boston

Things are heating up, this is not a drill people.

From MassBike

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We told you late last week that the crisis in federal transportation funding was only getting worse, and to stay tuned for an Action Alert. This is it. The consensus among advocacy groups, like the Alliance for Biking and Walking, Transportation for America and MassBike, is that there is no chance for salvaging the House transportation bill. MassBike is in close touch with the Massachusetts delegation and is confident that we will have their unanimous opposition to this horrible transportation bill. (Which is why we are not asking you to contact your House Representatives about killing H.R. 7 – but you can if you want.)

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Hope, then, lies in the Senate. Over the past few days, two amendments have been proposed to the Senate’s transportation bill (MAP-21, or S. 1813) that would fix many of the problems relating to bike funding. Without these amendments, the three key sources of funding for biking and walking (Transportation Enhancements, Safe Routes to School, and Recreational Trails Program) will no longer receive dedicated funding and will instead be forced to compete with many other programs for a smaller pot of money.

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Today, we need you to contact Senator Kerry and Senator Brown to ask them to support the Cardin-Cochran Amendment and the Klobuchar Amendment.

Senators Ben Cardin (D-MD) and Thad Cochran (R-MS) are co-sponsoring an amendment which would give local communities more access to Transportation Enhancements and Safe Routes to School. In Massachusetts, this amendment would likely make it easier for towns and cities to access this funding.

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Senator Amy Klobuchar’s (D-MN) amendment would restore dedicated funding to the Recreational Trails Program, a key resource for off-road trails.

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In Massachusetts, these programs have been leveraged into hundreds of millions of dollars of investment in off-road trails, paved multi-use paths, and improved signage, drainage, and crossings that remove barriers to biking. Just a few examples of worthwhile projects that received funding were:

• The Independence Greenway in Peabody for path construction;
• The Ashuwillticook Rail Trail in North Adams for trail construction;
• The New England Mountain Bike Association for maintenance and improvement of numerous off-road facilities around the state.
• The Jamaica Pond Trail in Boston for both construction and land acquisition.

We are asking you to do two things:

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1. Call and/or email your Senators TODAY, tell them why bicycling is important to you, and ask them to SUPPORT the Cardin-Cochran Amendment and the Klobuchar Amendment to MAP-21 (S. 1813).

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Senator John Kerry: (202) 224-2742, Email (select “Transportation” as Topic)
Senator Scott Brown: (202) 224-4543, Email (select “Transportation” as Topic)

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Don’t have time to write your own email? Click here to send a pre-written email message.  
2. Email action@massbike.org and let us know you contacted them!

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We know that we have been sending out a lot of Action Alerts on federal issues, but we want you to know that it’s only because the situation has grown that dire. Thanks so much for adding your voice to this crisis – and stay tuned for more developments!

Below are two job postings for the Hubway bike share program

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Alta Bicycle Share Job Description: Bicycle Rebalancer/Van Driver
New Balance/Hubway‐BOSTON
Overview:
Bicycle sharing is a sustainable, healthy and community‐based transport option that enhances urban livability and mobility. Alta Bicycle Share operates approximately 630 bikes at over 60 stations in the Boston area with expansion to surrounding Cambridge, Somerville and Brookline expected for 2012.
Alta Bicycle Share, on‐the‐ground operators of the New Balance/Hubway bike sharing program, is seeking several results‐oriented, dedicated individuals to assist with bicycle redistribution to all stations.

New Balance/Hubway Rebalancer is a part time position. The main responsibilities are to drive our company vans in Boston to help maintain the optimal number of available bikes and docks for our members.

Requirements:
• Must be able to start immediately with the ability to work nights and/or weekends
• Experience driving trucks or large vans in city traffic a must
• Valid driver’s license with clean driving record
• Knowledge of Boston geography/street layout
• Basic computer skills

Forecasted Hours are:
Weekday hours are 6am to 10pm, Saturday and Sunday 9am to 10pm

Responsibilities:
• Work alone or with other Street Team members under the guidance of the Operations Manager and/or Street Team Leader
• Drives a large van to redistribute bikes as required based on real‐time demand data
• Addresses and logs bike status, system events and rebalancing data as instructed
• Evaluates bike condition, and escalates issues, as needed
• Inspects bike stations for safety, operability and cleanliness
• Troubleshoots stations/ensures station operability
• Assists with bike and bike station deployment and re‐deployment
• Works with Customer Service and Bike Maintenance teams to ensure timely and productive workflows
• Uses both utility vehicle and redistribution van to accomplish daily tasks
• Other tasks as assigned

