I approve of this?

Posted on October 29, 2010 by jsallen

UPDATE: This post gives background information on the intersection. I have now ridden through it, and my opinion of it has changed. I have another post about it, and a video. Please check them out.

The image below shows a special installation of traffic signals and markings at the intersection of 16th street, U Street and New Hampshire Avenue NW in Washington, DC. To enlarge the image so you can read the text descriptions, click on it. You also may have a look at a Google map satellite view. Then please return to this page for my comments.

16th Street, U Street and New Hampshire Avenue NW, Washington, DC

16th Street, U Street and New Hampshire Avenue NW, Washington, DC

Pierre L’Enfant and Andrew Ellicott — and let’s also not forget African-American surveyor Benjamin Banneker — laid out Washington’s streets from scratch —  in the pre-automotive 1790s. Washington’s diagonal avenues give it an openness and unique sense of place — but the resulting uneven-length blocks and multi-way intersections make for some serious headaches now. Some traffic movements are odd, traffic signals can not be synchronized efficiently…

Before the new installation, no signals in this intersection faced new Hampshire Avenue. Bicyclists would sometimes use New Hampshire Avenue for through travel, though its conflicting one-way segments made that illegal and there was no conflict-free crossing interval.

The illustration above is from a page posted by the government of the District of Columbia describing a new installation of contraflow bicycle lanes, bicycle waiting boxes and special traffic signals. At first glance, these may raise the hair on the back of the necks of people who are suspicious of special bicycle facilities treatments.

Look again. The bike boxes look odd only because they connect with diagonal New Hampshire Avenue. They are cross-street bike boxes — which bicyclists enter from the left. Bicyclists from New Hampshire Avenue enter on a separate signal phase from the motor traffic on 16th Street, rather than to creep up on the right side of motor vehicles, as with more-usual bike-box installations. Motorists do not have to crane their necks or stare into a right-side mirror looking for these bicyclists.

The cross-street bike boxes are even more conflict-free than usual. Because only bicycle traffic runs contraflow, bicyclists do not have to negotiate with any right-turning traffic when entering the intersection.

To summarize: this installation, importantly, does not violate the fundamental traffic-engineering principle of destination positioning at intersections, as so many special bicycle facilities installations do.

Or, looking at the same conclusion from a different point of view, the installation does not require or encourage bicyclists to do anything dangerous or stupid, and it offers reasonable travel efficiency considering the situation it addresses.

I am not going to say that this installation is perfect. I can see the following issues.

  • Bicyclists’ having to wait through two traffic-signal phases is inconvenient and might lead to scofflaw behavior. A “scramble phase” could allow crossing in one step and might even apply to bicyclists arriving from other directions. It would reduce the time allocated to for all the other phases, but it might be practical, and preferable, at times of low traffic. Signals and markings which only apply at some times could, however, be confusing.
  • The installation addresses only bicycle traffic entering the intersection from New Hampshire Avenue. Traffic control remains as it was for 16th street and U street. Considering the many ways in which bicycle travel could be made slower and/or more hazardous in the name of making it better, this may be a case of “best leave well enough alone,”  but on the other hand, real improvements might be possible.
  • The bike boxes on 16th street could be interpreted as encouraging bicyclists on that street to overtake motorists on the right, then swerve in front of them, as is the more conventional with bike boxes.
  • Just outside the lower left of the picture on New Hampshire Avenue, there is wrong-way parallel parking next to the bike lane. Motorists exiting wrong-way parking spaces are in head-on conflict with bicyclists, but cannot see them if another vehicle is parked ahead. (See illustrated description of wrong-way parallel parking elsewhere, if the explanation here is unclear.) At the top right, on the other hand, note that the bike lane is farther from the curb: this segment of New Hampshire Avenue has back-in right-angle parking, avoiding the sight-line problem.
  • And, while we’re at it, I have another issue with the street grid, though it’s common to many other cities and not readily subject to correction. Streets that go east and west guarantee that twice per year,  for several days, the Sun will rise and set directly along the streets, glaring into drivers’ eyes.  If the street grid ran northeast to southwest and northwest to southeast, this would never happen. All you Pierre L’Enfants of today designing new cities, please take notice, here’s your chance to acquire a reputation as Pierre L’Enfant Terrible!

