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Cargo biking, one big sub-sub-culture of American bicycling

March 29, 2011 / / 0 Comments

Updated May 10, 2011, to include link and information about cargo bike meetup.

As far as the sub-culture of American bicycling goes, cargobikes are quickly becoming one of the fastest sub-sub-cultures.

I’m part of a group of cargobike owners and enthusiasts. We blog and post photographs about our cargo bikes and spread the cargobike love to our friends and neighbors. A friend of mine in Portland, Oregon, first owned a bakfiets (Dutch cargo bike with bucket in front), a Madsen (bucket in back), and now simultaneously owns an orange Yuba Mundo and a black Harry vs. Larry Bullitt (modern, aluminum take on Danish Long John bike).

Travis may like cargobikes more than me – he makes t-shirts!

So what did I do to earn my cargobike chops this month?

I just added five new comments to Dottie’s review of her one-day trip around town with the Yuba Mundo, now for sale at two Chicago local bike shops, J.C. Lind and Blue City Cycles (where mine was born).

I’m also working on emulating this Portland cargo bike meetup for Chicago. My first problem is finding the appropriate bar/restaurant that has a lot of space out front for all the Chicagoans to bring their family and cargo bikes.

Cargo bike meet-up outside Green Dragon Pub in SE Portland. Photo by Jonathan Maus.

I went all the way to Portland, Oregon, to test ride a Yuba Mundo at Joe Bike on Hawthorne. See more photos of my Yuba Mundo or from that trip.

Moving from a subculture to culture

March 28, 2011 / / 0 Comments

Mikael says bicycling in Chicago is a subculture.*

It will become a culture when lots of people (of all sizes, shapes, and colors) ride bikes for all kinds of trips. Read about the 8 to 80 threshold.

But I’m afraid that our subculture won’t exist anymore if it elevates to being part of the American or Chicago “culture.” Bicycling is the subculture that puts on bicycle scavenger hunts, teaches schoolchildren to repair bikes, takes in abandoned bikes and sells or donates the fixed up ones, goes on Tweed Rides. The same subculture that introduced me to strong friendships, based heavily on our shared passion for using the bicycle as transportation and trying to encourage others to ride for utility as well.

I’m not sure if any of this applies to Portland, Oregon, though. They will be successful in keeping the quirky and whimsical aspects of an American bicycle subculture as they transform into a bicycle culture. This is probably because Portland is so “weird.”

I went to Europe in December 2010/January 2011 and I rode a bike in Como, Italy, watched people ride their bikes in Milan, Italy, then rode a bike in Bremen, Germany, and Utrecht, Houten and Amsterdam in the Netherlands. I then rode again in Copenhagen, Denmark. I saw a lot of bicycle culture happening; er, does culture happen or does it just exist?

I would like to move to Europe and get a job or Ph.D there. Continue to learn how to transplant certain aspects of European culture to improve transportation in the United States. (“Making Transit Work” is one of the most interesting papers I read comparing European and American transportation-related cultural characteristics, discussing how urban form and automobile usage affects how often and how many people use transit – we can learn about more than bicycles in Europe.)

But in some of the places I visit or live in Europe, those that have a bike culture, I would have to adapt to a new culture and base my relationships on something other than riding bicycles to get around town. Because connecting to each other because of a shared passion for bicycling and “sustainable transportation” is not a thing. Fixed gear riding is a thing. Riding for sport is a thing. But riding a bicycle because it’s cheaper and more convenient than riding the bus is not something you tell your European friends about – cuz they ride just as often as you do.

*Mikael said this to me when we had dinner and drinks in Copenhagen during my January 2011 visit. Here’s us late that night.

In a bicycle culture, we won’t need to stop people biking on the street and ask them if they want a free headlight. Everyone’ll have a light because the police will ticket them if they don’t (this could happen now but it doesn’t, so education first and a free light is the strategy used in some places, including Chicago).

Did you ever take the GRE?

March 27, 2011 / / 0 Comments

I just started studying, today, for the Graduate Record Examination. I should have started in December 2010 when I first checked out some preparation books from the library and when I told my friends I was going to study.

But now it’s March and I just started. I haven’t even registered but that’s because I’m waiting for a voucher that can get me half of the $160 registration fee.

I’m looking at these analytical writing topics and I feel that I’m currently not prepared to respond to any of these topics. Obviously the point of looking at them before the test is so I can be prepared. You can view the list of topics that I will see on my test.

I write a lot in my blog, and I try to write correctly and accurately, but rarely do I write analytically. I provide critiques sometimes but I don’t think they’re the same genre of writing. Perhaps I don’t write analytically because I lack confidence in my writing and that I won’t be understood or I will be too harshly criticized. I also believe it may be in part that I don’t know on what topics to write.

Then maybe writing about the possible topics in the GRE pool will be easier.

Okay, there’s one more problem: I can be easily swayed. If I’m not presented or I don’t find opposing views or information quick enough, then I may agree or support the first view.

