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Showing posts with label bike. Show all posts
Showing posts with label bike. Show all posts
Monday, December 1, 2008
Thursday, August 7, 2008
Duelling with Buses
Anyone who is running a stop sign at full speed and failing to check if the other stops are occupied, is obviously a danger to herself and other road users. It seems that many people never studied rudimentary physics and have no understanding of inertia and braking distance, and the dangers large heavy vehicles can pose. But like the jerk who collided with me, no amount of public campaigning or private instruction will change idiotic behavior in those who are idiots.
Away from stop signs, duelling with buses on busy streets is one of the most dangerous situations facing a rider. The uneducated person on a bike may believe that to suck the curb on the right hand side is the prime directive, whereas experience or skills courses teach us that this is not so.
For example, on a street like Broadway, where parked cars, bikes and buses essentially must share the right hand lane, the dangers posed by passing a bus, especially the elongated ones are extreme. Approaching a stopped and loading bus from behind I will typically check the bus' rear lights and indicators, and have a look down the right hand side to guage the progress of the loading/unloading of passengers. If I see the bus is about to pull out and re-enter traffic lanes, I will yield and try to be visible in the driver's mirrors, as I do not want to suck bus exhaust and leapfrog with the bus all the way down the road.
However, if I am confident i can pass the bus on its leftside before he pulls out, I will do so. The real danger comes, and frequently happens, when the driver fails to check his traffic side mirror, and fails to see or ignores the (always assumed) invisible cyclist. It is indeed terrrifying when you are halfway past the bus, and it starts to roll and edge to the left, back into the traffic lane. This presents the cyclist with a tough dilemma and no place to go but to sprint for the front of the bus, hoping the driver sees you or is slow enough into traffic before you reach the front of the bus. Also hoping a motorist behind you doesn't have the same idea--ie, failing to yield and instead choosing to race past.
When the bicycle rider is already in the right hand flow lane and the bus starts to move, the rider runs the risk of being cut off and/or side-swiped by the merging bus, or else is forced into the lefthand flow lane, a place where no rider wants to find herself.
Yet also implicit in this discussion, although usually unvoiced, is the motorists' (and society in general) perception that bicycles are toys, riders are out for recreation only, and so are not legitimate road users. A bus driver with a schedule to maintain will typically view the cyclist as an annoyance, as an illigitimate road user, and so as someone who deserves no respect as a road user. John Forrester refers to this as "cyclist inferiority".
Lately I have been wondering about exactly what instruction does the typical sixteen year old beginning driver recieve in 'driver's ed" courses in regard to dealing safely with bicycles--my guess is none. Similarly, what instruction do city bus drivers get in relation to co-mingling with bicycles on the road. Here again, my guess would be next to none.
Away from stop signs, duelling with buses on busy streets is one of the most dangerous situations facing a rider. The uneducated person on a bike may believe that to suck the curb on the right hand side is the prime directive, whereas experience or skills courses teach us that this is not so.
For example, on a street like Broadway, where parked cars, bikes and buses essentially must share the right hand lane, the dangers posed by passing a bus, especially the elongated ones are extreme. Approaching a stopped and loading bus from behind I will typically check the bus' rear lights and indicators, and have a look down the right hand side to guage the progress of the loading/unloading of passengers. If I see the bus is about to pull out and re-enter traffic lanes, I will yield and try to be visible in the driver's mirrors, as I do not want to suck bus exhaust and leapfrog with the bus all the way down the road.
However, if I am confident i can pass the bus on its leftside before he pulls out, I will do so. The real danger comes, and frequently happens, when the driver fails to check his traffic side mirror, and fails to see or ignores the (always assumed) invisible cyclist. It is indeed terrrifying when you are halfway past the bus, and it starts to roll and edge to the left, back into the traffic lane. This presents the cyclist with a tough dilemma and no place to go but to sprint for the front of the bus, hoping the driver sees you or is slow enough into traffic before you reach the front of the bus. Also hoping a motorist behind you doesn't have the same idea--ie, failing to yield and instead choosing to race past.
