Archive for the ‘bicycles’ Category
The Bicycle Diaries: Last Entry
I took our two bicycles to Our Community Bikes this morning. I was responding to a Tweet I had seen yesterday that said donated bikes could get to “new Canadians”. So I thought of the increase in refugees that we are seeing Canada accept, and I liked the idea that maybe a Ukrainian might find one of our old bikes useful. There is, of course, no way to tell who will get the bike you donate – and maybe it just gets used for parts or something. And since this is currently tax form completing season for last year, the thought of another tax receipt was also welcome.
The shop is on Main Street near the junction with Broadway, which is going to be the location of a new underground station. So lanes are closed, turns are banned and access is a bit awkward. The idea is that you park in the lane and they come and take the bike, or bikes, from you when you call them. The lane is blocked at the southern end by the Broadway works. And, on this occasion, by a large truck which has backed down to deliver supplies to a restaurant. I get out of its way by going to an anonymous space which turns out not to be their back door after all. By the time I have taken the bikes off the bike rack and taken that off the back of the car and stowed it in the trunk, I notice that this has taken me 15 minutes – so rather longer than “I’ll be right out” lead me to expect. Two other people are also trying to donate bikes – and calling the shop but getting no response. The large delivery truck has now left so I can move my car closer to the back of the shop but then the recycling truck shows up. By gestures and a bit of shunting we get ourselves sorted out, and I go to the front door to see why we are being made to wait so long. I get a lecture about their mask policies instead.
I go back to the alley and find that one person seems to have just left his bike and gone and another is being told that her bike is not wanted as it is too old. They do take both the bikes I have, as well as the various accessories we will no longer need, like the bike locks, pump, helmets, two spare wheels and so on. My bike, while old is a bit like the hammer that has had two new heads and three new handles. My partner’s bike is six years old and cost $700 then. So I am gutted to hear that we do not qualify for a tax receipt. It is too late to put the bikerack back on the car and reload the bikes so I accept what seems a blatantly unreasonable decision. After all, writing a tax receipt doesn’t actually cost them anything at all.
The guy who is driving the recycling truck, who has been delayed by my car’s use of the alley, is very friendly. He remarks on the obvious value of my partner’s bike and is surprised by our willingness to give it up. I tell him I think that it is better that someone gets to use a bike that has been just sitting in a garage for two years.
My partner does not like cycling where we live. There are too many cars and too much speeding. We have used bike sharing systems in New York, Paris and Denver (and a rental in San Francisco) but have never used the one in Vancouver. We walk a lot, and take transit or an Evo if it seems like we have walked too far that day. Our nearest ShawGo station is about as far as the nearest Modo – and we haven’t used that either for the same reason. I cannot manage the hills which surround us in three of the four main compass points, and I blogged about the great electric wheel disaster some time ago. I also find that our local bike lanes tend to be badly designed – paint is no protection and sharrows actually make things worse.
So maybe, once we get to travel again, we may rent bikes once more. But Vancouver needs to get serious about protected bike lanes – and ebikes have to be one of the choices to get me on a bikeshare here. I hope whoever gets one of our bikes gets plenty of use out of them.
The Bicycle Diaries: Episode 14
Yesterday we got the bikes tuned up by Velofix (they come to you, which makes things very convenient) and the old, sprung front fork was put back on to replace the solid one I needed to accomodate the electric wheel. I never heard back from the guy who bought the other one, so I do not know if he got it to work. I will be taking all the bits I have left now to the zero waste facility (as the recycling centre has been renamed). – Postscript: one of the annoyances with the wheel was how the battery got wedged into its slot and was difficult to remove. “Impossible” I have been saying but today the staff at the Zero Waste site insisted I separate wheel and battery to put them into different places. It came out easily!
Since there is only one way out of here that does not require a steep hill climb, we decided to put the bikes on the rack of the car. We had heard that there was quite a bit of activity at Iona Beach on Monday – herons and eagles aplenty. That was not to be the case today, unfortunately. And while there were aircraft landing as we rode out along the jetty beside the sewage pipe, by the time we got to the end there was a distinct lull.
Doing this in bright sunlight with a camera that uses a screen (as opposed to a view finder) is not as easy as you might think.
