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Written by Joshua Liberles
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Wednesday, 10 October 2007 |
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When Joshua Hart traveled from his San Francisco home to attend university in Bristol, England in late 2006, he decided to take the “road” less traveled. No planes or cars for Hart: His trip started via San Francisco streetcar, continued via cross-country train, he set sail on a cargo ship across the Atlantic, more train travel in Europe, and mounted a bike for some of the connecting legs. Appropriately, Hart’s end destination was the University of the West of England where he would study Transport Planning.
Hart’s arrival in Bristol in October, 2006 coincided with a hotly-contested debate over the expansion of the city’s Stansted airport. Because of his trip’s timeliness, he caused quite a stir with the media in his new home: Hart was the subject of numerous newspaper features and appeared on the BBC and ITV.
From Joshua Hart, On the Level:
In response to BBC Radio Birmingham DJ Danny Kelly’s question, “what would you do if a future Mrs. Hart wanted to go on a beach holiday? I mean this (not flying) would be pretty limiting wouldn’t it? I responded that it’s now an open question whether there will even BE a beach to fly to within a generation or two, because of sea level rise. Besides, I’m sure that any future Mrs. Hart would be happy to take the train with me- we could even get a compartment– ooh baby.
Hart, who worked for the San Francisco Bicycle Coalition, gave up car ownership in 1999 and learned to rely on a combination of cycling and public transportation. Although at the time he did still travel by air, the destructive nature of aviation was too much for Hart to ignore. One flight across the Atlantic, notes Hart, has the same environmental impact as an entire year of automobile use. “I also learned more about why aviation fuel has more of a warming effect than fuel that is burned on the ground,” says Hart.
I have only been in a private car only once since arriving in Bristol in September (not counting 3 or 4 taxi rides). I committed to stop flying on the way back from Nice at the end of 2005 on Easyjet- I just felt physically sick taking part in an industry that is growing so fast with no regard for the environment. It just felt fundamentally wrong to be able to travel so quickly so cheaply. Eventually the costs will catch up with us. We are forcing our children to pay for our excessive consumption.
Louise Rouse, Hart’s girlfriend, embarked on a similarly-styled long distance journey. .She just completed her plane- and car-free voyage from the UK to Japan to study illustration and Japanese.
To learn more about around-the-world options for rail and sea travel, check out www.seat61.com.
Via On the Level - Car Free Blog. Photos via Flickr by: Himanshu Sarpotdar & Telstar Logistics
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Written by Joshua Liberles
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Wednesday, 10 October 2007 |
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Craig Calfee cut his teeth designing some of the first carbon fiber bicycle frames in the late 80’s. When Greg Lemond’s Team Z won the 1991 Tour de France aboard Calfee’s Carbonframes, Calfee had his first moment in the sun.
Calfee continued to fine-tune his designs of carbon bikes, and built a following among those seeking ultra high-end or custom rides. Calfee continues to work with carbon fiber but, beginning in 1996, Calfee started working with a new, exciting frame material: bamboo.
“I became interested in bamboo after my pit bull mix dog demonstrated how tough bamboo can be,” said Calfee. We built a few for fun and quickly realized the excellent vibration-damping qualities.”
The activity of riding a bike is about as green as you can get: it’s a super-efficient form of transportation. Fuel up the “engine” with a bowl of pasta, and you’ve got enough juice to propel you for 50 miles. The bike industry is less environmental, relying on a multitude of resource-intensive and toxic materials (titanium, aluminum, chromoly, etc.).
Growing bamboo, conversely, actually removes CO2 from the atmosphere.The bamboo is a renewable resource with no fertilizer necessary. Stalks are cut to the appropriate size, smoked, and heat treated. The stalks are then joined together using either carbon fiber or hemp lugs. The finished product needs no painting: just a little natural oil will preserve the frame and maintain its lustrous shine. Calfee offers frames for mountain, road, triathlon, cyclocross, and custom-design bikes.
Once Calfee proved the versatility and high-end performance of his bamboo bikes, he turned his attention in a humanitarian direction. In partnership with the Columbia Earth Institute, his Bamboo Bike Project works to bring inexpensive, durable bicycles to rural Africa. Communities are being trained to grow and harvest bamboo to build their own frames. Entire frames can be built without any need for complicated tools or even electricity – a Swiss army knife will do the trick! Only the components need be imported from Asia and India, rather than complete bicycles. This saves money in an area where bicycles are a necessity, decreases the environmental impact of shipping, creates a new local industry, and provides a far superior product.
