

According to the article @edmonds posted, the Bike Valet is operated by Bike Pittsburgh. It says Scott Gibson "manned the stand" and that he's an instructor with Free Ride, but does not indicate that Free Ride as an organization is directly involved. FWIW, I'd guess that if someone else was staffing the valet (whether paid or not) the journalist might list their other affiliations as a "human interest" angle, or to top off their word count. (eg, "Jane Doe, an off-duty EMT and avid cyclist, manned the stand").

My original post specifies "...can't keep its doors open to the pedaling public for even eight hours a week". Perhaps you misread?

There is no "core operating budget" or business plan.

Those who control the checkbook there had an issue with me, especially when it was revealed much of freeride's nestegg has gone missing over the last few years.

I instigated and helped implement the inventory system, researched and facilitated internet access at the shop, countless hours, (blah, blah, blah), and tried my best to bring some responsibility, accountability and transparency to the "organization".

freeride could be a valuable community resource, but instead its reputation is rather wanting.

I've no issues with any of the folk there (though I've been threatened (on the record no less)); count some as my friends, but the behaviour of some of the principals has been reprehensible, perhaps even criminal.

@Pseudacris: You're right, that is what it says now. I have two versions on my monitors. Must have been "updated"?

Never mind.

This thread has taken a weird path vs. what I expected after the first post. All freeride internal and operational stuff aside, I appreciated their presence, the bike valet, and bike-pgh during the festival. Thanks for being there.

I have the misfortune (I say that with a chuckle) of usually being involved with threads that take weird paths

I also appreciate their presence

As freeride is/was (at the time at least) legally a project/part of BikePgh, "their" "internal and operational stuff" is bound up with BikePgh, and vice versa.

If you peruse my past posts you'll see I'm the biggest booster for freeride on this message board. If you query first time volunteers at freeride, (and if I hadn't asked them to disavow me), you'd find I sent them. The classes were empty. I won't take credit for all the new students, but some of them are in attendance at my suggestion.

According to the article @edmonds posted, the Bike Valet is operated by Bike Pittsburgh. It says Scott Gibson "manned the stand" and that he's an instructor with Free Ride, but does not indicate that Free Ride as an organization is directly involved.

this is true. 3raf hired bikepgh to do this. we hired scott to run it. this has nothing to do with free ride

I'm not a lawyer, but I have a business and have to deal with my attorney much more than I'd like to, so take this with however many grains of salt you like.

Fungicyclist, you reference on a couple of occasions some type of legal action involving yourself and Freeride or members of freeride. Whatever the case may be, airing any of that laundry on a public forum is probably not the best idea.

Whatever the deal is, you might consider biting your lip on forums like this until it settles.

thank you ALMKLM

This is definitely not the proper forum.

can we talk about how we'll probably have parked over 1,000 bikes at the arts fest when it's over? and those are just the people who knew we were there

not proper, but pretty entertaining.

that's an awesome number of bikes, erok.

+1

...which would translate into X number of lane-minutes of automobile traffic through the Fort Pitt Tunnel...

The rule of thumb for road capacity works like this: drivers leave two seconds of following space behind the vehicle in front of them (during steady-state free flowing traffic -- in a traffic jam, well...) So that means that a single lane of traffic carries 30 cars per minute past a fixed point. The Ft Pitt tunnels are two lanes wide, which means they carry 60 cars per minute. 1000 / 60 is 16.7. So, 17 minutes of SOV traffic through the tunnel in the best case. Of course, there are other factors - multi-occupant cars and some bikers would have come via bus otherwise - so hard to come up with a solid comparison. On the gripping hand, satisfying 1000 visitors is no small thing.

edit: the calculation above illuminates why higher speeds don't really translate into higher roadway capacity. Although if you want to think of it this way, the time spent while the automobile itself travels across the fixed point will be larger at lower speeds (eg, during a traffic jam), and approaches zero as the automobile's velocity approaches c.

Dammit. Lyle stole my thunder. I was SO just going to say that.