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Showing posts with label bikes. Show all posts

Whoops - No Brakes! Never Mind, I've Got a Helmet

An email from the Environmental Transport Association today announces news of the latest campaign to force everyone under 14 to wear a cycle helmet. The call for compulsory legislation comes from the Bicycle Helmet Initiative Trust, a charity that promotes helmet use amongst children. Their latest campaign will shortly be hitting every school in England, Wales and Northern Ireland, in the form of teachers' packs and DVDs.

But there are a few catches. Despite widespread evidence showing that head injuries amongst children occur in a wide range of circumstances, and particularly whilst in a car, this campaign is targeted at under 14's only when they are on a bicycle. Second, the campaign is being funded by GEM, the motoring organisation. What would a motoring organisation be doing funding a campaign that wants to see cycle helmets compulsory for under 14 year old cyclists?

But perhaps most remarkable of all, GEM themselves have produced a "guide to safer cycling" featuring a child on a bike with a disconnected front brake. This potent brew of motoring interests, cycle helmet compulsion and dodgy brakes has provoked a stream of critical comments on the GEM blog. Have a look for yourself. Interestingly, whilst I've been writing this, GEM have pulled the link to the document in question.

The sad thing is, this is precisely the sort of "advice" that reaches our decision makers via well-paid lobbyists, whilst the real knowledge that is out there about cycling safety, and has been regularly featured on this blog, gets routinely ignored.

Perhaps the last word should go to our great friend and film-maker Mike Rubbo, who made this short film a while ago about an Australian cyclist who refuses to obey the compulsory helmet law down there.

Cycling Campaign Wins Bike Hub Funding

Darlington Cycling Campaign has been awarded one of just three New Ideas Fund to build on the work of the Beauty and the Bike project. The Campaign's submission is for a bike pool of the kind of dutch-style bikes that are proving so popular amongst young women who want to cycle. With funding for between 60 and 100 bikes, and support staff to promote the bike pool in workplaces, colleges and schools, the aim is to kick-start a cycling culture in the town that is more attractive to women in particular.

The documentary Beauty and the Bike, which will be premiered in Darlington Arts Centre on Wednesday 9th December, found that peer group culture is an important barrier to young women cycling. But where small groups got together to start using stylish bikes, the barriers began to crumble.

The Campaign also hopes that a growing culture of gentle cycling in the town will lead to better quality infrastructure. As one of the Beauty and the Bike girls said, "We're getting the lovely bikes, we've got the lovely girls to ride them. Now we are looking forward to the lovely cycle paths".

Nicole watching on as Andy and Marie crack on with the repair.

The Campaign was called out today on its first urgent repair job for the Beauty and the Bike project. The Cycling Campaign has been commissioned to provide a repair and maintenance service for the wonderful dutch bikes for the duration of the project. The bikes are being hired by the young women from Velodarlo, a self-managed bicycle sharing scheme that makes attractive dutch bikes available to the people of Darlington for a small charge.

Until now, we've been dealing with minor issues such as cabling, basket installs and re-tightening nuts and bolts after bike transit. But today Nicole called with a rear tyre puncture, after a thorn got into the inner tube. The Excelsior bike, like most in the Velodarlo fleet, has 28" wheels. A call to Halfords revealed that these are regarded as "rare these days" in this country. Funny how a town can be so behind the times that "modern" here is already becoming "out of date" elsewhere, but that's so-called entrepreneurial capitalism for you.

So a 27" inner it had to be. Step forward the heroes of the hour, Campaign members Andy and Marie. They were over to Nicole's house within the hour complete with tool kit, and had the tube replaced after another 30 minutes. After the job, they both said that the task with a dutch bike is totally different to the usual UK mountain bike, with chain guards and hub gears to grapple with. And with the size and type of spares also differing, the chances are that one of the local bike shops would have had problems. But they reckon that with a few more tube changes, the Campaign should have the collective knowledge to manage future issues without a problem.

Nicole is now back on two wheels again, and will be seen on the roads of the town tomorrow morning on her way to her Maths GCSE.

Good Luck Nicole!

A FASHION show on bikes will launch a cycle sharing scheme tomorrow.

