Speaker 1: Brought to you by Toyota. Let's go places. Welcome to
Speaker 1: Forward Thinking. Hey there, and welcome to Forward Thinking, the
Speaker 1: podcast that looks at the future and says, hey man,
Speaker 1: John's was never my scene. I don't like Star Wars.
Speaker 1: I'm Jonathan Strickland, I'm Lauren, and I'm Joe McCormick and Jonathan.
Speaker 1: I thought today we'd definitely or almost definitely be hearing
Speaker 1: about how you want to ride your bicycle. But yeah,
Speaker 1: if you followed that lyric long enough, you would have
Speaker 1: heard about how I went to ride my bicycle on
Speaker 1: That's that's that's actually from Bicycle Race by Queen. What
Speaker 1: a Way? Yeah, Jones will was never my scene and
Speaker 1: adult like Star Okay, then I just don't know my
Speaker 1: stuff at all, and I can't sing like Freddy Mercury song.
Speaker 1: I know why I tried. I don't even know what
Speaker 1: song book. You guys are talking about what Queen arena
Speaker 1: rock band Queen, I know the band, im my gosh,
Speaker 1: So day we're gonna be talking about the future of
Speaker 1: operatic rock music, and you know, I wish, but we're
Speaker 1: actually going to talk about something that a listener has requests.
Speaker 1: A couple of listeners have requested, Yeah, I don't say
Speaker 1: I wish like this isn't a cool topic. I think
Speaker 1: this is okay. This is from our listener Richard, who
Speaker 1: wrote to us and said, I really enjoy your podcast.
Speaker 1: Would you consider doing a podcast on the bicycle as
Speaker 1: a future form of transportation? I think it would be fascinating.
Speaker 1: For example, how about the electrical assist bicycles becoming more
Speaker 1: popular with aging population. Well, the cities of the future
Speaker 1: look more like Amsterdam in Holland with well developed bicycle infrastructure,
Speaker 1: for more like Los Angeles or Atlanta, Georgia, extremes in
Speaker 1: the opposite direction where the car remains king. Well, thank
Speaker 1: you for that question, Richard. We decided we'd take you
Speaker 1: up and talk about the future of the bicycle. And
Speaker 1: we can speak to that last point from personal experience,
Speaker 1: because the three of us live in Atlanta, Georgia. Yes,
Speaker 1: and it's true this city could definitely be more bike friendly. Yeah. Yeah,
Speaker 1: some parts of it are getting better. About that the
Speaker 1: kind of small towns within Atlanta, But lots of places
Speaker 1: I okay, Well, I find driving terrifying around Atlanta, but
Speaker 1: I find the very idea of being on a bicycle
Speaker 1: in the same places just completely out of the question.
Speaker 1: It's yeah, it seems really scary. There are actually a
Speaker 1: ton of issues at stake here, and it's one of
Speaker 1: those things that I hear is actually an issue throughout
Speaker 1: the world, not just in Atlanta. It's one of the
Speaker 1: things we noticed. But uh, there's the issue of the
Speaker 1: driving culture in Atlanta, which is definitely king uh if
Speaker 1: Atlanta's got a lot of sprawl, it's kind of like
Speaker 1: l A in that sense, and that everything is spread
Speaker 1: out and it's not easy to get to various areas
Speaker 1: of Atlanta without having a car. Um, the public transportation
Speaker 1: system is not is not a world class. It's not
Speaker 1: all bust. It's not what you would kind of like
Speaker 1: Los Angeles. You can get to some places pretty well
Speaker 1: on Marta, but it's sort of in a plus shape.
Speaker 1: So anything right along that plus shape is good and
Speaker 1: then you can you know, on the train, you can
Speaker 1: take a bus to get somewhere else. But yeah, they're
Speaker 1: definitely much better public transportation systems around. And also another
Speaker 1: element um is just the the bicycle culture and how
Speaker 1: uh not all bicyclists are say, you know, adhering to
Speaker 1: the rules of the road. But I mean, so one
Speaker 1: of the issues we want to really talk about, though,
Speaker 1: is what can we do on the other side, right,
Speaker 1: not just bicyclists need to make sure that they obey
Speaker 1: the rules, because part of the problem is that the
Speaker 1: deck is stacked against them here. Yeah, the rules are
Speaker 1: certainly not set up for for them to work. Well, yeah,
Speaker 1: it's they are trying to fit within an infrastructure that
Speaker 1: was designed for a completely different mode of transportation. So
Speaker 1: we want to really look at what are ways that
Speaker 1: we could change things. What what's the future of the
Speaker 1: mode of transportation in places like the United States? How
Speaker 1: could it be more like other places in the world
Speaker 1: where we see bicycles being used by growing populations of
Speaker 1: commuters and uh, and you know what's the How can
Speaker 1: we set ourselves up for success? Is really what we're
Speaker 1: looking at here. Yeah, so let's look back first to
Speaker 1: the olden bicycles, all right and figure out where these
Speaker 1: came from. I was actually curious because I didn't know
Speaker 1: when the bicycle was invented. I was looking it up
Speaker 1: and there's actually a cool article on Live Science about
Speaker 1: this called who invented the bicycle? And according to them,
Speaker 1: it was a German inventor named Carl Drace or Carl
Speaker 1: von Dre d r A I s. I guess there'd
Speaker 1: be sort of a French pronunciation dre. Well, if it's Vaughn,
Speaker 1: then it would be Germanic would be dra unless he
Speaker 1: pronounced it weird. Yeah, so uh, I'll get on the phone.
Speaker 1: You keep going, okay, yeah, you go find out. But anyway,
Speaker 1: the the idea here is that he probably made the
Speaker 1: first two wheeled bicycle in eighteen seventeen, and his own
Speaker 1: term for it was the Louth machine, which is German
Speaker 1: for running machine, which is great. It's a machine that runs,
Speaker 1: except it doesn't run. It uses wheels, and it was
Speaker 1: actually a modification of an earlier four wheeled human powered vehicle,
Speaker 1: which I think actually predates the bicycle. I think the
Speaker 1: reason it was called a running machine was not because
Speaker 1: the machine itself ran, but because in order to operate it,
Speaker 1: you had to push yourself along the ground with your
Speaker 1: feet no pedals, right right. It was a little bit
Speaker 1: like a two wheeled flintstones car, yeah, or like a
Speaker 1: like a really big skateboard. It's just you'd straddle this
Speaker 1: thing and use your feet to push yourself along, or
Speaker 1: like have you seen those balance bikes that kids have today?