This installation is the subject of experimentation sanctioned by the U.S. Federal Highway Administration, with observation, data recording and analysis to see how it works in practice. The experimentation may turn up more issues, or reveal that some are of little importance.

Now, dear readers, you also may also have points to add to the discussion. Let the comments fly.

See also: GreaterGreaterWashington blog entry about this installation; Washington, DC Department of Transportation page about it; Google maps satellite view.

Posted in Bicycle facilities, Bicycling, Bike box, contraflow | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | 10 Comments

Guest posting by John Schubert: New York, City of Confrontation

Posted on October 28, 2010 by jsallen

Responding to an article in the New York Times, a correspondent asked John Schubert

Why isn’t NYC concerned about being sued because of lousy bike-lane-
design-caused wrecks?

and he replied:

Good question. I think it’s important to know the answer from NYC’s point of view. I’m not their spokesman, but I’ll try.

First of all, they get sued no matter what they do. It’s a city of confrontation.

Second, NYC knows it will always have collisions, injuries and deaths. They would not view any one street design as a perfect protection against these problems, nor against litigation.

Third, they are SO bombarded with aggressive drivers, nonmotorized road users wanting some sort of relief from aggressive drivers, and the usual paint and path propaganda, that they buy into the idea that separation is necessary in NYC, even if not elsewhere, because NYC is unique.

I believe NYC does have a civility problem. Separated bicycle facilities don’t solve that problem, but in the minds of true believers, at least they avoid that problem. I think you can’t have a livable community without addressing THAT problem.

NYC does have other unique concerns. I suspect the biggest is the huge volume of midblock car stops, more than anywhere else, mostly because of taxis getting and discharging passengers. I think the designs they use to answer this are silly, but the ‘vehicular cyclist’ alternative hasn’t been made appealing to them. Yet.

Posted in Bicycle facilities, Bicycling, Cycle tracks, New York City, Sidepaths, Sidepaths | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , | 8 Comments

Deer dears

Posted on October 28, 2010 by jsallen

OK, the title “Deer Dears” might seem a bit obscure. It refers to children walking and bicycling in urban areas.

Brooklyn, New York, December, 2008

I chose the title because I’m  recalling a Bicycling Magazine opinion piece which my friend, long time Philadelphia bicycling advocate John Dowlin, wrote some thirty years ago. The title was “Cyclists as Urban Deer”.

Dowlin’s premise was that cyclists in urban areas, like deer in rural areas, are vulnerable, and deserve special attention and caution. He went on to make the point that the presence of cyclists is a measure of the health of the urban transportation system.

I wrote a response to Dowlin’s article, and it was published too. I suggested that cyclists do better to be smart like the fox. To put it in the simplest possible way: deer stampede out of the woods; foxes look before they cross the road.

The analogy still holds, I think, and it is more compelling now given the current widespread campaign for the construction of bicycle sidepaths which reduce foxy cyclists to deer, appearing from concealment behind parked cars and crowds of pedestrians — and, which  also keep newbie cyclists in a state of arrested development, expecting everyone except themselves to look out for their safety.

Certainly, on the other hand, children aren’t ready yet to look out for themselves. We must, then, ask a few questions:

  • To what degree is it actually possible to protect children from traffic hazards?
  • Do we actually protect them from traffic hazards, or only create an illusion of safety?
  • To what extent do other hazards — that a child might get lost, or ride off the top of a flight of stairs, or become a victim of crime — commonly bullying, bicycle theft — limit the child’s travel options? (Stranger abduction is the bugaboo, I know, though it is rare.)
  • What sacrifices in safety and efficiency of travel for other road users — including cyclists and pedestrians — are we willing to make so children can travel independently?

My own opinion is that these issues can generally be resolved to a satisfactory degree for child cyclists on quiet residential streets and on paths that cross roads infrequently, but not on urban arterials or on paths built alongside them.

