a midway bikelog

(via surlyblog, get some permalinks, guys!)

A city councillor in Toronto, Canada has this to say about bicycles in their fair city:

“I can’t support bike lanes. Roads are built for buses, cars, and trucks. My heart bleeds when someone gets killed, but it’s their own fault at the end of the day.”
-Rob Ford Toronto City Councillor
Email: councillor_ford@toronto.ca

here’s my response:

“I can’t support bike lanes. Roads are built for buses, cars, and trucks. My heart bleeds when someone gets killed, but it’s their own fault at the end of the day.”

Your quote was linked on some sites online, and i’m sure you’re getting a lot of response from this. I hope that you take the time to read through it and reconsider your position.

This is a very narrow view of public roads, insulting to your constituents and wasteful of public infrastructure. The public roads are built for the public, for the people to use. There should be no discrimination against those who cannot or choose not to use motorized transportation in their daily life.

I don’t know the history of roads in Canada, but in the United States, the modern network of pre-interstate roads were established in large part due to pressure from bicyclists at the turn of the 20th century. Roads at the time were plain dirt, and impassible in the wet season even to horse traffic. Bicyclists demanded and got graded gravel and cement roads, literally paving the way for the soon-to-arrive motorcar.

Automobiles make up the majority of traffic on the roads, but that does not mean that they have domain over roads the exclusion of all other traffic. It’s the duty of the government to assure equal public access to public facilities, and to society’s benefit as well. Every person who chooses to cycle, walk, or take public transportation instead of driving is improving he quality of life for everyone around them by reducing congestion and pollution.

Toronto should be embracing those who choose to cycle, and supporting them with a safe, efficient infrastructure. This is already being done by other world-leading cities such as London, who have developed a comprehensive plan to reduce carbon emissions and traffic congestion within the city. London is bigger and more crowded, yes, but they are only on the front lines of a trend all cities will be facing soon, if something more isn’t done about getting more humans on the street and fewer machines. See their complete plan here:

http://www.london.gov.uk/mayor/environment/climate-change/ccap/index.jsp

–
Bill Connell
St. Paul, MN, US

You can tell Spring has finally arrive here – not because the snow disappeared, or because it’s warmer out, or because of the bulbs sending spikes up, but because the streets have finally been swept. Thanks, city of St. Paul! At least a few days respite from dodging 5 months worth of broken glass and roofing nails.

Spring makes me want to start tinkering again, as i move the bike shop back out to the garage (instead of the basement), and the weather gets warm enough to work out there at night. My latest idea is to try to build a couple of bike racks, filet-brazed, from steel tubing.

I’ve been watching the racks that Alistair Spence (pictured) and CETMA have been making, and watching Curt Goodrich do some brazing was the final inspiration to start something myself. Watching Curt braze is deceptive, because he makes it look really easy, and i know enough to know it’s not THAT easy. Mainly, he’s just very calm and patient; it’s obvious that he’s spend a LOT of hours with a torch in hand.

I don’t think i’ll start with the sort of porteur racks that a lot of people are building, because i’m not sure any of my bikes will work well with that sort of front load. First up will probably be a rear rack with good side support, for carrying my Pa Panniers (which have no structure, really, and can get into the spokes with the Blackburn racks i have now).

I don’t plan to make this a big sideline or anything, just a couple for my own bikes, maybe some other things. I haven’t welded or brazed anything since high school metal shop, but a little copper plumbing work here and there. I’m looking forward to giving it a try, pics to come, if there’s anything worth showing.

I can’t remember the last time oxygen came up three times in a day, but it did today, in very different contexts.

1. We’re getting ready to redesign our website at work, now that our current design is close to 3 years old, and the company is outgrowing the current design somewhat. We had a meeting this morning with a designer who brought a lot of samples of his work, and among them were sample size cans of Oxygen+ (peppermint), for which he had designed the brand and packaging. It’s supposed to give you an energy boost, but i didn’t try it out myself.