Speaker 1: If you got on the belt line in Atlanta, you'll
Speaker 1: see a lot of kids who are out with their
Speaker 1: parents and they've got their bicycles. And it's a little
Speaker 1: tiny bicycle without pedals on it, and it's short enough
Speaker 1: that the kid's leg can reach the ground while they're
Speaker 1: sitting on the seat. It's essentially a modern version of
Speaker 1: what we're talking about here. Yeah, they were also called
Speaker 1: hobby horses. They were made from wood. The wheels were
Speaker 1: solid wheel, so it was not the softest ride you
Speaker 1: can imagine. I read that one. I bet they were
Speaker 1: so comfortable. I read that they used a leather saddle
Speaker 1: nailed to a wooden frame. Nothing luxury. But my favorite
Speaker 1: example from that article did they come with a monocle holder?
Speaker 1: I'm sure they did. My favorite example from the the
Speaker 1: article there was a there was a list of illustrations
Speaker 1: dated from the late nineteenth century. Was the auto bicycle
Speaker 1: auto as an O T T O. And it looked
Speaker 1: like a Victorian woman who had wheels attached to her.
Speaker 1: It's just just like two big wheels and to either
Speaker 1: side and two smaller wheels in front. So it was
Speaker 1: just ah for your wheeled Victorian lady the auto bicycle. Um,
Speaker 1: I guess you're if you're like whale bone undergarments are
Speaker 1: strong enough, and I you know, the wheel and axle
Speaker 1: was quickly followed by the bone corsets. So, um, yeah,
Speaker 1: I know it was. It was one of those those
Speaker 1: illustrations that just I know what it was. It was
Speaker 1: the obviously the platform that she would be sitting on
Speaker 1: or standing against or whatever was obscured by her large
Speaker 1: Victorian dress, but it just made it look like a
Speaker 1: wheeled Victorian lady. Um. So I wondered, what's the difference
Speaker 1: between a bicycle and a velocity? I will tell you
Speaker 1: that difference. So by the teen sixties, that's when we
Speaker 1: see the entry of the velocipede. And this was the
Speaker 1: first type of bicycle or or two wheeled human powered
Speaker 1: vehicle to actually have pedals and a fixed gear system. Uh.
Speaker 1: There's controversy about who was the first person to actually
Speaker 1: suggest this. A German inventor named Carl Kech claimed he
Speaker 1: was the first to modify a hobby horse by pedals,
Speaker 1: but a French inventor, Pierre la Lament, said that he
Speaker 1: was well, he patented it He was the first one
Speaker 1: to a secure patent in eighteen sixty six, and a
Speaker 1: lot of other people immediately got in on it. In fact,
Speaker 1: I don't know that that patent offered any protection whatsoever,
Speaker 1: because from what I could tell, everybody immediately started trying
Speaker 1: to make these things. Um. Now, these had steel wheels
Speaker 1: and uh no suspension, so very bumpy ride if you're
Speaker 1: on one of these things. They were often referred to
Speaker 1: as bone shakers because they were not terribly gentle. Now,
Speaker 1: the main difference between that and the modern bicycle two things.
Speaker 1: One is that we don't have solid steel wheels anymore,
Speaker 1: or we have the rubber wheels that allow us usually aluminum,
Speaker 1: I would imagine, Yeah, usually you don't want. You don't
Speaker 1: want something that's going to make the bike super heavy. Um.
Speaker 1: And also we don't have we tend to have some
Speaker 1: sort of tension absorbing system so that it's not as
Speaker 1: as rough on us. But to smooth out the ride
Speaker 1: when we have these velocities come out on the scene,
Speaker 1: one of the things they would do, the manufacturers would
Speaker 1: do was make larger and larger front wheels. That's where
Speaker 1: that image comes from. Yeah. Yeah, well also you you
Speaker 1: don't have to work as hard. Um, it's just one
Speaker 1: rotation of the pedal in order to push the bicycle
Speaker 1: a lot further. That's true. Yeah, because you're you're pushing
Speaker 1: your your rotation of the petals is at the center
Speaker 1: of the wheel, and of course the circumference of the
Speaker 1: wheels much larger. So one little rotation of the petals
Speaker 1: is one big rotation along the wheels outside. So you
Speaker 1: do go a lot further for a for a simple
Speaker 1: crank of the petals. Uh. But it also smoothed out
Speaker 1: the ride significantly. Those were the two big reasons. Apparently
Speaker 1: young men took to racing them in the streets of Europe.
Speaker 1: Um became something of a menace, and really wasn't that practical.
Speaker 1: They were the common term for these were the penny
Speaker 1: fig things. Uh and uh they got so ridiculously big
Speaker 1: and setting that high up is not really conducive to safety. Yeah, no,
Speaker 1: it's I can't even imagine what it was like getting
Speaker 1: on one of these things. I mean, once you're in motion,
Speaker 1: that that some tripical force really helps, that gyroscopic effect
Speaker 1: really helps you stay upright. But coming to a stop
Speaker 1: or or getting started, I can't imagine how challenging that
Speaker 1: was without falling over. I mean, this is coming from
Speaker 1: a guy who hasn't ridden a bicycle since he was
Speaker 1: a kid, and I remember it took me a while
Speaker 1: to get the hang of that particular part of the
Speaker 1: riding a bike myself. That's when John Kempt Stanley came along.