Now, in answer to a common rejoinder: I’m entirely sympathetic with the point made these days about children’s not walking or bicycling as much as the older generation — my generation — did. I recall my own suburban childhood, in which I walked to school, or I walked a mile to and from the nearest school bus stop. But I’m not going to be nostalgic about that, either. I was bullied at a couple of bus stops, day after day, and at only one of them did I manage to stop the bullying, when accumulated rage overcame caution and I punched the bully in the mouth.

I rode my bicycle in my quiet suburban neighborhood, starting at age 7, but my parents didn’t allow me full freedom to travel on my own, either on foot or by bicycle, until my teen years — appropriately so. I have done the same for my own son.

I’ll put out another thought about stranger abduction, while I’m at it: the grand emphasis in much design of bicycle facilities these days is on perceived safety, often in opposition to actual safety. Now, if we similarly tried to design our cities to create the perception of safety from stranger abduction, what would they look like?

To sum up: the utopian dream expressed by, for example, former Bogotá mayor Enrique Peñalosa, that young children should be able to travel independently everywhere in an urban area, remains just that, a utopian dream, and let’s acknowledge that. Young children are dear to us, and they are too much like deer, too little like the fox, to set out on their own everywhere in cities.

Posted in Bicycle facilities, Bicycling, Bike lanes, Crashes, Cycle tracks | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , | 1 Comment

Turn out the lights?

Posted on October 22, 2010 by jsallen

My attention has been drawn to a video from the U.K. that advocates removal of traffic signals.

I am sure that removing traffic signals is sometimes beneficial — my late friend Gihon Jordan pioneered it in Philadelphia, and he was able to report reductions in crashes. He did a careful survey of crash data to confirm that result.

On the other hand, in many situations, removing signals will not improve safety and mobility, or it must be accompanied by other changes (such as conversion of intersections to roundabouts) if it is to work.

My point in writing this, though, is not to try to evaluate the practice, or the particular intersection shown. Rather, I want to point to a style of advocacy. The video shows some heavily-edited clips of congested traffic before the signals were removed — and free-flowing traffic after, but the video consists mostly of a series of testimonials. There is only one statement by an engineer who might have the technical background to evaluate where traffic-light removal might be suitable. The remaining statements are by ordinary citizens with no particular technical expertise, including two groups of schoolchildren. The video casts the traffic-signal industry as an evildoer by implying that it is unduly influencing design choices, a statement which the video does not support with any evidence. There is some narration to the effect that accompanying measures are needed, but this is given way too little time to explain such issues adequately. Only one negative opinion is represented, from a blind man who, understandably, has more trouble with uncontrolled intersections than with signalized ones.

Traffic engineering has been subject to political pressure as long as it has existed, and with very mixed results. To be sure, we wouldn’t have infrastructure for travel if the public didn’t agree to fund it, but then, there is a strong element of tragedy of the commons in the uneconomical use of clean air and of subsidized infrastructure. Dominant modes of transportation — railroads in the 19th century; private motor vehicles and commercial air travel in the early 21st, — distort transportation choices — by making streets less hospitable, by taking the lion’s share of public funding, by reducing demand for other modes so they become less economical, by affecting patterns of land use. A full-cost, pay-as-you-go model would not be practical, because so much infrastructure must be held as a public monopoly: there can be only one set of streets, one urban public transportation system, etc. and it must be accessible to people at all income levels.

While political pressure is unavoidable, appealing to the general public for implementation of a specific measure has its perils. Where infrastructure choices are driven by such advocacy, the results often are out of tune with best practices as established by careful analysis. Common examples are demands for more traffic lights or stop signs — or, getting around to the topic of bicycling advocacy, for special bicycle facilities as if they were some kind of panacea. It is too easy to push for simple solutions to complicated problems.

And also as to bicycling, here’s one specific I noticed in the video: there’s not one single bicyclist in it, from beginning to end. I think that deserves mention. I don’t know whether bicyclists were there but were intentionally not shown, or whether there just weren’t any. In either case, I regard that as unfortunate and I’d like to know why!

Posted in Bicycle facilities, Bicycling, Crashes, Traffic Signals | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Safety in numbers: if and when so, why?