Since we were last at the airport, the extension to the Mall at the eastern end has popped up like a mushroom after rain and traffic over the bridge at 3pm is already heavy before that opens. It was also backing up from Marine Drive as a dump truck and trailer had stalled at the traffic lights in the left turn lane to Milton Street. Since this was not immediately apparent to approaching traffic, there were people still trying to queue jump into the turn lane even though it was blocked and cars were having a hard time regaining the left through lane to get around the truck. The signals were not producing any left turn green arrow phases either. I think we spent longer in the ensuing traffic jam than we did on the bike ride.
Next up will be a return to the Richmond Dike, and then probably a trip round Boundary Bay.
Here are some views from the end of the pipe, looking north towards UBC and Howe Sound. I have used the Mac’s photo editor to take out some of the hazy smoke.
We need physical separation
I have been on Twitter this morning and there is a picture of a mother and daughter riding their bikes on the sidewalk.
Seeing that reminded me of the pictures that I had taken outside the place we were staying at in Chicago’s Loop district (downtown). The bike lane is a bit better in Chicago than North Van but it is still just paint. And as the three pictures show a lot of green paint does no more to deter cars from entering the lane than that thin white line with the occasional bike logo. Anyone riding a bike down East Washington St would have to swerve around those parked cars putting them in line for a potential collision with moving vehicles.
If you look closely at the two left hand images you can see in the previous block a big bus shelter outside the bike lane providing excellent separation. For the 60 feet length of a bus anyway.
For more see “Walkable City Rules” (see previous post) Part XII Build Your Bike Network especially Rules 58 and 59. Best practices are outlined in the NACTO Urban Bikeway Design Guide.
By the way if you like those cars on green bikelane pictures, follow Streetsblog New York (@StreetsblogNYC) on Twitter for more.
The Bicycle Diaries: Episode 13
I know that this wheel is no longer being sold under the name UrbanX – or even UrbaNext – but that does not mean transactions are not continuing. The company which sold two to me has evaporated. Leaving me one wheel which simply does not work. And another that continues to frustrate me. However there are still plenty of pages available on the internet from websites which seem to have simply accepted the claims made by its makers untested. So my purpose in writing this is simply to re-issue warnings that I have made to an earlier diary entry which I keep updating but is maybe not being noticed as much as a new post.
Yesterday I took the bike out on the Greenway. It has been sitting in the locker for the winter, but the weather was so nice, and my partner was quite happy to ride her bike now that its electric wheel has been removed. I was quite surprised to find that the battery had held its charge all this time. I first did a short test along Valley, just to make sure everything was working properly. As expected the control started working once I reached 5 km/hr (based on the reading on the app) but kept on working even if the speed dropped below that provided that I did not come to a complete stop. I was even able to get the speed control on the app to work in motion and there is a real difference between the three “gears”. But it isn’t easy to hold the control down and change the bike’s gears. On the level that doesn’t matter. On a hill – such as the one up from Valley to Arbutus along King Edward Ave – it matters a lot. Once again I found myself getting off the bike and pushing. Even when the wheel is turned off it acts like a brake. The bike is much heavier with the wheel and its battery and that is all on front axle. That isn’t a good place to add weight. Pushing that bike up the hill was not fun!
If an electric assist bike is going to be useful, getting moving from rest on a hill must be the most important task. This wheel won’t do that.
On the return downhill ride on King Ed the app speed read 12 km/hr – even though I was keeping up with traffic which must have been much faster. The wheel under power does not hold back as it does when turned off. But it also doesn’t regenerate either if you did want a decellerator. It does happily bring me home on the flat Valley Drive – no pedalling, and I did not even press the throttle. But the wheel does get hot. It is impossible to pull the battery out from its housing when it is hot. So I left it in overnight. I still cannot budge it this morning. You have to hold down two tabs on the top of the battery while pulling back evenly. The battery case is smooth and there is nothing to get a grip on. You also need to have the wheel secured against something so you are not pulling the wheel over too. It is a lousy design ergonomically.
My conclusion is that while an electric assist bike is a worthwhile idea, the reality needs more than can be provided by purchasing over the internet from a Chinese company. It is cheap for a reason, and its very cheapness ought to be warning. Most ebikes and conversions come out to be more than the ~$500 I spent on each wheel. Buying from an established retailer a bike made (or adapted from) a reputable manufacturer is a lot better bet than KickStarter or IndieGoGo.
UPDATE September 12, 2018
I removed the wheel from the bike today. The battery is still in place in the wheel: it is immovable and therefore impossible to charge. So it is utterly useless. I have put on a regular wheel and will get someone to reinstall the suspension forks I had to get taken off to use the electric wheel.
