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?

Freak Incident for London Mayor

The mayor of London, Boris Johnson, was nearly caught in a totally freaky accident while testing out likely bike routes for infrastructural upgrading. Johnson and an entourage of about 10 cyclists were properly riding on the left edge of the pavement along a street where parked cars were on the right, and an overtaking truck had a rear hatch swing open, catch a parked car, and fling it (!!!) across the road, nearly taking out (in a major way) several of the cyclists. Luckily, no one was injured, but boy howdy, this could have been messy.

The Wharf account of the incident can be read here; The New York Times also has an account here which includes a video taken from a security camera. One of the riders in the group, also has a couple of Flickr photos here.

This incident is such a freaky one that it's difficult to draw "lessons" from it, but here at least are a few observations (feel free to chime in if you have others):

• The danger here is by no means confined to cyclists; pedestrians or motorists would have been equally at risk;
• The truck driver was clearly negligent (in not buttoning-up his truck at the very least) and deserves a healthy fine;
• The system of sidewalk/curb/bike lane/parking lane/driving lane would have greatly ameliorated (if not eliminated) the risk here;
• Boris Johnson is one lucky guy, as are his fellow riders;

Freaky Friday, indeed.

San Francisco April-May 2009

So, within one month I've managed to visit both Seattle and San Francisco, both west coast towns that are reputed to be bicycling cities (with the third of the West Coast Bicycling Triplets being Portland, of course.)

I arrived on Wednesday afternoon and arranged to go get drinks and a bite with my friend Scott at Zeitgeist, a fun bar and grill on Valencia street in the "SoMa" district of San Francisco. Arriving at my hotel and unpacking my bike, I discovered I'd left my pump at home (insert self-administered dope slap to forehead here) and so I looked up a nice bike shop called Freewheel just a few blocks south of Zeitgeist. I got down there in plenty of time, got the exact pump I was looking for (a Topeak Road Morph), and had time to do a little sightseeing on South Valencia before heading back north to grab a couple of beers and a burger with Scott.

Thursday night, my company Vectorworks was co-host of what turned out to be just a bang-up party —the City To Green Party— for architects, cyclists and artistic locals at the 3A Gallery on South Park street. In the gallery was an exhibit of track bikes from the second half of the 20th century. The gallery proprietors hung a show of track bikes on the walls and described the provenance of each bike, and detailed descriptions of the bike realization as a work of art. Here's a transcription of one of the the bike descriptions:

---------------------------------------------------------
Automoto, France, 1940s.

Cycles Automoto was a pioneering French maker of motorcycles and bicycles founded at the turn of the 20th century. Well regarded for thoughtful design and meticulous construction, Automoto grew in popularity until merging with the Peugeot group in the early 1960s. Part of that popularity is attributable to the company's wide ranging product offerings, whose bicycle line along grew to include 20 models. When an Automoto advertisement boldly declared, "Le Triomphe De La Qualité Française", few in sound conscience would have doubted the claim.

Built for the professional track racer
Restored condition
Magistroni cranks
Chater Lee Pedals
Major Taylor stem

Collection: American Cyclery of San Francisco
---------------------------------------------------------

Quite refreshing. A very well attended party, right to the end, as you can see from the photos. I've often wondered why the intersection-set of architects (particularly young architects) and bicyclists is so large. At least 30 attendees (including yours truly) arrived on bike and were graciously attended to out front of the gallery in a nice bike parking lot attended by the San Francisco Bicycle Coalition , a club of more than 10,000 members. Very, very nice work.

This poem was transcribed in chalk on the walls of the foyer of the 3A Gallery:

Ode to Bicycles

I was walking
down
a sizzling road:
the sun popped like
a field of blazing maize,
the
earth
was hot,
an infinite circle
with an empty
blue sky overhead.

A few bicycles
passed
me by,
the only
insects
in
that dry
moment of summer,
silent,
swift,
translucent;
they
barely stirred
the air.

Workers and girls
were riding to their
factories,
giving
their eyes
to summer,
their heads to the sky,
sitting on the
hard
beetle backs
of the whirling
bicycles
that whirred
as they rode by
bridges, rosebushes, brambles
and midday.