Speaker 1: He's the one who created the tension absorbing front wheel
Speaker 1: that allowed actual bicycles the way we consider them today
Speaker 1: to begin to be manufactured. Now, this was still very
Speaker 1: much in the early days, but a lot of people
Speaker 1: credit him as the father of the modern bicycle for
Speaker 1: that invention that made it actually possible to have normal
Speaker 1: sized wheels and not a bone shaking experience, and that
Speaker 1: still wasn't quite gentle at this point. Probably not, I'm
Speaker 1: sure that that kind of thing, and then probably also
Speaker 1: the introduction of like variable gear bikes and things like
Speaker 1: that is what made bicycles as popular as they have
Speaker 1: been in you know, the past century, as we've known
Speaker 1: them today. Sure, I mean that in the freewheel invention,
Speaker 1: that's the invention that allows you to coast where you know,
Speaker 1: you pedal and pedal and pedal, then you just stop
Speaker 1: peddling and your wheels can keep ongoing. That's different from
Speaker 1: fixed gear, which we'll talk about a little bit later.
Speaker 1: It's kind of interesting, but it's really kind of I'd
Speaker 1: say that was a big advance as well. It was
Speaker 1: one of those things that allowed people to use these
Speaker 1: in recreational ways here in the United States, and in fact,
Speaker 1: I would think that here in the US, recreation was
Speaker 1: the largest use of bicycles, not as a vehicle for
Speaker 1: commuting for most communities. It's not true everywhere. Some cities
Speaker 1: are very bicycle friendly. Portland, I think it's the law
Speaker 1: that you have to own a bicycle and then talk
Speaker 1: about it at length. That might be based upon my
Speaker 1: viewing of Portlandia all weekend long. However, how if we
Speaker 1: were to look at it's popularity worldwide, that's pretty complicated stuff, because,
Speaker 1: as it turns out, there are not a lot of
Speaker 1: authorities that collect and curate statistics of bicycles. We're gonna
Speaker 1: come back to this a couple of times in this podcast,
Speaker 1: but there are some inescapable facts. One of those is
Speaker 1: that bicycles are an incredibly popular means of getting around
Speaker 1: in various parts of the world, like in China, where
Speaker 1: four thirty million people own bicycles, So you know, it's
Speaker 1: larger than the entire population of the United States. Four
Speaker 1: thirty million bicycle owners in China. It's like if everybody
Speaker 1: in the United States owned one point three bicycles. Yeah,
Speaker 1: something like that. And according to the two thousand ten
Speaker 1: Earth Policy Institute, they had a report that said that
Speaker 1: bicycles are the quote biggest means of individual mobility for
Speaker 1: hundreds of millions of Chinese end quote. Not to suggest
Speaker 1: us that it's the primary method of transportation or mobility
Speaker 1: for all of China, but for hundreds of millions, it
Speaker 1: is the primary one. Uh. Now, going back to that
Speaker 1: fixed gear, this is the kind of bike that this
Speaker 1: is the first type of bike I had as a kid,
Speaker 1: a fixed gear bike, which is the kind where actually
Speaker 1: it wasn't technically fixed gear because it didn't have a
Speaker 1: break stop to it, but you use the you know,
Speaker 1: as you move the pedals, the wheels move, and as
Speaker 1: the wheels move, the pedals moved, so you can't coast.
Speaker 1: You can't just you know, stop pedaling and keep moving. Um.
Speaker 1: But it does mean that when you apply pressure to
Speaker 1: the pedals, then it stops the wheels from turning, and
Speaker 1: that's how you can break. And in a true fixed
Speaker 1: gear bike or fix ee, you could even pedal backwards
Speaker 1: and have the bike move backwards, although that is not
Speaker 1: recommended by people by people who want to live, it's
Speaker 1: apparently very difficult to learn um or at least tricky. Okay,
Speaker 1: but here we are today, and there are very obvious
Speaker 1: advantages to bicycles. I mean, there's some disadvantages to I mean,
Speaker 1: we all know that you can't travel as far as
Speaker 1: quickly in a bicycle as you can in a car.
Speaker 1: Uh Well, I mean maybe in some condition conditions, depending
Speaker 1: on traffic or something like that, you could, but if
Speaker 1: you're talking about moving at high speed, that's sort of
Speaker 1: a setback. You probably can't haul as much cargo or
Speaker 1: as many people and things like that. But on the
Speaker 1: other hand, there are tons of advantages to bicycles. Uh.
Speaker 1: There are a much greener option than cars. I mean
Speaker 1: that pretty much goes without saying. There are zero emission
Speaker 1: in in the everyday use. For furthermore, they're they're very
Speaker 1: much smaller and more lightweight, so right, you can fit
Speaker 1: more of them on a road, you know, Like they're
Speaker 1: lower traffic density, So you can get the same number
Speaker 1: of people through a thoroughfare on bicycles much faster than
Speaker 1: you could in cars, just because they're not surrounded by
Speaker 1: a huge bulk of metal that takes up space. Same
Speaker 1: thing for a storage and parking they take up less
Speaker 1: space there too. These are all important considerations. They also
Speaker 1: promote healthfulness, right, that's true fitness activity, Like if you're
Speaker 1: you're traveling back and forth place as well, are you
Speaker 1: going to be basically passively sitting the whole time or
Speaker 1: you're going to be moving getting your heart rate up?
Speaker 1: I lift weights while I'm driving. Now, is that why
Speaker 1: you've had so many accidents? Are you talking workout accidents?
Speaker 1: Are you talking like car accidents? I'm talking about all
Speaker 1: those times we heard about when she threw a dumbbell
Speaker 1: out the window of her car at another driver and
Speaker 1: road race accidents, um, but accident anyway. So there are
Speaker 1: obviously lots of advantages to a bicycle based transportation infrastructure.
Speaker 1: It just makes for a much nicer place to live
Speaker 1: in a lot of ways, and it makes for you know,
Speaker 1: a healthier body, greener environment. It's also one one other
Speaker 1: thing to point out before we move on one. Other
Speaker 1: consideration is that it's less expensive toning and maintaining a car.
Speaker 1: I mean, certainly once you factor in gasoline and insurance
Speaker 1: all that stuff. Yeah, yeah, I mean huge advantage there.
