Image from http://vorg.ca

Nine months ago we brought Ride the City across the Canadian border with the start of Ride the City - Toronto. Today we're happy to launch our second Canadian city: Vancouver, B.C.

Ride the City - Vancouver comprises all the cities within a distance of about 40 miles, including Richmond, New Westminster, Burnaby, Port Moody, Port Coquitlam, Pitt Meadows, Surrey, Delta, Langley, White Rock, and even Victoria! By the way, if you'd like the map to start out centered in Victoria, just use this address: ridethecity.com/victoria.

Reposted from http://www.goinggoingbike.com

We all love our bikes. Lots and lots! There are few worse feelings than coming back to find a broken lock and your bike missing. Unfortunately, hundreds of thousands of bicycles get nicked by bike thieves every year.

At Ride the City, we're interested in promoting safe transportation by bicycle, and we’re always looking for innovative ways to encourage people to ride their bikes. Recently, we had a new idea for another way to do that: Replace the New York Times Automobiles section with a Bicycling section once a year. That would be just one week devoted to bicycles and bicycling—the remaining 51 weeks would continue to be devoted to cars. See our rough mock-up below for an idea of what the section might look like.

Great video on the many steps NYC is taking to become a world class city, including for bicyclists.

This comes from EMBARQ's video series: Cities in Focus.

Lots of people talk about Portland, Oregon as one of the cities on the leading edge of urban planning and most things good for city living. They'll cite its walkability, its focus on downtown living (revitalized waterfront and light rail), and investment in bicycle transportation. For all of Portland's bicyclists, we're happy to launch Ride the City - Portland, which will give bicycle riders in Portland, Beaverton, Tigard, Tualatin, Lake Oswego, Gresham, Milwaukie, and Vancouver, WA, one more option for finding a safe way to get from one place to another by bicycle. Our goal is to provide all bicyclists a free, useful resource to help break down one of the barriers to urban bicycling: knowing how to get around safely.

On September 20, the mayor of Washington, D.C., Adrian Fenty announced the launch of the largest bike sharing system in the U.S. With a plan for more than 1000 bikes in D.C. and Arlington, this is huge for D.C. and bike sharing in the U.S. You can sign up on the Capital Bikeshare website. They're offering annual subscriptions to the service for only $50 (rather than $75) for a limited time.

Bike share is slowly gaining attention in many cities as municipalities struggle to find better ways to get people around and to promote sustainable transport. To hear a perspective from our Canadian neighbors, here's a recent post from Herb van den Dool of Toronto, where 1000 bike share members are required to sign up before the system is in place:

If you're a regular user of Ride the City, you've probably already noticed the recent changes that we've rolled out on the map. Ride the City looks different and has some new features. There's been a lot going on so let's boil things down a bit...

New Icons: First off, we're really happy to have new icons! We were lucky to find Kelly Shea and James Spahr, avid bicyclists and graphic designers, to help us design icons that are sharp, colorful, and easier to grasp quickly. We began brainstorming in the springtime and came up with lots of great ideas; Kelly and James were very creative, professional, generous, and fun to work with. (We certainly recommend them if you need any design work.)

Just got a tip from Harry at New York Bike Jumble. This Sunday you have a great opportunity to pick up bicycling gear, in addition to joining in on the dance party or watching some film after dark. Here you go:

Every now and again we all have to face the ugly reality of bike problems like flat tires and gears that don't work. It's easy when you can go to a good bike shop nearby but at some point it's great to know how to do it yourself.

Well, here's your chance to get on the ball. 3rd Ward, a Brooklyn organization that's committed to spreading bike love, is a member-based design center that holds over 100 different classes every season, including circuitry, crafts, web design, photography and woodworking, all are open to the public.