Velodarlo will make stylish Dutch city bikes available for use by Darlington residents for a small weekly charge as part of Darlington Media Group's Beauty and the Bike project.

The project involves a film crew and photographer following a group of young women as they cycle around Darlington, showing that cycling can by stylish and has raised grants needed to fund Velodarlo.

To launch the bike hire scheme, members of the Beauty and the Bike project will be on their bikes modeling clothes from the Leggs, in Skinnergate, in the town centre at noon tomorrow.

If you are interested in joining Velodarlo call Darlington Media Workshop on 01325-488139 or e-mail velodarlo@mediaworkshop.org.uk.

- The Northern Echo: Beauties show model behaviour on bikes

The event will be held in Pease Place (below the statue) at 12noon.

Today Programme on Cycling - A Tory Travel Mode?

This morning's cycling item on Radio Four's Today programme raised the idea that cycling is a natural Tory past-time. No doubt prompted by the number of Tory MPs who now cycle to work at the House of Commons, correspondent Norman Smith asked Tory MPs what was so "right wing" about cycling.

This intriguing answer emerged from Ed Vasey MP:

The heritage of cycling (is) very much woven into the British character. It's also a right wing issue, because it's about the freedom of the individual. It's about taking one's own action against an over-bearing state.

Setting aside for a minute the vast numbers of Tory councillors we see regularly cycling through Darlington, does this imply that the next Tory government will be challenging the hegemony of the motor car, due to the latter's role as the bastion of our over-bearing state?

Or will this lead to cycle-friendly towns and cities becoming the new bastions of state control, with Tory MPs (and councillors) driving their cars as a statement of individual freedom?

Discuss...

Yuba Mundo available this week

Do you need to move a ladder, lumber, solar panels, poles, a kayak, metal sheets, pipes, bicycle boxes, bags of rice, coffee beans, boxes of produce, balls of cotton, tires, stack of clothes, equipment, adult passengers or children? Wnat to do it without a car?

The Yuba Mundo bike is available in the UK this week.

Bike congestion in Copenhagen

Wouldn't this be a nice problem to have in Darlington? This bike lane has 25,000 bikes a day using it!

[Found, as ever, via Cycleliciousness]

A century ago, the ball-bearing was invented. It reduced the coefficient of friction by a factor of a thousand. By applying a well-calibrated ball-bearing between two Neolithic millstones, a man could now grind in a day what took his ancestors a week. The ball-bearing also made possible the bicycle, allowing the wheel -- probably the last of the great Neolithic inventions -- finally to become useful for self-powered mobility.

Man, unaided by any tool, gets around quite efficiently. He carries one gram of his weight over a kilometer in ten minutes by expending 0.75 calories. Man on his feet is thermodynamically more efficient than any motorized vehicle and most animals. For his weight, he performs more work in locomotion than rats or oxen, less than horses or sturgeon. At this rate of efficiency man settled the world and made its history. At this rate peasant societies spend less than 5 per cent and nomads less than 8 per cent of their respective social time budgets outside the home or the encampment.

Man on a bicycle can go three or four times faster than the pedestrian, but uses five times less energy in the process. He carries one gram of his weight over a kilometer of flat road at an expense of only 0.15 calories. The bicycle is the perfect transducer to match man's metabolic energy to the impedance of locomotion. Equipped with this tool, man outstrips the efficiency of not only all machines but all other animals as well.

The ball-bearing signaled a true crisis, a true political choice. It created an option between more freedom in equity and more speed. The bearing is an equally fundamental ingredient of two new types of locomotion, respectively symbolized by the bicycle and the car. The bicycle lifted man's auto-mobility into a new order, beyond which progress is theoretically not possible. In contrast, the accelerating individual capsule enabled societies to engage in a ritual of progressively paralyzing speed.

Bicycles are not only thermodynamically efficient, they are also cheap. With his much lower salary, the Chinese acquires his durable bicycle in a fraction of the working hours an American devotes to the purchase of his obsolescent car. The cost of public utilities needed to facilitate bicycle traffic versus the price of an infrastructure tailored to high speeds is proportionately even less than the price differential of the vehicles used in the two systems. In the bicycle system, engineered roads are necessary only at certain points of dense traffic, and people who live far from the surfaced path are not thereby automatically isolated as they would be if they depended on cars or trains. The bicycle has extended man's radius without shunting him onto roads he cannot walk. Where he cannot ride his bike, he can usually push it.