Speaker 1: It's not even close. And if your bike breaks down,
Speaker 1: it's a little bit cheaper than right. But if you
Speaker 1: look at most American cities today, they're not really geared
Speaker 1: towards bikes. Are they geared? That was like a pun
Speaker 1: Oh I didn't even do that on purpose. I almost
Speaker 1: pointed out too, I'm so probably Lauren, you got it
Speaker 1: before I did. They don't really cater to the cyclist
Speaker 1: in the way that they cater to motor vehicles. Some
Speaker 1: places in the world, like the Netherlands, or like probably
Speaker 1: places in Asia too, are designed to cater particularly two cyclists.
Speaker 1: They've got infrastructure designed that protects cyclists and encourages people
Speaker 1: to ride bicycles. Other places not so much, like the
Speaker 1: places Richard pointed out, maybe Los Angeles or Atlanta, even
Speaker 1: if they're getting better than they used to be, they're
Speaker 1: not exactly the Netherlands. So I was wondering how it
Speaker 1: got like this, and I found an interesting story that
Speaker 1: was in a November article for Wired, written by the
Speaker 1: writer Adam Man, and he made an interesting point about
Speaker 1: how roads in the United States are engineered and how
Speaker 1: this affects the kind of traffic they cater to. So
Speaker 1: Man claims that in America, a bunch of social and
Speaker 1: economic trends after World War Two, like and he gives
Speaker 1: the examples of suburban planning, interstate highway development, and movement
Speaker 1: of the middle class out of cities, caused cities to
Speaker 1: change the way they designed roads, specifically changing them to
Speaker 1: be more focused on accommodating cars and trucks. And now
Speaker 1: in the United States, most states use a standard for
Speaker 1: evaluating roads that's called level of service, which essentially means
Speaker 1: how many cars can I cram through this intersection in
Speaker 1: a given period of time. Now that's good if you're
Speaker 1: a driver, I guess, because it means you and less
Speaker 1: time clogged up in traffic trying to get where you're going.
Speaker 1: But obviously, relying mostly or entirely on a metric like
Speaker 1: this is going to come at the expense of other considerations,
Speaker 1: like how the road serves foot traffic or cyclists or
Speaker 1: public transportation. And Man points out that optimizing roads to
Speaker 1: make auto travel easier creates a situation known in economics
Speaker 1: as induced demand. So as we constantly work on making
Speaker 1: roads easier and easier to drive, it simply encourages more
Speaker 1: people to drive cars because it's easy to do so,
Speaker 1: and that creates a positive feedback loop that requires us
Speaker 1: to optimize roads for even more cars because more people
Speaker 1: are driving them. Yeah, here in Atlanta, you know, we'll
Speaker 1: we'll probably be referring to our city quite a bit
Speaker 1: in this because we've seen this in the city. You know,
Speaker 1: we've seen uh, big projects where you're you're looking at
Speaker 1: budgets for transportation and a lot of it gets earmarked
Speaker 1: for things like widening roads or highways. Highways and particular
Speaker 1: the Atlanta highway system is ridiculous, but uh, you know
Speaker 1: it's it's what you really need, these twelve lanes and
Speaker 1: uh and also the things that each driver needs about
Speaker 1: four lanes to themselves, right, you know, because because you know,
Speaker 1: it's important that you be at least five lanes over
Speaker 1: from your exit when you realize you need to get
Speaker 1: all the way across and then you've got to cut
Speaker 1: across all those other lanes. So uh, yeah, that's ridiculous
Speaker 1: and obviously there are plenty of studies that show that
Speaker 1: if you add more capacity to roads, that capacity gets filled.
Speaker 1: It doesn't it doesn't alleviate traffic. It just means that
Speaker 1: you have more cars in that same space demands. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so it's you know, we we've seen this many times
Speaker 1: here in our city. Um, and the important thing to
Speaker 1: remember is that there are alternatives. Right. We've actually seen
Speaker 1: other cities kind of incorporate new strategies that have had
Speaker 1: measurable and quantifiable results, and not just improvements for for cyclists, right, No, No,
Speaker 1: these improved months for cyclists. I would argue our improvements
Speaker 1: for everybody. So I want to look at one No, really,
Speaker 1: I want to look at one particular example. And I
Speaker 1: say this as somebody who's not a cyclist. I mean
Speaker 1: I could be interested in becoming a cyclist, but I don't.
Speaker 1: I'm not personally staked in this right now, me neither.
Speaker 1: Actually I don't even own a bike. I own a
Speaker 1: bike helmet. I'm not sure. Well I don't bike, but
Speaker 1: no helmet. So yes, we have one person who can
Speaker 1: legally ride a bicycle in our city. Well, I own
Speaker 1: a unicycle. So you you, Maverick, But you were about
Speaker 1: to say, I'm just kidding. I don't own a unicycle,
Speaker 1: but I do have some facts about what's been going
Speaker 1: on in New York City. So a big thing that
Speaker 1: I think is going to be crucial in the development
Speaker 1: of bike friendly cities in the future is the addition
Speaker 1: of protected bike lanes. So you've been out driving before,
Speaker 1: while not you, John, but you've probably been out riding
Speaker 1: once or twice, and even in road A lot of
Speaker 1: roads around here don't have bike lanes at all, right,
Speaker 1: A lot of them that do have bike lanes essentially
Speaker 1: have what what I would look at and say, that's
Speaker 1: just insulting because it's just like a you know, foot
Speaker 1: wide stripe that's sort of painted along the edge of
Speaker 1: the road in the rightmost lane that's kind of partially
Speaker 1: in the gutter sometimes and and may or may not involve,
Speaker 1: you know, getting your elbows lopped off by someone going
Speaker 1: even the normal speed for that roadway A lot of
Speaker 1: times to riding over storm drains like like it doesn't
Speaker 1: even clear the storm drains sometimes A lot of times
Speaker 1: to me, it doesn't look any different than if there
Speaker 1: were just a cyclist riding as far as he or
Speaker 1: she could to the right in the right lane, so
Speaker 1: that I don't really see another lane. That line is
Speaker 1: a force field that protects the bicyclist from any cars
Speaker 1: that could end up swerving into that traffic. Right, that's no,
Speaker 1: but there could be such a force field, not so
Speaker 1: much a force field, but maybe say in physical matter.
