Another Mixte In The Mix

Today's post won't be about Max, or any other cat.

It'll be about a bike.  Specifically, it'll be news about one of my own bikes--as if I haven't given you enough lately.

This item, though, has nothing to do with any of the bikes on the side-bar of this blog.  It has to do with my commuter "beast" bike that almost never enters my apartment.

For three years, that bike was a '70's Schwinn LeTour.  It was one of those rare bikes made in a woman's version big enough to fit (more or less, anyway) someone my height.  

(Funny that when I lived a man, I was of average height.  Now, as a woman, I am taller than about 90 percent of my sisters!)

Well, that bike was stolen.  That is one of the reasons, of course, to have a "beater" bike:  Losing it doesn't hurt as much as having a nicer bike disappear.  You buy such bikes cheaply and spend as little as necessary to make it do whatever you need it to do.  And, if you lose that bike, you repeat the process.

Anyway, I went to a few sidewalk and yard sales and checked Craigslist, where I found this:

From the information I've gleaned, Fuji made this Allegro during its 1986 model year.  The frame is constructed from "Valite" tubing.  How or whether it differs from the carbon steel Fuji and other manufacturers used on their cheaper models, I don't know--or care.  I must say, though, that the bike does feel livelier than the LeTour.  That may be a function of its geometery, which seems a bit tighter.  If nothing else, the wheelbase is shorter.

And, interestingly, this bike has SunTour dropouts with the "ear" for mounting a derailleur.  They actually look like the SunTour dropouts on my Trek 412, except for an additional set of eyelets:  a handy feature, as I've mounted a rack and fenders on the bike.

Originally, the bike had 12 speeds shifted with steel SunTour derailleurs and stem shifters.  As you can see, I took those off and turned the bike into a single speed.  The derailleurs were still operable, but the chain, freewheel and cables were rusted.  So were the springs and all of the other brake hardware.   In any event, I gave the derailleurs, brakes and some other stuff--including the flat-ish bars and brake levers that came with the bike--to Recycle a Bicycle.  And I replaced the brakes with a pair of Raleigh-branded Dia Compe centerpulls I had lying around.

If you read this blog regularly, you won't be surprised to see that I installed Velo Orange Porteur handlebars and bar-end brake levers.  I don't like the hand position on most flat bars:  The grip area of the Porteurs allows me to keep my hands in a position something like that of the ramp and brake lever hood area on the handlebars of my road bikes.  The Porteurs also allow me to use a stem with a slightly longer extension, which improves handling.

So far, this bike is working well as my daily commuter.  And, yes, it's a twin-tube mixte, so I feel at least like I'm riding with some style.  And isn't that what really counts? ;-)

In Cuba: Away From Bikes, And Back

It happened in the US after World War I.  It happened, perhaps to a lesser degree, first in England, then in Continental European countries, after World War II.  And it happened in China and Cuba during the early years of this century.

The "it" is this:  Greater prosperity led people to forsake the bicycles they had used for transportation and recreation in favor of automobiles.  When it happened in the US, surviving bike manufacturers sold the public on the idea that a bicycle is a toy--or, that if it is indeed useful as transportation, it is suitable only for those who aren't old enough to drive.  On the other hand, in England and the rest of Europe, adult cycling survived mainly as a recreational activity practiced by a slowly but steadily declining portion of the population.  

In the US, England and continental Europe, those who switched from cycling to driving seemed, as often as not, to see the bicycle as a symbol of privation--or of those things which they had "grown past" or "grown beyond".  This was particularly true for poor or working-class people who acquired the means to own a car:  They simply would not dream of "going back".  I believe that this is one reason why we see more bicycle disdainers among people who are, say, over 50 than among the young.  

Similar phenomena have taken place in China and Cuba.  In both countries, especially China, the bicycle was a, if not the, primary means of transportation-- particularly in cities.  The leaders most identified with those two nations--Mao Tse-Tung and Fidel Castro--had much to do with turning people into cyclists.  Both rulers saw the bicycle as a "people's" way of transportation, and the "Communist"* parties they led promoted it as such. 

But while the numbers of bicycles and cyclists in China grew steadily from the time of the Revolution (1949) until the end of the century, Cuba experienced a surge in cycling during the 1990s.  The Soviet Union, the island's chief benefactor, had just collapsed.  In its wake, the supply of cheap petrol that had flowed to the Pearl of the Antilles dried up.  So did the cash subsidies from Moscow, which meant that less was spent on public transportation and other infrastructure improvement.  