Qualifications:
• Must be at least 18 years of age
• High school diploma or equivalency
• Mechanical and/or electronic aptitude a plus
• Basic computer skills
• Flexible to work various shifts, as assigned.
• Interpersonal skills ‐ must maintain confidentiality, remain open to others’ ideas and exhibit a willingness to try new things
• Adaptability must adapt to changes in the work environment, manage competing priorities and is able to deal with frequent change, delays or unexpected events
• Dependability ‐ must be punctual, able to follow instructions, respond to management direction and solicit feedback to improve performance
• Previous experience in delivery driving, mechanical and/or logistics experience is preferred

Job Conditions:
• Bike shop/warehouse conditions
• Job may require travel
• Job may require hours that exceed 8 hours per day and/or 40 hours per week
• Requires bending, stooping, lifting up to 35 pounds

Compensation begins at $13/hour with the potential to increase to $15/hour after 90 days
Alta Bicycle Share is a drug‐free workplace and an equal opportunity employer.

To Apply:
Submit a cover letter and resume to resumes+hubwaystreetteam@altabicycleshare.com

Note: The above statements are intended to describe the general nature and level of work being performed by people assigned to this classification. They are not to be construed as an exhaustive list of all responsibilities, duties, and skills required of personnel so classified. All personnel may be required to perform duties outside of their normal responsibilities in order to meet the ongoing needs of the organization

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Alta Bicycle Share Job Description: Bike Checker
New Balance/Hubway‐BOSTON

Overview:
Bicycle sharing is a sustainable, healthy, and community‐based transport option that enhances urban livability and mobility. New Balance/Hubway currently operates with over 60 stations and 600 bikes in Boston, with system expansion planned in Cambridge, Somerville and Brookline in 2012.

Through contracts with the City Of Boston, Alta Bicycle Share is responsible for all “on the ground” aspects of New Balance/Hubway bike share program, including but not limited to: station and bike building and deployment, station and bike repair and maintenance, and bicycle redistribution. Bike checkers ride between stations to provide on the spot maintenance and technical assistance to help ensure the safe and efficient operation of New Balance/Hubway system.

Availability Requirements:
• Must be able to start immediately
• Flexible availability a plus
• Part time shifts available
• Weekday shifts from 8am – 5pm

Responsibilities:
• Work alone or in a team setting and with Lead Bicycle Mechanic
• Rides a bicycle throughout city to check status and perform routine maintenance on bicycles
• Evaluates bike condition, and escalates issues, as needed
• Inspects bike stations for safety, operability and cleanliness
• Works with Customer Service & Street Team to ensure timely and productive workflows
• Some data entry, for inventory tracking purposes

Qualifications:
• Must be at least 18 years old
• High school diploma or equivalency
• Some bicycle mechanic experience
• Comfort riding a bicycle in city traffic
• Basic knowledge of Boston geography/street layout
• Basic computer skills
• Flexible to work various shifts, as assigned
• Accountability – the individual will be working unsupervised for the majority of the time
• Adaptability ‐ the individual adapts to changes in the work environment, manages competing demands and is able to deal with frequent change, delays or unexpected events
• Dependability ‐ the individual is consistently at work and on time, follows instructions, responds to management direction and solicits feedback to improve performance

Job Conditions:
• Bike shop/warehouse conditions
• Job may require travel
• Job may require hours that exceed 8 hours per day and/or 40 hours per week
• Requires bending, stooping, lifting up to 35 pounds Compensation begins at $13/hour. Alta Bicycle Share is a drug‐free workplace and an equal opportunity employer.

To Apply:

Submit a cover letter and resume to:
resumes+hubwaystreetteam@altabicycleshare.com@altabicycleshare.com

Note: The above statements are intended to describe the general nature and level of work being performed by people assigned to this classification. They are not to be construed as an exhaustive list of all responsibilities, duties, and skills required of personnel so classified. All personnel may be required to perform duties outside of their normal responsibilities in order to meet the ongoing needs of the organization.

4th Annual Boston Bikes Update (New Date) – Tuesday Feb. 28th 6:15 – 8 p.m. Boston Public Library, Copley Square, 700 Boylston Street / Rabb Lecture Hall

Free and open to the public

Nicole Freedman, Director of the Boston Bikes Program, will present her fourth report on past achievements, challenges, and future goals of the Mayor’s effort to create a “world class bicycling city.” Come hear details on Hubway bike share, the Bike Network Plan, parking facilities, youth programs, festivals, and more.

And this year the Mayor is scheduled to make an appearance.

From the email.