Speaker 1: So in two thousand seven, the City of New York
Speaker 1: started adding protected bike lanes on some roads. And contrasted
Speaker 1: to the type of lanes we were just talking about,
Speaker 1: these are lanes for bikes that are set apart from
Speaker 1: motor traffic by barriers or parking spaces, like parallel parking
Speaker 1: spaces between the bike lane and the driving lanes, painted buffers,
Speaker 1: street lamps, planners, and trees, and other non driving zones
Speaker 1: like it might be just a raised curb, almost like
Speaker 1: a median, but just a very thin one that separates
Speaker 1: the bike lane from the car lane, right. And so
Speaker 1: they started in two thousand and seven. Now they've got
Speaker 1: more than thirty miles of these things in the city,
Speaker 1: and in September, the New York City Department of Transportation
Speaker 1: released to presentation showing some of the results, and one
Speaker 1: important finding is that these protected lanes definitely did cut
Speaker 1: down on legions with injuries, and encouraged more people to
Speaker 1: bike on the road. So that's two improvements right there.
Speaker 1: Just to give a couple of examples, on a stretch
Speaker 1: of ninth Avenue in New York between sixte Street and
Speaker 1: twenty third Street, they eliminated one traffic lane and added
Speaker 1: a protected bike lane offset by a parking lane and
Speaker 1: a buffer area with some trees in it, which you know,
Speaker 1: that's kind of nice anyway. Tree In this stretch of road,
Speaker 1: Crashes with injuries were reduced by fort and bike traffic
Speaker 1: volume increased by sixty simultaneously. That's awesome. That is incredible
Speaker 1: because you know you're talking about you know, you have
Speaker 1: a lot more bodies involved here and yet fewer actual incidents.
Speaker 1: That Yeah, that's that's a really great story. Yeah. Just
Speaker 1: one more example on Columbus Avenue, and this was between
Speaker 1: street and street. They didn't eliminate any traffic lanes. They
Speaker 1: just narrowed the ones that already exist. Did They added
Speaker 1: a protected bike lane again, it was offset by a
Speaker 1: parking lane and some some planners with trees in them.
Speaker 1: Crashes and injuries fell by and bicycle volume increased by
Speaker 1: and they had stats like this in the presentation for
Speaker 1: a bunch of different stretches of road. I just wanted
Speaker 1: to give a couple examples. Now, hang on, Joe, if
Speaker 1: if you were to go and say, remove a lane
Speaker 1: like in that first example, you gave, sure bike traffic increases,
Speaker 1: and yeah, a few people managed to get there successfully
Speaker 1: without being hit because of that. But doesn't that end
Speaker 1: up really impacting the car traffic. I mean, if I'm
Speaker 1: a motorist, aren't I gonna be totally cheesed off. You
Speaker 1: might be cheesed off, but you wouldn't have justification for it, because,
Speaker 1: believe it or not, it actually had a positive impact
Speaker 1: on the flow of auto traffic. Uh So, in many
Speaker 1: of these roads, the travel time was unchanged, and it
Speaker 1: looks like in a lot of cases the protected bike
Speaker 1: lanes actually read deuced travel time on that section of road.
Speaker 1: I didn't see any speculation as to why exactly this was.
Speaker 1: I don't imagine at least some of those people would
Speaker 1: otherwise have been in vehicles that would have increased the traffic,
Speaker 1: and instead we're in bikes, which removed them from those lanes,
Speaker 1: and therefore that that would that would at least partially
Speaker 1: offset it. Yeah, that brings up the volume thing we
Speaker 1: were talking about before. If you can get some of
Speaker 1: the people traveling this this route from cars, two bicycles
Speaker 1: more can go on the same stretcher road without congestion.
Speaker 1: But anyway, the numbers were For example, on eighth Avenue
Speaker 1: in New York, travel times were reduced by an average
Speaker 1: of four by adding the protected bike lane, which is crazy.
Speaker 1: I mean, it seems like making your city more bike
Speaker 1: friendly in this aspect is a total win win. Well,
Speaker 1: what about what about a situation where I mean, okay,
Speaker 1: so so you've got all of this extra space between
Speaker 1: the road and the the retail shops they're lining the street.
Speaker 1: How do how do businesses feel about this? Awesome? Actually,
Speaker 1: and this is the next win. So actually it's a
Speaker 1: win win win. So the New York City protected bike
Speaker 1: lanes helped confirm something that actually already been observed in
Speaker 1: the past. This wasn't new to this research, but bike
Speaker 1: lanes boost business. Stores and restaurants that are along roads
Speaker 1: that have bike lanes and bike traffic receive more customers
Speaker 1: and make more money. Just one example, again, we're looking
Speaker 1: at ninth Avenue here, so this is West twenty three
Speaker 1: West thirty first Street in New York between before they
Speaker 1: added the bike lanes and then the two year mark
Speaker 1: after they added them, the area of shops on this
Speaker 1: street section saw a forty seven percent increase in combined sales.
Speaker 1: And Okay, so that might just mean, well, maybe the
Speaker 1: city is having a strong year economically. So they compared
Speaker 1: it to two other sites that were similar but without
Speaker 1: the protected bike lanes, and those sites only saw a
Speaker 1: forty three percent and twenty three percent improvement in the
Speaker 1: same time period. So there's a lot of evidence to
Speaker 1: indicate that encouraging bike traffic. I think the same is true.
Speaker 1: Foot traffic in front of retail areas is good for
Speaker 1: the local economy. More people our patrons of your businesses
Speaker 1: when they're passing in front of it on bicycle and
Speaker 1: on foot. So this is actually key in my opinion,
Speaker 1: because if you can get business owners pressuring local politicians
Speaker 1: to make these kinds of changes on the promise of
Speaker 1: attracting wealth and indirectly increasing revenue, you have a much
Speaker 1: better chance of actually seeing cities change. Yeah, that's one
Speaker 1: of those things where you have to make I mean,
Speaker 1: it's it's just true with politics you have to make
Speaker 1: a good business case for for what you want, you know,
Speaker 1: the change you want to see enacted. And sometimes that
Speaker 1: might be in some in some areas, like in Portland,
Speaker 1: that might be the environmental impact where you can make
Speaker 1: that kind of argument, and that's going to to work
Speaker 1: in that community. Other places like Atlanta, you you know,
Speaker 1: you might have to find a few other things to
Speaker 1: convince people to put in a bike lane for once.
