Sharrows

Let's continue on the topic of street marking.

Wanting to know more about sharrows, I went to Wikipedia and read about shared lane marking. (I had to read about a district in Sheffield, England first.) I was a little unclear on the topic, I suppose, as I had thought that sharrows were rather vague in their application. Nothing could be further from the truth, as there appears to be a small if well defined body of traffic standards that apply to shared lane markings.

If you've (like me) not been paying close attention to the sharrows issue, here's a brief definition: Sharrows are "bicycle use" road markings that are installed where complete bike lanes cannot be installed for various reasons including:

• Not enough cyclists to justify bike lanes;
• Too expensive to install bike lanes;
• Use of bike lanes would require loss of parking; and/or
• Use of bike lanes would require road widening;

The city of San Francisco did a study on sharrows in 2004 that they have published in PDF form. The study's stated goals for sharrows is the following:

• Improve positioning of both cyclists and motorists on streets without bike lanes;
• Reduce aggressive motorist behavior;
• Prevent wrong-way bicycling;
• Prevent bicycling on sidewalks;

San Francisco additionally studied two different forms of sharrow marking, the "bike in house" design and the "chevron" design. Their study logged 140 hours of videotaping of before-and-after activity on six different streets in SF, three of which were two-lane and three of which were four-lane. Even though this study is not exactly "new news", I must say that I'm impressed with the size, thoroughness and rigor of this study. San Francisco has got a bunch of wonks that know what they're doing, statistically.

So, what happened? Well, the city of San Francisco (CSF) videotaped and analyzed a lot of traffic behavior. In 6 street locations, and before painting the streets, they taped cyclists' positions on the street, motorists' locations, and clearances afforded cyclists by motorists. (They did this for 1100 cyclists.) Then they painted the sharrows with the center of the figure 11'-0" out from the curb. And they ran the video study again. The results of the study are as summarized in the graphic at right.

I don't know about you, but I think these are pretty significant results. Cyclists are clearly less crowded towards parked cars, and motorists are clearly making better affordances for them.

One of the interesting things that the CSF found was that while the "chevron" design eliminated wrong-way cycling where it was used, the "bike-in-house" design appeared to have no effect in this area. For this reason (and the slightly better affordances noted above), the CSF approved the "chevron" design for use on CSF streets.

Because the markings were applied to the streets with no preceding public education program (the CSF evidently felt this might have skewed the results,) cyclists and motorists were then surveyed as to their perception and understanding of the markings. I won't go into the results of this survey in detail, (you can peruse the PDF if you like, as it's all there,) but will hit on some highlights:

• Most cyclists felt that the markings indicated a bike route;
• 60% of the cyclists felt an increased sense of safety;
• 33% of the cyclists felt that the markings caused them to "take the lane" more;
• 35% of the cyclists felt that the markings improved motorists' behavior;

After reading and reflecting on this excellent study, I feel that I have a much more positive feeling about sharrows than I had before. First and foremost, they are effective; they work to improve cyclist/ motorist interactions. Secondly, they have a "skills improvement" component, that of helping the cyclist attain proper position on the road. Finally, their ambiguity (which had put me off a little before I read the study) may prove to be one of their strong points: while a cyclist may feel he is "unprotected" if he ventures outside a fully-marked bike lane, no such boundary exists or is even implied with a sharrow, and this is probably a good thing.

Lawfulness & Licensing (Survey)

Once again, the NY Times has a well-written screed about urban cycling. It's here. I have to say that the sentiments of the author, Robert Sullivan, pretty much mirror mine. Riding in an urban environment carries inescapable risks, and it's simply imperative to avoid the risks we can by obeying the rules of the road. As one of the article commenters (from Davis, CA) responds, "same roads, same rights, same rules".

Sullivan, in the concluding paragraphs of his article, makes four suggestions for "better Bike PR":

• Stop at intersections;
• Don't ride on sidewalks;
• Don't ride against traffic (especially on one-way streets); and
• Signal your turns;

This is all pretty basic stuff, and I agree that universally doing these things will improve the lives of all urban cyclists (practical and otherwise!) but lately, I've been thinking further afield, deeper about this problem, venturing into what I'm pretty sure will be unpopular territory.

Simply put, the question is this:

If bicycles are vehicles, prone to the rules of the road like cars, and fundamentally unlike pedestrians, should bicycle riders who use public rights-of-way be licensed to operate their vehicles?

With no small amount of trepidation, I'm coming round more and more to the conclusion that we should be licensed. I think this solves two fundamental problems that otherwise show no clear way of being solved. These problems are:

• Lack of Skills Training: Many, many cyclists on the road are woefully unprepared, both physically and mentally, for dealing with traffic issues. They don't know how to recognize dangerous situations and how to avoid them. Any licensing program would have to have a concomitant skills development and testing program to justify the awarding of licenses.
  
• Lack of Moral Hazard: If I'm a driver, and I behave irresponsibly, then my license can be revoked, and I have to cease driving (at least if I want to obey the law). This threat of "points" has a strong effect of keeping my more animal impulses in check.

I look at "outlaw" cyclists, the heedless or reckless ones, and see people who are behaving as though under the influence of a drug. (See this post over at the Momentum website for yet another essay / perspective on this by Deb Greco.) Certainly cycling as an experience can convey a sense of euphoria, and it is the dangerous aspects of this euphoria in a public sphere that vehicular laws are intended to regulate.

The question is, should bicyclists play offense or defense? There are those, uh, "colorful cyclist personalities" who insist on the right to play offense. They assert that in Europe cyclists are treated with far greater deference by motorists, and that's the way it should be here, dammit. I'm a pragmatist, and I believe in defense. Cars are big, hot, massive, dangerous. To assert that it "should be otherwise" is all very well, but it is what it is. Much as I like Europe, much as I've enjoyed cycling over there, the US is different. I say that for me, for here, defense is the game.