I thought about evening when the boys
wash up,
sing, eat, raise
a cup
of wine
in honor
of love
and life,
and waiting
at the door,
the bicycle,
stilled,
because
only moving
does it have a soul,
and fallen there
it isn’t
a translucent insect
humming
through summer
but
a cold
skeleton
that will return to
life
only
when it’s needed,
when it’s light,
that is,
with
the
resurrection
of each day.

- Pablo Neruda, 1956

I broke 1000 miles for the year so far on the last day of April on the streets of San Francisco. For me, this really cut it. Call me fickle (less than a month ago I was extolling Seattle,) but San Francisco is US Bicycling City Number One in my book.

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.

AIA-SFO: Integrating Bikes and Business

Next week I'll be attending the American Institute of Architects (AIA) convention in San Francisco. Architects are (at long last) becoming environmental leaders in the professional communities, and "cycling" and "environmental" fit together nicely for me, so I'll be taking a folding bike to push the envelope of "green consciousness" for architects. I don't want to be unfair here—I've noticed that there exists a large intersection among architects, cyclists, and (even) bike builders, it's just that, when it comes to cycling, and particularly practical, everyday cycling, there's a lot more lip service than action. So I hope to turn that around in a small way.

My company, Nemetschek NA, produces a computer-aided design software called Vectorworks. It's used primarily by architects (as I am), but it has great 3D and solids capabilities, and I want to design bikes with it. (This would be just another integration of life, work, and avocation for me.) I've designed buildings and shoes with it, but not yet bikes. If you've used CAD to design bikes, I want to talk to you, so leave me a comment and a way to get in touch!

San Francisco is a city where I've spent time before. And it has hills that are serious challenges to walk up, much less bike up. I don't think I have a bike set up with the gears needed for all of San Francisco.

That's the bad news. The good news is, I'm going to be spending almost all my time in the "SoMa" (South of Market) area, which is quite flat, by SFO standards. Following one of the guiding principles of Practical Cycling, "Research your Route", I've done some homework on SFO. Here's a nifty topographical map of the city overlaid with bike routes. Below is a Google map of what I'm going to be up to. The aqua-colored destination in the middle of the Castro district is where my friend Scott and his wife Polly reside, and that is at the top of a pretty awesome hill, one I don't think I'd try and tackle unless I had about 22" gears. So Scott and I will have to meet elsewhere (maybe at the "Zeitgeist" bar, which is I'm told a favorite of the local bike couriers), or I'll take the bus to his house.

View SFO AIA Convention 2009 in a larger map

So, I've decided to take my folder for the flat areas. I bought (off my brother, who wasn't using it) a Dahon "Speed D7" folder, (mine being about 8 years old, not quite as nice as the one in the link), and a Samsonite "Oyster" standard-airline-case (SAC) that it fits in for transport. I spent a weekend overhauling it, getting it properly equipped for minimal practical cycling (tool kit, pump, lock, patches, lights,) and learning how to pack it. (I made some breakthroughs in this area. There are websites that state that you can't pack a Dahon folder in an Oyster without removing the stem and handlebars, a major pain since I added a cyclocomputer mount. I found that I need only remove the wheels, and everything else fits neatly. (I'll leave the details of that for another post.)

I was in Seattle at the beginning of April and used the trip out there as a first shake-down trip for the travelling cyclist use-case. Excepting a tangled chain on initial unpacking of the bike, everything went surprisingly well. I found the little Dahon, while a bit short in the leg for my tall frame, to still be an acceptable ride for up to, say, 20 miles. I put about 75-80 miles on the Dahon in 5 days, in Seattle, a city not devoid of hills itself. The gear range is rather limited, at both the top and (somewhat surprisingly, given the 20" wheels) the bottom.

So, if you're in San Francisco next week and see the very tall guy on the clown bicycle wearing the Vectorworks shirt, that will be me. Flag me down and tell me you're a reader of A Practical Cyclist, and I'll be glad to invite you to the Vectorworks "City to Green" party on Thursday night! And if by chance you're attending the AIA convention, please drop by the Vectorworks booth, #1651, and let's talk bicycles, design, and computer-aided design.

Bicycle as Fetish

My dictionary defines it thus:

fet•ish |ˈfeti sh |
noun
•an inanimate object worshiped for its supposed magical powers or because it is considered to be inhabited by a spirit.