Posted on October 15, 2010 by jsallen

I write here in response to an online article in the Grist blog, which addresses the concept of “safety in numbers” among cyclists and pedestrians. As is all too common, the article takes this phenomenon for granted, and ascribes it entirely to changes in behavior of motorists. There is no mention of changes in behavior of cyclists and pedestrians themselves.

The concept of “safety in numbers” is often applied to animal behavior, and a couple of examples might be useful. Here’s one from the University of Rhode Island Sea Grant program:

A potential predator hunting for a meal might become confused by the closely spaced school, which can give the impression of one vast and frightening fish. Additionally, there is the concept of “safety in numbers”—a predator cannot consume an unlimited quantity of prey. The sheer number of fish in a school allows species to hide behind each other, thus confusing a predator by the alteration of shapes and colors presented as the school swims along. Of course, those on the outside edges of the school are more likely to be eaten than those in the center.

Here’s a video of such behavior.

A herd of animals may actively defend its members, as shown in this astonishing video.

In warfare also, there are issues of safety in numbers, discussed in terms of “swarm warfare“. In some cases, the opposite tactic is applied, for example, in dispersing troops to avoid their all being taken out in a concentrated attack.

Bicyclists and other road users, on the other hand, don’t generally interact like prey and predators, or like armies in battle. I mean, motorists may sometimes be careless. A few may intentionally take risks with the safety of bicyclists and pedestrians, or be in denial about the hazards they pose. Motorists, however, generally aren’t intentionally out to kill and aren’t contemplating having us for dinner. What, then, is the mechanism of so-called “safety in numbers”? When might it exist, and when not?

First, there are different kinds of numbers.

  • The general level of bicycling or walking in a population.
  • Different locations in the same area that have different numbers of bicyclists/pedestrians/motorists, but all from the same general population.
  • Different areas, with different populations and different rates of use.
  • Numbers which increase on particular days, for example in nice weather.
  • A population in the same area but changing over a span of years.

In an earlier post, I examined an Oakland, California study of pedestrian crashes at different intersections in the same community. The researchers’ text claims safety in numbers but the graphs show otherwise: the crash rate was moderately higher at intersections with more pedestrians. It was also higher at intersections with more motorists. It would take further analysis to determine how these two factors correlate with each other.

The well-known Jacobsen study of safety in numbers of bicyclists (also here) compared different communities at the same time. It also has been criticized (including in the Oakland study) for faulty math that shows a hyperbolic descending curve even if the input data are completely random.

The Jacobsen study also says:

Whose behavior changes, the motorist’s or that of the people walking and bicycling? It seems unlikely that people walking or bicycling obey traffic laws more or defer to motorists more in societies or time periods with greater walking and bicycling. Indeed it seems less likely, and hence unable to explain the observed results. Adaptation in motorist behavior seems more plausible and other discussions support that view. Todd reported three studies showing “motorists in the United States and abroad drive more slowly when they see many pedestrians in the street and faster when they see few”.27 In addition, motorists in communities or time periods with greater walking and bicycling are themselves more likely to occasionally walk or bicycle and hence may give greater consideration to people walking and bicycling. Accordingly, the most plausible explanation for the improving safety of people walking and bicycling as their numbers increase is behavior modification by motorists when they expect or experience people walking and bicycling.

This dismisses the learning experience: that the more people walk or ride bicycles, the better they get at recognizing and avoiding hazards. Other studies have demonstrated that the length of bicycling experience has a dramatic effect on crash rates. This occurs whether or not people are obeying traffic laws or deferring to motorists. Jacobsen identifies bicyclists as being able to take no active measures to improve their safety.

In order to maximize safety, we need to know not only what happens, but also why. My own opinion is that there is generally an increase in safety over time as the number bicyclists and pedestrians increases. This occurs due to a number of different factors but also is impeded by others.

Some factors increasing safety:

  • Longer experience, on average, of cyclists
  • Cyclists’ better understanding of how to ride safely in a group
  • Higher average age of cyclists
  • Multiplicative effect of mentoring of cyclists by other cyclists (especially, children by parents)
  • Change in attitude of motorists
  • Presence of one cyclist directly increasing the safety of another by blocking traffic.
  • Better facilities design, resulting from a more refined understanding of how to provide for bicyclists’ safety.