So, time for an informal, non-scientific survey. The Blogger system doesn't (at least as far as I have discovered) allow for a formalized survey system, so let's do an informal one. If you have read this far, please do me the favor of commenting on this blog post with a letter signifying one of the following survey preferences. Honor code, here; don't be casting multiple votes (I'm pretty sure I can delete multiple votes after the fact, anyway.) As I've implied above, this is primarily aimed as the US, so if you're voting from overseas, it would be helpful for you to say where you're located. Feel free to comment further, but start out your comment with one of the letters A through D:

Question: Should bicycle riders who use public rights-of-way be licensed to operate their vehicles?

• A. Yes; time to get serious; Particularly as the number of cyclists grow, it will make the roads safer for all of us.
• B. Partly; Require licensing for bicyclists using roads that have speed limits >= 30 mph. This will allow "family use" in suburban 25 mph zones.
  
• C. No; If we provide bike lanes, the safety problem will go away, except for those idiots who want to take crazy risks with their own necks.
• D. Hell, No; I demand the right to do as I please on a bike; I'm not a car and I shouldn't have to behave like one. We need the government out of our lives.

Bag Security / Laptops

Marcus Sanford, one of the two co-editors over at the Austin on Two Wheels blog (see my blogroll), has just experienced a major equipment failure with a pannier which failed to protect his laptop, and he cracked his screen as a result. Read the story here.

My condolences to Marcus. I think that bag security is a major issue for commuting cyclists. I, like Marcus, carry my laptop in to work on a daily basis. Until early last year, I wore a padded laptop backpack to do so. However, I changed over to large touring panniers that are large enough to actually take the padded backpack inside. Although initially somewhat improvised, this has proven to be a quite workable solution.

Marcus' experience was that the laptop pannier he chose (the Axiom "Transition") didn't have an obvious (or documented) lock-down mechanism to guarantee that the pannier wouldn't fly off the rack. (His dispute with the Axiom company is that they did in fact have a locking device, but failed to inform the users about it! I can't blame Marcus for being heated.)

My big panniers sit far back on my rack, to make room for my big feet. They are secured with hooks, with heavy elastic tie-downs, and (as a backup) with Velcro safety straps that encircle the top rails of my rear rack. (See the image.) If the panniers that you use on your bike have a comparable safety device, use it, even if it takes an extra moment to do. (Marcus will tell you it's worth it.)

Although these are by no means expensive bags, (they're the Nashbar house brand), they get the job done. They are plenty big (and that's a major virtue), and they are soft and kind of floppy, so that abrupt bumps are "suspended" by the flexibility of the bag itself. I've hit many bumps over the 3,000 miles of last year, and no major accidents yet. It's also a major advantage that, if I park my bike, I can easily lift out the backpack with my laptop, and carry it with me comfortably.

I do consciously think about my bags. I look back at them at least once on every commute. If I see them swinging about, I stop and check attachments. So far, so good.

PS: End of the first week of March, and I'm now at 500+ miles. Woo-hoo!

Progress / Condescension

So, first a progress report: I logged 180+ miles in February, which isn't so bad since I "lost" more than a week visiting Germany and Switzerland. (Not really lost, of course, although I came to dread hitting the hotel gym to ride a stationary bike -- bleah.) The good side was of course seeing how the "other half lives".

The hastily-snapped cellphone picture at right is a bike shelter we saw from the

train between Munich and Basel. Interesting bike racks. But also consider this is the first week in February. Many citizens, even in the elevated parts of semi-Alpine Western Europe, have integrated their bikes in their daily lifestyle. Bike, train, no car. At least not on a daily basis. It's definitely true that distances are smaller compared to the sprawling US, but I have to say, it is so refreshing to see this (and not just because of the brisk air.)

While we were in Basel, we had anything but nice weather (lots of rain and wind) but the practical cyclists were out, getting around, everywhere, at all hours of the day. On the coldest, windiest day, I saw a woman riding a bakfiets with her two little kids bundled up like two stuffed toys. Even I, a daily cyclist, saluted her unconsciously, but frankly, she didn't seem fazed.

Which brings me back to my experience since returning. On a couple of occasions, I've sort of 'snapped' at people who have commented on my cycling. Just after returning, when attending a yoga class, I was locking up my bike at the yoga center when an older woman (who was going to the same class as I) turned to me and said, "Ah, it's a sure sign of spring when the cyclists come out." I responded with as much abruptness as I could muster, "Oh, I cycle year 'round." (It just came out, really.) And just last week, I was biking to meet my wife at a doctor's office so I could put my bike in the back of the car and drive her home, a nurse at the office said, "that's so cute that you ride your bike everywhere," and I snapped back, "I'm the future."

I felt condescended to by these people. My dictionary defines "condescend" as "to show feelings of superiority". Certainly people driving cars have physical superiority. A very small car is still very large, heavy, and hot up against a bike. But to be treated in the diminutive makes me feel like these people are also claiming moral superiority, and I can't accept that. These people are ignorant. They don't understand the horrifying waste that they produce with their lifestyle, they haven't the imagination to see it. Since I've comprehended it, I can't just make it go away. So I do what I can. And I think that is worthy of respect, not condescension, not impatience.

I won't be holding my breath waiting for it, though.

Hazards 1: Traffic Calming: Chicanes

Anyone who's done cycling in an urban environment has encountered traffic calming devices. On my modest 9-mile commute in Columbia, MD, I experience speed bumps, rumble strips, chicanes, and traffic circles. Sometimes these devices don't work entirely as intended; they can be abused by drivers, or can be confusing to drivers who don't know how to manage multiple inputs (Bicyclist ahead! Traffic calming ahead!) in a way that reconciles everything.

Sometimes, as a Practical Cyclist, you've got to help that driver Do The Right Thing.

Today we'll talk about chicanes, "pinch points" that are intended to slow down traffic. A two-way chicane is illustrated at right. Notice that I've illustrated a chicane that preserves the shoulder / bike lane. Not all of them do.

So, what's the problem here? Well, the simple problem is that most drivers dislike (sometimes intensely) traffic calming and therefore feel entitled to "cheat" it. ("Let's see if I can get through this chicane without slowing down. Wheee!") And sometimes they tend to ignore little things like, oh say, that cyclist up ahead. I've heard other city cyclists complain about this bitterly, and yet I've not had a bad problem with this. Maybe 1 in 100 times, I'll have a jerk motorist squeeze by me, but it's rare.

