Overview

In a world of growing traffic congestion, expensive oil, and threats of cataclysmic climate change, a grassroots movement is carving out a niche for bicycles on the streets of urban cityscapes. In Pedaling Revolution, Jeff Mapes explores the growing urban bike culture that is changing the look and feel of cities across the U.S. He rides with bike advocates who are taming the streets of New York City, joins the street circus that is Critical Mass in San Francisco, and gets inspired by the everyday folk pedaling in Amsterdam, the nirvana of American bike activists. Mapes, a seasoned political journalist and long-time bike commuter, explores the growth of bicycle advocacy while covering such issues as the environmental, safety, and health aspects of bicycling for short urban trips. His rich cast of characters includes Noah Budnick, a young bicycle advocate in New York who almost died in a crash near the Brooklyn Bridge, and Congressman James Oberstar (D-MN), who took to bicycling in his fifties and helped unleash a new flood of federal money for bikeways. Chapters set in Chicago and Portland show how bicycling has became a political act, with seemingly dozens of subcultures, and how cyclists, with the encouragement of local officials, are seizing streets back from motorists. Pedaling Revolution is essential reading for the approximately one million people who regularly ride their bike to work or on errands, for anyone engaged in transportation, urban planning, sustainability, and public health, nd for drivers trying to understand why they?re seeing so many cyclists. All will be interested in how urban bike activists are creating the future of how we travel and live in twenty-first-century cities.

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9780870714191

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Reviews

... great ammunition for those of us who would like to see American cities become more bike-friendly... --David Byrne, the New York Times Book Review Pedaling Revolution is easily the best book-length examination of cycling culture and its connection to big-picture issues... --the Oregonian Mapes puts a passionate and pragmatic face to the 'new urban bike movement' while connecting the dots between cycling culture and a host of quality of life issues. --Publishers Weekly -- Writing from Portland, the hub of the American cycling renaissance, Jeff Mapes, brimming with passion, humor and salutary insight, makes an admirably clearheaded, convincing and, ultimately, humane argument for making more room for the two-wheeler, in our lives and on our roads. -Tom Vanderbilt, author of Traffic: Why We Drive the Way We Do (and What It Says About Us) Finally, the bicycling movement gets the serious examination that it deserves. - Jane Holtz Kay, author of Asphalt Nation: How the Automobile Took Over America and How We Can Take It Back You can't have a revolution (pedaling or not) without information, and this book just might become one of the sparks that fuels biking's upcoming boom. --bikeportland.org

Author Information

Jeff Mapes is a reporter for Oregon Public Broadcasting. He covered state and national politics for the Oregonian for nearly thirty-two years. He lives in Portland, Oregon, where he is a longtime bike commuter.

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