Some factors decreasing safety:

  • Entry of new and inexperienced cyclists into the mix
  • One cyclist’s concealing another from view when there many
  • Sense of entitlement leading to scofflaw behavior
  • False sense of security — “follow-the-leader” behavior when riding in a group
  • Rush to build bicycle facilities, resulting in design compromises and inherent flaws
  • Facilities that favor the least skillful, but are overprotective and frustrating for the more skillful, promoting scofflaw behavior
  • Placing all eggs in the basket of “safety in numbers” and neglecting other approaches to increasing safety

There’s clearly much more research yet to be done in this field.

Posted in Bicycle facilities, Bicycling, Reviews | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , | 13 Comments

Support petition candidates in League of American Bicyclists election.

Posted on October 12, 2010 by jsallen

Three League of American Bicyclists members are petitioning to run as candidates for the Board of Directors. They have asked me to post their message, and here it is. I have signed their petition and I suggest that if you are a League member, you also do.

Did you know that by next year, nearly half of the LAB Board (7 of 15 members) will be appointed? This means that seven board members will not feel a commitment to be responsive to members. The League board changed the Bylaws this July — without asking members whether they approve of having their influence weakened.

We think this is unacceptable in a membership organization. Please help us protect the rights of all members. Support candidates who will work to make all Board members elected and responsive to members, and who will work to re-direct LAB to better defend cyclists’ rights and represent members’ interests.

In addition to appointing the unelected directors, the Board controls who can get on the ballot. They accepted only one reform candidate, Bill Hoffman, who is currently on the Board. This means John Brooking, Eli Damon and Khal Spencer must collect over 1000 petition signatures to get on the ballot.

We hope you will sign our ballot petition. You can sign online at http://www.PetitionOnline.com/0league0/petition.html
If you want more information and especially if you would like to help us collect signatures, please see http://www.labreform.org/campaign/

We apologize if you get more than one request to sign our ballot petition. Time is critical — we must receive all petitions by October 20 and we need many signatures. We are contacting affiliated clubs, cycling lists, cycling instructors and anyone we can. You can help by forwarding this message and the petition link to any LAB members you know.

After you have signed and returned the petition, please let us know so can verify that all petitions are counted.

And please remember to vote for us and for Bill Hoffman when balloting opens on Dec. 1.

Thank you very much for your support and vote.

John Brooking

Eli Damon

Khal Spencer

Posted in Bicycling | Tagged , , , , | 1 Comment

Such language!

Posted on October 8, 2010 by jsallen

The following are my comments on a post on P. M. Summer’s CycleDallas blog. I’d have liked to post my comments there, but they are longer than allowed by the software on Summer’s site.

Quoting Robin Stallings, Executive Director of the Texas Bicycle Coalition:

We have tried to answer your inquiry from a ‘legal’ point of view below.

Leslie Puckett, our legal fellow, prepared the answer with some input from Mark Stine and I. This should not be construed as legal advice. Consult an attorney for that.

The word “legal” in quotes — the nominative “I” as the object of a preposition — trivialities? Maybe, but on the other hand, grammatical errors can drastically alter the meaning of laws. Indeed, consult an attorney, but Stallings and his advisors didn’t!

The short answer of BikeTexas’ interpretation of the current law is that:

“If the bicycle lane is considered part of the roadway, then, TTC 551.103, which requires a cyclist to ride as far to the right on the roadway as possible, would seem to require a cyclist to ride in the bike lane (or paved shoulder) except when it is obstructed or when turning left, since the bike lane is usually on the right side of the roadway. The law is appropriately ambiguous and leaves discretion to individual cyclists to determine for themselves if the bike lane is obstructed and is usable.”

Stallings appears to be unaware that the bike lane, but not the shoulder, is part of the roadway. Also, Texas law requires a cyclist to ride as far right as practicable, not “possible”, and with additional exceptions he doesn’t mention. These are important distinctions in the light of the Reed Bates arrests in Texas. Stallings knows of these arrests.