When the bicycle rider is already in the right hand flow lane and the bus starts to move, the rider runs the risk of being cut off and/or side-swiped by the merging bus, or else is forced into the lefthand flow lane, a place where no rider wants to find herself.
Yet also implicit in this discussion, although usually unvoiced, is the motorists' (and society in general) perception that bicycles are toys, riders are out for recreation only, and so are not legitimate road users. A bus driver with a schedule to maintain will typically view the cyclist as an annoyance, as an illigitimate road user, and so as someone who deserves no respect as a road user. John Forrester refers to this as "cyclist inferiority".
Lately I have been wondering about exactly what instruction does the typical sixteen year old beginning driver recieve in 'driver's ed" courses in regard to dealing safely with bicycles--my guess is none. Similarly, what instruction do city bus drivers get in relation to co-mingling with bicycles on the road. Here again, my guess would be next to none.
Thursday, June 26, 2008
Who Pays?
A local bicycle rider has written:
“Every spring I hear the same two complaints from motorists. Cyclists don't follow the rules of the road, and they do not pay to use them.”
Leaving aside the first complaint for the moment, I had some thoughts about the second.
The counter-argument to the false idea of “my taxes pay for the roads” are many. The simplest one is that taxes are taxes and everybody pays them. Saying that this kind of tax is earmarked for that kind of program is a false argument. Its like saying I can’t pay you the $20 dollars I owe, because its in my left pocket....
--Sure I have the $20, but its in my left pocket and that’s for something else.
--See, my right pocket is empty.
--If I had the $20 to pay you, it would be in my right pocket....
It’s all about priorities.
The most elegant one is that if everybody rode bicycles [by using the word “bicycle”, generally I mean any self-propelled, lightweight, emission free vehicle], we’d likely never have to build another road. Ever. Think about that for a moment.
Well maybe that is an exaggeration, but maintenance budgets would drop to a quarter or a tenth of current levels. In the absence of free and easy (read subsidy and society-enabled) motor vehicle traffic, we have already built every road we are likely to ever need.
Ten thousand cyclists a day passing over any given piece of road for a hundred years will not equal the damage done to roads that a year’s worth of motor traffic will inflict.
Currently, the motorist ensures he will be paying high taxes simply by being a motorist. Most car owners have never even considered how much society subsidizes their “right” to drive.
A sane system would demand the demonstration of “cause for use”. In the short term, this would allow a road user such as a contractor who absolutely requires a vehicle to still make a living. But the single use motor driven commuter would no longer be a viable option. It is ridiculous how we preserve some of the most expensive real estate in Canada for keeping our cars happily waiting for us at the end of an office-bound day.
Getting people out of personal use cars will free traffic gridlock and allow once again the efficient use of roads. Dedicated routes could then be maintained for heavy and light truck/service traffic along commercial routes. Other routes would be exclusively for transit--maxi and mini buses, and clean-air taxis. Still others would be dedicated to bicycles. Many neighbourhood streets would gratefully succumb to depaving.
By creating separate traffic streams, one of the three major impediments to getting people out on bikes is removed, as conflict with motorised traffic is limited to infrequent intersections. Imagine how quickly you could get from SFU to ScienceWorld if you only had to stop at lights at Willingdon, Boundary and Main streets, with the Boundary overpass coming online next year!
It’s all about priorities.
“Every spring I hear the same two complaints from motorists. Cyclists don't follow the rules of the road, and they do not pay to use them.”
Leaving aside the first complaint for the moment, I had some thoughts about the second.
The counter-argument to the false idea of “my taxes pay for the roads” are many. The simplest one is that taxes are taxes and everybody pays them. Saying that this kind of tax is earmarked for that kind of program is a false argument. Its like saying I can’t pay you the $20 dollars I owe, because its in my left pocket....
