New York’s streets are safer and more livable than ever. More than half the households in NYC do not own a car. Polls show conclusively that the public supports the bike lanes, traffic calming, and pedestrian plazas. They also make economic sense. Unfortunately, most decisionmakers in the city do own cars, drive regularly and get free parking everywhere, so they have a clear conflict of interest with the people they supposedly represent.
Funding local transportation locally
Whenever Tax Day approaches, I end up thinking about where that money goes, and what it buys, and whether I really wanted any of it. Increasingly, it seems to me that the larger the governing jurisdiction, the less democratic it is, and the more despairing I am of having any influence over it. More than any other realm of policy, the way we build our cities — and thus our buildings and our transportation systems — influences our energy use and other impacts on the world around us. Land use is nominally controlled by local government (city planning boards, zoning commissions, etc). However, in many important ways the actions that local governments can take are limited by the state and federal policymakers. In particular, they’re limited by what they can get funded. The large jurisdictions take your tax dollars, and then set up hoops for small jurisdictions to jump through in order to get it back. This leads to an unfortunate homogeneity of policy, and discourages experimentation, or even imitation of things known to work in other places. At best you end up playing accounting games, doing things like building bike paths with federal flood mitigation money.
How exactly does this mitigate flooding again?
An Afternoon of Boulder Streetscapes
I spent the afternoon wandering around downtown, reading, sipping coffee, and taking pictures. I was surprised to see that Boulder had apparently been invaded (in the best possible way) by stylish olive skinned women wearing high heels, until I got to the Tea House, and remembered it was Persian New Year (also known as the Vernal Equinox). The music and dancing was just winding down, but the outdoor space was still filled with people, and social buzz.
Wrenching at Dan’s
The Boulder Bike Commuter Meetup group got together at Dan’s (now former) house, to play with his tools and hang out. It was nice to have a during-the-day event that lasted a little longer.
Kathy fixed a slow leak in her rear tire. First patch ever? Hopefully it held!
Kerry wasn’t feeling mechanically inspired (she’s been playing with her own tools), and just wandered around snacking and heckling. And napping. And cooking kielbasas.  Ann did a practice run of DIY fender (and pannier) making for the workshop she’s teaching at Community Cycles next weekend.
Getting a first taste of bicycle touring
I don’t even remember how I got the idea in my head that one could go bike touring. I must have heard of other people doing it, but growing up in Sanger, California I certainly didn’t know any of them. By the time I left home for college, I’d decided I wanted to go on a bike tour the following summer. I saved money I earned by working as an usher during my freshman year. I hadn’t been prepared academically for Caltech by my rural high school. I’d never had to study before. By the spring I was frazzled and depressed. I’d had mononucleosis, and had almost failed out entirely. But I had a bike.
At the time I was afraid of riding alone in the US and ended up buying a cheap ticket to the UK at the last minute, intending to spend the summer riding around the British Isles. I ended up meeting other bicycle tourists, and riding all the way to Turkey, via a newly open eastern Europe. I didn’t make it home until December, after five months of riding gravel roads through the Champagne vineyards of France, drinking cheap wine and eating baguettes and cheese before napping in the shade in the mid-afternoon.
Is the Anthropocene here?
Anthropocene — the Age of Man. First coined in irony, the International Commission on Stratigraphy is now debating whether to officially end the Holocene geological epoch. We humans are leaving home, in time if not in space.
American Bucket Bikes: CETMA Cargo
Finally, somebody is making long-john style bucket bikes (bakfiets) in the US! That someone is CETMA. The frames come apart into two pieces so that they can be shipped at somewhat reasonable cost ($300) by ground carriers. Total cost for the frame, at your door: $2150. Eccentric bottom brackets for use with internally geared hubs. Disc brake tabs. Integrated platform allowing flat-bed or box-bike use. Looks pretty awesome.
Why don’t I dress up like a traffic cone?
Why not dress like a traffic cone when you ride your bike? Lots of great reasons, from the Lazy Randonneur. Including, importantly, the desire to move cycling in the US beyond being some kind of sporty geeked-out niche activity.
This is what a closed-loop economy looks like today
A great series on the recycling industry in China from the writer of Shanghai Scrap. We need to build a closed-loop material economy, and there are pieces of it around today. This is one of them. Mountains of fist-sized shards of shredded cars, sorted manually by women who are earning more than your average Chinese college grad. Amazing photos.
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.
(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!)