The Bike Czar In A Black Dress

In the past decade or so, cities all over North America and Europe have tried--sometimes in misguided ways--to encourage more people to ride bikes to work and school, for shopping and for fun.  Lanes have been built, share programs started and commissions and committees organized or appointed--and organizations consulted--for insights into what would lure people out of four-wheeled vehicles and onto two-wheelers.  In some cities, these efforts have been followed by (if not resulted in) rapidly-increasing numbers of cyclists.

Atlanta, it seems, has not been one of those cities.  Nearly three years ago, Mayor Kasim Reed set a goal of making  his city one of the most "bike friendly" in the US by this year.  Much to his credit, he has worked hard toward that goal in a city with some of the worst traffic and longest commutes in the nation.  But,  a torrent of anti-bike backlash caused the Georgia Department of Transportation to remove bike lanes from its plans to re-stripe Peachtree Road, one of the busiest thoroughfares in the city.  And the bike share program, scheduled to begin before the end of 2015, now won't launch until this coming summer.

On the other hand, Dogwood City has just made a bold move that no other community--no, not even Portland or Minneapolis--has ventured.  One of the problems in most cities is that bicycle lanes and other infrastructure come under the purview of the local Department of Transportation or its equivalent.  Because there are many more motorists than cyclists (yes, even in the Rosebud and Mill Cities) and because bicycle infrastructure commands relatively small sums of money, bicycling is usually not a high priority in most DoTs.  In most places, there is not a full-time planner, engineer, organizer or lawyer who deals exclusively or even mainly with cycling-related issues.  Thus, there is neither an advocate nor an ombudsman for cycling in most places.

It looks as if "The Big Peach" might have solved that problem.  Last month,  the city hired Becky Katz as its first Chief Bicycle Officer.  The Atlanta Bicycle Coalition made the position possible, in large part, and received a five-year grant from the Atlanta Falcons Youth Foundation to help fund it.  The city has promised to add additional money.

Becky Katz

I knew nothing about Ms. Katz until I read about her appointment today.  If nothing else, she has firsthand knowledge of what cyclists in "The Big A" face:  She is a cyclist who, last year, was rear-ended by a motorist while she was riding on a wide street with low traffic.  The impact tossed her onto the windshield, where her helmet shattered the glass and she broke a shoulder socket  and wrist.  Her bike was totaled. 

Within two months, she'd bought another bike and was on it, even more determined to make cycling safer and more accessible in her city.  "Within moments [of being struck], I was thinking, 'this has got to be better.'"  She also realized that making streets safer for cyclists would also mean making them safer for motorists.

Since becoming the city's bike czar in October, Katz has been focusing on gathering data about cyclists--where and when they ride, where there are crashes and which roads are most stressful to cyclists and pedestrians.  "Data builds a strong case for why bike infrastructure can help all users of the road," she explains.

It may also--I hope--Atlanta avoid some of the mistakes other cities have made.  If it does, the delay in starting the bike share program or cancellation of bike lanes on Peachtree Road may turn out to benefit the community of cyclists in the Empire City of the South.

It's Too Cold....For What?

This afternoon, the temperature has risen to 55F (12C).  That's about 12F (6C) higher than normal for this time of year. 

Three days ago, the temperature dropped to -1F (-18C) at dawn, giving us the coldest morning we've had in over two decades. It was Valentine's Day--a Sunday, to boot-- and when I went outside, nobody was on the streets.  (That might mean that a lot of babies will be born in November.)  None of us who might normally ride on a Sunday were pedaling down the pavement.  Even the delivery men for the 24 hour diner seemed to have taken the morning off.

Before that, we had a week or so of relatively mild weather, preceded by a blizzard, which was in turn preceded by warmer-than-usual-for-early-winter temps.


In years past, there always seemed to be a spell of a few weeks when the weather was "too cold" for most people, including dedicated cyclists, to ride.  Of course, what people in this part of the world deem as "too cold" would seem absolutely tropical in, say, northern Quebec or the eastern plains of Montana.  But I would imagine that even in such places there are conditions which even the hardiest and most seasoned cyclists, hikers and other outdoorspeople dare not venture.