Now, bear that definition in mind as you read and view this article from the Style (of course!) section of the New York Times, a photo layout of high-fashion models draped over Dutch and high-end American street bicycles. After reading (with no small amount of amusement) this article, I have come to the inescapable conclusion that bicycles are now a fetish in urban America. Since it is defined as bestowing powers, what can we say is the power it might bestow? I submit that the power (in today's America) is coolness.

Bikes have become cool. Partly as a result of Lance, partly as a result of the skinny young bike couriers, partly as a result of the ecological movement, partly as a result of last year's gasoline price bubble, bicycles have arrived.

The fashion models bear witness to this. I mean, really! The set of individuals who would not only bike to work but who would insist on being a fashion plate is very, very small. This is not for societal reasons, it's for practical ones. Let's examine a quote from the Times article:

Can the bicycle, the urban answer to the wild mustang, slow down and put fenders on? Can the urban cyclist, he of the ragtag renegade clothes or shiny spandex, grow up and put on a tie?

I think what's interesting is the way this quote (and the article as a whole) presents this as an either-or. Either spandex or worsted. Either wild or staid. Either adolescent or grown-up. While the either-or is effective as a literary device, I think it's a bit overwrought in this particular case. Let's look at some facts:

"Real" cycle-commuters have to deal with the weather. Even sitting upright on a Dutch bike, in New York City there are probably only about six weeks out of the year (three in spring, three in fall) where you could ride to work a distance of greater than 3 miles and not get either grossly lathered up or pretty darn cold. Fashion cycling is a very limited activity, and people who cycle because they are motivated by fashion-good-looks won't be doing so for very much of the year.

"Real" cycle-commuters have to deal with safety. The Times article states, "Dutch bikes are ridden upright, not hunched over, and you move at a safe, slow gait". Please! Moving at a "slow gait" on the streets of Manhattan is safe? Riding a bike to work, preoccupied with how I'm going to keep my two-thousand dollar Marc Jacobs suit from getting stained or ripped is safe? Not wearing a helmet because "..riding a bike should be normal, and you shouldn’t have to wear a funny Styrofoam hat” is safe?

"Real" cycle-commuters in the City have to deal with New York. The article pays lip service to the ever-present everyday problems of the commuter: the traffic, the fear of theft, the lack of secure bike parking. None of these are made any easier by being dressed fashionably. (Lugging and lifting bikes is a great way to rip tight-fitting pretty-boy suits. I think the look on the face of the model in this picture, dealing with the folding bike, says it all.)

The Times article, in the end, is kind of a mish-mash (or "mashup," the more popular contemporary term). It flits around, and touches on a wide variety of very valid and interesting issues, but doesn't stay with any of them long enough to make sense. Of course, that's not its point. Its point is to sell fashion, which it does admirably with its slide show.

This isn't the first recent intersection of bicycling and fashion that comes to mind. There are the $3000 cycling suits by Rapha, fresh from Savile Row, and the seriously sartorial Dashing Tweeds get-up that bike manufacturer Gary Fisher (right) recently was fitted for in London. The Dashing Tweeds suit is made of Lumatwill, a fabric whose pinstripes are reflective for night riding. Like Gore-tex it's a Teflon laminated fabric, so it's both breathable and waterproof. To me, this is a true bespoke ("custom" for those of you who don't speak the King's English) suit for a cyclist. It's truly forward-looking and (assuming as I must that it's cut for freedom of movement) represents something that could be seriously used by a commuter on those days when he just has to wear a suit.

David Colman of the Times has put up a visually interesting article, but ultimately it's about the conventional fashion trade. It seems ironic to me that there's a true story going on about cycling and cycle-clothing, however, and they're missing it.

PS: Hey, NYTimes, where are the female models? Is it just too hard to reconcile the way that real female cyclists look with the current uber-anorexic female fashion model?

P.U.M.A.

This is too ironic. Here's a verbatim quote from the GM introduction of the "P.U.M.A." auto-balancing two person vehicle made in joint venture with Segway:

"Imagine moving about cities in a vehicle fashioned to your taste, that's fun to drive and ride in, that safely takes you where you want to go, and "connects" you to friends and family, while using clean, renewable energy, producing zero vehicle tailpipe emissions, and without the stress of traffic jams," said Burns. "And imagine doing this for one-fourth to one-third the cost of what you pay to own and operate today's automobile. This is what Project P.U.M.A. (Personal Urban Mobility and Accessibility) is capable of delivering."