2. I attended a 1-day bicycle framebuilding workshop last saturday that was organized by a local bike shop with a local framebuilder of excellent reputation. It was a super fun time, hanging out in a metal shop all morning asking questions and seeing him braze a couple of joints and a dropout, looking at a frame in progress and the various tools and parts around. It inspired me to look at trying to build something simpler, like a luggage rack for one of my bikes, so i’ve been doing a little research into torches and steel tubing. The equipment is a little expensive to try out as a hobby, but the cheaper mapp/oxygen setups might work fine. So i found myself reading up a bit on torches, brazing, and oxygen cylinders in the afternoon.

3. I got an update on my dad tonight, and he now has oxygen with him all day. It’s a good news-bad news thing. He has been doing well in general lately, but had a setback last week when his cardiologist doubled one of his meds, apparently in error. He ended up with trouble breathing and fainted a couple of times and ended up in the ER. So, the oxygen is a bit of a hassle, but he feels much better and is sleeping better, which was a problem. And the not fainting – not fainting is good. Ending the day with news like this makes oxygen uses #1 and 2 seem all the more frivolous.

If you ride in St. Paul, you probably know the hill. It’s short (1 block) but steep (gaining about 300 feet), so it’s a nice challenge. I’ve decided to make it some sort of fitness benchmark for the year, and i’ll try to revisit it maybe every couple of weeks.

Yesterday’s (1/13/07) benchmark time was 1:21. I was getting a stitch in my side about 2/3 the way up, and had to downshift to grind out to the top. It took about 5 minutes to catch my breath again.

I wonder if i can beat a minute. Somebody must have already, right? Anybody have a record?

via the Bike Show

Ken Livingston, current Mayor of London who has a plan to make London the greenest city in Europe, recently had this to say about SUV drivers there: “Buying a gas-guzzing 4×4 vehicle is an individual choice, but it creates carbon emissions that contribute to global warming and harm everyone. It should be no more socially acceptable than to claim the right to dump rubbish in the street.”

One large part of the London plan to reduce traffic and pollution is the congestion charge that is applied to people who want to drive within the downtown area. A proposed revision to that charge would create an additional higher charge to drivers of larger vehicles (SUVs). Here’s a link to the complete plan on the city of London website.

I don’t think such a congestion charge would work well here simply because of the sprawling geography, but it’s an interesting idea. We do have something of that beginning with the for-pay express lanes on 394, but that only applies to single-vehicle occupants, and i don’t know how many people buy passes for that toll lane.

Another option, of course, is to change the major highways into toll roads such as in Chicago. Again though, Mpls-St. Paul is too sprawling a city to manage that, and likely a good chunk of traffic would divert to major city streets instead, just moving the problem to everyone’s front yard and creating still more sprawl from those trying to escape the mess.

Taxing the roads is the wrong approach though, and i think London is on the right track; they’re making it part of an overall plan to reduce carbon emissions in an effort to fight the source of global warming. As part of this effort, it makes sense to go after the low-hanging fruit of SUVs and other sources of energy waste. Since a congestion charge is impractical, how about changing the structure of the vehicle tax to base it on the efficiency rather than the selling price of the car? Use the money to pay for programs such as low-cost loans for homeowners to properly insulate older homes.

Here’s another nice idea: post weight limits on residential streets.

Yesterday we got hit with the second big snowstorm in a week here in the twin towns. Everything was fine in the morning until about 8:45 when the big flakes started to fall. My office closed for the day (hooray for managers living in the ‘burbs), but all the kids had school for the full day. We had some fun hanging out in the coffee shop, running a few errands, shoveling multiple times and watching it all pile up.

Around 6 pm, me and the mrs took a spin around the neighborhood to test out her super nice new commuting light. Fun times. I could have ridden for an hour – i love a bike ride on fresh snow. The only problem was visibility, as the snow was coming down to heavily that after 15 minutes neither of us could see where we were going (she with sunglasses and me with the goggles).

We got another 4″ or so overnight, making about another foot on top of the foot or so from last weekend. This morning, schools are closed for the day but my office is open. Someone didn’t coordinate that very well… I was about to bike in to the office to take advantage of the low traffic and minimal salting, but decided the sliding car factor was too great. Perhaps another snow ride tonight!