The bicycle also uses little space. Eighteen bikes can be parked in the place of one car, thirty of them can move along in the space devoured by a single automobile. It takes three lanes of a given size to move 40,000 people across a bridge in one hour by using automated trains, four to move them on buses, twelve to move them in their cars, and only two lanes for them to pedal across on bicycles. Of all these vehicles, only the bicycle really allows people to go from door to door without walking. The cyclist can reach new destinations of his choice without his tool creating new locations from which he is barred.

Bicycles let people move with greater speed without taking up significant amounts of scarce space, energy, or time. They can spend fewer hours on each mile and still travel more miles in a year. They can get the benefit of technological breakthroughs without putting undue claims on the schedules, energy, or space of others. They become masters of their own movements without blocking those of their fellows. Their new tool creates only those demands which it can also satisfy. Every increase in motorized speed creates new demands on space and time. The use of the bicycle is self-limiting. It allows people to create a new relationship between their life-space and their life-time, between their territory and the pulse of their being, without destroying their inherited balance. The advantages of modern self-powered traffic are obvious, and ignored. That better traffic runs faster is asserted, but never proved. Before they ask people to pay for it, those who propose acceleration should try to display the evidence for their claim.

So says Ivan Illich.

Found on Kent's Bike blog, which has all the relevant links.

Yuba Mundo cargo bike

The Yuba Mundo cargo bike now has a UK distributer; This Is Loads Better (who also sell loads of other cool bikes).

The Yuba Mundo offers "environmentally friendly transportation, economic viability, unsurpassed cargo capacity, the ability to carry passengers, healthier commuting and affordable mobility". The Yuba is based on the Xtracycle long bike system.

If you order before the end of the month, you can get the 6-speed version for £380, instead of the usual £425. Ten percent of every order goes to the Re-Cycle charity.

Strike Bikes Built Under Workers' Control

135 sacked workers at the Bike Systems GmbH bicycle factory in Nordhausen,Thuringen (in the old GDR) have resumed production of bicycles under workers' control, by occupying the factory since 10th of July 2007.

If you are thinking of buying a new bike in the near future, have a look at their Strike Bikes web site. Click on "english" to get a babelfish-style translation. For 275 euros - under £200 - you get a city bike with a state of the art hub dynamo, three gears, and reverse-pedal braking. The workers are trying to build up 1800 pre-orders by 2nd October to create a viable basis for production under workers' control.

You can email your support to fahrradwerk@gmx.de

Looking for a way to transport the whole family?

Looking for a way to transport the whole family? The Cleverchimp blog features two videos; one showing four people on one bike (a Bakfiets - mam, dad, and two kids), the second of thirteen people on seven bikes.

If ever there’d be television ads for bicycling in the US, you can be sure they’d feature locations the actors drove to, and a whole lot of helmets and other specialty clothing. Dutch bicycle advocacy ads, in contrast, feature couples making out on a (single) bike, helmetless children on bikes, business suits and dresses on bikes blasting through motor traffic outside the lines, Saddam Hussein on a bike shooting Americans, and the pathetic qualities of drivers and driving, including the possibility of a car bomb taking you out. “Bicyclists live longer.”

Found on the excellent Cleverchimp blog.

New purchases, and a sale

Today we became a seven-bike family (four of them are mine). My wife got a free bike from her brother which has been sat in his garage for a couple of years. It fits her and is serviceable enough, although it's not the best bike in the world.

Since she wanted to be able to take out youngest around and about on it, we were thinking of a rack-mounted child seat, but when we was Halfords were selling the two-child trailer for 30% off, we bought that instead. This has the advantage that we can fit both kids in, as well as shopping and toys, and it seems pretty waterproof. It also converts very easily into a pushchair, which will come in useful.

We've had a play with it in the street, but not taken it on a longer ride yet. Once we put four stone of children in you can feel it but it's much easier to pull than riding a bike with heavy panniers fitted, which is what I expect a seat would feel like.