I am going to do some more research about ebikes available locally but I am not going to be in a hurry.
What Vancouver Streets will look like
A powerpoint presentation by Dale Bracewell (Manager of Transportation Planning, City of Vancouver) via Twitter
Three sample slides
What anti-bikelane advocates don’t want you to see
This is the exact comment blogger Aaron Dixon left on a Victoria, BC anti-bike lane Facebook page that quickly got deleted twice because it was deemed as ‘spam’. Enjoy.
The Bicycle Diaries: Episode 12
Where I live there is only one flat route out of Arbutus Village park – north west along Valley Drive. In any other direction there is a hill. In fact to get up to the Arbutus Corridor I have to get off and push. So when I saw a crowd funder for an electric wheel, that provides assistance when cycling, I decided to take a chance. It has taken six months from making my payment through KickStarter for the first of two wheels to arrive. I got one for myself and am still waiting for the one for my partner.
In the intervening period the name of the project had to be changed from UrbanX to UrbaNext.
Via Kickstarter the team reported
We received notification from BMW Auto Group that our product name UrbanX was too close to their venture fund called URBAN-X which focuses on helping emerging and start-up companies in the fields of technology and design for urban environments. You can read more about the program here. Despite our best efforts in researching our product name, we were unaware of similarity to their program and program name. The program does seem very cool in its mission to work with small businesses and help fund new innovation in urban environments.
KickStarter provided regular project updates and this video about installation
So that all looks pretty straightforward I thought. Once my wheel arrived, I unpacked it and took it down to the basement. Taking off the existing front wheel is easy, but the new wheel was a real problem. Some time ago, after renting a very comfortable bike in San Francisco, I had my Trek 800 upgraded by fitting suspension forks and a sprung saddle post. The forks were simply too fat to admit the wheel properly – and the bracket for a disc brake got in the way of inserting the battery. I took the bike with the wheel to West Point Cycles in Kerrisdale, and they replaced the forks (no suspension) and installed the new wheel for me. I then spent a while hooking up the cables and installing the control and the phone carrier – as the functioning of the electric wheel is controlled through an app. No, that installation video does not mention that – but you do get an instruction manual with the wheel. That includes a QR code for the app which is called iMortor. If you go to YouTube you will see other videos about iMortor and another UrbanX user called Edgar Cornejo who has made a number of youtube videos about his experiences.
I first tried out the new wheel in our underground garage. That really did not get me enough space to get up to speed (5km/hr), and I also missed the point that you are supposed to hold the throttle open for ten seconds, while pedalling, to get the motor to kick in. My next trip was to take the bike up to the Greenway by the hill on King Edward Avenue. This gave me enough distance to get up to speed and to hold the throttle open for long enough – and I knew the motor had kicked in as I did not have to get off and push. The app allows for three speed settings, and all of my first trip was in speed 1. The ride up to Kerrisdale by the Greenway is actually not a problem for me, I just gear down and keep twiddling. This time I did not have to gear down. As long as I was pedalling the bike kept going – and that seemed to be true even when I let go the throttle. I tried other speeds too, but that is not so easy when trying to hit the very small button on the app while moving.
Of course, no-one needs help to ride downhill. What is missing from the UrbaNext is a regenerative brake setting, which could act as a retarder and recharge the battery. Not only that but as I was in speed 1 and the app and motor was stilled turned on even pedalling downhill on King Edward, hoping to keep up with traffic, all I could manage was 12 km/hr.
Today I decided to venture further afield, so I added a bottle of water and some Cliff bars to the pannier and headed south on the Greenway to Burrard, hoping to use the new bikeway across the bridge. The east side of the bridge was closed by barriers, and a sign instructing “use West walkway”. I rode wrong way in the bike lane – and noticed that there might have been room to ride in the vehicle lane if I had been daring enough. Then down Beach Avenue and round Stanley Park (via the Chilco Loop). By now I was getting used to riding with and without assistance. In fact there were times when, with the throttle closed, I wished it was not “helping”. Equally there were times when I was below the 5km/hr when help starts and I would have appreciated it much sooner!