What's my secret? The magic of Eye Contact. I'll be the first to say that I don't know why eye contact works, but it definitely does. What I do is, when I'm approaching a chicane and I hear a motorist behind me, I'll turn and fix an eyeball on him when he's about 3 or so car-lengths back. In (as I say) 99 out of 100 cases, it works like a charm, and that hundredth case, well, I take evasive action (and usually holler something.)

Try this the next time you come upon a pinch point (and 3-way traffic circles are analogous to chicanes in this context). You'll be surprised how effective it is.

Conflicted

Three times in the last week of cycling (twice on a single day) I've had it happen: On a two lane road with no-passing stripes, a motorist coming up on me from behind passes me wide on the left at a relatively high rate of speed. In doing so, they pay more attention to me than to (argh!) the oncoming traffic, and they narrowly miss an oncoming motorist who (understandably) honks.

I'm conflicted about this. On one hand, I'm grateful that the motorist behind is giving me a wide berth (particularly since they're hauling right along), but I'm distressed (to say the least) that these guys are creating what amounts to a dangerous situation.

So: Slow The Hell Down if you're a motorist passing a cyclist. Wait until the road is clear and you can cross over the double-yellow line without endangering anyone. Patience, dammit! And if you're the oncoming guy and see my light, it wouldn't hurt to hug the curb a little.

Winter Cycle Clothing Guidelines

I've promised an article on my "system" for active winter dressing, so herewith I'm going to lay out what has worked for me so far this winter. I hope that you who are thinking about doing some serious cycling find this helpful, but first some general observations. The chart at lower right shows how I progressively dress for cold weather. (NB: All temperatures in this list are the temperature after "wind chill" is considered.) I think it's pretty self-explanatory, although I discuss some clothing articles at more length below.

Adaptation: To me, one of the continually-remarkable things about cold-weather cycling is the way our bodies adapt when in use. I call it remarkable because it seems like I have to consciously remind myself that it's going to happen. If I dress to be comfortable for the first 7 minutes of cycling in the cold, it usually means I'm going to sweat up my gear thoroughly by the end of my 9 mile commute (and be pretty miserable at the end). So what I do is I suffer (just a teeny bit) for the first mile and a half, until I make it to the top of my first decent hill. By the time I've ridden that far, I'm quite comfortable. By "comfortable" I don't mean that I'm toasty warm, but I'm not feeling chilly, either, and the engine is just humming along. It is a bit of a strange sensation, feeling a little cold, but being very confident that the discomfort will pass, and it always does. It's a good exercise in delayed gratification.

Core vs. Extremities: If you spend some time looking at the clothing chart, you'll see that I act earlier to protect my extremities (hands, head, feet) than I do to protect my core (torso and legs). For one thing, my windproof shell does an excellent job of protecting my core (this makes me think that windproof tights would work as well as two layers of tights in very cold weather, but I already have the two pairs of tights in my hard-to-find tall size, and windproof tights (assuming I could find them in large-talls) would set me back $100-$150, so I'll live with the inconvenience of putting on two pairs of tights when it's truly frigid outside.

By far the most difficult "extremities" problem is hands. I've discussed before my approach to gloves / mittens, and I've found the "Zoidbergs" with poly liners good down only to the about 20° F. (given my commute distance). Below that temperature, you can help comfort by wearing latex gloves against your skin as vapor barriers to prevent chapping. I recommend also applying a very thin coating of some anti-chap hand cream as soon as you can after riding. Chapped fingers are no fun.

Discussions on Particular Items of Clothing:

1. Tunic: I think finding a high-quality fleece tunic is fairly critical. This tunic from REI [UPDATE 10-19-09: the previous item is no longer available; this is the replacement] is what I use, and I like it quite a lot. It's stretchy, it's available in tall sizes, the fleece is very soft and comfy against my skin, it's very thermally forgiving, and it will dry quickly hanging on the back of my office door.

2. Windproof shell: There are many brands and varieties of windproof shell available. I've had mine for several years now, and I'll probably have to replace it in the next year or so. The one I have I bought several years ago at the LL Bean store in Freeport, ME, and I've worn it so much that replacing it will seem like replacing a friend. But the zipper has only so much time left. In any case: requirements are: reflectivity, drawstring or elastic waist (or both), big enough to fit over a couple of winter layers, but not excessively floppy, zipper pockets, velcro wind flaps over the zippers, and a stowable hood. This is the closest thing that Bean has to what I use now. In a perfect world, it would have under-arm "pit zips," but sigh, no.

3. Vapor barriers for feet: This makes a surprising difference in foot warmth. I use newspaper bags for simplicity, economy, and convenience. For weather that's not too cold, you can just pull them on over your wool socks. But your feet will definitely feel, uh, rather humid at the end of your ride, so it feels good to "unsack" your feet at the end of the ride to let 'em air out. This article suggests that I'm doing it wrong, and ought to wear the VB under my socks, so in colder weather I've worn thin sock liners (old dress socks work just fine) under the bags. VB socks are available from hunting-fishing places also, but the paper bags are a pretty green solution, and zero cost (if you're one of the dinosaurs still reading newpapers!)

4. Headwear: I've become pretty attached to wearing a balaclava in temperatures below freezing, although above freezing, a thin fleece stocking-cap will do fine. In very cold weather, I might be tempted to put the (windproof) hood up on my parka.

So, that's about it. Nothing earth-shattering here, and (as always) your mileage may vary (along with your cold-bloodedness), so you can adjust the temps at the top of the chart. Remember to keep in mind some of my other recommendations for winter cycling, and get out there.

An Attaboy on a Snowy Day

Unlike the city of Boulder, CO, the city of Columbia, MD, does not assiduously maintain its bike paths in winter snows. A stretch of no more than 1/2 mile of a pedestrian/bike trail is part of my daily commute; it parallels a busy stretch of road that tends to be full of distracted drivers.

Yesterday morning, the trail had not been cleared and (taking a deep breath, knowing that some patience was going to be involved) I got on the road, named Little Patuxent Parkway. I took my line well out in the roadway in the right lane of a four-lane undivided street -- I wasn't going to be pinned against the curb by heedless drivers on my one day that I was forced to ride this stretch.

