Overdue Bicycle Parked at Library Branch

Bicycle parked at Aurora Hills Branch Library, Arlington VA

You can't leave your bike locked up at one location for more than five days, or it gets removed. To where is a bit vague.


Tag on bicycle parked at Aurora Hills Branch Library, Arlington VA

I guess we won't have any books published like Bicycles Locked to Poles with its photos of bicycles in New York City (in various states of disassembly, mostly attached to poles with chains as heavy or heavier than the bikes themselves).

500 Hurt in New York City by Bikes - Good? Bad?

The Wall Street Journal (that is mostly behind a paywall, so no point in linking to it) has an amazingly bad article titled "A Different Spin on the Dangers of Urban Cycling" - the first sentence states, "Two recent studies appear to expose cyclists as a potent urban menace." I guess for this fellow it appears that way.

The first study he quotes compares soot accumulation in the lungs of five (5!) cyclists who commute by bike in London with Londoners who don't. The cyclists had higher levels of black carbon in their lungs. When I think of something as an "potent urban menace" I am thinking it means to other people and not to themselves. But it says cycling is bad, so he tosses that into his article.

The second study has been reduced by the Internet (and the Wall Street Journal) to "500 pedestrians hurt by bikes in NYC a year." The study, done at Hunter College, was more nuanced that that and tried to determine if more or fewer pedestrians were injured by cyclists over a four year period - their conclusion was that despite more cycling and cycling infrastructure, the number has dropped (slightly). So this is a good metric - that is, even if we want to think that cyclists are a potent urban menace, it seems to be declining, or anyway not growing at the rate that cycling is growing. No one suggests that the 500 figure is good but there are questions such as, "compared to what?" and "is it going up or down?" that these articles typically ignore.

Different publications draw different conclusions - the New York Daily News takes the view it suggests a "need for tougher enforcement" which I guess is step beyond the Wall Street Journal position. But a physical fitness advocacy group takes the position that this is good news since the number isn't growing - "The city says that while bike use is up, the total number of accidents is stable. According to a Hunter College study, some 500 pedestrians are hurt each year by cyclists. At Bike New York, there is nothing but optimism." Kind of oddly put, but anyway.

This takes the "is the glass half full or half empty to new heights (or lows, depending on your point of view). And it does nothing for confidence in the Wall Street Journal.

Another point of view is provided by the trailer for the new bike messenger movie set in NYC - it makes it look like it is the messengers and the taxi drivers who are having dramatic traffic interactions.

Kickstarter Funded Folding e-Bike

A Kickstarter project for an e-bike that is fully funded. It is a very attractive design.


Kickstarter page for folding e-bike

The informational site (that doesn't have much information yet.)

Since a $1,390 Kickstarter pledge meant one received one of the early bikes at a "special" price one can deduce that the expected sale price will be somewhere north of that. A Dahon electric folding bike with a more traditional derailleur shifting system can be had for around $2,000, so that's a point of comparison in the folding bike world. Performance has a Schwinn 8-speed comfort bike (no folding) with a 250 watt front hub for $999, which is probably the low(est) end for pricing for what is probably an OK (not for heavy use) electric bike.

Putting the battery in the frame seems lovely from a design standpoint but not necessarily very practical otherwise, but in the notes to funders, apparently it will be possible to attach supplemental batteries.

A strong advantage of this design compared to many e-bikes is that it looks to be reasonably light. In one of the videos, someone commented on the bike being light, which is hardly the first thing people typically say about e-bikes. The Schwinn mentioned above, near as I can figure out, must be around 50 pounds (or about 20 pounds more than it would otherwise).

Otherwise it has some issues, I think. Looking at the set-up, there appears to be a single brake lever yet one can see two brake units, front and back. A single brake lever that controls both brakes? I know this is technically possible but it seems highly undesirable. There does not appear to be any shifting mechanism for the pedal-drive system - the traditional drive system that the electric drive in the front hub supplements. Perhaps it just a single speed bike? And the use of a direct drive system rather than a chain (or a Gates belt drive, if one is insistent on getting rid of greasy chains) isn't something I find appealing, even if it is a elegant design element. I suppose since it is an electric bike, the loss of some pedal power due to the inherent inefficiency of direct drive is OK. Real bikes have tires that run on roads and sidewalks etc where there is dirt - in the rain, quite a lot of messy stuff, actually - so while you can get rid of the chain, folding the bike may still involve some mess.

I find most puzzling the use of "recycled aluminum" for the frame - presumably this is recycled aluminum appropriate for a bicycle frame and not just former beer cans. Or perhaps turning former beer cans into 6061 bicycle frames or similar is easy.

At least this bike project got funded!

Shirlington - Officially "Bike Friendly"

New sign on bike trail near Shirlington - that one in the middle

A crew appeared today and installed the sign stating this is a "bicycle friendly community." (I realize I don't know if those signs stating the distances to various places were there before or not - I don't think so.) The sign faces the bicycle trail, as this picture mostly makes clear. There are several problems with this:

* The ones who need to hear this kind of thing more are the motorists in the sense of, "hey, don't run over the cyclists; this community is supposed to be bicycle friendly!" Ironically this sign is posted right at one of the worst crosswalks for cyclists in Arlington. Arlington is bicycle friendly, and by the way try not to get hurt crossing this street with cars zipping off 395.

* I suppose pointing this sign celebrating the League of American Bicyclists' designation of Arlington as a "bicycle friendly community" is fine but in the end, it's deeds not words. We aren't going to think, "oh yeah - Arlington loves cyclists because they put up this sign. We are going to think that because of useful things that the County does for cyclists (and their safety), which does not include the layout of this particular intersection (from a cyclist perspective).

It reminds me of socialist realism to have a sign proclaiming the glories not of today's reality but tomorrow's shiny future.

Washington Monument on Bike Commute

During my morning commute -

As a result of the earthquake, apparently climbers were going to rappel down the Washington Monument to inspect it; as a result, camera crews came early to get positioned to shoot video and stand-up news interviews. Around noon they were still there . . .

Bad Street Crossing for Bikes

Hoping traffic clears, then he'll finish crossing

This kind of thing is crazy - this cyclist, having seen this intersection before, assumes that the traffic pattern is the same every day. The cross traffic has the green light. Traffic from the left clears and then, usually, traffic from the right. So if you go out as he has done and wait in the middle, it should be possible to get across once the traffic from the right clears (without waiting for a green light, that is).

But what are motorists to think of this? They have the green light, and there you are in the middle of the road. There is no center island. And sometimes the traffic pattern doesn't work out and traffic ends up coming from both directions at the same time, and there you are, in the middle of the road with no place to hide.

Belgian Bicycles, 1910s (Photo)

Newly added to the Library of Congress Flickr collections online

Taken near the Belgian town of Diest, presumably during World War I. From the Bain News Service collection. As presented by the Library of Congress on its site, it isn't possible to "pull out" the images with bicycles much of the time, but users add tags in Flickr that help with that.


"France - Cyclists of Army" - another Bain photograph


The Austrians had some bikes, too.