Recently in Commuting

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.

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.

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.

Dottie commutes by bike with style through winter in Chicago, and she's put together this great video on how to dress for winter bike commuting:

My family has acquired a new Bikes at Work cargo trailer and we’re starting to put it to use.

A significant deterrent to everyday bike riding is the prospect of getting chain grease on your clothing. European city bikes generally solve this problem with internal hub gears and partial or full or chainguards. The internal hub gearing also reduces the maintenance.

But here in the US, most bikes now have both front and rear derailleurs. And it’s just about impossible to find a chainguard that works in combination with derailleurs. But the new SKS Chainboard seems to be just that.

Read Patrick’s review of the SKS Chainboard on the Velocouture blog for a full review.

Wrists are prone to getting cold while winter bike commuting. With arms stretched out to reach the handlebars, a gap appears between jacket and gloves. When my wrists are cold, I'm cold.

I tried jackets with sleeves that cinched over my gloves. These slipped. I tried giant over-mitts that tightened over my jacket sleeves. These slipped too, and the big mitts were bulky to carry around in my pockets when I was off the bike.

So I made this simple sleeve extender, shown in this photos after the jump. It's super to easy to use, doesn't slip, and is very low bulk. It also happens to look like an extra long shirt sleeve, rather than technical mountain climbing gear.

There's plenty of articles and statistics out there damning the practice of riding a bike on a sidewalk.

That's why I so surprised to come across what's seen in this photo from Portland, Oregon, the bike capital of the United States.  On the Hawthorne bridge, bike traffic is directed on to the sidewalk.

As luck would have it, a Traffic Safety Specialist  in Portland noticed I was posted bike photos of Portland on Flickr, and invited me out for a beer while I was visiting.

Greg Raisman was prepared to be questioned about that. He was aware of the same bikes-on-sidewalk-are-evil rhetoric. He explained this was technically a sidepath, and the important difference here is how the traffic is managed in the facility.

A sidewalk typically has many conflict points with motorized traffic-- driveways and intersections. Those are the places where accidents to tend to happen on sidewalks and are the source of the danger from riding bikes on them.

On Portland's Hawthorne bridge sidepath there are zero conflict points between bikes and cars. Cyclists roll up their own ramp to enter the facility from a bike lane. There are no roads or driveways to cross on the bridge while traveling westbound, and cyclists have their own exit ramp at the other end (rather than being dumped at an intersection). Meanwhile, the curb physically separates the bike traffic from the cars, providing extra  safety and security compared to a painted stripe on the road.

I think the League of Illinois Bicyclists may have the right idea with their Sidepath Trail Calculator.  Rather than being simply for or against bikes on sidepaths, they calculate a rating based a number of factors, such has how many driveway and road crossings there are along the path.

I still believe that there are many cases where riding a bike on sidewalk or sidepath could be more expensive for a city to support and more dangerous for bicyclists.  Bridges generally don't have intersections in the middle of them and strike me as a place where a sidepath could be a safe and effective facility for bicyclists.

Greg Raisman was one of many gracious people I met in Portland, Oregon last week. He's a Traffic Safety Specialist for the City of Portland, and he gave me this tip for those interested in advocating for bike lanes in their own towns.

There are likely roads in your own community that you suspect are already wide enough to accommodate a bike lane-- They just need stripes to mark the lane. You can check road widths yourself by using a measuring wheel, found for about $10 on E-bay.  A measuring wheel measures distances as you walk. To measure the road width, you just have to walk across the road while rolling the wheel.  Keep in mind these details and do the math to determine if you've already got room for bike lanes:

Road Element	Width
Standard through traffic lane	11 feet
Standard parking lane	8 feet
Standard bike lane	5 feet
Standard center turn lane	12 feet
Possible gutter	1.5 feet
Possible buffer*	3 feet

* The possible buffer zone is between parked cars and the bike lane, to prevent "dooring" and allow for possible snow piles in winter.

There are cases where narrower minimum lane widths for all cases may be acceptable. Check the federal standards for details.

Armed with these calculations, you can make a much stronger argument to City Hall if you can show definitively that no costly road width expansion will be needed, and you can say with certainty that bike lanes will fit.

But you may also  find that there is in fact no room to simply stripe a bike lane on roads you check. There are still possibilities to make roads more bikeable by using a road diet or the bike boulevard concepts. I expect to write more about these in future posts.

I ordered my measuring wheel tonight. I'll be interested to see what I learn about my city streets!

While "quick trips to the store" can feel they are sucking my life away, completing the task this morning by bike was fun.