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Wednesday February 1, 2012 from 6:30 PM to 9:30 PM EST

Where

Giant Cycling World
11 Kilmarnock St
Boston, MA 02215

Boston Cyclists Union and Smuttynose Brewery present: Wheels to Reels

Wheels: 6pm-7pm

Race head to head in a stationary sprint! Bikes are wired to Open Sprints racing software so you can see real time data as you power against friend (or foe) next to you. This is the ultimate in stationary bike racing! You must RSVP to race. Races are scheduled in advance so please email us with special requests.

Reels: 7:15pm – 9:30pm

Catch your breath, sit back with a brew and popcorn, and enjoy classic bike and kung-fu film Pedicab Driver!

This month’s Wheels to Reels is presented by the Boston Cyclists Union.

The Boston Cyclists Union is a membership organization that grows in influence with each new member it gains. Help improve your own bike commute and get more riders to join you on the road by joining here:

http://bostoncyclistsunion.org/memberjoin.php

RSVP here:
http://events.constantcontact.com/register/event?llr=lkyvqkiab&oeidk=a07e5hx3su1c0b4be50

From c-list (1, 2)

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Urban AdvenTours, Boston’s first and finest bicycle tour company, is hiring! We take pride in offering the highest level of customer service from our tours to our bike shop. If you are a driven and outgoing individual who loves the city of Boston, we want to hear from you!

If you love bikes and riding in Boston, then being a tour guide at Urban AdvenTours is the perfect job! No tour guide experience required. We hire cyclists who are outgoing, friendly, hard working and knowledgeable about safe riding in an urban environment. A love of history and pop culture is a big plus as well!

Your primary responsibilities would be supporting and leading tours, giving content in a unique and professional fashion while on tour, keeping our guests safe and sound while out in the streets, and most importantly, making sure everyone has fun!

If you would enjoy showing people our beautiful city from the seat of a bike please send us an email with a brief bio of yourself and a resume.

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Urban AdvenTours, Boston’s Downtown Bike Shop, is hiring! We take pride in offering the highest level of customer service from our tours to our bike shop. If you are a driven and efficient individual who loves the city of Boston, we want to hear from you!

We are looking for some dedicated mechanics to ensure a professional level of service on every customer’s bike. Attention to detail is paramount to success, as is a friendly, ready-to-help attitude! You will be at the forefront of our business’s customer service department.

Your primary responsibilities would include professional level bike service and sales, receiving and executing tune-ups in a quick fashion, maintaining our extensive fleet of rental and tour bikes, and assisting the shop manager with inventory, ordering and receiving. We would prefer to hire someone with at least two years of experience in a shop. You must be able to work on any style of bike, have a strong motivation and attention to detail, and be neat and organized in your work. Retail experience is a big plus as well!

If you can make any bike run like new, we want to hear from you! E-mail us with a brief bio of yourself as well as a resume.

From C-list

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MyBike is growing which means we’re hiring!

The Job: Outside Sales Representative
We are looking to add an Outside Sales Representative to the join the MyBike Team. The Sales Rep we add to our team will use their outgoing personality and winning attitude to build strong client relationships to help sell MyBike’s unique repair packages.
No experience is necessary for the position because the MyBike Team will fully train the Sales Rep before engaging the public. Also the Sales Rep will report directly to the President/CEO of the company.
This position has an uncapped incentive based commission pay scale with flexible hours.

Duties:

Lead generation
Attend networking events
Effectively sell MyBike’s repair solutions
Manage a portfolio of clients
Learn and manage the MyBike Sales Cycle
Client management
Make money

The Company

Since 2005 MyBike (www.mybike.com) has been Boston’s Untraditional Bike Shop providing the residents of Boston convenient repair and rental solutions. Our services include: monthly bike rentals, repair memberships, and a revolutionary citywide Concierge Service (pickup & delivery).

Voted Best Bike Shop by Boston A-List
Boston Globe x2
Daily Candy x2
Urban Daddy
Business Week
Bicycle Retailer & Industry News
College Newspapers x15

To apply, reply to this posting with your resume

To build them sweet mobile apps to use with the new bike share program!

from the MBTA website

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much more here

Olken joins Hostelling board • Lezyne offers web Buyer’s Guide BOSTON, MA (BRAIN)—Richard Olken, a former bike retailer and director of BikesBelong, has joined the board of directors of Hostelling International New England. Olken and his family have a long history of supporting hostelling in the U.S. “We are very excited about the addition of Richard to our board,” said  Deborah Ruhe, executive director of Hostelling International’s Eastern New England Council

From JP Bikes, looks like a good time.

