Tufte would be Proud

Ed Tufte is one of the original thinkers of the Information Age. See his website here. I will presume that most readers have at least a passing acquaintance with his books, perhaps fewer with his sculpture. I was struck by a surpassingly nice graphic in last weekend's New York Times that was pure Tufte. A reduced image is at right; click here to go to the original article. Rarely have I seen a more concise graphing of two important (and related) quantities: The price of gasoline vs. the number of miles driven per year (on average) by Americans. Nice to see them researched and correlated. (I also like the way the curve is smoothed out -- it has a nice organic look to it.)

It's pretty shocking to see that between 1968 and 2004, the miles driven by Americans doubled. It's also nice to see things moving back to the left. Do Americans realize that, no matter how nicely appointed their autos, the quality of life while driving is a miserable fraction of that spent out in "the real world"?

All other things being equal, economic theory predicts that instead of such a loopy curve, we'd see a straight slope up from left to right. Of course, this isn't the whole story. To see the entire economic picture, we'd also have to see a supply curve of gasoline produced in the US market for the same period of time. Perhaps also an efficiency curve of average MPG for autos in the US market. Perhaps looking at such a 3- or 4-dimensional graphic would give me a headache!

Creepy

Is it just me who finds the new Toyota Prius ads creepy? Apparently.

Yes, I know that the Prius is the most fuel-efficient car out there. Yes, I know the Munchkin-like seething mass of humanity is mostly computer-augmented, just like the Coliseum crowd effects that won the Oscar for the movie Gladiator. But it still creeps me out.

Part of what I know about the Prius is this: It's a car. (well, duh.) And that means it's big and heavy (relative to my scrawny transporation system, that is.) Think about it this way: A Prius hauling a single person (most of them do) is getting (let's say) 50 person-miles per gallon of gas, (which contains 31,548 kcal), or 31,548 / 50 = 630 kcal per mile. On a bike, I can cover roughly 15 miles per hour burning 700 kcal, which works out to 700 / 15 = 46.7 kcal per mile. So my system (for a single passenger) is 13.5 times as efficient as a Prius. So if a Prius gets 50 mpg, I get "675 mpg". (I know that's a bit of a red herring.)

In honor of this ratio, I'vc created a graphic. You can download the high-rez version here, if you want to put it on a t-shirt or something.

But the latest data point about hybrids is a truly unexpected one: according to insurance statistics, hybrid drivers drive more, get more tickets, and have more accidents than non-hybrid drivers. (Perhaps they are distracted by their hypermiling techniques?) According to the study cited here, the decreased guilt associated with improved fuel-efficiency increases the number of discretionary trips by up to 25%, largely offsetting any petroleum savings.

It is, after all, just a car.

Bike to Work [Fill in the Blank]

I attended in mid-May the "Bike to Work Day" held along my morning commute in Columbia, Maryland. It was frankly frustrating, and as probably the only regular cycle commuter in attendance, I felt, frankly, out of place. Who were all these people in colored Spandex, and where did they come from? Unlike last year, when it was a downpour, the weather cooperated, and there was a pretty good crowd of people, I'd say 50 or so. A smattering of the attendees are described below:

• An older middle-aged woman who steadfastly refused to be convinced that riding with the traffic was safer for her;
• A group of cyclists who had a 10+ mile commute for which they hadn't figured out the route;
• A group of bicycle cops, off at a small remove, looking like they didn't belong, and no other cyclists were going over to talk;
• The usual group of recreational club cyclists waddling around on their racing cleats;
• Maybe (maybe!) one other person who was outfitted for practical cycling (this was the only other bike with fenders, for God's sake.)

I went off to talk with the cops. They were nice enough guys, if a little clueless about what "bike to work" was all about. I asked them about their training, and they said they had received certification from the International Police Mountain Biking Association, which trains and certifies policemen, EMS, and security people. I asked about the coursework, and they emphasizd the low-speed, crowd-oriented part of the training. (I've since followed up on it, and to me, the PDF coursework summary offered by the IPMBA looks pretty good for a 3 day course.) As usual, I would say, the cops were a little too focused on the hardware. They kept looking at me a little strangely, maybe because I was wearing my "Eclectic Shock" T-shirt (image at right.)

But, getting back to the point. What is the purpose of Bike to Work Day? Is it

1. To convince people that they can physically manage the ride to and from their place of work? Maybe it does that, but I also suspect that there are enough mishaps (from flat tires, sunburn, and being late to work from simply getting lost) that there is a significant risk that the opposite effect may be achieved.
2. To allow local politicians to conspicuously ride a bike and thus try and capture the bike riding community as supporters? I suspect that this plays no small role in the planning. For sure, I didn't hear anyone talking about serious new bikeway planning or sharrow painting. (Unlike lucky Boris, see previous post.)
   