Although the frames available in the U.S. are expensive ($2600 for a typical race frame), once the economy of scale catches up with the design, Calfee anticipates prices to go down. This represents an exciting development for those looking to “green their ride.” |
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Written by Joshua Liberles
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Sunday, 07 October 2007 |
It doesn’t come as news to most of us that bikes are the most efficient form of transportation ever devised. Most of the bike use in the United States is for fitness or just pleasure cruising. About as utilitarian as we tend to get is bike commuting or running occasional errands.
In places where bike use is strongly supported (i.e. Europe) or where economics precludes widespread use of costly vehicles (China, et al), bicycles are commonly used to transport cargo.
“Work bikes,” or utility cycles, while not unheard of in the U.S., are not in common use. Bikes can be adapted to carry more than 800 pounds on flat terrain. Of course acceleration is a bit slower, but once cruising speed is reached, the overall effort isn’t much more than an unencumbered bicycle. On more hilly or rolling terrain, up to 300 pounds can be transported in relative comfort.
The Bay Area groups who assembled the parks for Park(ing) Day used various work bikes and trailer configurations to transport all of the necessary equipment to the park-sites. Those committed to a car-free existence have done cross-city moves via bicycle. A well-equipped work bike can tow a refrigerator, stove, bed set, or couch.
Work bikes come in many shapes and sizes. There are the front-load types off add-ons, similar to those found throughout Amsterdam. These are popular both for hauling gear and loading up the kids and cruising around. More common in the U.S. are the one-wheeled B.O.B trailers (available with a shock-spring for off-road hauling) and the Burley trailers.
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Written by Joshua Liberles
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Saturday, 06 October 2007 |
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Stand at a busy street corner in midtown any weekday morning and just watch what happens. You'll see a dozen dangerous crimes a minute: drivers "squeezing" the light or just plain ignoring it, drivers bullying pedestrians out of the crosswalk in a very lopsided game of "chicken," drivers stomping on their accelerators and peeling out of a stalled lane into another that offers an irresistible ten feet of Open Road, only to shudder to a squealing stop half a second later.
Enforcement is essentially nonexistent: when was the last time you saw, or heard of, a driver being ticketed for not yielding the right-of-way to a pedestrian? Or for reckless driving after forcing a cyclist off the road? It just doesn't happen.
It is in response to these everyday experiences that Charles Komanoff and Michael Smith founded the Right of Way organization (with the website mirrored at www.cars-suck.org). Based in New York City, the duo fights for pedestrians’ and cyclists’ rights. The main objectives of Right of Way are: enforcement; reducing the flow of traffic; traffic engineering for people; and education of drivers
“Cars suck. Does that mean all cars suck?” asks Smith. “Of course not. What sucks is car dependence -- car worship -- car tyranny -- car violence.”
In addition to their activist efforts, including painting memorial stencils of citizens run down by motorists and working to hold negligent motorists accountable, Komanoff and Smith are taking a hard look at transportation data and authoring studies to strengthen their cause.
Komanoff and Smith’s seminal The Only Good Cyclist was authored in response to the NYPD’s 1999 claims (made without corroborating data) that cyclists were to blame for 75% of cycling deaths. The Only Good Cyclist methodically analyzes available data and reveals that the off-the-cuff “findings” of the police were inverted. In fact, drivers were highly culpable in 58% of reported incidents, and partially culpable in at least 78%.
Killed By Automobile, Komanoff’s next comprehensive study, adds pedestrians to the equation and delves into some of the root causes of collisions. Some eye-opening stats jump out:
- Drivers are at fault in almost 90% of pedestrian and bicyclist deaths.
- Aggressive turning through crosswalks is the single biggest known cause of pedestrian deaths. The oft-scapegoated Drunken driving ranks 12th.
- In over 90% of pedestrian fatalities, the driver is male (compared to a 75% incidence of male drivers in Manhattan). Per mile driven, male drivers killed bicyclists at 10 times the rate of female drivers.
- The most frequent cause is a turning vehicle in a crosswalk striking a pedestrian. Speeding, and driving through a red light or stop sign, are the next most frequent causes.