--Sure I have the $20, but its in my left pocket and that’s for something else.
--See, my right pocket is empty.
--If I had the $20 to pay you, it would be in my right pocket....
It’s all about priorities.
The most elegant one is that if everybody rode bicycles [by using the word “bicycle”, generally I mean any self-propelled, lightweight, emission free vehicle], we’d likely never have to build another road. Ever. Think about that for a moment.
Well maybe that is an exaggeration, but maintenance budgets would drop to a quarter or a tenth of current levels. In the absence of free and easy (read subsidy and society-enabled) motor vehicle traffic, we have already built every road we are likely to ever need.
Ten thousand cyclists a day passing over any given piece of road for a hundred years will not equal the damage done to roads that a year’s worth of motor traffic will inflict.
Currently, the motorist ensures he will be paying high taxes simply by being a motorist. Most car owners have never even considered how much society subsidizes their “right” to drive.
A sane system would demand the demonstration of “cause for use”. In the short term, this would allow a road user such as a contractor who absolutely requires a vehicle to still make a living. But the single use motor driven commuter would no longer be a viable option. It is ridiculous how we preserve some of the most expensive real estate in Canada for keeping our cars happily waiting for us at the end of an office-bound day.
Getting people out of personal use cars will free traffic gridlock and allow once again the efficient use of roads. Dedicated routes could then be maintained for heavy and light truck/service traffic along commercial routes. Other routes would be exclusively for transit--maxi and mini buses, and clean-air taxis. Still others would be dedicated to bicycles. Many neighbourhood streets would gratefully succumb to depaving.
By creating separate traffic streams, one of the three major impediments to getting people out on bikes is removed, as conflict with motorised traffic is limited to infrequent intersections. Imagine how quickly you could get from SFU to ScienceWorld if you only had to stop at lights at Willingdon, Boundary and Main streets, with the Boundary overpass coming online next year!
It’s all about priorities.
Friday, June 20, 2008
Switching to Glide
excerpt by Bill Reynolds in The Walrus
The bicycle, according to scholar Donald Zaldin, revolutionized nineteenth-century culture. Its progenitor was the two-wheeled velocipede, invented in 1817 by Germany’s Baron Karl von Drais. The velocipede looked like a bike, but it had no crankshaft or drive train. The rider was propelled along by foot power alone. Then, sometime in the mid-1860s, a French metalworker figured out how to add a crankshaft. Two decades later, in 1885, England’s John Kemp Starley attached gears to the rear wheel instead of the front. Three years later, John Boyd Dunlop, a Scottish veterinarian, improved pneumatic tires and introduced the smooth ride. Suddenly, anyone, rich or poor, young or old, could travel beyond his or her immediate surroundings at no extra cost and with little wear on the body. The past century has seen numerous design upgrades and innovations — the three-speed Raleigh, the ten-speed derailleur, the mountain bike, the hybrid — but the concept remains the same.
And that concept’s irreducible nut is the body defying gravity. Riding is governed by physics, specifically by torque-induced precession. Gravity causes a stationary bike to fall over, but applying torque — using the legs and feet to push down on two pedals attached to a crank — changes the equation. The drive train transfers the rider’s energy directly into movement. The wheels turn and stay upright, and torque allows 182 pounds of human tissue to move on two flimsy pieces of rubber filled with air.
The thinner the bicycle’s frame, the less wind resistance, and aerodynamics only increases efficiency; leaning over the handlebars, especially going downhill, reduces drag and boosts speed. Spoked wheels are almost as strong as solid ones, at a fraction of the weight. Using a derailleur, a transmission system invented by the French in the late nineteenth century, the rider easily switches the chain to a smaller sprocket and — voila! — more torque, more distance in less time. As the rider increases cadence — the number of revolutions per minute — he injects pure power, especially in higher gear ratios. The work is hard but satisfying.