3. To educate people about safety? There were State of Maryland DOT brochures out about "Bike safety" competent enough I suppose in their content, but they featured a little girl in pigtails on a banana-seated bike as their protagonist, thus perpetuating the image of bicycling as a children's activity.
4. To ecucate people about what they really need to know about how to commute successfully? In this respect it failed miserably. Success as a cycle commuter requires planning and motivation. Resources promoting either of these were nowhere in evidence.

I suspect the real answer is 2, and so I've become more than a little jaded about bike to work day. I've joined the ranks of Bike Snob NYC who put out a PSA on Bike to Work month. (More and more, I like Bike Snob, even if he does leave me rather breathless.)

Think about it -- even the name is wrong. What does "Bike to Work Day" mean? It should be "Bike to Work Unless It's Bad Weather", or "Bike to Work Year Around". I've come to terms with the fanatical streak that keeps me on my bike and I enjoy the side-benefits, but I must admit I don't have the least practical idea about how to convince others to become regular practical cyclists. That "regular" part is pretty important -- how do you make bike commuting a habit?

The Bicycling Paradox

Karl Ulrich, a professor from Wharton School of Economics in Philadelphia (and an avid bicycle commuter,) is experiencing some significant notoriety in bicycling blogs as a result of a paper he has written about the "true" environmental savings of bicycle transportation displacing automobile transportation. Most succinctly put, his thesis is this:

Practical bicycling is not a net gain for the environment because the energy savings due to the use of human power for transportation is offset by the increased energy used by living longer due to better health.

I think this paper has good entertainment value, and I'm pretty sure that Ulrich is writing this as a Gedankenexperiment with a little bit of tongue in his cheek. There are a few aspects of his logic and assumptions that I'm not sure I buy, however:

Ulrich correctly calculates the net efficiency differential of auto to bike at approximately 1:32 (I have replicated this calculation elsewhere) but falls into the trap of making a big deal out of the energy cost of agricultural production, thus lowering the differential in the range of 1:6 to 1:9. (This is a pretty big range, by the way.) As I've said before in a letter to the League of American Bicyclists magazine, I think this is a slippery slope. Since food is such an energy-expensive proposition, does Ulrich consider the food consumed by the auto driver? (Or by the driver of the gasoline tanker truck, for that matter?) What about vegetarian locavore cyclists?

Ulrich rightly and justifiably compares the practical cyclist to the athlete who doesn't abandon the use of the motor vehicle. (This includes all those athletes at the health club as well as recreational cyclists). The energy profile is shown in the graph at right. Note that, even with the "stacking of the deck" done by Ulrich in the food-production energy discussion above, the practical cyclist is still superior to the sedentary motorist, if not by much.

There is an excellent discussion of the papers and its putative "holes" here.

By the way, Ulrich is also the creator of the Xootr Swift folding bicycle. If you go to this link for the Swift, and click on the "Guidelines for commuting by bicycle" link, you'll find one of the better one-page summaries of how to be prepared to commute by bicycle, including some recommendations for cold-weather dress that pretty closely parallel my earlier post. Hey, Ulrich is right up the road, in Philly. Not too far from Central Maryland where I live, so the guidelines should be similar. I like the Swift also. Not many folders are specifically sized for the tall (6'5"+) rider, but the Swift has an "XXL" size that is specifically aimed at us tall guys.

Bikes for the World

We interrupt this blog to present a brilliant idea. To begin thinking about this idea, ask yourself: How many unused bicycles are going to waste, simply collecting dust, in American garages? How could they best be put to use?

One continuing theme I hear on the liberal-media outlets that I frequent is that the third world needs development, not aid. Aid (in the form of money) is corrupting, too easily diverted, and ulitmately misses the target.

But... what if the aid were in the form of... bicycles?

Bikes for the World is a project of the Washington Area Bicyclist Association whose mission is to collect valuable but unwanted bicycles and related material--parts, tools, and accessories--in the United States and deliver them at low cost to community development programs assisting the poor in developing countries. The donated bikes provide needed and affordable transportation to laborers, micro businesspeople, farmers, health workers, and students.

As much as possible, Bikes for the World uses the donated bicycles to help set-up self-sustaining bicycle repair operations which can make enough money to pay the direct costs for subsequent container shipments of donated bicycle.