Theories abound about how to protect cyclists and pedestrians and to make our cities safer. It’s only through crunching the numbers and looking at hard data, like Right of Way is doing, that we ensure our energies are well-targeted and we’re really making a difference.
Not all of the study’s stats are so disheartening. For example, the number one action that increases cyclists’ safety? It’s not helmets, lights, reflective vests, etc. It’s more cyclists! From Killed by Automobile:
Researchers in several countries are documenting, and quantifying, this safety-in-numbers effect: they’re observing a “power law” relationship of approximately 0.6 between cyclist numbers and cyclist safety.
What does that mean? It means that the probability that an individual cyclist on a particular road or in a city or region will be struck by a motorist declines with the 0.6 power of the number of cyclists on that road or in that region.
Maybe I should give an example. Say the number of cyclists triples. Since three raised to the negative 0.6 power is roughly one-half, each tripling in cycling volume brings about a halving of each cyclist’s crash risk.
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Written by Joshua Liberles
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Saturday, 06 October 2007 |
We at Carectomy love to offer practical tips that lead to decreased car-use; to feature practical, human-powered contraptions; and hope to move us all towards a happier world.
Well, Treehugger just put together a gallery of custom bike/lawnmowers. They don’t look particularly practical, but they’re pedal-powered, and sure as heck scream "fun!" A little bit of mellow exercise, no gasoline required, and quirky minds getting creative. Just needs a cupholder…
Who knows, maybe someone will even take one of these “prototypes” and make something functional.
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Written by Joshua Liberles
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Saturday, 06 October 2007 |
The greater Los Angeles area is known for many things. Among them are: sunshine, movie stars, insane sprawl, smog, and the ultimate car-culture. Of course, providing parking for all of these gas-guzzling metal behemoths is of the utmost importance.
Santa Monica, in an effort to pay attention to environmental concerns, has constructed the first sustainable parking structure in the U.S. The structure is made from recycled construction materials, uses a storm drain water treatment system, and is designed to be energy efficient. The extensive solar photovoltaic system will take care of the building’s power needs. The garage aims to be the first ever LEED-certified parking structure.
The six-story garage is 290,000 square feet and offers parking spots for 882 cars, with plans to add 1,712 more (for another $180 million). There’s artwork installed inside on every level of the garage, which may help soothe the pain of those who had to endure seeing this hideous-looking structure from the outside.
Santa Monica deserves credit for being a progressively-minded, green city. And, if a building needs to be constructed, well kudos for making it sustainable. But surely I’m not the only one who sees the intense irony here, perhaps one of the greenest structures in the area devoted to housing 882 of the worst environmental offenders we have: freaking cars!
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Written by Joshua Liberles
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Saturday, 06 October 2007 |
Tom Everstone, head honcho of Cars-R-Coffins and known to most by his nickname “Hurl,” figured out this seminal equation at an early age:
Bikes+Punk Rock=Freedom.
Cars-R-Coffins is a Minneapolis-based organization that incorporates all three of those values into their lifestyles. As a trip to their website will quickly reveal, if that equation doesn’t quite jibe, beers may be another hidden variable.
Hurl Everstone:
I was raised on a steady diet of bicycles and punk rock. Bicycles gave me the freedom to explore outside my neighborhood. Music, and especially punk music, gave expression to the angst that a kid growing up in Reagan-era America tended to feel.
Now in America, if you ride a bicycle beyond the age of 14, you are considered an anomaly at best, a freak by most.
When I got to college, it became obvious that the status quo was all about chasing the carrot; getting a university degree in order to make enough money to live the "American Dream." The message seemed to be, "Sorry son, but play time is over. Put away the bicycle, put away the punk rock records. You've got work to do." Bollocks to that, I said.
So, what’s a guy with an English Lit degree, a love for bikes, and a desire to hop to his own punk-drums to do? In addition to writing for Bike magazine, putting out the iconic Cars-R-Coffins website and brand, and disseminating his countercultural messages in a hand-stapled zine, Evermore runs the CRC Coffee Bar / Cykel Garage, a café dedicated to “caffeine and cycling culture” in Minneapolis. Cars-R-Coffins also helps to promote events such as the upcoming Homie Fall Festival: Less Gears More Beers, on October 20th.
As Evermore says, “I'll never quit riding, never quit rocking. Pass me a pint!”
Photo credit: Kelly Macwilliams Photography
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