The bicycle, according to scholar Donald Zaldin, revolutionized nineteenth-century culture. Its progenitor was the two-wheeled velocipede, invented in 1817 by Germany’s Baron Karl von Drais. The velocipede looked like a bike, but it had no crankshaft or drive train. The rider was propelled along by foot power alone. Then, sometime in the mid-1860s, a French metalworker figured out how to add a crankshaft. Two decades later, in 1885, England’s John Kemp Starley attached gears to the rear wheel instead of the front. Three years later, John Boyd Dunlop, a Scottish veterinarian, improved pneumatic tires and introduced the smooth ride. Suddenly, anyone, rich or poor, young or old, could travel beyond his or her immediate surroundings at no extra cost and with little wear on the body. The past century has seen numerous design upgrades and innovations — the three-speed Raleigh, the ten-speed derailleur, the mountain bike, the hybrid — but the concept remains the same.
And that concept’s irreducible nut is the body defying gravity. Riding is governed by physics, specifically by torque-induced precession. Gravity causes a stationary bike to fall over, but applying torque — using the legs and feet to push down on two pedals attached to a crank — changes the equation. The drive train transfers the rider’s energy directly into movement. The wheels turn and stay upright, and torque allows 182 pounds of human tissue to move on two flimsy pieces of rubber filled with air.
The thinner the bicycle’s frame, the less wind resistance, and aerodynamics only increases efficiency; leaning over the handlebars, especially going downhill, reduces drag and boosts speed. Spoked wheels are almost as strong as solid ones, at a fraction of the weight. Using a derailleur, a transmission system invented by the French in the late nineteenth century, the rider easily switches the chain to a smaller sprocket and — voila! — more torque, more distance in less time. As the rider increases cadence — the number of revolutions per minute — he injects pure power, especially in higher gear ratios. The work is hard but satisfying.
Monday, March 17, 2008
Dollar short and a day late
As usual I am kind of slow catching on to these new fangled things like the world wild web and the whole blogosphere, aka, nattering away into the void. I have been mostly a lurker and a commenter on other people's missives, but was inspired today to get this going by stumbling upon this delightful and new blog.
I 'm not "super-fit" or "super-brave" or even "really stupid", as I have been called in the past. If anything, I became more and more conscious of the superior lifestyle that the committed cyclist enjoys. Upon some of these virtues I hope to extol in the coming pages.
I have been solely self-propelled for a lifetime; the elegance and simplicity, the beauty and the reliability of the bicycle capturing my soul from the start. I don't mind to walk, but most walks of any length will usually result in my comment: "We should've rode our bikes."
Back in the day when we were kids, when gas was cheap and smog was plentiful, when the post-war dream was still in rem stage, when we had seemed to indeed achieve "better living through chemistry," the parentals dragged us back and forth across the country from Ontario to California, a number of times. Back then I seemed to be enjoying the scenery and the "freedom of the open road" that would soon become only a marketing slogan, as the realities of the first oil crisis took hold of the nation, gas lines formed, and a strange new, ominous 'word' appeared on everyone's lips: "OPEC."
I was too young to really be effected by any of this, and perhaps it had left no real impression, as I dutifully played with my hot wheels cars and GI Joe's. My family was no different than any other in our neighbourhood--two cars in the driveway that were relied upon for 100% of the journeys made that were more than a block away. A distant "Uncle" owned a classic car, which we appreciated and were appropriately thrilled to get a ride in such a beautiful old touring car. I enjoyed building the model cars in my basement, and I knew who "Big Daddy" Don Garlits was.
In short, my automobile indoctrination was proceeding apace.
So, what went wrong? Where did the indoctrination fail? Today, I hold no driver's license, and go about my daily business quite capably on two wheels.
Still, this is a question I don't ponder much, as the bicycle is my first love and preferred conveyance.
I 'm not "super-fit" or "super-brave" or even "really stupid", as I have been called in the past. If anything, I became more and more conscious of the superior lifestyle that the committed cyclist enjoys. Upon some of these virtues I hope to extol in the coming pages.
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