Think about donating, if you can, to this brilliant initiative. Even better, if you live in the Washington DC area, contribute your time and energy to fixing up and containerizing bikes.

PS: mileage update, 3/31: 721 miles. (This is where I was the third week of May last year. Yes!)

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.

(No Relation)

Here's a story about convoluted reasoning in San Francisco bike politics. A person who (sort of) shares my name, Rob Anderson, a 65-year old described as a "gadfly" has insisted the city of SF complete an environmental impact study before they roll out a massive bike lane / bike parking plan.

His reasoning? Allotting more street space to cyclists could cause more traffic jams, more idling and more pollution.

This guy is definitely a weirdo / lightning rod, to be sure, but hasn't SF always, always been the epicenter of this kind of highly-charged local politics? Critical Mass originated in San Francisco in 1992.

This political contentiousness is nothing new. I remember 10 or 12 years ago seeing sidewalk stencils in the parks at Haight-Ashbury with pictures of cars described as "heat death machines". Here's another article on sidewalk stencil art in SF. You can see a nice collection of stencil art over at StencilArchive. (The bike stencil above came from there.) I searched, but I couldn't find my "death machine".

DC SmartBike vs. Paris Vélib

Today (August 14), Washington DC rolled out its public bicycle system, called "SmartBike". There are 120 bikes based at 10 different stations spread across downtown Washington DC. I'm a little dubious about how it will work, or rather I should say that the system is structured in a way that is unclear. Is the system for locals or tourists? Some aspects of the system seem to discourage tourist use, but others suggest that the system will not work all that well for local commuters.

The obvious comparison is to the Vélib system in Paris, what Parisians have cleverly nicknamed "La Vélorucion". I've had the good fortune to visit Paris 3 times in the past year, and have personally admired Vélib. Rain, shine, night, day, whatever.. you see Parisians on Vélib cycles. You see the stations everywhere. At night, you see trucks full of Vélib bikes being hauled back to the central depot for maintenance. It's really something.

Both systems, Vélib and SmartBike, are subsidized by advertising (billboard) companies in a private-public partnership with the respective city. And the bikes (Vélib top right, SmartBike center right) are not so different, urban highly adjustable upright bikes with full mudguards, and high-capacity front baskets. (The DC program for some inexplicable reason decided to go with differently-sized front and rear wheels, thus doubling their tire inventory requirements for maintenance. And, equally inexplicably, the SmartBikes have no lighting system. No doubt a cost-cutting measure.) There the similarity (such as it is) ends.

In the thematic spirit of Practical Cyclist, let's run the numbers.

Looking at the chart outlining the systems at right, we can see that it's not really fair to compare the Paris and DC systems. (Note: corrected for DC served area.) A quick glance shows that the Paris system has 170 times the bikes, 150 times the stations, and 30 times the density (the Paris system covers approximately 5.5 times the land area). Not much of a match-up there; the American sponsors are being, ahem, a little timid (understandably, I suppose).

An even more striking contrast is apparent when you compare the fee structure between the two systems. To use a bike in DC, you can go up to 3 hours free. To use one in Paris, you are charged a surcharge of 1 euro after your first 30 minutes, and the rate of surcharge increases the longer you have the bike. At 3 hours, the limit of the DC system, you've been charged over 20 bucks on Vélib!

So what's going on here?

Well, it would seem, from the economic structure shown, that the DC and the Paris systems are designed to answer different questions. The Paris system tries to answer the question, "What would a mass-transit system based on bicycles look like?" The frankly punitive surcharges that they levy are designed to get the users to use the bikes to get to their destination and get them back in service. They are trying to create a feeling of reliability, such that you can go to your nearest station and expect to find a bike to use. (Failing that, if your nearest station is out of bikes, the station density assures that there will be another one very nearby.)

The question the DC system is trying to answer is not so clear. They don't cover a broad enough area nor do they have enough density to truly serve the commuter needs. Nor do they have a bike depot at Union Station, where all the train commuters come into town. The 3-hour limit is too ahort for a work day, and seems more oriented towards a tourist use. However, the station locations are not in the right places for tourists, and tourists won't use it anyway because of the annual fee. So I'm forced to conclude that the question the DC system is trying to answer is, "What symbolic but ineffective gesture can we make to show we are a 'green' city?" or, alternatively, "What can we do to further frustrate the cabdrivers of DC?"

I think the SmartBike system could work, even given the major limitation it has (that of being situated in a non-cycling city!) I think that if they situated a huge depot at Union Station, (where they care about how bicycles look,) and situated "receptor" stations around L'Enfant Plaza and the Capitol office buildings, it could succeed locally in terms of visibility and ridership. And that would be a success, indeed.