Here’re a few topics with which I agree:

“Laws should not be rigid or fixed. Instead, they should be flexible enough to take account of various circumstances, times, and places.”

“Originality does not mean thinking something that was never thought before; it means putting old ideas together in new ways.”

“It is always an individual who is the impetus for innovation; the details may be worked out by a team, but true innovation results from the enterprise and unique perception of an individual.”

It’s quite alright to agree with the topic when I respond to it in the test – the purpose is not to agree or disagree, but to describe my perspective on the topic “using relevant reasons and/or examples to support [my] views.”

I’m taking the GRE because I may want to go back to school for a Ph.D.

I don’t want to take the test – I just want to watch trams out a bedroom window in Bremen, Germany.

TransportationCamp West

March 26, 2011 / / 0 Comments

TransportationCamp West was an unconference that took place on March 19th and 20th in San Francisco at Public Works SF and other locations (restaurants, the street, online).

I only went on Saturday and attended four topic sessions (view the full schedule with 28 topic sessions). These are the writeups of my notes and links to others’ writeups.

My writeups

Others’ writeups

TransportationCamp: Real-Time Pedestrian and Bike Location, Session Two

March 26, 2011 / / 0 Comments

Real-Time Pedestrian and Bike Location How can we get it? What can we do with it? How can it not be creepy?
By Eric Fischer.

My summary of the discussion

There are many existing data sources that are published or have APIs that could stand as reasonable proxies for tracking people who are walking, biking, or just ambling around the city – some of this information is given away (via Foursquare) by those who are traveling, and other information is collected in real time (buses and taxis) and after the trip (travel surveys and Flickr photos). I don’t think the group agreed on any good use for this data (knowing where people are in the city right now), nor did the group come up with ways to ensure this collection is not “creepy.”

Eric’s original question involved the location of people bicycling, but the discussion spent more time talking about pedestrians. However, some techniques in tracking and data gathering could be applied to both modes.

See final paragraph for links on “further reading” that I find relevant to this discussion.

Schedule board at TransportationCamp West on Saturday in San Francisco at Public Works SF, 161 Erie Street.

[Ideas and statements are credited where I could keep track of who said what, and if I could see your name badge.]

Eric, starting us off:
We have a lot of information about where motor vehicles (MV) are in cities.
A lot of experience of city is not about being in a MV, though.

How many bikers going through intersection that are NOT getting hurt.
Finding places where people walk and where people’ don’t.

Where do people go on foot and on bikes?
As far as I know this isn’t available

Foursquare has benefits (awards) so people are willing to give the data, but we don’t want another Please Rob Me.

In SF, there are flash mobs, sudden protests, Critical Mass

Data sources:
-buses – boarding and deboarding – you can get a flow map from this. Someone said that Seattle has this data open.
-CTPP (Census Transportation Planning Package)
-city ped count
-Eric: Where people get on/off taxis.

“CycleTracks” – sampling bias, people with iPhones
-70% of handheld devices are feature phones, not smart phones. So there’s another sampling bias.

Opt-in factor
How do you sample?

SF Planning Dept. had a little program or project ask people to plot on a map your three most common walking routes.
What is your favorite street, and where do you not like to walk?

Eric: My collection tool is Flickr. Geotags and timestamps.
flickr.com/walkingsf

Magdalena Palugh: Are there incentives for commuting by bike? There are incentives for people who vanpool.
If there is incentive, I would gladly give up my data.
Michael Schwartz (SFCTA, sp?) What is difference <> SFCTA/MTA?

-If part of this is to get at where the trouble spots are, could you have people contribute where the good/bad parts are? “This overpass really sucks.”

Tom: Can you get peds from aerial images?
-Yes, but there’re too many limitations, like shade, and tree cover. Also, aerial images may be taken at wrong time (for a while the image of Market/Castro was during festival).

Brandon Martin-Anderson: What strategies have you tried so far?
-aerial images
-Flickr/Picasa location
-Street View face blur (a lot false positives)
Anything you plot looks kind of the same.

People like to walk where other people are. For safety reasons. -Good point on real-time basis.
Eric: Not a lobbying group for peds.
Eric: Find interesting places to go.
Richard: We need exposure data.

Paris bike sharing report showed that “Cycling is faster on Wednesdays.”
Europeans more open to sharing their private details – possibly because of stricter regulation on what agencies can do with the collected data. (There was a little disagreement on this, I personally heard the opposite).

Andrew: Can we use something like Xbox Kinect to track these people?

National Bike/Ped Documentation Project – same format
Seattle – 4 different groups that do annual bike counts. UW bike planning studio.

Who pays for this?
-Transportation planners pay for this.
-Private development projects (from contractor).
-Universities, NSF, Google
-Community groups –

Further reading

People

Mike Fleisher – DS Solutions
Andrew – @ondrae – urbanmapping.com

Notes to self

Is Census question about commuting about time or distance of “most traveled” mode?
Splunk – data analysis tool
What is difference <> SFCTA/SFMTA?