Tomorrow is the big test, when she takes out eldest to the town centre. Thinking about the route has shown to us again that there are still major gaps in the cycle network; pavements will be ridden on at times. If "The Magnet problem" is ever solved we will have an almost traffic-free route from home to town, but for now when faced with a choice between riding on a badly laid out bit of road with the cars or on the pavement we'll be choosing the pavement option I'm afraid.

So, that's the new purchase, what's the sale? Our car. We hardly use it but it costs us a fortune, so a week on Saturday it will make its final journey with us, to some friends in Leeds who are buying it off us. After that we will be car-free.

We've been lucky in that we made decisions which mean we had already minimised our car use: we chose to buy a house close to our family, I only applied for jobs I could get to on public transport, we live near to local shops (and only a ten minute walk from Asda), and we tend not to drive unless we have to. We'll see how it goes, and will report back here.

One less bike. One more car.

The same day that I posted Tricky's views on cycling in Darlington, he decided he would return to commuting to work by car. I'll let his own words explain why:

After another close shave yesterday by an ignorant motorist who doesn't know his highway code I have decide to stop commuting by bike and use my considerably larger Ford Mondeo and add it to the ever increasing queues on Yarm Road. Life is far too short, and after 15 years of commuting up and down Yarm Road, DBC have only made things far more dangerous for cyclists. The biggest culprit being the new bus lanes that even the buses don't use. Add to that the numerous pedestrian refuges and parked cars, and all you have is a road unsafe for cycling on.

Here is a question for you. When is a cycle lane not a cycle lane?

When it's a bus lane apparently, just after been pushed out of the aforementioned lane by a Citreon Xsara Picasso, who, give him his dues, did have his indicator on at the time when he very nearly side swiped me. When I confronted him about driving in a bus lane his defense for nearly hitting me was "Well you don't look like a bus either."

Can someone from the council amend their statistics on decreased car use and increased bike use, please?

The irony here is that, I believe, Tricky has been riding to and from work since before the Local Motion campaign began and before the council started to make changes.

Urban cycling: a survival guide

Each day this week, G2 is publishing tips on how to get the most out of cycling in UK cities. To open the series, Zoe Williams presents her alternative highway code - and advice on the best routes through London.

Parking problems and congestion

4x4 too big to fit in one car park space? Rather than buying two tickets, why not get the bus?

Worried about getting stuck in queues of traffic when the Eastern Transport Corridor work causes disruption on Haughton Road? Ride your bike or walk.

THE bike slowly wobbles along St Cuthbert's Way, past the magistrates' court and police station.

It clings nervously to the kerb as huge buses, lorries, and vans zoom past it.

The bike reaches Victoria Road roundabout, near Feethams, and comes to an uncertain stop.
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As the cyclist waits to turn right, the truck in front spits fumes over him. The cars behind rev menacingly.

This is cycling on Darlington's ring road - intimidating and unpleasant.

A feature article, Saddled with traffic - or dodging the pedestrians by Owen Amos appeared in today's Northern Echo on page 11, and is available online.

York Critical Mass

Slightly old news, but i thought it might be of interest.

Around 30 people took part in this month's Critical Mass bike ride on Friday, the second since regular rides restarted. For the first time, a group met on campus before the ride, to cycle in together. There was no Police presence and everyone enjoyed themselves.

Indymedia York - December's Critical Mass a success

Keep the Joy of Cycling Going

You get your first bike at the age of three. You learn to cycle on Xmas Day with your parents in tow. You cycle to school (illegally) on the pavement.

By 2007 you are at secondary school and some smart powers-that-be have built you a fantastic covered bike shed, so you can still cycle to school (illegally) using the pavements and muddy tracks.

Cycling is such a joy at this age. On Sundays you take your bike out to the nearest park and play cycle jumps all afternoon.

But don't think too far ahead. One day, if these powers-that-be have their way, they will chase you off the pavement and on to their deadly roads. Cycling in this world is all about defence, helmets and reflective clothing. But it doesn't HAVE to be that way. There are some cyclists out there who want to carry on with the joy well into their old age. "I hope some day you'll join us" (JL).