Tag: bicycle

Imperative Flats

Getting a flat tire is never fun, but all flats are not created equal. My black bike has had a slow leak for months.  I have to pump it up every few days.  Surely I’ve spent more time and effort inflating the tire by now than would have been required to patch the hole or replace the tube.  This is my least favorite kind of flat.  It’s a long term drain that’s never quite inconvenient enough to demand fixing.  Sometimes they linger until a second puncture forces you to remove the tire anyway.

In contrast, when you run over a big piece of glass as you’re rushing home with drinks for people who are supposed to be showing up any minute, there’s no ambiguity — you just sit down and patch it, right there, right then.  If it’s obvious where the hole is, you don’t even have to take the wheel off the bike, and it turns out not to be such a pain in the butt after all.

Late and Flat

(Especially if you remember to unseat the bead of the tire all the way around before trying to lever it off the rim… D’oh!)

48 Minutes and 75 Bikes on the Boulder Creek Path

I spent some time this afternoon sitting alongside the Boulder Creek Path out east of where it joins up with the Goose Creek Path, heading toward the ocean of office parks that employ a significant chunk of Boulder, a 7 minute ride from my house at 21st and Walnut.  As the sun headed for the continental divide, I took a picture of (almost) every bike that went by.  Over 48 minutes, I saw 75 bikes. 

Looking at the photos after the fact, I did some counting and found some things out about cyclists in Boulder.

Continue reading 48 Minutes and 75 Bikes on the Boulder Creek Path

A Weekend Bike Tour to Fort Collins

I’m organizing an overnight bike tour from Boulder to Ft. Collins and back the first weekend in April (weather permitting of course, who knows what it will do).  If you’ve got route suggestions or know anyone in Ft. Collins that might be interested in letting some weary cyclists camp in their backyard for a night and take showers… we could cook them dinner or take them out as thanks!  And if you know anyone who might be interested in giving bike touring a bite-sized try, let them know.

Population density vs. cycling rate

David Hembrow looks at the correlation between population density and cycling rate for a range of cities.  Or rather, he points out the remarkable lack of correlation.  Clearly there’s an intrinsic relationship between population (# of people) the distances people need to travel to access that population, and the density of the population, but even for cities with densities comparable to the US (1000-2500 people/km^2) cycling can be a very convenient mode of transport.

Car Free Kid Questions

When your 3 year old asks ‘Mom, can we get the kind of car that we keep at our house?’ What do you say?  Which of the motivations can be explained well to a 7 year old?  If some of your reasons for not driving are environmental, it’s hard to avoid the difficult question of judging other people for their behaviors. (via No Car Go)

The Selfish Automobile

A good overview of the cost of cars in terms of money, space, and time at Planetizen. Transportation costs are already unaffordable (>20% of household income) for the lowest income 40% of the US, and drivers only pay a minority of automotive costs directly.  Over the last half of the 20th century, the proportion of household income dedicated to transportation doubled.  Cars use ~20x as much spacetime (s*m^2) as bikes for the same commute, and ~200x as much as a pedestrian.  Interestingly the direct car costs mentioned are only about half what AAA estimates ($4100 vs. $8500 per year).

The Motorist’s Identity Crisis

What are the social connotations of cycling? If you’re driving, and you see someone on a bike, are you more likely to think they’re a loser?  That they’re poor?  That they ride because they have no other choice?  Or will you be irritated by their smug sense of superiority?  Can the same drivers have both of these experiences?  They only make sense when the drivers themselves never ride.  When it’s us and them.  The connotations of cycling are changing, and I think that’s a good sign.

Human Powered Comments on the Boulder County Transportation Master Plan

Reserved Parking

I went to one of the inaugural Boulder County Transportation Master Planning meetings… on January 13th.  I took notes, but never wrote them up (bad blogger!).  The process will probably take most of the year, and it’s looking out 25 years or so into the future, so really 6 weeks isn’t too big a deal, right?  If you haven’t already, please do take the Boulder County TMP survey.

Before the meeting there was a mingling session with a bunch of poster board presentations (available here as PDFs), mostly maps showing a bunch of different current and projected data.  Where people are, where jobs are, where trips go, both today and our imagining of 2035.  I talked briefly to George Gerstle (whose bicycle parking spot is pictured above) about the current and projected population centers in the region.

Boulder Population and Job Density 2010

Boulder County 2010: Blue=Households, Red=Jobs

The expectation is that there will be a lot of sprawling, suburban, car dependent development just beyond the southeast corner of Boulder County around Broomfield, in Jeffco, and also in the southwest corner of Weld County (which does not participate in RTD).  Also, growth is projected along the I-25 corridor, and along US 36.  By and large, what happens beyond the county’s borders is out of our control.  There’s a little bit of open space out there that we own, and we can control what kind of infrastructure exists within the county, but barring sudden and sustained increases in gas prices, it seems unlikely that these communities are going to embrace transit oriented development and compact urban design.  We’ve got sprawl at the gates, and we have to decide what to do about it.  These bodies politic are apparently not interested in planning around the possibility of significantly higher fuel costs in the future.

Continue reading Human Powered Comments on the Boulder County Transportation Master Plan