I had a pleasant break near the Lumberman’s arch, with a view of the Lions’ Gate Bridge and some charming company. By the time I got to the Second Beach pool, the lights on the control box were showing red – or 30% of capacity. So I stopped using the motor by simply hitting the off button, hoping to conserve power. The bike was much heavier, thanks to the wheel and its battery, but there also seemed to be significant rolling resistance when there was no power available. Given the lack of regenerative braking I found that puzzling. By the time I got to Cornwall, I decided I had had enough, and waited for the #2 bus. Getting the bike on the bus wasn’t easy before the new wheel. Now it was beyond my ability unaided. Fortunately a very strong young chap who was passing offered assistance, and the bus driver got out too! I had taken the phone off the bike to use the transit app to find out how long I had to wait, so I just shoved the phone into my pocket when the bus arrived.
The #2 was short turning at 16th Avenue, so the driver was not pressed for time, and told me she would help me get the bike off. What with the ratchet on the bike rack’s bracket and the weight of the front wheel I was very glad of her help.
I set off home along the familiar nearly flat Valley Drive route, and just out of curiosity flicked on the throttle to see how much power was left. Amazingly the bike took off like a rocket. There was no phone controlling the app – I had taken it off the bike, and hit the iPhone’s power off button reflexively when putting it in my pocket. I even stopped pedalling altogether and the motor actually accelerated! I used no muscle power at all to get home, and in fact did a lap of honour round the garage all unaided by pedalling!
It has taken only an hour or so to recharge the battery. I should also point out that getting the battery out of the wheel is in itself no mean feat. It really helps to wait awhile for it to cool down first. Then you have to hold down the two top latches while pulling evenly on both sides.
As I was an initial funder through KickStarter I paid $800 – plus $200 shipping – for two wheels. That is considerably cheaper than other electric assist bikes – or wheel conversions. However you only get what you pay for – and while others are expensive they can also be installed for you. Their offered range is considerably greater than the UrbaNext. They do have a facebook page and currently offer the wheel at $319. If you click on the Shop Now link on that page it takes you to IndieGoGo – where the “60 second conversion” claim is repeated. Sorry, that 60 seconds is not actually possible. Even if your front forks do fit first time! Allow at least an hour to set it up properly.
POSTSCRIPT 1
I should have mentioned that I got the 350W version: there is also a 250W which is a bit cheaper.
POSTSCRIPT 2
The second wheel did not turn up until we were off on our cruise. When I got back I fitted it to my partner’s bike. I was alone at the time, and did not have her phone. So when it came to test the installation I used the wheel without setting up the app. In retrospect that was a mistake. There are a couple of steps in the set-up process, and one of them is what the makers refer to as a safety device. As mentioned above you have to be pedalling and above 5km/hr to get assistance – but since I had not set up the app, it worked straightaway. But only once. It seems I burned out the control – and now I am waiting for a replacement. It is also the company’s advice to use the app downloaded using the QR code from the manual. There are other iMortor controlled devices out there and the app gets adapted to suit each one. Download iMortor from somewhere else at your peril.
POSTSCRIPT 3
There is a good article on City Lab – which looks at the Copenhagen wheel specifically – and bike conversions in general. I really wish that I had had the opportunity to borrow a tester first!
POSTSCRIPT 4
The replacement control arrived at the end of January. I replaced the control on the bike, and checked that the battery was fully charged. When I pressed the red button on the new control box, nothing happened. No lights at all. Needless to say the bluetooth connection through the phone did not work either. I sent an email to Urbanext – delivery failed. I tried using their facebook page to contact them: its content has now been removed.
So while I have one working bike the second cannot be made to work. I have removed the wheel and the control and put back the previous front wheel.
And we will eventually go shopping for new electric bikes.
By the way when I bought the wheel, it came with a one year warranty. That is printed in the user manual. The manual does not have any contact information in it. The installation video remains on YouTube, but there has never been any contact information provided there.
This report relates to a message you sent with the following header fields:
Message-id: <47DBBDE5-2017-4E5D-A597-558E7127B8B5@me.com>
Date: Thu, 08 Feb 2018 13:18:31 -0800
From: Stephen Rees <redacted>
To: UrbaNext Wheel <info@urbanxwheel.com>
Subject: Re: ProblemYour message is being returned; it has been enqueued and undeliverable for
3 days to the following recipients:Recipient address: info@urbanxwheel.com
Reason: unable to deliver this message after 3 days
The QR code in the manual points to a Chinese web site that hosts the iMortor app essential to the wheel operation. There is no longer an English version of the app available there. As noted at the end of Postscript 2 there is a version of iMortor on Google Play but that is not designed for this wheel (so far as I can determine). It should look like this screenshot
The second wheel has now been sold.