Yes. Imagine that. Let's imagine this as a series of bullet points, shall we?
A vehicle:
• tailored to your tastes
• fun to drive and ride
• safely takes you where you want to go
• "connects" you to friends and family
• using clean, renewable energy
• producing zero vehicle tailpipe emissions
• without the stress of traffic jams

I say that my commute (which is to say, my bike) can robustly answer "check!" to all of these with the possible exception of the "connects you to friends and family" item which seems to me to be more like a cell phone than a vehicle. But my bike, maybe kinda sorta, can be said to do even this.

This whole thing beggars the imagination. I've accused GM of incompetence before (before this abomination, even well before the first bailout).

But the point is, really: What does the fact that PUMA can be taken seriously say about us as a society, anyway? Are we so culturally averse to physical activity (and to sweat) that we'll do anything to avoid it, as beneath us? The Roman poet Juvenal described the ideal of the "healthy mind in the healthy body"; the apostle Paul referred to the "body as a temple". It does seem that there is something particularly American about this; you don't see this aversion to activity in Europe. Can this be laid at the feet of Madison Avenue, who basically elevated BO (and therefore sweat) to the level of a mortal sin?

And, does that guy in the photo above have any notion of just how truly dorky he looks? I mean, didn't everyone see Wall-E?

Have we really, truly become South Park? (Thanks to Geeks are Sexy for the reference.) Man, I would feel so much better if I knew this were GM perpetrating an elaborate joke. But I don't think so; they're a week late.

Chevrons for All

In doing a little more research on sharrows, I came across a brand-new (only two weeks old!) study on sharrows done by the city of Bellevue, Washington. It's worth a download and read. Much of the methodology is very similar to the earlier City of San Francisco (CSF) study.

Continuing in the spirit of my last two posts, I've decided to do a little "free art" for the public. I've made a couple of full-size graphics of chevron-style sharrow images, done to two different municipal standards. They are ready to be printed on a large-format printer and cut into a large sheet of (something). Then, well, do with it as you will. Hang it on the wall, or use it, uh, as a focus for night-time activity.

Images: The images are full-size PDF graphics. They are fairly compact (in terms of file size). The image based on the CSF "chevron" style (download here) is smaller and will fit into a 4' x 8' sheet of stencil material. The Bellevue image (download here) is rather larger and would require a 4' x 11' or 4' x 12' sheet of material. I've slightly modified the CSF image by adding "webbing" for easy positioning of the cutouts. This will be a single-piece stencil. The Bellevue image isn't modified from their spec, which is much more detailed, and is a multi-piece stencil.

Positioning on roadway: The CSF guidelines were for the center of the image to be 11'-0" from the curb in areas of parallel parking. The Bellevue guidelines call for the center of the image to be "about 11 feet from the curb where parking exists" and, with no parking, "about 3 feet out from the curb."

Methodology: Well, the standard approach is to print the PDF full size at a printing shop that handles large-format printing, then to transfer it to stencil material such as corrugated single-face plastic sheet and cut it out (be careful, be careful, BE CAREFUL!)

It is, however, difficult to get an image out of my head, and that is Joshua Kinberg's utterly brilliant "Bikes Against Bush" rig (website here, video here) done for the New York City Republican Convention. The resolution of these images are of course a lot higher than the rather crude (brilliant! but low-rez) letters of Joshua's first experiment. But it doesn't take a genius to visualize a higher-rez "bike dot matrix" system that could handle one-color graphic images as well as just text. This really sounds like a job for JK or the Graffiti Research Lab of NYC. This would be a technological tour-de-force for the "Urban Repair Squad", wouldn't it?

The Urban Repair Squad

There's an interesting group of urban cyclists in Toronto who are practicing a form of "street art". They call themselves the "Urban Repair Squad", and a website showcasing their work can be found here. The manifesto of the URS goes something like this:

MISSION:

To encourage bicycling as an antidote
to the poison that is car culture.

To invert the status structure of the commons,
returning priority to pedestrians and bicyclists over cars.

To create an infrastructure
that promotes polite sharing of the roadway.

To employ the concept of Critical Mass,
encouraging cyclists to bond together
and more safely take back their rightful place
on the public roadways.

