My name is Ryan Rzepecki. I grew up in Erie, Pennsylvania and have been living in New York for over 8 years. I graduated from Penn State in 2001 with a BS in Marketing and honors in Film and Video Production. My first job in New York was in the publicity department of Paramount Pictures and I have also worked as a freelance video editor and horse drawn carriage driver in Central Park. In May 2009, I graduated with a Masters in Urban Planning from Hunter College. From November of 2008 to March 2010, I worked as a planner for the bikes division of the NYC Department of Transportation. While at the DOT, I installed bike racks, edited the bike map, conducted field research on existing and proposed bike facilities, and organized cycling promotions.
I left the DOT to start Virtuous Cycles, a company dedicated to promoting sustainable development. The first project is to develop a prototype for a mobile bike share system that I designed and entered into the Copenhagen Design Competition. I hope to have a working prototype by the end of summer and to field test the system in New York in the fall of 2010.
I hope my experience in video production, marketing, publicity, and urban planning help make this an interesting site. In addition to daily written content, I plan on producing a series of videos that promote cycling in New York. I can be reached at ryan@ibikenyc.com if you would like to collaborate on any projects.
I bike all the time. I live in Seattle, so I probably won’t bike all the way to New York, but I will bike to many other places. Biking rocks!
Hi Ryan,
BTW, I bike EVERYWHERE I can in NYC and recommend it to everybody. I can’t wait until the city is more bike friendly so that more people can enjoy it. Thanks for helping.
Thanks for the laugh. You left a Mike Davis baseball card on my spokes with a cloths pin, a la how we used to do it in our childhood when we wanted our bikes to sound like a motorcycle…of course…the card also had this URL. You really are a good at marketing. BTW, I was inside @ CNN editing and I see that you’re an editor. My bike was on 58th street btw. 9th and 8th Ave chained to a sign. Maybe you can help at DOT. I’ve been meaning to bring this up with some official or bike advocate group: Why are there no bike racks or places to lock up your bike in that area? All the signs are taken, especially in the summer, so certainly there is a great need. It is, at times, difficult to find a spot to chain your bike on that block. Really — it’s a mall…people want to bike there…
Glad you liked the card, ya gotta love 80s nostalgia. I agree about the parking issue as I didn’t see any racks in the area. Generally requests for racks are made through 311 or your community board, but I’ll make a suggestion to City Racks for you and we’ll see what they can do. There are requests coming in from all over the city and its hard to keep up, but I agree that Time Warner Center, Columbus Circle, and Central Park South should be a priority location. Thanks for reading!
Ryan,
Love the site! It was great meeting you in New Orleans. If I’m ever in NY I’ll have come back to your site for biking tips!
Take care,
Heather
Congrat on almost being finished with Hunter Ryan. Great job getting the blog up and running. If you are in Minneapolis anytime give me a holla. We have some awesome bike infrastructure.
Matt