Bikes as Transportation

Today's milestone was our first family trip to Lowe's by bike. While I have no special love for this big box store, it's sells some things we can't find elsewhere in town. It's also located on the farthest edge of Richmond, nestled next to a interstate exchange and the typical sprawl of chain businesses and parking lots that accompanies them.

None the less, we found routes there and back that involved minimal time of busy roads, arriving in 18 minutes*. In total, we rode about another 20 in-town miles today running typical errands. Again this seemed very reasonable on the electric cargo bike, and a workout on my fast recumbent to keep up.

click photo to see charger, connector and battery highlighted on Flickr

A lot of people ask how the electric cargo bike charges, so I thought I would post a photo.

It’s essentially the same process you would use with rechargable digital camera batteries, only with a bigger battery and a bigger charger.

Our LiFePO4 battery is size of a miniture loaf of bread and can be easily unplugged from the bike and plugged into a charger. The claim is that this needs to be done every 15 to 35 miles. Based on our usage, it appears that it may be more like 30 to 50 miles. (Because we don’t always engage the electric assist).

It turned out I had a rather ideal situation in my garage, with a electrical outlet directly above where we usually park the bike. So, here you can see our charger mounted to a pole, and the battery is literally just “plugged in” with an XLR connector while still attached to the bike.

With this battery it’s also healthy for it to keep it fully charged, so we can simply plug it in when the last ride for the day is done. Because the range exceeds our daily needs, this process implies that the electric assist is always available when we need it.

In sum, it takes just seconds to charge at an estimated of cost of less than a penny per mile. By contrast, I once calculated the total cost of operating my wife’s station wagon. It worked out that to require about one hour of work for to pay for every one hour of driving the car. That’s not exactly efficient if you factor all the money-earning time into your True MPH for driving your car.

If you are curious about your own true average speed in your vehicle you can download a spreadsheet I made to calculate it for yourself.

For more stories and photos about our electric cargo bike, see the related photo set on Flickr.

This is Ron's solution for getting a 32 foot ladder home from the store.

The store is only about 2 miles away, and the ladder weighs only about 50
pounds, so using a using 4,000 car seems like a particularly inefficient
solution, assuming Ron had actually found vehicle he could use that was capable
of carrying such a long load.

One alternative would have been to have it delivered by truck for $60, adding
20% to the cost. He could have potentially strappped it to the top of a large
truck or van, which could have involved driving to the van location, driving
the van to the store, driving home, driving back to the van the location, and
driving back home again. The time involved in that process could easily take longer
than just riding to the store and back by bike.

By using this Bikes-at-Work trailer, Ron was able to efficiently accomplish the task and enjoy a nice ride as well. Since the ladder was not particularly heavy, it didn't require a great amount of effort to carry it on the trailer.

The Bikes-at-Work comes in three sections. Extra sections can be left at home
if you don't need them, and the axle location can changed to suit the task at hand.
Here we put the axle all the way at the rear of the 8 foot trailer so that it easily
balances the 16 foot load.

Each 12 inch ceramic tile weighed 4 pounds and we needed 850 of them. That’s 3,400 lbs in tile alone. The floor project would also require about 12 bags of mortar at 50 pounds each. That brings the total weight of the project to 2 tons now— 4,000 pounds, before we even add the grout.

Of course, I calculated what it would take to carry all this on my bike. The tile alone would take 17 trips at 200 pounds per trip.

I decided cargo biking wasn’t practical for this job, but I still had the opportunity to have most of the material pass through my hands. I helped load and unload much of the 50 pounds bags of mortar, and two car-trailer loads of tile. By the end, I felt well acquinated with the full impact of 4,000 pounds. I could feel in my bones the amount of energy it took to move that material.

And for a least a moment, I appreciated cars for this. They were far better for carrying 2 tons of materials than a bike would be.

And that’s when it hit me like a ton of ceramic tile. The average American car weighs 2 tons.

Recently Dave Deming put his Yuba Mundo cargo bike to the test by attempting to haul about 1,000 bananas on it— about 400 lbs of them.

The tagline for the Yuba Mundo bike is “affordable mobility”, which translates to a cargo bike that starts at $1100 and is built to haul 440 lbs of cargo.

106:365 just a coupla nutcases, originally uploaded by julochka.

Having fun and attractive helmet options could help voluntary helmet use among yourself and your family.

Here are several alternatives to the standard recreational helmet design which may not be available in your local bike shop.

For less than $1,000, Oak Cliff performed a make-over of a city block, making it more walkable, bikable, enjoyable and prosperous. Here’s a “before” shot:

See the video for the result of the final transformation, complete with temporary businesses like a cafe, flower market, kid’s art studio and live music.

Visit the Streetsblog.net post for more information on this DIY street makeover.

Is this an event that could work in your town?

I’ve recently written about why INDOT should revise the plan for US 27. to follow Complete Streets principles.

I recently found another reason why INDOT should do this— because it would follows their own policy on Context Sensitive Solutions.

Ashley Hungate, an INDOT spokeswoman was quoted on a topic in a recent article by AARP, covering improvements needed elsewhere in the state to make Westfield, Indiana more bikeable, walking and livable. Here’s the quote:

INDOT strives to design its roadways for all users through its Context Sensitive Solutions policy, Hungate said. It uses community input to strike a balance between providing safe, cost-effective highways and protecting local values. “If we’re doing a project in a community, and they express opinions on what’s important to them, we try to accommodate them when appropriate and feasible,” Hungate said.

And “expressing opinions” is exactly what’s recently happened in Richmond. The City asked for a plan based on Complete Streets and over 100 people petitioned support for it.

I looked up the Context Sensitive Solutions program and found that “making streets more bikeable is often a goal of CSS projects”. CSS is also used to implement bike and pedestrian bridges like the Freeman Park / Oak Drive Connector which would truly be an improved and viable alternative to US 27 for non-motorized traffic.

With so many reasons to support Complete Streets in Richmond, I hope INDOT will respond soon to let us know that they will be following the new federal transportation policy as well as their own policies regarding accomodations for walking and biking.

Couch hunting: riverside break, originally uploaded by Mark Stosberg.

Another successful day of couch hunting.

I was unsure how I would load and unload this 225 pound waterlogged triple recliner by myself. But just at the right moments, friendly strangers showed up to help.