True to form, a clueless driver got in behind me and slowed down. For some inexplicable reason, the driver, even though it was two lanes in our direction and the traffic was light, couldn't bring herself to pull out and move around me. Instead, she kept creeping along, got frustrated (no surprise) and began honking at me. My general approach when faced with such clueless behavior is to ignore it (particularly when I have on my Zoidbergs and therefore am constrained to be polite—no "flipping the bird", so to speak.) So I did here, until I made my turn and the driver passed, whereupon I yelled at the top of my voice, "WHAT'S YOUR PROBLEM?"

Unbeknownst to me, there was a pedestrian who had witnessed the entire sequence, and he was on the street I turned on to. As I was accelerating, I saw him pull down his hood, give me a big smile, and say, "Hey, good job!"

I won't ever know if he was complimenting me on my comments to the motorist, my lack of profanity, or simply the fact that I was out commuting on a morning when the wind-chill was in the mid-teens. But I'll take it anyway.

The LightLane, a Better Mousetrap?

It seems to me that people over-value ideas, and under-value the hard sweaty work it takes to get ideas to be really fruitful implemen- tations. I remember Rich Diehl, a friend and employer, once saying to me, "One doesn't patent ideas; one patents implementations," and he was absolutely correct. Which brings me to the LightLane.

The LightLane is a concept from Alex Tee and Evan Gant of Altitude (I'm not 100% sure what "Altitude" is. A design firm, maybe?) Here's what they say about it:

A close brush with a distracted driver is enough to intimidate the most avid bikers from riding at night. The problem isn’t just about visibility, as safety lights are effective at capturing the attention of a driver. However, these lights are typically constrained to the bike frame, which highlights only a fraction of the bike’s envelope. Bike lanes have proven to be an effective method of protecting cyclists on congested roads. One key is that the lane establishes a well defined boundary beyond the envelope of the bicycle, providing a greater margin of safety between the car and the cyclist. Yet, only a small fraction of streets have dedicated bike lanes, and with an installation cost of $5,000 to $50,000 per mile, we shouldn’t expect to find them everywhere anytime soon. Instead of adapting cycling to established bike lanes, the bike lane should adapt to the cyclists. This is the idea behind the LightLane. Our system projects a crisply defined virtual bike lane onto pavement, using a laser, providing the driver with a familiar boundary to avoid. With a wider margin of safety, bikers will regain their confidence to ride at night, making the bike a more viable commuting alternative.

The LightLane is an idea (NOT an implementation, if I am to interpret the Photoshop job as the work-in-progress.) Not a bad idea, although not by any means fully fleshed out. The concept of defining in a clearly visible way a "safe zone" around a bicycle using a stroked laser is interesting. But it doesn't seem remotely ready for prime time, in my opinion. It looks to me like Tee and Gant might be trying to solve the wrong problem here:

• Firstly, if (as they admit) high-intensity bike lights "are effective at capturing the attention of a driver", then the rest of the problem is simply a matter of obeying the rules of the road. What makes the "envelope" around bicycles any different from the reasonable safe clearance given any other vehicle by a safe driver?
• Secondly, does this concept work in the day time, or is it conceived strictly as a replacement for bike lighting? (I can't imagine the laser that would be sufficiently bright to light up a virtual bike lane in the daytime without burning holes in things, if you know what I mean.)
• Thirdly, the device as shown seems to be oriented more towards overtaking cars rather than cars ahead. It's been shown through accident statistics that very few accidents occur from cars overtaking bikes. Far more often, collisions occur when cars pull out in front of bicyclists (see below) or when they turn left in front of them, both as a result of not seeing the approaching bike. This device doesn't seem to significantly increase forward visibility of the bicylist, although it might in certain terrain.
  
• Fourthly, and possibly most importantly, it seems to me that a (regular) bike lane has value precisely because it provides a zone of protection for a cyclist that has been agreed to by statute. It's there day and night, and it doesn't move around. The "virtual bike lane" does (at least in theory) make the cyclist more visible in certain situations, but that's really the limit of it. It should really be billed as an alternative night-lighting arrangement and compared to other such devices, and not as a alternative to infrastructures, which it really doesn't provide.
• Lastly, even if all these issues could be dealt with, could this device be produced at any reasonable cost?

All these criticisms aside, I can think of things you could do with stroked laser type lighting. The idea of creating a virtual envelope around a bike might have merit, but I think it needs to be a 3D envelope, which almost suggests something more holographic. (I'm not sure this is possible with current technology). I could also conceive of a training aid to teach cyclists how to "find their line" in the traffic lane, although this is something that should be projected ahead of the cyclist, and should probably have some sonic detection to help the cyclist move out around parked cars, and this of course would add complexity and cost.

All in all, it's hard to see how this is much of an improvement over conventional night lighting for bicyclists. I'm put in mind of the Trek bicycle ad that they ran on OLN during the Tour de France, where they showed a cycle commuter at dusk on (presumably) a Trek bike, but with no headlight! (Hey, doofus, why do you think that car is pulling out in front of you? It's because he can't see you!)


Well, hmm, this has been a bit of a wandering post. I guess the point I want to make is about "the better mousetrap". I'm not seeing where projecting a lane on the pavement around me is going to increase my visibility to drivers all that much, while simply using a conventional light device doesn't do a bad job of it.

Cold Weather and Adhesives: A tale in 3 chapters

Chapter 1: Late last fall when it was quite cold, I had an "interesting" experience. My helmet (a Giro Atlas) delaminated—the shell peeled right away from the foam core of the thing. Strangely and excitingly, it happened while I was riding. I made a quick decision to not stop (it was cold, after all) and try and recover the shell on my morning ride to work, which I did.

I wrote the customer service wing of Giro and they kindly sent me replacement tape (adhesive tape around the perimeter is what holds the standard vacuum-plastic-foam helmet together) with instructions on how to repair it.

I was surprised (stunned, really) about how the thing just let go all at once. Clearly (it seemed to me at the time) this was a temperature-related occurence. I'm now using (for extreme cold weather riding) a Bern helmet using their "Zip-mold" technology, quite a different thing from the vacuum-plastic-foam approach.