Lost in the Fog

I greatly admire George Vecsey, the sportswriter for the New York Times. Here's a link to his coverage of the Olympic men's bicycle road race (152 miles).

An excerpt is a quote from Jacques Rogge, the president of the International Olympic Committee, (IOC):

“The fog you see is based on the basis of humidity and heat. It does not mean to say that this fog is the same as pollution. It can be pollution, but the fog doesn’t mean necessarily that it is pollution.”

It's tempting to say that Rogge doesn't have a superb command of English, and that would explain the ambiguity of this statement. Me, I think it's rubbish. Rogge is trying to say something that is less than a bald-faced lie, and not succeeding at it.

The cyclists call it pollution, and I tend to believe them. "Grandpa" George Hincapie said these were the worst conditions under which he had ever raced.

This is a scandal, and the IOC's and the US Olympic Committee's (USOC) transparent responses to pressure from their Chinese hosts is disgraceful. Consider this story: The USOC issued the specially designed masks to protect athletes from the potentially harmful air in Beijing. Randy Wilber, the USOC's main exercise physiologist, advised the athletes to wear the masks on the plane and as soon as they stepped foot here. Which is precisely what the US Track-cycling team did (see photo). Then, after being scolded by USOC officials who told them "the Chinese were mad," they apologized to the press. For doing what is (1) prudent and (2) what they were advised to do. This sucks big time. I'm probably going to boycott TV coverage of these Olympics because it angers me so. (Update: I didn't. It was good to see the American swimmers and roundball players rock.)

Vecsey describes the air as "Hot and furry and persistent". Ugh. I'll leave it at that. Put on your masks, people.

Update: Here's a followup in the NYT from a pulmonologist.

Photo Copyright© 2008 The New York Times Company

Surprising Results in Carbon Footprinting

Sometimes you see an image that conveys a new and unexpected fact and it just grabs you and doesn't let go. So it was was when I read this article in the New York Times in late April. The unexpected fact was about the relative carbon footprint (CF) of French vs. California wines on the East Coast (where I live). As the graphic below shows, French wines have roughly one-half the CF of California wines, almost all the difference due to the shipping of bottles and the finished wines themselves. (Click the image below for a legible version.)

A close read of the article exposes some other gems: Where is the sense in Great Britain exchanging 20 tons of bottled water a year with Australia? This is a fact that only the freight companies could love.

I'm all for eliminating tax exemptions and subsidies that hide the energy / carbon costs of our way of life. (Ultimately this philosophy has to be good for cycling!)

Practical vs. Symbolic Gestures

Michael Pollan, the visionary food-politics writer, writing earlier this year in the New York Times Magazine "Green Issue", said in an essay entitled "Why Bother?" the following:

I don’t know about you, but for me the most upsetting moment in “An Inconvenient Truth” came long after Al Gore scared the hell out of me, constructing an utterly convincing case that the very survival of life on earth as we know it is threatened by climate change. No, the really dark moment came during the closing credits, when we are asked to . . . change our light bulbs.

Pollan was (rightly, in my opinion) decrying the symbolic-but-quantitatively-meaningless gestures found in the "green" movement. And, oh my goodness, are there a lot of them out there. Pick a green blog, any green blog, and you'll have to plow through things like recyclable clothes hangers. Give me a %&^$%# break! I recycle virtually 100% of my clothes hangers as it is -- doesn't everyone take their clothes hangers back to the cleaners, who gratefully accept (and, one assumes, re-use) them? "Recyclable clothes hangers" are not only fatuous, they actually break the first rule of being green, which is, "consume less stuff".

The green movement, well intentioned though it be, is just chock-full of this kind of silliness. What we need is some who will do the apparently Sisyphean chore of running the numbers for everything that we do as a society. All that we consume, and how, and all that we produce, and how. And then give us some idea of what we should be doing. Such a big and complex job that it just couldn't be done.

Until now.

Once again, a physicist has come to the rescue. David J.C. MacKay, of the Department of Physics at the University of Cambridge, has written a book. A brilliant book, a book that is free to download on the Web, at his website, withouthotair.

Go to the website and download this book right now.

MacKay has run the numbers on the global energy picture (well, the energy picture of Great Britain, which closely parallels that of the US) and has made an assessment of what we have to do. He lays out 5 different alternative plans for what we have to do, really, to become globally sustainable as developed society.

