Inventing One Kind Of Superhighway, Getting Another

Folks in that part of the world invented one kind of superhighway.  Now they might get another.

San Jose is the largest city and seat of Santa Clara County, California.  Just south of San Francisco, the county is part of "Silicon Valley," where the technology that brought this blog to your screen--often called the "information superhighway" was developed.

Now it might see a "superhighway" that's more closely associated with parts of Europe than any place in the United States.  It would run 10 miles  through San Jose and Santa Clara. What would differentiate it from the county's  800 miles of bikeways and 200 miles of dedicated bike trails is continuity.  Local activists and commuters, like their counterparts in other US locales (including my hometown), complain that too many lanes and trails go from "nowhere to nowhere," beginning and ending in seemingly-arbitrary spots, and are thus not useful as transportation conduits.

From San Jose Spotlight

This "superhighway" was recently proposed as part of the Santa Clara Countywide Bike Plan.  Three different routes have been suggested.  Information about the progress of this project can be found on the Valley Transportation Authority's website--which you will access, of course, by the other kind of superhighway.

Can Silicon Valley Become Amsterdam--In India?

Efforts to get people out of cars and onto bicycles are most commonly associated with European (and, to a lesser extent, North American) cities with relatively young and affluent populations.  Most of them are places that have long been established as regional, national or worldwide centers of commerce, culture and technological innovation.  

Those cities, with a few exceptions like Portland, are relatively compact:  San Francisco, Montreal and New York are hemmed in by water, while European capitals are ringed by long-established, if smaller, municipalities.  In other words, they can't expand, so if people move in, their population densities increase--and housing becomes scarcer and therefore more expensive.  That, as much as anything, puts a damper on the growth in such cities' populations.


Most people don't immediately associate car-to-bike campaigns with rapidly-growing cities in developing, low- to middle-income countries.  If anything, people want to parlay their newfound prosperity, or even flaunt it, with their new automobiles.  That their shiny new machines may spend more time idling in traffic than moving to any particular destination seems not to deter them from getting behind the wheel rather than astride two wheels.

So it is in Bangaluru, known in the English-speaking world as Bangalore.  It's often called "The Silicon Valley of India" for its concentration of high-tech firms, which have drawn migrants from the rest of India. As a result, it's been one of the world's fastest-growing cities and metropolitan areas in the world: The 2011 Census counted 8.4 million residents (about the same number as my hometown of New York) but current estimates say that there are between 10.5 and 12.3 million people living in the city where fewer than 3 million lived in 1981 and only 400,000 took up residence in 1941.

But Bangaluru, like other rapidly-growing cities in developing countries, has even more knotted and chaotic traffic than what one encounters in First World cities.  As I've mentioned before, millions newly middle-class Bangalureans have taken to driving.  The real problem, though, seems to be that the city's roads simply can't handle so much traffic.  They are narrow, and many people won't cycle because they don't want to compete with motorized vehicles for space.  Worse, they are jostling with cars and trucks on the roadway while dodging huge potholes:  Before the boom, there wasn't money for maintenance, but now it's difficult, if not impossible, to keep up with needed repairs.  

The possible model for Bengaluru

So, the city and its regional administration are working on a several-pronged plan that both takes its cues, and learns from the mistakes of, other schemes in the area's cities.  In those places, bike lanes were built but people didn't use them because they weren't useful for getting to wherever they had to go or were simply seen as not much safer than riding on the streets.  Also, Bangaluru planners have learned that city-owned bike share programs have had a number of problems and, as one report put it, while municipalities are good for providing the needed infrastructure, private companies are better at providing share bikes.  A problem with those services, though, has surfaced in cities all over the world, especially in China:  the bikes are left anywhere and everywhere when people are finished with them.  So, a possible solution is to have a company like Yulu or Ofo provide the service, and for the city to build dedicated parking facilities--like lots for cars, only smaller--where people can leave, or pick up, bikes.

Could India's Silicon Valley also become its next Amsterdam?

Building in 3D

I guess we shouldn't be surprised.

On Friday, I wrote about a 3D printed airless tire.  When I learned about it, I knew that other 3D printed parts were being made somewhere. 

Turns out, I underestimated the speed of technological progress.  Now there's a 3D printed bicycle that looks like a sci-fi version of an urban commuter bike--and is said to be stronger than titanium.

The new machine was made by Arevo, a Silcon Valley (where else?) startup that specializes in "additive manufacturing" (tech-speak for engineering-level 3D printing).  The company is backed by the venture capital arm of the Central Intelligence Agency, which isn't surprising when you realize that the armed forces are the main drivers behind 3D's evolution from a novel way to make chintzy plastic figurines to a sophisticated technological process used to make weaponry.

(Few people realize that the Silicon Valley became, well, the Silicon Valley largely because of military contracts during the Cold War.  So, if you're going to thank a soldier or sailor for anything, make sure it's for making the iPhone possible, not for invading Iraq!)

The bicycle's frame was made first, as a single piece, and the other parts were made.  According to Arevo CEO Jim Miller (formerly of Google), it took about two weeks to make the bike.  

Knowing that answers the question folks like me ask about carbon fiber bicycles: "Why does something made of plastic cost so much?"  Well, carbon bike frames--whether of custom chassis from the likes of Land Shark or the Specialized items your local bike shop offers--are made by workers who lay, by hand, individual layers of carbon fiber impregnated with resin around a mold of a frame.  The frame is then baked in an oven to melt the resin and bind the carbon strips together.

Arevo takes workers out of the process.  It uses a "deposition head" on a robotic arm to print out the three-dimensional shape of the frame.  The head then lays down strands of carbon fiber and melts a thermoplastic material to bind the strands, all in one step.   The result is that Arevo can build a frame for $300, even in The Valley.  That is about what it currently costs to build a similar frame in Asia.

Of course, even though Miller is reportedly a cyclist, he doesn't see Arevo as the next Schwinn or Trek or Specialized:  The company is working on a head that can run along rails and print larger parts, avoiding the need of ovens in which to bake them.  "We can print as big as you want--the fuselage of an aircraft, the wing of an aircraft," he says.

Surely he knows the Wright Brothers started as bicycle builders...