I leave out the list of studies that Stallings cites — Summer has addressed that.

There are no examples of cities that we are aware of, in Texas or the nation, where the mainstream bicycle advocates regret the installation of, or are calling for removal of bike lane networks.

Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, to give an example…Stallings also changes the subject, “where is it legal to ride?” to “mainstream, knowledgeable (!) people like us support bike lanes everywhere and if you don’t, you’re a weirdo.”

However, protected bike lanes, also known as “cycle tracks”, are replacing bike lanes in many cities.

Stallings floats a topic that has nothing to with the original question — he gets to sound more authoritative to an uninformed audience, and to use the word “protected”. This originally applied in traffic engineering to, for example, a left-turn signal phase where the opposite-direction traffic has a red light, but now, instead, it is applied to a bikeway behind parked cars, with the attendant poor safety record due to crossing and turning conflicts and sight-line obstructions. It is a path — but calling it a bike lane lends it the aura of the familiar. The uninformed, or misinformed, will assume that it offers real protection. They are also introduced to a new buzzword, “cycle track,” which may have been unknown to them.

Sharrows are in use in many cities where there is not enough right way to accommodate bike lanes.

Shared lane markings, not the obsolete “sharrows” — are indeed used, but to refer to them and bike lanes as the only alternatives narrows the discussion, now doesn’t it?

Let me know if you have any more questions.

OK, then, why, Mr. Stallings, are you resorting to classic techniques of manipulative use of language? On that topic, allow me to recommend Prof. S. I. Hayakawa’s classic book Language in Thought and Action and to quote Robert Jay Lifton:

“The language of the totalist environment is characterized by the thought-terminating cliché. The most far-reaching and complex of human problems are compressed into brief, highly reductive, definitive-sounding phrases, easily memorized and easily expressed. These become the start and finish of any ideological analysis.”

Posted in Bicycling, Bike lanes | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | 4 Comments

Fisher Explains Interbike Move

Posted on September 28, 2010 by jsallen
Gary Fisher explains

Gary Fisher explains

As announced rather abruptly to the retailers who attend the Interbike trade show, next year’s show is to be held in Anaheim, California in early August rather than Las Vegas in late September/early October as it has been for the last several years. Manufacturers and wholesalers put on the show and pay for it, so they get to call the shots. Retailers get in free, but on the other hand, without them there is no show.

This year’s Interbike was marked by the absence of several of the larger bicycle manufacturers, including Cannondale and Trek. These have taken to holding their own shows in the summer, at several places around the country so as to keep the travel expenses down for their dealers.

As I was walking the floor at Interbike, I encountered mountain bike pioneer Gary Fisher. Almost immediately after we greeted each other, a man walked up carrying handwritten, photocopied petition forms protesting the Interbike move. August is in retailers’ high season in much of the USA. Sending personnel to the trade show would be a serious hardship, especially for the smaller shops.

Trek owns the Fisher Mountainbikes brand, so it’s fair to assume that Gary has some inside information. He told the petitioner that he would not sign, explaining that the move is largely about publicity. New York and Los Angeles are the nation’s two major media centers. Media don’t come to Las Vegas to cover the show. Gary understands publicity, and perhaps his background colored his explanation: his grandfather worked for the legendary Hollywood publicist Hal Wallace.

As for myself, I probably won’t be attending next year’s Interbike. I myself am in the media, as a Webmaster of the informational site sheldonbrown.com. That’s a new job for me and it’s why I attended Interbike this year. But I think that I made enough contacts to keep me going for more than a year, and in any case, August is my usual family vacation time!

A broader perspective on the Interbike move may be found on Rick Vosper’s blog, Bike 2.0.

Posted in Bicycling | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , | 1 Comment

Tipping point for electric bikes?

Posted on September 27, 2010 by jsallen

I have just returned home from the 2010 Interbike bicycle trade fair in Las Vegas.

This was the year for electrically-assisted bicycles – over 40 booths displayed them. Here are some examples:

Lahaina electric bike, essentially a conventional bicycle with a motor in the front wheel and a battery on the rear rack.