Chapter 2: Cycling in to work about 6 weeks ago, when I was about a mile from the office, I experienced a sudden flat. Since I was so close, I just got off and walked the bike in. When I got the tube out of the tire, I was surprised to find that the cause of the flat was a Slime Skab peel-and-stick patch that had just let go. I immediately thought of my helmet and began to wonder about how cold weather affects adhesives. (I also began a more philosophical rumination about how our lives depend on adhesives, but that's for a different time.)

When I was fixing the tire that day, I was concerned about the "wrinkly" appearance of the Skabs (I had several on this particular tube). I compared them to the appearance of a Park peel-and-stick that I also had on this tube. (This is, admittedly, a rather "road-weary" tube.) The Park patch was more rigid, but perfectly flat, while the Skabs were thin and pliable, but all wrinkled.

Chapter 3: Earlier this week, a second Skab developed a leak. I replaced it, but I must say the cold weather reliability (or lack thereof) of the Skabs has me concerned. At the moment, I would not recommend the use of Skabs if you're going to be cycling in significantly cold (below freezing) weather. Reliability of your cycling system needs to be high in extreme weather conditions. I'm not calling it a matter of life and death, but a flat at the wrong time (for no good reason) can be a matter of significant discomfort.

Epilogue: If you're going to be cycling in cold weather and you use peel-and-stick tire repair, go with Parks.

Immigrant Bike Commuters

If you live in an urban environment, you've seen them. Adult immigrants (almost always Latinos) cycling in work clothes on Wal-mart bikes, too slowly, on streets that are too busy, with no helmets. Every time I see a such an immigrant commuter, I cringe, out of worry for their well-being. I know they are just trying to get to or from work in the most cost-effective way possible.

Hector Rapalo (shown at right) was killed over the Christmas holidays in Islip, NY while on a bicycle. There's not much to the story. The police report is here, and here's an editorial in the New York Times (from Jan. 11) that drew my attention to this particular incident. The editorial also mentions the cases of Santos Javier Ramos and Enrique Aguilar-Gamez. The editorial suggests that some of the hit-and-runs (and yes, there are multiple ones) are hate crimes. My general good-naturedness makes me want to doubt this, but then I went to this comments posting on the Ramos incident, and frankly, too many of the comments are pretty sickening in their xenophobia and racism.

The NYT editorial generalizes a little too much: it says, "Bicyclists and suburbs are an uneasy fit," with which I utterly disagree. More accurately, unskilled bicyclists and commuting are an uneasy fit, and it makes no difference your skin color or national origin, although (I submit) the economic status, access to Internet, and language barrier of Latino immigrants exacerbates the situation for them.

So, how can we make this situation better? I can think of several ideas, all of which are "unfunded mandates":

1. An initiative on the part of the League of American Bicyclists to provide Spanish-language and/or bilingual versions of the "Road 1" course;
2. Concurrent with (1) above, scholarships from HHS or INS to help legal immigrants (or for that matter, low-income Americans) to attend these classes;
3. Since most of these bikes (I suspect) are $80-to-$100 models bought at Wal-Mart, I'd like to see Wal-Mart provide a certificate for a free or very low-cost ANSI-compliant helmet (nothing fancy, to be sure) for every bike sold;

I'm no policy whiz—I really don't know what I'm doing in this area. But there is simply no defensible reason for the the least-affluent in our society to be deprived of access to information that will make them safer as they try to use cost-effective, environmentally-friendly transport.

Pearlie-Zoomies

About 2-1/2 months ago, I finally broke down and bought a pair of Pearl-Izumi "lobster" cycling gloves. Numbness and tingling in my hands has been a continual problem for me during the cold months, and these gloves definitively solve it. I used to use three layers; XXXL mountain-biking full finger gloves over fleece over polypro glove liners. It didn't stop the cold-finger syndrome when the weather dropped below about 40 ° F. (4° C.)

I don't do a lot of product endorsements, and I've never received compensation of any kind for any product I've mentioned on this blog (and I won't be starting now.) But I have to say that these gloves really do the trick. I've been cycling in Maryland winter weather this season in weather as cold as 20° F. (-7° C.) and have yet to see the weather that these gloves (along with simple polypro glove liners) can't handle. These gloves are not cheap -- they cost $55 to $65 depending on your source. But comparing that cost to circulation difficulties and attendant possible neurological problems, these guys seem like a bargain.

I call them my "Zoidbergs".

Soon: A systematic approach to dressing for cold-weather cycling..

2903.77 --> 0.00

Happy New Year to All!

For me, it's that most mixed-emotion of times -- time to reset the odometer. There may be those who say that one should just go on running up the miles, but not me. I think goals are good things to have, and you have to know where you're starting. My goal last year was 3000 miles, which I almost made, even considering that I didn't ride much in January or February.

This year is starting out with ugly Maryland weather, rainy and cold, but I'll be out in the first two months of the year this time around. I'm wanting to make 3300 miles of "practical" (displaced automobile) miles, and that means I need an early start.

I'm feeling pretty positive about the blog. Something just happened that has never happened before. My last post (the cargo bike review) got two comments on the first day -- whoo hoo! There are many good topics for the Practical Cyclist this year. I expect I'll be writing on my winter clothing in some more detail before the winter goes much further, and I have some overseas adventures planned with a folding bike that I've, uh, "re-cycled" from my brother.

Here's hoping the year has good cycling in store for you, too.

Thanksgiving 2008

I'm very thankful to be a cycle-commuter. It greatly increases my health (mental as well as physical), it saves me money, and it does its part to save the planet. It has such a salutary effect on my lifestyle that I'm sure I would bore to tears anyone who asked me why I cycle and was willing to stand around and hear the answer.

One of the questions I therefore ask myself (repeatedly) is, "Since cycling provides so many benefits, why don't more people cycle? What would it take to get more people on the road?" Certainly one (oft repeated here) obstacle is the irrational fear of traffic. (Irrational, that is, for people with traffic cycling skills.) Once a cyclist has a high skill level, it's no problem to cycle in American traffic.

