What Is A Bike—Or Bike Lane?

When asked to define “film,” the director Jean-Luc Godard replied, “truth at 24 frames per second.”

Would that New York City’s Department of Transportation would define “bike” so clearly! Then again, if the DOT would, would the city’s Police Department enforce any policy about who and what could be in a bike lane.

The cynic in me says that my question is rhetorical: Just about anyone who pedals a non-motorized bike or walks in a bike-ped lane would answer with an emphatic, “Are you kidding?”

Too many of this city’s bike lanes (and I almost) have been overrun with two-wheeled contraptions that have no pedal assist and that run by a twist of the driver’s wrist.  They, apparently, are lumped in with electric-assisted pedal bikes because they’re sold by the same dealerships.

Now the DOT wants to expand the definition of a commercial e-bike to 48 inches (122 cm) from the current 36 inches (91.4 cm) and “allow” a “maximum” speed of 20 mph (32 kph), which current e-bike riders routinely exceed.

Those behemoths would be even bigger than the delivery “bikes” UPS is trialing on city streets—and weigh 500 pounds (227 kg.).  Oh, and the “bikes” have four wheels.

In other words, they would be as wide as most bike lanes—which would effectively block everyone else—and, with their volume, mass and four wheels, could build enough momentum to maim or kill cyclists.

If such vehicles are allowed to use the lanes, are they still “bike” lanes?

A "Smart" Investment?

For all of the work that has been done with frame and wheel materials and configurations, and with new ways of shifting and braking, the single most important bicycle-related technological innovation--indeed, one of the world's most important technological innovations, period-- is 135 years old.

I am talking about the pneumatic tire, which John Boyd Dunlop created.  Note my choice of the last word in the previous sentence:  For decades, Dunlop was cited as the "inventor" of the air-filled rubber tire.  But neither he nor researchers on the subject seemed to have been aware of the patent fellow Scotsman Robert Thomson took out four decades earlier for his "aerial wheels," which were tubes of rubber strengthened by a process Thomson invented:  vulcanization.

 Thomson's creations were produced only in limited quantities mainly because rubber, at the time, was very expensive.  And, because there were no cars or planes, and very few of anything we would recognize as bicycles, the market for his creation was limited.  Apparently, though trials showed that carriages fitted with Thomson's "aerial"s were markedly faster and more comfortable, carriage owners and operators didn't line up to buy them.  My guess is that changing a flat tire would have been, to say the least, arduous.

Anyway, Dunlop's tires literally changed the world: Without them,  bicycles, cars and trucks would be no faster than horse-drawn carriages , and modern aircraft could not take off or land. And, ever since, owners and operators of vehicles have tried to eliminate the main drawback of air-filled tires--that they can flat--without sacrificing their buoyancy.

(To clarify:  For whatever advantages they offer, today's tubeless tires do not solve this dilemma.  Since they are filled with air, they indeed can go flat.)

It seems that every decade or two, someone or some company or another comes out with an airless tire.  A few years ago, I wrote about one I rode--the Zeus LCM--I tried about four decades ago, when I worked at Highland Park Cyclery in New Jersey. While I understood their appeal to commuters and folks who weren't confident in their mechanical abilities--or simply didn't want to dirty their hands or scratch their newly-enameled nails--I switched back to my air-filled tubed tires after a few rides.  

About two and a half years ago, I wrote about one of the latest attempts to create an airless tire.  Actually, unless I want to be struck by the ghost of my old physics teacher, I have to correct myself:  there is air at the core of the tire I'm about to describe, just as there is air in most "empty" spaces on Earth.  The difference is that the air at the hollow core of the Metl tire isn't pressurized and not necessary for the tire to hold its shape.

Rather, the Metl tire, as the name indicates, is kept round by a Slinky-like spring made from a nickel-titanium alloy and wound around the inside of a polyurethane-rubber tube, which has a replaceable rubber tread.  The alloy used in the spring, combined with its design, makes for a tire that, like conventional pneumatics, deforms on impact but springs back to its original shape.  This design is very similar to the tires used on planetary rover vehicles, so it's not surprising that tires were developed for the Smart Tire Company with NASA's cooperation.