This year, though, we seem to have had almost no such stretch of weather.  Aside from a couple of abnormally cold days (like Valentine's Day or the weekend of the blizzard), we have not had terribly wintry conditions.  Within two days of the blizzard, the temperature rose to 50F (10C), so the snow didn't remain for very long.  And the snow that fell in the wee hours of yesterday morning is a memory, distanced by the warmer-than-average conditions we're having today.

Still, when I showed up at  my job today, one of my colleagues expressed disbelief that I cycled in.  "It's too cold!"

"Too cold for what?" I wondered aloud.

"Well, it is still winter, you know.  You must be cold." 

I wasn't, but I took her up on her offer of a hot chocolate.  It is indeed winter, whether or not "it's too cold".

Prone To Revival--And Deservedly So, I Think

Shakespeare never had an original idea--for a story, anyway--in his life.  George Orwell took almost everything that makes 1984 worthwhile--including the notions of "thought crimes," "Big Brother" and its mathematical theme--from We, a novel from a little-known Russian writer named Yevgeny Zamyatin.  (Orwell reviewed the book three years before 1984 came out.)  D'Artagnan was not the creation of Alexandre Dumas; rather, Dumas lifted him--and Athos, Porthos and Aramis--from the first volume of Gaeten Courtilz de Sandras' book called The Memoirs of D'Artagnan.

In the book of Ecclesiastes, we find this:  "There is nothing new under the sun."  So it is in the world of literature and the arts.  So it is in science and technology.  And so it is in the world of bicycling.  In the four decades I have been cycling, almost every "new" idea had been done before, sometimes in the very early history of cycling.  As I mentioned in two recent posts, suspension is one such idea.  Another idea is that of building frames of anything besides steel:  During my formative years, carbon, titanium and aluminum frames were not only created; they were available to the general public (for a price, of course).

Then there are those ideas that never really go away but are nonetheless "rediscovered" by a new generation of marketing types (or, sometimes, actual cyclists who haven't been in the sport for very long).  One such concept is that of the recumbent bicycle.

I am not about to dismiss recumbents, as I have never ridden one myself.  I don't doubt that, as their proponents claim, their aerodynamics can make them faster than standard bicycles.  My concerns about them are twofold:  How well and comfortably can a rider use his or her muscles in such a position?  (At my age, the answer to such questions is more meaningful than it was when I was younger!)  And, how visible is a recumbent rider in traffic?

(I'll admit that the second question is the one that has done more to keep me off a recumbent!)

That there were recumbents before Dan Henry and others were touting them doesn't surprise me.  It's also not surprising to note that in the years just after World War I, some cyclists experimented with riding nearly prone.  Marcel Berthet--for whom the Lyotard No. 23 platform pedal was named--was concerned with aerodynamics, as were other racers and designers who flew or worked with aircraft during the war. 

The Challand Recumbent

But it's truly interesting, if not shocking, to see that some two decades earlier, in 1896 a horizontal bicyclette normale was exhibited in Geneva.  The Challand recumbent, named for its inventor, was said to allow easier mounting, improved stability and greater thrust on the pedals. It had just one problem, though:  It weighed about three times as much as its rider!

Berthet and others who revived recumbents after the War used them in record attempts. Charles Mochet designed his own recumbent--dubbed the "Velocar"--and used it to set records for the kilometer, mile and hour.  In the case of the latter, he broke a 20-year-old record by half a kilometer.

His exploits ignited a debate as to whether the "Velocar" was actually a bicycle.  The Union Cycliste Internationale (UCI) answered that question in the negative, and banned recumbents, as well as aerodynamic devices, from racing in 1934.  The UCI then declared all of Mochet's records invalid.

Given all of the controversy about pharmaceutical and mechanical doping, the controversy over recumbents seems almost quaint now.  Recumbents are, I believe, here to stay, just as--unfortunately--doping is.