However, it's just not rational to expect a large number of people to somehow magically develop these skills. So in the absence of [insert magical event here], how do we change the environment (and I use the word "environment" in the broadest sense) to effect this desirable change?

I'm not the only person who has been asking this. Fortunately. (If I were, very little would have gotten done.) Dr. John Pucher is a professor in the Bloustein School of Planning and Public Policy at Rutgers University, and he has studied bicycle use in all its variants across the world. Pucher's bio page is here , so I won't repeat it. Suffice it to say that this guy is doing important work in the areas of public policy and public health. He (along with a Rutgers PhD candidate, Ralph Buehler) have written a well researched white paper (PDF) and an excellent presentation (in both video and slideshow form) on the topic "Cycling for Everyone" which studies cycle use worldwide, and which focuses on the ways governments can encourage cycling utilization by policy in the following areas:

• Better facilities and traffic engineering
• Integration of biking with public transport
• Traffic calming of resiential neighborhoods
• Mixed-use zoning and improved urban design
• Traffic education
• Traffic regulations and enforcement

He's given this presentation in various forms in fora in New York City (4/2007), Louisville, KY (4/2007), Vancouver, BC (5/2008) and at the League of American Bicyclists National Bike Summit in Washington, DC (3/2007). So this is no big secret by any means, but it's definitely information that bears repeating, and passing on.

The presentation is in some ways a laundry list, and I think that there are some implementations in Europe that will have difficulty finding acceptance in the US (30-kph speed limit zones for example) but there are many that are already "mainstream" practices in the US, e.g. traffice calming and bike carriers on public transit. The really good news here is, all the policy research has been done. Now it's only a matter of using that research to bludgeon convince our legislators that this stuff is important for our health, our well-being, and our energy policy also. I think the League has done good work in this area, and that's why I'm a member of it.

So, hats off to you, John Pucher. Here's wishing you success in getting your policies put in place. And, as long as we're being thankful, thank you for the good work you've done and continue to do.

Cycling Deep into Winter

Well, OK, everyone seems to be putting up posts on "Winter Cycling Tips". Here's one over at Paul Dorn's excellent commuting website, and here's another. Now that I've been cycling for a couple of weeks in weather that is often-if-not-mostly below freezing, I guess I can offer some ideas.

Planning: Winter, with its short days and questionable road conditions, is no time to experiment with new routes, at least during the early morning and early evening hours of your regular commute. Stick to the routes you know; if you want to develop some new routes, do it over the weekend, during the day.

Clothing / Accessories / Equipment: I like a layer of full-on fleece (say Polartec 200 gauge) next to my skin, topped with a wind-proof (but uninsulated) shell, and full tights. For mid-20 to 30 deg F. weather, this is really enough clothing. If it gets down into the zero degree range, I might add another layer, but it's possible to sweat this up pretty thoroughly in sub-freezing weather. I find that I warm up about 1.5 miles into my ride, where I hit my first significant uphill. Truth is, where you're exercising, you adapt pretty well thermally.

Protection of Extremities: I have a thin fleece cap that fits under my helmet (I'm probably going to add a balaclava), and I use SmartWool hiking socks. So far I haven't found the need to go to a second layer of socks -- I probably would use a vapor barrier wrap made from bread sacks or newspaper bags before I went to a full-on multilayer sock approach. (For a good discussion of why you want vapor barriers at your feet, go to this link at the venerable Stephenson "Warmlite" site.) The big difficulty I find is keeping my hands sufficiently warm. I wear a light Polartec glove liner under full winter cycling gloves, and my fingers still hurt from the cold at the end of a 9-mile ride. Better to hurt than to have lost feeling, I guess. The next step is to go to "lobster gloves" -- I've ordered some from LL Bean (Pearl Izumi brand) and maybe can find some comfort.

Other Equipment: One thing you'll need is sunglasses for the morning commute. The sun is low in the sky, and creates a lot of glare. If you don't wear glasses anyway, you'll need eye protection for the evening commute, also. One other thing that I've found, is that it's extremely handy to have a visor on your helmet. This is so you can put your head down to deflect the headlight beams of oncoming cars on dark roads. This keeps you from getting blinded.

Outfitting the bike: Mudguards (fenders) are essential, of course. Lights that meet the legal minimums also. I like the blinking-LED variety, for the way they conserve batteries. I've also added a large amber auto-reflector to supplement the standard red rear light. If I know the weather is going to be inclement, I don't plan to ride. But I carry extra clothing (a full rain outfit and the aforementioned newspaper bags) to keep me reasonably dry if the weather turns foul. As for tires, you can research and buy studded tires at Peter White's excellent website. For me, right now, if the weather is such that I'd need studded tires so I can ride on ice, hmm. I think I'll not ride that day. That doesn't mean you can't, though.

Motivation: Many of the other blog articles on winter cycling talk about motivation and getting going. It is true that the first mile is the hardest. I think the strategy that has been most successful for me is to just not quit, not get out of the habit. I do think that deep winter would be a challenging time to start a cycle-commuting habit, to say the least. I feel like any week where I can ride 3 days or more is a good week, and I've had mostly good weeks since the end of summer.

If you're planning on regular winter cycling, I hope these little tips have been useful. Be safe!

Bike-onomics, or, What Succeeds the Bike?

Here's a link to an article in the Week in Review section of last Sunday's New York Times. It's an article about technological advance and the "creative destruction" of capitalism (a timely topic, you might concur.) It starts with the (to me) exceeding provocative statement, "By some logic, there is no earthly reason why bicycles should still exist." It's a very interesting article, and (as is often the case with the NYT) so very timely on many fronts. (So go on, read it, don't worry, we'll still be here when you're done..)

The author, Catherine Rampell, makes the statement that "older technologies have survived by recasting themselves as luxuries and by marketing their sensory, aesthetic and nostalgic appeal." I wouldn't disagree with that, exactly, but Ms. Rampell does miss (or perhaps chooses to ignore) the point that bicycles do have a straight-ahead economic advantage: they are greatly less expensive to operate than automobiles for trips of a certain length, say daily commutes of 10 miles or less. There's just no comparison, and commuting bicyclists' blogs are replete with stories of how much money they've saved, ad nauseaum. Ms. Rampell might make the argument that such extra modality makes no sense, even if there are savings to be had. I would respond that I know of people who (even today) find cross-country driving more economical than flying, and do so for that very reason.