The Metl tire, without its tread.

The treads are said to have a lifespan of 5000 to 8000 miles (about 8000 to 12,800 km) but the main body of the tire should last for the life of the bike, according to Smart.  They fit conventional rims and are now available--via a Kickstarter campaign--in 700C X 32,35 and 38C sizes.  The 35C width has a claimed weight of 450 grams (about 16 ounces, or one pound), which is fairly typical for a tire of its size.

A pledge of $500 will get you a pair of tires, and it costs $10 to re-tread them.  A complete set of aluminum or carbon-fiber wheels clad with Metl tires can be had with pledges of $1300 and $2300, respectively.  Just take note, dear investors (When have you ever seen that phrase in a novel?) that delivery of the tires and wheels isn't expected before next June.

When A Local Ride Turns Into A Journey

The other day, before I wrote my 9/11 commemorative piece, I took a ride:  a ramble through Queens and Brooklyn on Tosca, my Mercian fixed-gear.

My ride included some familiar streets and sights.  But I also took in some streets--or, more precisely, segments of them--I hadn't ridden before.

One of those thoroughfares, Carroll Street, spans the breadth of Brooklyn in two sections.  The first begins at Hoyt Street, near the borough's downtown hub and cuts through the brownstone neighborhoods of Carroll Gardens and Park Slope on its way to Prospect Park.  On the other side of the Park, Carroll continues along through neighborhoods less known to tourists:  Prospect-Lefferts Gardens, Crown Heights and Ocean Hill-Brownsville.  It was along that second section, in Crown Heights, that I chanced upon these houses: 

They combine the brownstone facades one sees on the other side of the park with Victorian-style cornices--and rounded, almost turret-like fronts I've seen only in Ridgewood and a couple of other Queens neighborhoods.  That block of Carroll--between Kingston and Albany Avenues--lies in the heart of the Hasidic neighborhood of the Heights.

After I took the photos, I walked Tosca (Carroll is a one-way street) to check out a store where I didn't think I'd buy anything but I wanted to see because it's unlike any in my neighborhood of Astoria, or in most other places.

Turns out, the place moved around the corner, to Kingston Avenue.  I peeked in; the young man working in it knew full well that I wasn't from the community and therefore wouldn't buy the mezuzahs (Star of David medallions found on the doorways of homes), prayer shawls or other items ultra-Orthodox Jews use in their daily lives and worship.  But he didn't seem to mind my being there and we exchanged greetings of "shalom" on my way in and out.

As I turned to my left, I noticed an alleyway in the middle of the block.  

The first painting, closest to the street, seems like a conventional representation of a Torah lesson--until you look closely.  But the sky-blue background gives the scene an almost ethereal feel and the rabbi's expression makes him seem, simultaneously, like a relative and an ancestor, as if the kids might be in a room with him or that he might have come to them in a dream or vision.

To their left were two other murals.  Is the girl--woman?--in awe or fear?  I couldn't help but to think about Edvard Munch's "The Scream"--which, I'm sure, the artist intended.  But is it a scream of ecstasy or terror, or something else?  I might've asked the same questions about the man in the other mural which, of course, evokes Van Gogh's "Starry Night."

Even though the compositions echo (pun intended) Munch and Van Gogh, I felt that the artist's real inspiration may have been one of the greatest Jewish modern artists:  Marc Chagall.  At least, the colors--themselves and the way they play off, with and against each other--reminded me of his paintings and the stained-glass windows he created for the cathedral of Reims, France, to replace the ones blown out during World War II.  In fact, in walking past the murals with Tosca, I felt as if I were in an open-air temple or synagogue.

On the other side of Kingston is another alley, with this portrait by the same artist:

I thought it was interesting how that artist used blue differently from the way it's used in the painting of the Torah lesson.  Here, it makes the man--whom I assume to be, if not a rabbi, then at least some sort of elder in the community.  

It never ceases to amaze me how taking a random turn during a ride in my city can take me on a journey!