To encourage citizens to reclaim
ownership and stewardship of their public space.

To actively construct a positive future
of what urban transporation could be
by installing it NOW.

Your city is broken.
Don't wait for the bureaucrats to fix it.
DO IT YOURSELF.

So, what doe the Urban Repair Squad do, exactly? They surreptitiously paint bike lanes and sharrows. This is usually done under cover of darkness ("rush hour bike lanes.") Tom Vanderbilt, in his blog, notes that they do this while "disguised as municipal workers." This is an interesting and amusing (if true) twist on the term "street theatre", entertainment not only in the street but in fact changing it. Vanderbilt notes that they have painted over 6kms of bike lanes in Toronto.

If you download and read the URS manual, it outlines (sometime in amusing hand-drawn comics) the process and results of this urban guerrilla activity. I think that, as long as the bike lanes are well-chosen and well-executed, this is a laudable activity, although it raises some potentially difficult questions, e.g. what happens if a cyclist is struck by a motorist while in a guerrilla bike lane? Is the liability of the motorist somehow reduced because of the illegality of this urban infrastructure? (I'm reading a book on the legalties of cycling, which I will post on in the near future, that will hopefully point the way to some answers on this.)

PS. The URS website linked above is claimed to be not an "official" web site. It is maintained by a photographer named Martin Reis who claims to be only a "fan" and documenter of the URS activities and not a participant (sure, Martin, sure! :)

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.

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.

Good Cop / Bad Cop [Redux]

This New York Times article gives a recent update on the NYC cop who brutally shoved a cyclist at a Critical Mass night ride on July 25, 2008. He's Gone! This is good news, and actually done in a pretty timely fashion (you may not agree with this, but the wheels of justice do turn slowly.)

Pogan was indicted on December 16, 2008 for this incident. The NYPD said he was fired about February 9, 2009. (There was no press release on this. It's a little understandable that the NYPD doesn't care to shine a light on its most questionable officers, but on the other hand, it's also a clear PR opportunity missed.) The press accounts say that charges have been dismissed, and that a "spokesman" for Pogan (do 23-yr old cops get spokesmen now?) said that Pogan resigned, and was not fired. In any case, the dropping of charges was no doubt a quid pro quo for getting rid of this bad apple, and the NYPD just wanted it done.

I first reported on this last August. You can see a video of the incident here (my original YouTube link has gone stale).

I feel pretty strongly about this (in case you hadn't guessed) as I'm sure others do. I guess this is because I think most police understand their job is to protect cyclists (along with everyone else). Riding to work this week on a cold morning, I was breezing by two Howard County police officers engaged in drivers-side-window conversation. The one facing the road who could see me gave me a wave as I went by. It was respectful, possibly because she (the cop) was a cyclist and it was below freezing that morning. There are good cops out there who appreciate cyclists (particularly ones who practice safety). What a great world it would be if we could count on all cops to respect cyclists this way!

A second rather obvious thought on this. Since the seminal amateur videotaping of the beating of Rodney King, video cameras are now everywhere. There may be one in your pocket right now. The world has changed, and while pictures can be altered electronically, the ubiquitous vid-cap still serves as a vital witness that didn't exist even five years ago. I've given some thought to mounting one of those Flip Mino camcorders on my seatpost, just to record cars overtaking (and their license plates). It's overkill, but it's an idea to consider. Maybe for a future topic on "Your Bike's Data Network".

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.

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.

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.

Cargo bikes

Time for another product review post, yay! It's been a while since I posted anything really substantial (I've been too busy out riding, fighting the cold) so... Let's look at a favorite topic of mine, Cargo Bikes. These are the essence of "Practical Cycling".

I had visions years ago of unusual municipal vehicles in Austin, Texas. Garbage conveyance (which after all doesn't have to travel at a high rate of speed), street sweeping, public safety (THAT one at least came true) -- could they all be supplied by human-powered vehicles? Certainly deliveries could, as these vehicles amply demonstrate. (Note: I limit this review to commercial-style cargo bikes, no kiddie trailers.)

Bakfiets: This Dutch company makes a variety of front-wheel loaded bicycles and tricycles. "Bakfiets" is Dutch for "carrier cycle" or "cargo bike". This make is apparently popular as a purveyor of kiddie-carriers for (hm, how can I say this...) bourgeois US households and even has some name-brand-recognition therewith.