And so did the supply of bicycles from the Soviet Bloc.  Some people bought bikes from foreign tourists or other sources.  It was at that time that the first bicycles were manufactured in Cuba:  one model, called the Minerva.  It left most people wishing for imports and black- or gray- market bikes:  The Minerva was of "poor quality," according to Lazaro Pereira, a bicycle repair specialist in the city of Cardenas.  "The forks split, and when this happened, passers-by would mock people falling off their bikes," he recalls.

I imagine that alone would have stopped some people from cycling.  But in the early 2000s, the island began to recover from the loss of Soviet subsidies and cycles, and people abandoned two wheels in favor of four.  Bicycles developed a "negative connotation...associated with the poverty that characterized this period," according to Naybis Diaz Labaut, the owner of VeloCuba, a repair and rental enterprise in Havana.  She has seen "significant movement in the world of bicycles in Cuba" during the past five years or so, which has allowed her to open two shops.

All of the bikes she rents, or that her guides use on tours, were purchased from foreigners.  Even with the increased interest in cycling, the bikes sold in Cuba are "Chinese models made of iron" and "of poor quality," she says.   She believes that cycling "has a big future in Havana" even though it has yet to achieve the popularity it's regained in the provinces.

Still, one of the biggest challenges to the growth of cycling in Cuba, she says, is motorists--and not only because many of them won't get out of their cars and bike on their bikes.  There is a "lack of motorist education," she explains:  A generation of people has grown up without cycling, while some older motorists have been away from cycling for a long time.

That sounds like a problem we still have in the US and it won't change tomorrow, as several post-World War I generations didn't ride bikes as adults, or at all.  At least the Cubans have lost only a decade or so rather than a generation.

Cycling: Socially Profitable--And Good For Business

As an undergraduate, I took an economics class.  The thing I remember most is the professor intoning, "Marginal Revenue equals Marginal Cost", then pounding the podium  and shouting "Always!"  I don't recall, exactly, what that means, but I do understand--more or less--by two other phrases he seemed to use in every class:  "supply and demand" and "benefit cost analysis."

That last phrase might be one of the few things I actually understood in that class, which may be the reason why it's probably the only thing I took from that class and used in my daily life.  Well, sometimes, anyway.  I guess most of us perform some version of a "benefit cost analysis" when we're making important decisions.  

Of course, the "benefits" and "costs" are not always monetarily measurable, or even quantifiable in any other way.   For example, we might give up some free time in order to volunteer for something, or simply to help someone.  The "cost" of the free time can't be measured; nor can the "benefit" of serving meals at a soup kitchen.  

Sometimes the costs and benefits of something are both quantitative and qualitative or, if you like, empirical and subjective.  An example is a city's efforts to encourage cycling.  

What's interesting is that the authors of a study from the Spanish research group Applied Economics and Management, which is based at the University of Seville, set out to discover whether building cycling infrastructure in their city--and generally--is a net gain.  One thing that sets their study apart from others like it, however, is that the economists involved didn't try to calculate only business profitability.  Instead, they tried to measure what is commonly called "social profitability":  Does the investment make the city a better place to live?

Now, if you ask cyclists--or people who want to make their cities "bicycle friendly"--that question in reference to bicycle infrastructure, their reflexive answer would be "Yes!"  And, on the whole, the authors of the study agree, but with some caveats.

Those researchers seem to share some of my skepticism about bike lanes.  Indeed, they conclude that it's not enough that Seville has constructed 140 kilometers (about 87 miles) of bike lanes or 260 bike-share share stations.  They are just two elements of a scheme that would actually entice more people to ride bikes to work, school, shop or play.  The authors, therefore, advise that other  "complementary services", such as places to safely and securely park bicycles at the beginnings and ends of routes, are necessary.  Absent such measures, they say, cycling for transportation in Seville "will probably enter a period of stagnation, not to say decline."

Yes, they understand that "bicycle infrastructure" isn't just bike share programs and bike lanes and that they alone don't make cities "bike friendly."  (If anything, the poorly-conceived, designed, constructed and maintained bike lanes I've encountered probably keep people from cycling and discourage those who've just started.)  Moreover, they also acknowledge that public projects often end up costing a lot more than anyone anticipated, especially in a country like Spain, notorious for its corruption and the over-spending that results from it.

Even weighing in such factors, the researchers found a remarkably high social profitability to the bike lanes and stations that have been constructed. That, even as University of Seville Economics Professor Jose Ignacio Castillo Manzano, the chief author of the study, says that his team used a "conservative approach" that didn't take into account such factors as the reduction of traffic and noise levels or the national and international recognition the city has earned for its use of the bicycle.

So, the short answer is, yes, building bicycle infrastructure--the right kind, anyway is socially profitable--and good for business!