Speaker 1: I think it's such a good case that. I mean,
Speaker 1: based on everything I've read, I couldn't find what the
Speaker 1: drawback was except I mean, I guess you have initial
Speaker 1: construction costs and the inconvenience on the road while you're
Speaker 1: while you're making these changes, and so yeah, there is
Speaker 1: that drawback. But as far as I can tell, once
Speaker 1: you've actually made these changes, it's a win win win.
Speaker 1: It's good for everybody, and everybody seems to like it.
Speaker 1: This is also just a way to make your streets nicer.
Speaker 1: So if you imagine what it actually looks like on
Speaker 1: the street when there's a sidewalk and then a bike
Speaker 1: lane and then a buffer area between the bike lane
Speaker 1: and the traffic, there is much more of a sort
Speaker 1: of peaceful sidewalk atmosphere, you're not right up against cars
Speaker 1: that are knocking you over with wind as they pass
Speaker 1: three ft beside you at fort or you're also you're
Speaker 1: not encountering bicyclists who are riding on the sidewalk because
Speaker 1: the road is way too freaking scary. Right. So, these
Speaker 1: protected bike lanes, I think really are the future of
Speaker 1: American city infrastructure. If we want to encourage people to
Speaker 1: ride bikes, we need these protected bike lanes, not just
Speaker 1: because they make it safer and do all this other stuff,
Speaker 1: but because they encourage more people to ride bikes by
Speaker 1: making biking less stressful. Right, So, let's talk about some
Speaker 1: of the improvements that we could see in this because
Speaker 1: even in the one the examples you were siting in
Speaker 1: New York, Uh, those bike lanes, while a huge improvement
Speaker 1: over the sort of things that we see in other cities,
Speaker 1: there still are some proposals to make them even more
Speaker 1: safe in the future, right right, Well, because having protected
Speaker 1: bike lanes doesn't solve all the problems, it definitely makes
Speaker 1: biking safer and less stressful while you're sort of moving
Speaker 1: along the link of a surface street. But what happens
Speaker 1: when you get to an intersection right, especially if you
Speaker 1: have to make say a left turn something if you're
Speaker 1: a if you're a cyclist, I think a lot of
Speaker 1: the fear is coming from a right turn because a
Speaker 1: car turning right might not see you right and it's
Speaker 1: trying to cut right. But if you are making a
Speaker 1: left turn as a cyclist, you're cutting across the two lane,
Speaker 1: the lane of traffic that's immediately to your left, plus
Speaker 1: any oncoming traffic that's coming the other way. Yeah, So
Speaker 1: I mean it's either way. You have to worry about
Speaker 1: motorists turning right. If you're turning left, you have to
Speaker 1: worry about everybody on the road. It's it's it's you know,
Speaker 1: intersections are tough, right, And so this is where the
Speaker 1: idea of the protected intersection comes up. I I was
Speaker 1: reading about this earlier and I thought that this was
Speaker 1: just great and really beautiful. So it's inspired by the
Speaker 1: design of intersections. Again in the Netherlands, a very bike
Speaker 1: friendly country. A Portland based urban planner named Nick Falbo
Speaker 1: came up with this design called the protected intersect, and
Speaker 1: and it could be used in American cities. And there's
Speaker 1: really nothing all that fancy or high tech about it.
Speaker 1: It's just kind of some smart design. That's pretty much
Speaker 1: all it is. What are the what are the integral
Speaker 1: elements here? Okay, So imagine your standard traffic intersection where
Speaker 1: there are rectangular streets coming up to it. They each end,
Speaker 1: you know, four corners, and then there's an intersection box
Speaker 1: in the middle. That's where the crosswalks are. Yeah, and
Speaker 1: the crosswalks are right at the edges of the box.
Speaker 1: That's sort of the old way. This has several different things.
Speaker 1: First of all, what you're going to have to imagine
Speaker 1: are these things that he calls corner refuge islands. So
Speaker 1: imagine the box again. So at every corner of the box,
Speaker 1: imagine there is centered on that corner, another smaller box
Speaker 1: that includes this island he's talking about in the corner
Speaker 1: of the box that extends into the big intersection box
Speaker 1: following me at all, it's it's sort of like a
Speaker 1: little bubble if you can imagine like like kind of
Speaker 1: like a little bubble coming off of the sidewalk area
Speaker 1: a little bit further out into the intersection. That's kind
Speaker 1: of what it looks like. Yeah, that's a good way
Speaker 1: of putting it. Even at each corner. Wherever you'd be turning,
Speaker 1: there's a bubble of sidewalk and protected area that extends
Speaker 1: into the intersection right, so that the bike lane, the
Speaker 1: protected bike lane that you are in. So when you're
Speaker 1: when you're writing and it's immediately to your left, that's
Speaker 1: separating you from the cars. It actually extends into the
Speaker 1: intersection just a touch, so that when you make your
Speaker 1: right turn, uh yeah, but you can go straight there's
Speaker 1: an opening, but if you make a right turn, you're
Speaker 1: never exposed to vehicle traffic. Yeah, So any car making
Speaker 1: a right turn there or coming the other way, it's
Speaker 1: going to have to turn around the outside of this
Speaker 1: island curb area that's between you and it constantly. So
Speaker 1: that's one protection. The next one is is the forward
Speaker 1: stop bar for cyclists. This is simply the idea that
Speaker 1: the place where cyclists to stop at the intersection and
Speaker 1: wait on the traffic light is much further ahead than
Speaker 1: where the cars have to stop like a yeah, And
Speaker 1: so this ensures that cars see where cyclists are right
Speaker 1: they're not and they're not in the blind spot, they're
Speaker 1: not immediately off to the right where you know, they
Speaker 1: may not notice because they're looking the motorists is looking ahead,
Speaker 1: not directly to the right, that sort of thing. Right,
Speaker 1: The next thing is set back bike in pedestrian crossing.