Nirve Lahaina electric bike, essentially a conventional bicycle with a motor in the front hub and a battery on the rear rack.

The Nirve Lahaina electric bike is essentially just a conventional bicycle with add-ons. The front brake is an inexpensive long-reach sidepull, marginal even without the added weight of a motor and battery. The rear wheel has a Shimano three-speed hub with a coaster brake.

Front brake and hub of the Lahaina bike

Front brake and hub of the Lahaina bike

Here’s another example, a Pedego electric bike configured more or less like a conventional bicycle, and with derailleur gears, but with an electric motor in the rear hub, and on its way to be a motorcycle with fat tires that would have unacceptable rolling resistance with pedal power only. The disc brakes should be adequate to their task.

Fat-tire electric bike, with distinct motorcycle tendencies.

Fat-tire electric bike, with distinct motorcycle tendencies.

The e-Solex electric bike shown below is configured more like a motor scooter, with a step-through frame that favors a rider with limited flexibility, or who wears a skirt. The saddle is adjustable upwards, for efficient pedaling. (Note other bike in the background, with raised saddle.) Solex was the classic mid 20th-century French moped add-on, a small gasoline motor that transmitted power through a roller on the front tire of a conventional bicycle. The e-Solex recalls this design, though the motor is actually in the rear hub and the cylinder over the front wheel is a baggage compartment.

An electric bike which is more like a motor scooter

An electric bike which is more like a motor scooter

At the show, there was even one cargo trailer with a motor, that could be hitched onto any bicycle and could help bring home a heavy load.

I didn’t expect to see so many electric bikes at the show. I have thought in the past that adding a motor to a bicycle would inevitably lead to atrophy of the pedals through disuse. Motorcycles began as a subspecies of bicycles in the first decade of the 20th Century. Again, in the mid-20th Century, bicycles with a small gasoline auxiliary motor evolved into mopeds, with vestigial pedals, and into motor scooters, with no pedals at all. Why?

  • The heavier machine with its motor made pedaling ineffective;
  • the motor also made pedaling irrelevant;
  • the motor made higher speed possible, and a larger and more powerful motor, in turn, required a heavier frame;
  • storing a gasoline-powered machine in a living area was not practical.

For these reasons, motorized two-wheelers diverged into entirely different categories from bicycles, with little or no overlap. Electrically-powered two-wheelers never succeeded in the market, as the dead weight of batteries made them more trouble than they were worth – no fun to ride, heavy to carry, with short range.

But now electric bikes have improved substantially thanks to lithium-ion batteries and rare-earth magnets. Concerns about air pollution also come to bear. An electrically-assisted bicycle can be stored in a living area. It can go up in an elevator, though it can’t easily be carried over the rider’s shoulder like a pedal bicycle. Electric two-wheelers have become popular in China (though still using lead-acid batteries there), and the corner may be about to turn in other countries as well, including the USA.

At the dirt demo days at Interbike, people on electrically-assisted bicycles were effortlessly cruising up the steep hill to the demo site in the 99-degree heat. Even in the dry, desert heat of southern Nevada anyone who pedaled up the hill would be wearing a coat of sweat-soaked dust before reaching the top.

There was even a sort of John Henry vs. the steam drill uphill race. Everyone was pedaling furiously, so everyone ended up sweaty, I’m sure. One particularly strong cyclist on a racing bike finished near the front, but a small-wheel, fat-tire electric bike was first.

At Interbike, I spoke with my colleague John Schubert, who suggested that electrically-assisted bicycles would be useful:

  • To allow a person incapable of producing enough power to make use of a bicycle for local transportation. This is obvious enough. With the Baby Boom generation aging, this can be a substantial market.
  • To make short “Dutch-style” utility-cycling and commuting trips possible without a person’s having to work up a sweat – important for many people.
  • To make longer “bigger, hillier US city” trips practical for people who would otherwise only consider shorter trips.
  • To allow a bicycle tourist to cover greater distances or keep up with a group of stronger riders. This is, to be sure, only possible where there are places to recharge overnight — but most campgrounds have electrical power. John tells a story of an elderly man who was thrilled to have participated in a multi-day tour which would have been impossible for him otherwise.
  • And entirely eliminating the complications and extra weight of pedal power, that small, electrically-powered motor scooters, would be practical for short-distance urban travel — and they exist, but they do not yet fit into a legal category in many places.