Work Cycles: This is another Dutch company with a nice broad selection of designs. Their philosophy as stated on their website begins: "The bicycle is a perfect example of the beautiful minimalism the world should adopt to continue forward. We thus promote everyday cycling amongst individuals, families and enterprises.." Nicely put. Work Cycles does Bakfiets-style "child transport cycles" but also heavier-duty stuff like the "Bakers' Bike" illustrated. (Regular readers may notice a similarity to the Stockholm commercial bike I pictured earlier.) Update: the bike pictured in this section is a "Truck", made by Monark Bikes of Sweden, better known in the US for their exercise bikes.

The Dutch Bicycle Company: Another, hm, Dutch company (is there anyone other than me noticing a pattern here?) that deals in (among other things) cargo bikes. I get the impression that this company, more than manufacturers, are importer and dealers. They sell a bike (that they describe as Swedish-built) called the "short John" that is pretty much identical to the "Bakers' bike" above, and also a "long John" cargo bike (pictured).

Bilenky Bikes of Philadelphia (finally an American builder!) Full disclosure: I've done business with Steven Bilenky a couple of years back when he modified and repainted a touring frame for me. Bilenky is a full custom builder and does beautiful hand filed fillet brazing on his main frame joints. His motto is "Artistry in Steel", which pretty much tells you his choice of material. Most of Bilenky's cargo bikes are variations on a front-hauler style. In 2005, a courier named Hodari won the "World Messenger Cargo Bike Race" on a Bilenky. Go here to see a video of the race. Fun!

Bikes at Work is a custom shop out of Ames, Iowa that also has a production line of heavy-duty bike trailers (pictured). I really like the unassuming practicality of these units. (They are sized to fit multiples of Rubbermaid garden waste containers, available everywhere.) Bikes at Work also does custom cargo bikes; there's a page on their web site showing some of their "projects".

Carry Freedom: Not a commercial enterprise, but a take on bicycle-trailer-as-appropriate-technology. This is the ultimate green bike trailer, made of bamboo, and plans are free for the downloading. (Wide acceptance of the Internet didn't occur until long after he was dead, but Fritz Schumacher would have loved the Web and the dissemination of information it embodies.) If you have a source of bamboo, it's hard to imagine a more cost-effective solution. The page has a number of other free bicycle cart designs at the bottom that are worth visiting. See this page also for other community bike cart designs. Bicycle ambulances! (This gets back to some of my original visions for municipal support of human power.)

Continuing the "Appropriate Technology" theme, the Center for Appropriate Transportation of Oregon has many interesting practical hauling-cycle designs. Check out the "tri-hauler", a front-wheel drive utility tricycle that comes in a "third-ton" model! I've been fascinated by alternate-steering geometries of human-powered vehicles, and this model epitomizes this approach. I do worry a little about the torque on the steerer of this design, and I feel about this a little like I felt about the front-wheel-drive Volkswagen pickup truck, i.e., the weight ought to be over the driving wheels, oughtn't it?

Segue-ing on while maintaining the Oregon theme, CETMA Racks is a small builder from Eugene, Oregon who (as the name suggests) has made a business in heavy-duty front racks and is now offering a limited edition (and really beautiful) cargo bike. The bike looks exceedingly sturdy and well-engineered with disk brakes and, yes, what appears to be a Rohloff rear hub. Very, very nice. (The racks are nice too, if you're on more of a budget.) This is the builder you go to if you're an execution fanatic, where every detail counts.

I've seen the Danish-origin Christiania cargo trikes in London. They are reverse trikes, with two rigidly connected steering wheels under the cargo box. Very tradesman-looking, and they have a unique offering in the disability-transporting unit that will take a wheelchair passenger. These have many optional extras (including electric drive hubs) and appear to be very professionally built.

We're getting into the serious commercial side of things with Cycles Maximus, makers of pedicabs. These can also be seen on the streets of London and are very professionally made. Three-passenger capacity, space for advertising, compact off-duty storage, 24-speed SRAM rear hubs (no doubt with perfect gearing), differentials, and so on. You get the impression of an almost Darwinian, highly-evolved design for the pedicab, or rickshaw, or "pedicab rickshaw" as they are somewhat redundantly referred to on Maximus' site. Ding-ding! Get out of the way!