But I think the article raises an interesting question: what would it take to render the bicycle obsolete, at least as a practical means of transportation, or to marginalize it to such a degree that its only practical use is as a "fresh-air exercise machine"? I say this knowing full well that there are those of us "hard-core" individuals who will let you take our bikes only when you can pry our cold, dead fingers, etc., and it can reasonably be argued (by someone who lacks the personal daily joy of same) that bicycle commuting is inherently a fanatic kind of activity, even if economical.

Well, here's a candidate for a vehicle technology that might someday render the bicycle obsolete except for us fanatics: the Twill Wicked. What if you could have a highly safe personal transportation device, freeway-speed capable, extemely efficient (450-mpg equivalent, say), and capable of existing totally "off the grid", for which a solar panel of less than 4 square meters would suffice to supply energy for a daily 30 mile commute? What if this vehicle cost $12,000 (the price of a high-end carbon racing bike)? Such are the promised specifications of the Wicked.

To be sure, the Wicked exists right now somewhere between the gleam in the eye of an engineer and a partially-working prototype, no more. But the imagination displayed in this project is remarkable. (Allow me to step up on my soapbox a moment.) It is precisely the lack of this kind of imagination on Detroit's part that is at the root of their current death-throes. I mean, look at the ridiculous Chevy Volt, totally hobbled by the fact that it's designed around a superstructure based on cheap oil. As long as a car is assumed to be a ton-and-three-quarters hunk of metal, the battery requirements to get any kind of decent range will be excessive and costly. The problem is that, since this is what Detroit's "best and brightest" can come up with, this is what the public takes for an "electric vehicle". I don't assign any form of conspiracy theory here along the lines of "Who Killed the Electric Car?", rather I just think it's gross incompetence. (end soapbox) Maybe the the Wicked is what will replace the car, maybe the Aptera. Or a vehicle being brewed in any one of a thousand garages right now.

But I'm not worried about them replacing the bicycle. No time soon, anyway.

2539.7

..is what it reads on my cyclo-computer odometer (which I reset on January 1) right now. It being just past the Ides of November, I expect I may (if I'm lucky) get in 3 or at most 4 weeks more of commuting in before the end of the year. This past week, I got in 3 days, had one day lost to bad weather, and one day lost because of having to make a business trip into Washington, DC.

My goal for the year was to displace 3,000 miles of car travel. To me, this meant 3,000 miles of trips that I would have made anyway in a car — commuting, errands, etc., so recreational cycling wouldn't technically count. I feel like I've gotten pretty close, no matter what the rest of the year looks like. I'm particularly happy in comparison to last year, when I cycled only about 2200 miles, over 500 of which were weekend recreational miles. (Nothing wrong with them, except they don't displace auto miles.) I got a late start this year, no cycling in January, which was pretty inclement, and precious little in February. I'm just going to have to get out more in winter if I want to make my goal next year, which I'm setting at 3,300 miles. (You read it here first.)

So, (shifting gears here a little,) as part of the Great Financial Bailout of 2008, the Bicycle Commuting Act was passed. This allows employers to provide fringe benefits to their bicycle-commuting employees of up to $20 and provide various tax incentives for same. I don't know how a "bicycle commuter" is defined; there are several guys at my office who are "bicycle decorators", i.e., they use bikes for office decor, but they don't ride them very much. One article I read says that if you ride your bike 60% of the time, you would be considered a bicycle commuter. So I broke out my calculator:

48 weeks* x 5 days x 17.6 miles in my RT commute = 4224 miles per year at 100% utilization.

(* I figured 52 weeks - 3 weeks vacation - 1 week holidays)

So at 60% utilization, 4224 x 0.6 = 2534.4 miles. This means that on my last ride home this past week, I became a bicycle commuter for the year. Whoo-hoo!

Seriously, I do a good amount of business travel, which should fairly be excluded. And there are other extenuating circumstance -- no one should have to cycle in a downpour. Not only is it not fun, it's dangerous. But I know that by US standards, I'm a cycling fiend. It just goes to show that the bar for defining "cycle commuter" has not been set too low by our friends in Congress.

For a NY Times article on the Bicycle Commuting Act, go here. For more information on the Congressional Bike Caucus (presumably a good place to write to do some informal lobbying,) go here.

Final word on Stockholm

Before I leave it, a few last words on Stockholm:

Stockholm Bike Fashion: The "fixie" craze has yet to hit Stockholm the way it has in the US. If you have a single-speed, it's an standard* steel-frame, coaster-brake style. Other "standards" are three-speeds. (I would call an "standard" an "old person's bike" except that young people who are not bike enthusiasts ride them too. So they are just "standard".) Enthusiast bikes are derailleur-equipped late-model mountain bikes or road bikes with bright paint jobs. (I did see one Rohloff-equipped bike. Nice.) I saw aluminum, not carbon, frames in the display windows of the one bike shop I stopped at. As for couture, I saw only a few people wearing Spandex, and they were all club riders. For that matter, I was remarkable (even in my street clothes) for wearing gloves.

Infrastructure / Pedestrians: Bikeways, where they are uninterrupted, are great, e.g. along a waterfront, especially where there is some separation (other than a line of paint) from pedestrians. But they are always problematic where they end, or have to deal with intersections, or cross roads. There is a lot of "engineering" (signalization, signage, and control) involved. And the cyclist always has the option of using the roadway anyway. Just as in the US, delivery trucks and cars park in the bikeways, forcing the cyclist into the motorway. The adjacency of bikeways to pedestrian areas is problematic, I think bikes (moving at 10-20 mph) belong more with cars than with pedestrians. I found myself using my bell a lot.

*I've been, justly enough, taken to task for my earlier use of the term "ordinary", which historically refers to a "penny-farthing" type bicycle.

Stockholm Cyclist Holiday...