I would add one more point: that electrically-assisted bicycles will be much more appealing in hot climates than in cold ones. This is mostly a question of rider comfort, but also, battery performance decreases appreciably in the coldest weather. In impoverished countries with hot climates, bicycling of the very slow, energy-conserving variety has been a favored mode of transportation, but has given way to gasoline-powered motor scooters as soon as rising income made them affordable.

Whether electrically-assisted bicycles are going to find an important niche in the US market remains to be seen. Certainly, they are less expensive than mopeds or motorcycles; their environmentally-friendly and indoor-storage-friendly characteristics may appeal — but for the foreseeable future, the power-to-weight advantage lies with the internal combustion engine and its fuel tank.

Wherever electric or gasoline-powered two-wheelers steal a substantial part of the market for utility trips away from pedal cycles, expect some serious dislocation in planning. But that’s a topic for another article.

Posted in Bicycling, Equipment, lighting | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | 5 Comments

Tom Revay: PeopleforBikes is an industry lobby

Posted on September 25, 2010 by jsallen

[I publish tom Revay’s comments here with his permission. My own comments here are in italics, like this one — John Allen]

On June 10, 2010, someone posted on the BostonAreaCycling e-mail list:

There is a new pro-bike website organized by the Bikes Belong Campaign that is collecting one million names in support of a better biking (100,000 by end of summer).

Boston Area cyclist Tom Revay replied in his usual colorful style –sorry, I didn’t get around to posting this till now, but Bikes Belong has drawn my attention, as I just attended the Interbike trade show, where it made its presence well-known:

Bikes Belong isn’t a campaign. It is the bicycle industry public lobby. It is not a non-profit.

And Bikes Belong isn’t a public membership organization. To join, you must be part of the bike industry at some level — retailer, distributor, manufacturer, etc — paying annual dues proportional to the size of your business. Bikes Belong’s purpose is to tap the Federal gravy train to build facilities that the bicycle manufacturers believe will help them sell bicycles.

I have no doubt they’re right — they have smart people who figure out demand models for bicycles in areas with and without certain facilities, I’m sure — but basically what they want is to use taxpayer money to make themselves wealthier, just like energy lobbies, tobacco lobbies, drug company lobbies, insurance lobbies, and so on, do.

Is there anything wrong with that? Nope. But that doesn’t mean I want to support them in doing it, either.

And their definition of “better biking” is “anything that helps the bike industry get more money, without spending their own capital.”

[“Tom quotes again from the other person’s e-mail. “Peopleforbikes” is the name of Bikes Belong’s campaign to collect signatures.]

While millions of Americans like us ride for their health, for the environment, etc. until now, only a tiny fraction of riders have stood up to help improve bicycling in America. Peopleforbikes.org hopes to change all that. They’re building a national movement with the clout and influence to get things done.

No, it’s not a “national movement” — this isn’t about civil rights, don’t be confused.

What they want is to be able to walk into your own Congressman Bilbo’s office and say, “Hmmm, says here we got 2231 people in your district who want you to support the Great Swamp Boggity Bog Trail amendment to the current transportation bill … say, didn’t you win by less than 2000 votes a couple years ago?”.

It’s revealing, I think, that the “Who we are” page on that website doesn’t really tell you who they are. If you knew, maybe you’d figure that they should chop their own wood, rather than having you pay someone to it for them … ya think?

But by all means, sign the pledge, if you want to. Just understand, this isn’t some kind of “grassroots campaign.” It’s an industry lobbying effort. And claiming it’s anything else is just political obfuscation. (And I wrote that instead of using the term “bull****,” since this is a family oriented group.)

— Tom Revay

[The asterisks are mine, as Tom appears to have trampled a bit on his own family orientation, intentionally, I’m sure — the man has a fine sense of irony.]

Posted in Bicycling | 4 Comments