Book Review: "Joyride" by Mia Birk

I recently finished reading a great book titled "Joyride: Pedaling Toward a Healthier Planet" by Mia Birk.

Who is Mia Birk?

Mia Birk is the current CEO at Alta Planning + Design, a consulting company that works with various local governmental agencies across America to create safe streets for all users, especially bicyclists and pedestrians. Before she started this company,

Mia was the City of Portland Bicycle Program Manager from 1993-99, where she led a period of rapid growth of Portland's bikeway network.

This book is primarily about her painful struggles and inspiring successes during the process of transforming Portland, OR into the world class bicycle city it is known as today. Before reading this book, I naively assumed that Portland had been a bicycle friendly city for a long time. Therefore, this book was really eye opening. Mia provides a good framework and process for transforming the average American city into a city for people. Throughout the book, she provides footnotes with links to many useful websites and advocacy agencies, both within Portland and nationally. Reading about the very specific projects which were most difficult to implement, such as compromises with railroad companies on railroad right-of-ways, really taught me about the extreme complications involved with building a world class bike network.


Her motivation is inspiring to read about. It paints a realistic picture for me, a modern day livable community advocate.

Long story short: though much has been accomplished, there is still a very long way to go. This was a fact I was already aware of, of course, but now I know which aspects of the advocacy framework have been more developed and which have not. For example, she spoke frequently about editing the Manual on Uniform Traffic Control Devices.

You may not have heard of the Manual on Uniform Traffic Control Devices (MUTCD or, simply, the Manual), but it is a major player in your daily life. The Manual dictates the signs, markings and signals that govern your travel behavior... It is referred to as the traffic engineer's bible. Unfortunately, very little bikeway design guidance is found in the Manual.

Though this is still an obstacle to quality bikeway design, a lot of progress has been made on this front since the early 1990's. For more examples and great information about the whole process, read this book.

Conclusion: Overall, this book was wonderful. I strongly recommend it to anyone who is in need of any sort of motivation in their life, as well as people who are interested in the long process required to transform our current car-dependent cities into cities for people and bikes.

If you would like to know more about Mia and the work she does, here is a link to her great blog. Here is link to one of her posts where she discusses Tucson.

Road Diets + Streetfilms and the Streetsblog Network

When I am having conversations with people about "complete streets" or "road diets", I sometimes wish I had Streetfilms videos on me at all times.

Streetfilms is a part of the massive national alternative transportation blog network, Streetsblog. This giant blogging network had humble beginnings in New York City in 2006. It was created by Transportation Alternatives, a well known transportation advocacy group in NYC, along with a couple other groups. Since then, it has since become the predominant online presence within the livable streets community. The Streetsblog network includes hundreds of blogs and writers all over America. Currently, four metropolitan areas are covered by the blog itself: "NYC", "LA", "SF", and "Capitol Hill". There is also a section of the blog titled "Network", which covers stories from other areas.

Anyways, there is a section of the Streetsblog website featuring short videos about the livable streets movement: Streetfilms. These videos are professionally produced. They are short enough to be interesting and long enough to be educational. Recently, Streetfilms began a series of videos called "MBA: Moving Beyond the Automobile." They post a new video every Tuesday. Each short clip features information about Bus Rapid Transit, Car Sharing or some other aspect of alternative transportation.

Today they posted a great video about Road Diets:

Moving Beyond the Automobile: Road Diets from Streetfilms on Vimeo.

Enjoy watching and check out the rest of the Streetfilms website for more of these great videos.

Tucson Transit Task Force and Imagine Greater Tucson: Methods of Shaping Our Future

April 6: First Tucson Transit Task Force Meeting - I met with small group of people from the Living Streets Alliance and from other local groups to brainstorm a strategy for addressing issues of transit funding, expansion and awareness. I learned much about the history of transit in Tucson, from the relationships between the various governing agencies down to the relationships between bus drivers and riders.

The primary reason for our meeting was the discussion of proposed transit fare increases that will be enacted within the coming months. Basically, SunTran has two options: 1) increase fares or 2) cut routes. Increased fares seems like best option but this can sometimes lead to less people using the service, creating even less efficiency overall. However, the propposed fare increases are relatively small and they are probably a better alternative to cutting service.*

Another big discussion topic was the relationship between SunTran and the university. The proposed fare increases would have the most dramatic effect on the discounted annual U-Pass for University of Arizona students. After the meeting was over, it was clear that the future of quality transit in Tucson depended on a close relationship between the university and SunTran. I will continue to drive home this important point within this group.

Last year, I prepared a presentation/proposal for free transit in Tucson for university students. This is a common policy in college towns across the nation, including my home town of Albuquerque. I tried to push my message for a few months but it always fell onto deaf ears. Now, with this new task force, I have a better opportunity to create constructive dialogue with the university.


April 7: Imagine Greater Tucson; The Big Reveal - I attended the "Big Reveal" presented by Imagine Greater Tucson.

What is Imagine Greater Tucson? From the website:

Imagine Greater Tucson is a rapidly growing, community-based effort dedicated to protecting and enhancing our quality of life in the greater Tucson region. Our goal is involve the people of greater Tucson in creating a shared vision for our region’s future, and catalyze the development of strategies to realize this vision.

What does this mean? I had a hard time deciphering it. The event and presentation was interesting but not very groundbreaking. The concepts presented were commonly understood regional goals, such as job growth and quality education. All the attendees appeared to be passionate individuals with a lot of great ideas on how to improve the direction of growth in the Tucson/Pima County region. However, they presented no possible methods that could be used to accomplish the goals they presented. Apparently, these issues will be resolved in future community meetings. Only time will tell.

April 8: Featured on Tucson Velo - As previously discussed, the geovisualization created by my project group and I, "UA Campus Bicycle Geovisualization", appeared on local bike blog Tucson Velo. It was a well written post and I thank Mike for posting our unique Google mashup.

Thanks for reading and feel free to write comments. The more feedback I receive, the better.


*If you are personally interested in the bus fare increases, here is a list of the current fares and the proposed fares. The decision on these increases will be made at a City Council meeting next week. More information on this meeting can be found here.