David Wilson Industries of Seattle makes a cargo bike called the "Borracho" which would be reviewed here if for no other reason than its name. ("Borracho" translates from the Spanish as "drunken".) At first glance, perhaps, this bike appears a little less sophisticated than some of the others we've looked at, but don't be fooled. It has a 600-lb capacity, and if I had to batter down a reinforced door with my cargo bike, this is the one I'd use with the least fear of damaging the bike itself. The braking system is notable here; rear roller brake (part of the Shimano Nexus hub) and take a look at the size of that front disk.

Fraser Cycles is a custom builder out of San Diego who has ventured into the area of cargo bikes. He's also done track, road, racing, and the sine qua non of custom builders, the back-to-back tandem recumbent. (Is there a more complicated bike, mechanically?) Fraser uses software on his website called "tiltviewer" that is easily the most high-tech gallery viewing software I've seen on the web. It's a little "too-too", I think.

Organic Engines (love that name) is a Tallahassee builder (Daniel Kavanagh) who also has a heavy-duty front wheel drive cargo trike like C.A.T. above, but I think Kavanagh's is more interesting. Firstly, it has a pivot (can we still call it a headset?) setup that doesn't look like it would break under heavy loading. Second, Kavanagh builds it as a cargo trike (platform only) or as a pedicab. Third, Kavanagh touts the pedicab as a small-business pitch, which I really like. Lastly, OE/Kavanagh sells frame sets only if you want to save a buck, and he's very upfront about costs. Very admirable. The first expression on his site is (and I quote,) "OMGWTFBBQ". What's not to like about a guy like this? (Well, I can think of one thing, and that is, he likes bikesnobnyc.)

So that's it, a not-quite-exhaustive survey of cargo bikes. I'm sure there are others out there, let me know if there's a favorite of yours that I missed.

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!

Brief Interlude

Well, I seem to be having trouble finding time to get to my blog again. (There's probably a word for it - "blogpostaphobia" or something.) Anyway, to while away the time until I can get it together to finish the story of Stockholm, here's a link to the New York Times Biking Travel Guide section. (Did you know the Gray Lady had a section on bicycle tourism? I didn't).

Enjoy! I'll be back soon. Really.

Stockholm Business / Cycling Trip — 1

I just got back from my first time in Stockholm. Business trip. Lovely city in late September, and lovely people, too. I'll put several posts up about the trip, which culminated in a wonderful 5-hour cyclist's tour of Stockholm. I'll be putting a map up on Google and some linked pictures up on Flickr. about that, also.

Preparation: I'd never been to Stockholm before, so I got out the NYT's "36 hours" feature on it, which wasn't too old. I find the "36 hours" series try to find the very new, very hip, or offbeat places that you might not find in a conventional guidebook. (As I was meeting up with locals for business, I figured I would get plenty of the "standard tourist fare" from them.) Other than that, I looked up my hotel, my meeting places, and a couple of the places in NYT on Google Maps, and figured out how far apart things were. (My hotel was a couple of blocks from one of my meetings, and less than 4km from the other.) As for equipment, I took a helmet, U-lock, gloves, and a bandanna. As I was carrying on all my luggage, I wondered how the U-lock would look to the security screeners. (Outbound, no one asked anything. Coming home, the screeners asked to see it. I said, "It's a bicycle lock." The screener smiled and said, "I know, but she (pointing to the x-ray screener) wants to see it." All very good natured.) Also, a tourist tip: If you visit Stockholm, use the Arlanda Express high-speed train to get into town. Not much more expensive than a bus and much faster. And, you can pre-book on the Web and just use your credit card for ID in and out of town. Painless.

Geography / Geology: Stockholm is an archipelago. I rode on 7 bridge-connected islands when I was there. One of the first things you notice when you catch the Arlanda Express train into town is that the walls of the station itself are cave-like. No structure or walls, just hewn from rock, dark granite like stuff. At first I thought it might be decor, but I learned otherwise. It turns out Stockholm is underlain by a huge granite dome. (Question: what better place for a chemist to develop high-explosive to remove rock?)

Here's a picture of a "working bike". Notice the details. I was particularly impressed by the fact that the framemaker included diacritical marks in the lettering. Nice.

(Soon: A deal that's even better than Stockholm City Bikes..)