Thursday, February 15, 2018

The "invisible" bicycle rider

Quick: Picture, in your mind, The Bicycle Rider.

What did you see?

No, we're not going to ask you to describe him (or is it her?). But you may want to compare your picture to the one that the writer Dan Koeppel described when he spent some time with people who ride their bikes not for recreation or for health, but because they have no choice.



Koeppel calls them the "invisible riders", and reports some surprising things:

"The Invisible Riders, for instance, log far more hours than most "serious" cyclists. They do so on equipment most of us wouldn't touch and under the most adverse conditions: at the height of rush hour on the busiest thoroughfares."

Here is a 2-3 minute article that highlights a few more surprises, and links to the longer original article in Bicycling magazine.

Yes, Koeppel wrote about riders in Los Angeles, and Princeton is not Los Angeles. Nevertheless, we do count neighbors who ride their bikes not as a lifestyle choice but because it's their only option. Then there are the people who come from other towns to their Princeton jobs, on their bikes. Because it's their only option. 

And this is why safe bicycle infrastructure is so cool: As Enrique Penalosa, the mayor of Bogota, said, "A bikeway is a symbol that shows that a citizen on a $30 bicycle is equally important as a citizen in a $30,000 car."
 

Thursday, February 1, 2018

Winter biking

Over in Arlington, VA, BikeArlington is calling for a "Winter Bike To Work Day", planned for Friday, February 9. The temperature expected to be at most 36F that day, just about the coldest day of the week, a suitable time to trial winter riding.



And why restrict biking to the summer months?
Here are a few myths around that.

It's cold.
True enough. But think about it: you can't beat excessive summer heat by taking off more and more clothes (most of us wouldn't go naked on the public roads). But in winter you can put on more and more layers until you're almost comfortable. The exercise will go the rest of the way to warming you up.

It's dark.
Please use your bike lights in the dark, winter or summer. It's safe. It's the law. There are rather glorious and long-lasting LED bike lights. Some have a handy USB port for charging. Most have a blink mode that makes it hard to miss. Here is a great picture highlighting (pardon the pun) all the ways you and your bike can be better visible at night, posted by the West Windsor Bicycle and Pedestrian Alliance.

There's snow.
Right. Even if there is proper cycling infrastructure, without the proper maintenance simply biking to work can still be classified as an extreme sport. But why build the right infrastructure if you can only use it half the year? Cities that are serious about biking as a mode of sustainable transportation, make sure to enable residents to bike year round.

In Linköping, Sweden, the city ploughs the bike lanes at one centimeter snow coverage. That's half an inch. Because bikes only have two wheels, and they're, you know, skinny. Yes, this means they plough the bike lanes before the car lanes. 

These practices keep ridership up, even in places like Oulu, Finland, which gets 100 snow days a year. According to this CityLab article,

"During winter, cycling levels are relatively steady even as temperatures range from 0 degrees Celsius to 20-below (that's 32 to -4 Fahrenheit). It's only past this arguably insane point that a cold-induced decline of 15 percent sets in."

The argument for proper maintenance is equally cogent for sidewalks and pedestrians. At the very least, let us ask the snow clearing crews to make sure sidewalks are unobstructed as they are ploughing the car lanes.


[Photo courtesy Katy Faas]