The book (can't call it a paper, really, though it strongly resembles a peer-reviewable scientific paper) is just full of good stuff. The final third or so is the "technical chapters" which (if you are the sort who enjoys reading "Scientific American") are enjoyable nonetheless. Because MacKay "shows all his work", and has published this book under the Creative Commons Attribution ShareAlike License, the book has the potential to become a reference for work of all kinds.

It's hard for me to say too many good things about this book (as you might have gathered by now). I've only read the (non-technical) parts through once, and quickly, but MacKay lays it all out.

As you might expect, vegetarianism gets its due, and (yes!) bicycling, but the most jaw-dropping thing that came from the book for me personally was the environmental cost of something I do quite a lot: flying. A transcontinental or trans-Atlantic flight has the same environmental impact as driving a car for a year. This is disquieting, to say the least, and has me doing research into advocacy for regional high-speed rail in the US. If any of you readers (all 3 of you) have information on this, let me know.

As you might not expect, the reading of this book is easy. It is (wisely) peppered with meaningful graphics and diagrams. Some of the information contained in the book has a deceptive sense of humor as well. (Let it not be said that physicists have no sense of humor -- I've known a few personally, and it ain't so.) Consider this chart in the "wind power" section that addresses the issue of how much a threat wind generators pose to avian life:


I mean, the facts are surprising, and refreshing in their own way, but the graphic presentation! I just love the little "kitty logo" on the left margin. There's something just so right about this. (And the offhand comment in the legend about "collisions with windows".)

Here's a quote from the book:

The myth that won’t die

The BBC is still banging the phone-charger drum in 2007: “turn off your TV, unplug your mobile charger and switch off lights when you leave a room” (Monday, 14 May 2007, http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/6653687.stm).

And on 6th June 2007, the Mayor of London launched ‘DIY planet repairs’, a public information campaign calling on citizens to ‘unplug, switch off and turn down’. Under the heading ‘Unplug’, we are advised:

If every London household unplugged theirmobile phone chargers when not in use, we could save 31 000 tonnes of CO2 and £7.75m per year.

Let’s think about these numbers. London’s population is about 7million. So what this ... is really saying is that if you unplug your charger, you’re saving 31 000 / 7million = 0.004 tonnes CO2 per year per person.

We should compare this quantity with the typical CO2 pollution per person, which is about 10 tonnes per year. So what the Mayor is recommending is: ‘Do your bit! Make a difference! Unplug the evil phone chargers, and reduce your CO2 pollution by less than one twentieth of one per cent!’

Not the least, I appreciate MacKay's essential Britishness, and the fact that he uses words like "codswallop".

Please join me in a hats-off to David J.C. MacKay. Oh, and read the book!

Republicans vs. Bicycles / Bicyclists

If you live in the congressional district of Frank McNulty, (R-Highlands Ranch, NC) who is against spending a measly (measly!) $1M to promote bicycle use for commuting, I say, the beauty of the House of Representatives is that you can vote them out any time. More here, including YouTube video.

Updated: My brother Willie says that "McNutty" is from Colorado. Sorry to our enlightened North Carolina neighbors about the mistake!

A Deficit of Imagination

Lookit — there's a definite paucity of imagination among the political bloviators in this country.

The prevailing opinion in this country is that we have a supply problem with petroleum. If you believe that, if you truly do, then I have a bridge in the general vicinity of New York City in which you might be interested. I mean, there may be some short term speculation going on, but... c'mon.

Our problem is not a supply problem. It's a demand problem. More specifically, it's an efficiency problem (see the Einstein posting in this blog, which details the efficiency numbers). People in the media are wringing their hands, saying that any ameloriation of the current dire situation is "eighteen or more months away". Oh, please. Let's do something about petroleum demand beginning tomorrow. Heck, beginning RIGHT NOW:

• If you live in a city with public transit, use it;
• If you don't, use carpooling. You can use the online database at Ridesearch to match up with other interested carpoolers;
• If you live 5 miles or less from where you work, ride a bike at least a couple of days a week;
• If you drive, obey the speed limit and use your cruise control on the highway, and
  
• Make sure your tires are properly inflated and your car tuned;

You might say that this won't make a difference, but I must respond that if 25 - 50% of Americans began implementing the above remedies in their lives (and they could beginning, as I say, right now), they would not only be depressing the cost of gas (and disappointing the speculators, tsk tsk) but also they would begin immediately saving money.

Until we begin to change our demand profile, we can't begin to whittle away at this problem and buy ourselves the time to develop the highly efficient, non-petroleum economy that we need to be truly secure. Swallow hard and repeat after me: "High fuel prices are our friend, for two reasons: they depress demand, and they make alternatives viable."

Updated: Here's a post on CNN Money that says pretty much the same thing.