Speaker 1: So this just means that instead of the crosswalks being
Speaker 1: right at the edges of the intersection, they're set a
Speaker 1: little bit back from the intersection. And this has several advantages.
Speaker 1: One of them is just that let's say you are
Speaker 1: going through a crosswalk and somebody is turning right into
Speaker 1: the crosswalk while you're going, Well, they're not going to
Speaker 1: be just turning into you blindly, because the crosswalk is
Speaker 1: set back far enough that they will be facing you directly.
Speaker 1: By the time they get to it's right, they will
Speaker 1: have already completed the turn and be moving straight again,
Speaker 1: so they have to consciously make the decision to run
Speaker 1: you down. Right. Yes, the next would be and this
Speaker 1: is the last one, bicycle friendly signal phasing. And this
Speaker 1: is just how you control the stop lights there, having
Speaker 1: separate lights for bicycle traffic and for auto traffic, and
Speaker 1: and also controlling the phases of them separately. This is
Speaker 1: kind of like how some intersections have a a walk
Speaker 1: phase for pedestrians, that is that allows people to start
Speaker 1: crossing before the traffic for cars changes, so it'll hold
Speaker 1: everyone like a four way stop, it will hold everyone
Speaker 1: has stop while the pedestrians are able to cross. I've
Speaker 1: seen that in a couple of different intersections. Most of
Speaker 1: them are not that way, but if you are, yeah,
Speaker 1: and if you get a chance, I really recommend looking
Speaker 1: this up. I think it looks really cool. You can
Speaker 1: check it out at Protected Intersection dot com. I think
Speaker 1: it's a smart idea that the creator did admit. There's
Speaker 1: basically one major drawback to it, UM, and that's that
Speaker 1: because of this bubble formation, that's a terriff protected area
Speaker 1: for both pedestrians and cyclists to hang out in. UM,
Speaker 1: you're you're modifying the way that cars are going to
Speaker 1: have to turn in the intersection is going to be
Speaker 1: a much sharper turn, and so you know, like a
Speaker 1: like a two seater isn't going to have that much trouble,
Speaker 1: but a large truck might, which might mean, UM that
Speaker 1: you'd have to either change the way that trucks are
Speaker 1: built or or change the way that cities allow trucks
Speaker 1: to drive around in them. Right, you'd either change the
Speaker 1: truck's route where it's going, or you might change I
Speaker 1: don't know how good truck drivers are at what they do,
Speaker 1: but just what sizes of trucks are are built and
Speaker 1: us so, I mean you could see this easily becoming
Speaker 1: an issue. Let's say that you you are moving from
Speaker 1: one part of the city to another and you rent
Speaker 1: a trailer to to haul your stuff. I mean that
Speaker 1: would alone would make it very differ Like what about
Speaker 1: a school bus. Those things can't turn for anything, right,
Speaker 1: So then I guess, yeah, there's a question. It's well,
Speaker 1: does the inconveniencing of large trailer trucks, uh, you know,
Speaker 1: does that offset the benefit provided by this kind of system.
Speaker 1: I don't know, but it seems like a really good
Speaker 1: idea to me. Yeah. I'm not a civil engineers, as
Speaker 1: someone again as someone expert, as someone who's a pedestrian
Speaker 1: and and soon to be cyclists, uh, you know, these
Speaker 1: sort of things really appeal to me. I mean, anything
Speaker 1: that increases the safety of folks in general, and at
Speaker 1: the same time is promoting a healthier lifestyle and more
Speaker 1: green method of getting around, reducing traffic. I mean, all
Speaker 1: of these are are definitely incentives to look into stuff
Speaker 1: like this. On top of everything we've said, I think
Speaker 1: there's one more piece of news we came across that
Speaker 1: makes it look actually looks good for bikes in cities. Yeah,
Speaker 1: this would be going back to that level of service
Speaker 1: you're referring to earlier. Right, that was the idea that
Speaker 1: roads are measured in performance by how many cars they
Speaker 1: can get through them in a given period of time.
Speaker 1: And generally speaking, civil engineers don't didn't like to see
Speaker 1: that number go down for any reason, right, They didn't
Speaker 1: want to see it become less efficient. And in some states,
Speaker 1: like in California, this ended up becoming a matter of policy,
Speaker 1: where as a rule, the city of Los Angeles, for example,
Speaker 1: wouldn't consider any kind of proposal to any sort of
Speaker 1: transportation project if it meant negatively impacting the level of
Speaker 1: service of the intersections nearby. And that would mean that
Speaker 1: perhaps there'd be some projects that in the long run
Speaker 1: would be incredibly beneficial, but in the short run might
Speaker 1: have a negative impact on a particular intersection for you know,
Speaker 1: however long it's going to take for the project to complete,
Speaker 1: and those projects would not even be considered, despite the
Speaker 1: fact that there might be a real benefit in the
Speaker 1: long run. But recently, the state of California decided that
Speaker 1: level of service would no longer be the guideline for
Speaker 1: makeing these kind of decisions. That, yeah, that there they
Speaker 1: can make changes now that in the short term might
Speaker 1: make life a little more complicated for folks who have
Speaker 1: to navigate through that intersection, but in the long term
Speaker 1: could stand to benefit people in immeasurable ways. Right, you
Speaker 1: can have a longer view of the improvement of your
Speaker 1: traffic infrastructure right now. First of all, one of the
Speaker 1: interesting things and this is one of those. It almost
Speaker 1: it seems really informal to me, like there are a
Speaker 1: lot of informal news reports about how millennials are giving
Speaker 1: up the car. They're not interested in owning cars, They're
Speaker 1: not interested in having that automobile. That's not how they
Speaker 1: define independence, by Gali, The way they define independence is
Speaker 1: the fact that they can access the world's knowledge using
Speaker 1: a device in the palm of their hand. Whereas I think, well,
Speaker 1: maybe it's also because of crippling student debt and the
Speaker 1: inability to afford a car and maintain a car. But yeah,
Speaker 1: it's tight genes. It gives them idea exactly. There are
Speaker 1: a lot of factors that go into whether or not
Speaker 1: people of the in the millennial's age range, which is
Speaker 1: late teens to mid twenties. UM, why why there seems
Speaker 1: to be a larger population of them who are not
Speaker 1: getting cars, not owning cars, buying cars. What are the
Speaker 1: actual numbers on that. I don't have numbers for you, Joe,
Speaker 1: I do. Oh that's good. Uh so. So basically, according
Speaker 1: to research that was done by the p I r
Speaker 1: G Educational Fund and the Frontier Group, which it should
Speaker 1: be said, are like pro green kind of entities. That
Speaker 1: being said, though, UM, they found that Americans in general
Speaker 1: drove less from two thousand one to two thousand nine UM.