CUTA Integrated Mobility Report
I have decided that there is no way to make this work just with a retweet. So this blog post is addressed to mostly to readers who come to this blog because they are interested in how Canadian transit agencies should better adapt themselves to changing circumstances. Unlike CUTA’s approach to transit statistics, this report is not restricted in its distribution and it is free to download as a large pdf.
It is meant to be a resource for transit agencies wishing to advance their communities towards integrated mobility.
So if that is something you want to read, start at the CUTA report web page from which there is a download link.
South West Marine Drive bike lane
Posted to YouTube by my social media contact Anthony Floyd.
All summer long this stretch of road has been closed to traffic to allow for the reconstruction of an important water main (he says – I thought it was sewers). This has resulted in much frustration, as traffic diverted to 41st and King Edward avenues while the work went on. And my favourite route to get away from traffic on Granville Street (Arbutus/West Boulevard/Angus Dr) was closed so it took a lot longer to get to the Airport.
There isn’t any reason for me to use that bike lane, but I am glad it’s there. The video illustrates really well how a bike lane makes it faster for a bike over driving. Compared to other things I have seen I note that the amount of physical protection (New Jersey barriers) is minimal. I also note that there is no-one parked in the bike lane!
I also note that there is always someone who wants to ride faster than you, in any circumstance.
History strikes again
After the Greater London Council was abolished (1985), I managed to secure new employment with the Department of Transport. I went through a competitive recruitment process and was appointed an Economic Adviser (Grade 7) and my first assignment was to the Traffic Policy Branch. I think a lot of that was due to the fact that in the run up to abolition there had been a hard hitting campaign which was pointing out some of the lacunae in the government’s assessment of the task in front of it. For instance the GLC had one man who wrote all the traffic orders for the metropolitan area. After abolition, it looked like there would have to be 32 – one in each borough. Not exactly the great boost to efficiency that was predicted. I also happen to think that someone had a sense of humour since the Under Secretary I reported to at Traffic Policy was called Neville Rees.
Most of my time as the economist of the unit was to try and make some sense out the mess that had become of parking in the capital. The politicians, of course, insisted that it was simply a matter of the market producing the optimum solution. There was no market where the hidden hand could work its magic. There had to be policy and there had to be regulation, but mostly there had to effective enforcement – that had collapsed under the weight of indifference to traffic policing at Scotland Yard.
This is a good story but it will have to wait, because now we turn to what was going on in a quiet corner of the office. There were two engineers who were trying to improve the dreadful numbers of collisions involving cyclists. The cycling lobby was pushing hard for the government to promote cycling. The policy at the time was to resist any promotion at all, since the more people who cycled, the worse the casualty statistics. The engineers were coming up with real, hard engineering solutions. Finding safe routes, better separation and better sight lines at intersections. Their mantra was to make cycling safer – and every time they did more people started to use their bikes. And just to make this perfectly clear, their remit was national, not just London. Two engineers, tiny budget for a small number of carefully selected projects. No actual program to promote anything.
My father had been an avid cyclist. Back in the 1930’s car ownership was low, public transport was plentiful and cheap, but young people used cycles – especially for recreation, sport and commuting. When my Dad was evacuated out to Egham with the Public Control Department of the LCC (1939) , he rode his cycle back to Manor Park every weekend. He could do that because when the great network of road improvements was built – mainly as a way to relieve unemployment during the Great Depression – cycle paths were always added to these new roads. For instance the Great West Road, Eastern Avenue and the East Ham ByPass all come to mind.
When the cycling engineers and I talked about what they were trying to do, I mentioned this history to them. They were pretty dismissive. So imagine my surprise when I came across this article in the Atlas Obscura. I knew these roads and had tried to use some of them in my own youth. By the late 1960s much of them were being used by residents along these roads to park their cars.
In the years that followed the construction of the cycleways, though, cars became the predominant form of transportation, and the bike lanes fell out of use. Even the Ministry of Transport forgot that it had built them. “Within 40 years, it had been lost in their own department that they were doing this,” says Reid. He read the ministry’s minutes going through the 1960s and found records of ministers saying that they’d never built anything like a bike highway before.
So once again, just like bringing back the trams, or re-opening the railway lines closed by Dr Beeching, Britain is now rediscovering what it lost in the rush to motordom. They could have done it thirty years earlier.
Stephen Rees's blog 