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Come to the Connolly Library in JP on Monday Jan. 9th at 5:30 for this excellent documentary and forum on how people use public spaces. It’s especially relevant given all of the local efforts to rework local street networks into more pedestrian and bike friendly environments.

more info

Description

The Boston Cyclists Union, JP Bikes and LivableStreets Alliance invite you to watch and discuss with an expert forum the classic 1980 one-hour documentary “The Social Life of Small Urban Spaces” by the witty journalist William H. Whyte. This documentary surprised everyone with its revelations on how people actually use public spaces, and what makes them use some more and some less, and it’s super fun to watch. If you’ve ever enjoyed people-watching on a sunny day—this is the ultimate version, early 80s style.

Afterward, discuss the movie and the future of place-making in Boston with three renowned experts in different aspects of the built environment, Dr. Walter Willett, Aaron Naparstek, and Peter Furth. These three speakers come at the built environment from the fields of public health, medicine, transportation engineering, community organizing and journalism. It should be a very interesting evening!

Dr. Walter Willett MD DrPH is the Fredrick John Stare Professor of Epidemiology and Nutrition, and Chair of the Department of Nutrition at Harvard School of Public Health and also a Professor of Medicine at Harvard Medical School. He is considered one of the world’s experts on nutrition. Willett is the principal investigator of the second Nurse’s Health Study, a compilation of studies regarding older women’s health and risk factors for major chronic diseases. He has published over 1,000 scientific articles regarding various aspects of diet and disease and is the second most cited author in clinical medicine. In the public eye, Willett is perhaps best known for his 2001 book Eat, Drink and Be Healthy, which presents nutritional information and recommendations based on the currently available body of nutrition science.

Aaron Naparstek is the founder of Streetsblog (an online publication providing daily coverage of transportation with blogs in New York City, San Francisco, Los Angeles, Cleveland and Washington DC. Launched in 2006, Streetsblog has played a significant role in transforming New York City transportation policy as well as cities all over the world. Based in Brooklyn, Naparstek’s advocacy and community organizing work has been instrumental in growing the bike network, removing motor vehicles from parks, and developing new public plazas, car-free streets and life-saving traffic-calming measures across all five boroughs. Naparstek is currently in Cambridge with his wife and two young sons where he is enjoying a Loeb Fellowship at Harvard University’s Graduate School of Design.

Peter G. Furth is a professor of engineering at Northeastern University and the author of “A Greenway Network for the Boston Area,” a study of the possibilities for an interconnected system of off-street paths in Boston, as well as several other studies regarding improving transit, bicycling, and walking conditions. His work led to the experimental sharrow (bicycle shared lane marking) with guidelines on Longwood Avenue in Brookline, and several other improvements for biking and walking in Boston and neighboring towns.

More on the movie: In the late 1970s, William H. Whyte, author of “The Organization Man” and the first to publish Jane Jacobs in Fortune Magazine, took a leave of absence from his job there to study one of the issues he’d always cared most passionately about: cities. He started with a simple topic: public plazas. His hometown of New York City had recently begun giving developers incentives to build public plazas to give people some breathing room in the crowded city and he decided to investigate which plazas worked. He took to the task like a scientist, setting up time-lapse cameras with digital clocks and making charts and graphs and notes. And the conclusions he came to surprised everyone. The result was this movie “The Social Life of Small Urban Spaces” and a book of the same title.

Visit JP Bikes

Got this in the email today (thanks Ron!)

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The Boston Transportation Department, working with the National Park Service, has launched an initiative to connect certain transit hubs in Boston with new pedestrian and bicycle paths.

The effort, called Connect Historic Boston, will join MBTA transit stations and National Park Service sites in downtown Boston, including North Station, the Aquarium and State Street, and visitors’ centers at Faneuil Hall, the Charlestown Navy Yard, and the Harbor Islands Pavilion on the Greenway.

The goal is to create safe paths that allow visitors easy access between sites, according to Sean Hennessy, public affairs officer for the National Park Service.

“The mayor has made a substantial commitment with the bike-sharing programs and bike lanes, and this project blends in beautifully with that,” Hennessy said. “Connect Historic Boston is an effort to identify and remedy the need for safe bike and pedestrian paths in Boston.”

Funding for the design project will come from a $400,000 grant from the National Park Service — the “Paul Sarbanes Transit in Parks” grant — to the city of Boston. (read more here)

I used to work downtown, and still ride through there on a regular basis, and every single time I think to myself, “man this place would be a whole lot more pleasant if we got rid of most of these cars.” While that wont ever happy, making it easier to bike and walk between these highly visited sites will go a long way to making the downtown area more friendly and useful, not only for tourists but for everyone that lives and works in the area as well. The added draw of these locations will also spur more local business opporotunities, and help to keep and expand the vitality of the region. People driving through that area in their car never stop to buy anything, because there is a lack of parking, pedestrians and cyclists however will stop and visit local shops.