..well, it was really a business trip, but I was able to tack on a day to do an extensive tour of the city by bike. As I said in an earlier post, I'd never been in Sweden before. I found it very English-friendly. (This is good thing, as my Nordic is pretty non-existent. One of the weird things about visiting Sweden is that "Hello" in Nordic is "He!" pronounced "hey". It's tempting to just say "hey" right back, kind of comfortable and informal, until you realize that you're sending the wrong signal about which language you prefer.)

Stockholm has a lot of practical cyclists. It would not be hard to believe that (at least in the warm months) 20 to 25 8 to 10 percent of city-dwellers commute to work, or do at least some practical transportation on bikes. The city has an extensive network of bike lanes, and the sensible Swedes wear helmets in far greater proportion than I've seen elsewhere in Europe. I'd guess 50% of the urban riders I saw wore helmets, which may not sound like a lot, until you see Paris where the percentage is in the low (and I mean low) single digits.

Stockholm has a public bike-sharing system called "Stockholm City Bikes". It has been put together by Clear Channel advertising, who I think also did the Washington DC "SmartBike" system. The systems look pretty much identical: the bikes (3 speed w/ coaster brakes on the rear) are the same (see my post on SmartBike here), and the rental system is very similar, with a 3-hour usage limit. SCB is more tourist oriented, though, with a 3-day pass available (for between $15 and $20) at the central railway station.

I got a better deal than SCB, though. I got a free bike for two days from my hotel (a very nice central hotel called the Scandic Anglais). Evidently this is not unusual. The larger hotels keep a collection of bikes available for patron use, and you just check them out and a deposit is put on your hotel tab until you return them. Simple and convenient. The bikes are nothing special: one-speed "ordinaries" with rear coaster brake (coaster brakes suck, by the way) and drum brake on front, rack, mudguards, and lights. Pretty basic stuff, and not very different from what a lot of locals use on their own. Just guessing, I would say that about 50% of the locals were on "ordinaries" while the other half were on more high-tech modern bikes. I saw very few people on the SCBs. It was late September, and past the tourist "high season", so maybe that was it -- the SCBs were mainly for tourists.

The SCB website is here, but it's in the off-season now. Bikes are available only for seven months of the year, 3/31 to 10/31. I guess winters are pretty tough in Stockholm. One of my acquaintances there said he had a co-worker who put on studded tires and rode year-round, but he was considered extremely hard-core by his colleagues.

So, to document the holiday and encourage other tourist-cyclists in Stockholm, I've mapped my city tour on Google Maps below. My first day tour (8.5 miles, Friday afternoon) is in red, and my longer Saturday tour (19.5 miles) is in purple:

View Larger Map

..and, even more fun, have an annotated collection of "travelogue" photos on flickr here. You can click on the map link on each photo page to see where it was taken in Stockholm. I hope you enjoy seeing Sweden's capital by bike!

The Skills vs. Infrastructure Debate

Regular readers of this blog know that from time to time I bloviate on about "vehicular bicycling skills." (It might be more accurate to say that this is one of the primary ongoing themes to be found in this blog.) Not all of this blog's readers, however, might know that there is an ongoing if ill-focused debate among interested parties that touches on this issue. The debate is between proponents of INFRASTRUCTURE vs. those who promote SKILLS DEVELOPMENT. (It is entirely possible to be a proponent of both these things. Let's, just for the moment, be partisan about this, hey? It's so much fun to argue, even if it is with oneself.)

The "infrastructure" argument asserts that bicyclists need more environmental protection from motorists, and the way to make that happen is with new bike-lane infrastructure. This argument tends to support the intuitive position of people who think they would like to cycle more but are not currently doing so, i.e., "Gee, if only there were more bike lanes like in Europe, then I would get out and cycle on a much more regular, even frequent, basis."

The "bicycling skills development" argument asserts that if bicyclists learn and use the rules of "vehicular bicycling," then additional infrastructure not only isn't necessary, but can have negative effects such as creating confusion (if poorly engineered), creating a false sense of security for unskilled cyclists, and (ultimately) relegating cyclists to "second-class" vehicular status (because of the additional confinement of the bike lane -- e.g., if a bike lane exists but is not used, even if for a good reason, is the cyclist liable?) and ultimately driving (so to speak) the cyclist off the roadways. The "skills" argument seems to be adopted more by people who are actually regular cycle commuters.

I believe it to be the case that bicycle accident statistics tend to bear out the "skills" arguments rather than the "infrastructure" argument. See my earlier post here.

I personally think that bicyclists need more education and skills development to be safer. I commute regularly by bicycle, and the stupid (i.e., dangerous) things I've seen cyclists do is breathtaking. This includes inexperienced cyclists, who are still in the "toy-bike" mode, as well as experienced road riders (who are nonetheless inexperienced vehicular cyclists) who believe, since they are so experienced, the "rules of the road" don't apply to their seasoned selves.

If the problem could be described as a problem of educational infrastructure rather than transportation infrastructure, then what is the best approach? I don't see this as something that can or will be taught in public schools -- they certainly have enough problems, not the least budgetary. But the educational infrastructure needs a curriculum, a venue, teachers, and a funding source.

A curriculum could be developed by interested parties drawing from the LAB curriculum (which the LAB tends to keep under rather tight control, as their training courses serve as a funding source) and other sources, such as Forester's Effective Cycling curriculum (but much abbreviated). Of course, the curriculum should be regularized on a national basis, while being scrupulous to minor variations within the governing state's "rules of the road". The cost to do this would be a few tens of thousands of dollars, I would think.

The venue for this education should be diffuse, locally-based, and trusted. I think a good candidate would be the public library system. Public libraries are available and currently serve a well-recognized educational role. They typically have many outreach programs, which a bicycle-skills program could join. They have large parking lots for basic skills training. They have a good image.

The teachers will of course be drawn from the ranks of current practitioners.

Funding is of course always an issue. How is this to be controlled and paid for? Will the state DOT have any say, will they want control or licensing authority? (I assume driver-training schools are licensed by the state DOTs.) Would this ultimately be linked with (and at least partially paid for by) a cyclist-licensing program? Others have broached the subject of testing and licensing bicyclists, and I think it's perhaps an idea whose time has come.