All Posts Tagged With: "bike advocacy"

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ELa5CHsUepo[/youtube]

Greg Cantori, Executive Director of the Knott Foundation, and an avid bicyclist, discovered “Ciclovia” while visiting Bogota, Colombia. Every Sunday, they close 70 miles of streets from 7 a.m. to 2 p.m. Up to 2 million residents bike, rollerblade, walk, do group exercise classes, and generally enjoy themselves.

Greg immediately set about importing this community-wide exercise program to Baltimore. Here is what he envisions that Sunday Streets will mean for Baltimore:

• Increased activity -physical activity, economic activity and tourism.

• Youth engagement and employment opportunities

• Clean air and some quiet for a day

• Free exercise classes – Frankly few people can access health clubs, and what’s so fun about being stuck indoors when our whole city is available and waiting for us? Let’s get out and spin, dance, stretch, twirl, run and jump!

• Social re-engagement – This is our physical INTERNET. We provide the network (routing) and our entrepreneurs and communities go from there. Imagine the possibilities…..

• Putting Baltimore on the map nationally for something extremely positive that fosters real Happiness.

Already thousands of people know about it – let’s make it 10,000, 100,000 and then a million. Isn’t this a perfect, visible program to help promote Mayor Dixon’s “cleaner, greener” Baltimore? Tell everyone you know about this, and if you have any questions, contact Greg Cantori (gcantori(at)knottfoundation.org) or Carol Silldorff (carolsilldorff(at)comcast.net).

Baltimore Spokes is a locally-based bike advocacy blog. It’s full of news and events about how people are helping to improve the conditions for our community bike riders. Find out more about the HB 143 bill which will support safer passing of cyclists and right of way in a bike lane. You can become active in the MD Bicycle Symposium and tell your representatives about your bike advantages and disadvantages. Do you think Baltimore is conducive to cycling? What would make you bike more? You can also take a poll and answer these questions on their blog.