Speaker 1: Like the population increased by ten percent and driving simultaneously
Speaker 1: decreased by one percent. And that's the first decrease that
Speaker 1: we've seen in recent decades, like basically going back to
Speaker 1: the nineteen fifties. However, people ages sixteen to thirty during
Speaker 1: that decade drove the least uh twenty of percent less
Speaker 1: than that same age group did in the nineteen nineties. UM.
Speaker 1: And as of eleven, they found that only six of
Speaker 1: Americans ages sixteen to twenty four even had driver's license UM,
Speaker 1: which is the lower percent lowest percentage in the past
Speaker 1: fifty years. Now, you can also look at that decade
Speaker 1: and see another trend, which is at fuel prices were
Speaker 1: increasing fairly steadily. So it's one of those things where again,
Speaker 1: uh the the factors that determined why people were doing this,
Speaker 1: why this this particular generation was doing this, are varied.
Speaker 1: Some may very well be making it as a lifestyle choice.
Speaker 1: They want to live close to where they work, close
Speaker 1: to where they play, and all of that means that
Speaker 1: they don't have a need for a car. That could
Speaker 1: be part of it. But some of them may be
Speaker 1: doing it because they are environmentally conscious and they want
Speaker 1: to be very eco friendly. Some may be doing it
Speaker 1: simply because it's the financially viable means for them to
Speaker 1: get to where they need to go. Um Boiling this
Speaker 1: down to a simple answer is I think a mistake,
Speaker 1: because life is never that simple, especially when it gets
Speaker 1: to something about why humans do something in a particular way.
Speaker 1: It's always complicated. But there are a lot of uh
Speaker 1: these a lot of these factors are all coming to
Speaker 1: play at the same time, and we are seeing this
Speaker 1: kind of shift at least right now now. Granted as
Speaker 1: we're recording this, gas prices are are significantly lower than
Speaker 1: they had been for quite some time. So it could
Speaker 1: be that we see a reversal in this trend. It
Speaker 1: maybe that has nothing to do with the generation at all,
Speaker 1: and that this ends up just being a little blip
Speaker 1: in the long term uh history of the United States
Speaker 1: Americans in their cars, because we do have a very
Speaker 1: car centric um culture in many parts of the United States.
Speaker 1: Uh So, it's just something to keep in mind. And
Speaker 1: the one other thing to keep in mind is that
Speaker 1: when we're talking about millennials and this adoption of bikes,
Speaker 1: is that we're largely talking about the United States. That's
Speaker 1: the same thing as not. Trends are different, probably quite different. Yeah,
Speaker 1: And in China and India, a lot more younger people
Speaker 1: are interested in buying cars, and there are a lot
Speaker 1: more people in those countries than there are in the
Speaker 1: United States. So globally, the story is not that young
Speaker 1: people are are issuing automobiles and and we're not going
Speaker 1: to see cars except for long distance travel in the
Speaker 1: near future, or it's all going to be cars sharing
Speaker 1: and no one's going to own a car. That's not
Speaker 1: necessarily going to be true across the world. Okay, Well,
Speaker 1: so We've talked about how the cities of the future
Speaker 1: might change to become more bike friendly and why that
Speaker 1: sort of seems at least to be hopeful likely to happen,
Speaker 1: and possible trends in how people are feeling about cars
Speaker 1: and bicycles. But what about the bicycles themselves? Right? Could
Speaker 1: the bicycle as a machine actually change in the future
Speaker 1: or is that pretty much gonna stay exactly how it's
Speaker 1: always been. It's it's a pretty simple machine, right, I mean,
Speaker 1: it's pretty effective the way that it is. What what
Speaker 1: could we do to improve it? Well? Uh, rockets? Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: that's that's good. I like where you're going. Okay, that's good,
Speaker 1: that's good. What what if what if we double the
Speaker 1: number of wheels on a bicycle, put it in a frame,
Speaker 1: cover that frame and metal sheeting, put a motor in it,
Speaker 1: and run it on fossil fuel, right, so you don't
Speaker 1: have to pedal, you don't get wet when it rains. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I think it's gonna catch on. It was certainly has
Speaker 1: I you know, we can just look at the window
Speaker 1: and see. Uh. Now, there are actually lots of different
Speaker 1: ways that bicycles could evolve, and many of them are
Speaker 1: kind of in the mind of the millennial. I mean,
Speaker 1: it's the idea of having this connected device. It's just
Speaker 1: that now it's also a device you ride on, not
Speaker 1: just you know, the stuff that you're carrying on your person.
Speaker 1: But some of the more simple improvements are ones we've
Speaker 1: seen over the last couple of decades, such as electric bicycles,
Speaker 1: which is not a new idea. Is that different than
Speaker 1: an electric motorcycle. Yes, an electric motorcycle does not require
Speaker 1: any sort of pedaling at all. In fact, there's usually
Speaker 1: no sent no actual pedals, whereasn electric bicycle can at
Speaker 1: least be switched to manual pedaling if you want it.
Speaker 1: So there are two different ones. But we're seeing not
Speaker 1: just electric bicycles, but electric assist bicycles. By these are
Speaker 1: bikes that have an electric motor that help kick in
Speaker 1: and give you a little extra boost so that you
Speaker 1: don't have to exert yourself quite as hard on difficult terrain,
Speaker 1: for example, or a really tall hill, which I think
Speaker 1: would make people who live in San Francisco extremely happy. Um, Now,
Speaker 1: like I said, they're not new. There are patents that
Speaker 1: actually date from the late nineteenth century, so that's the
Speaker 1: same century that we saw the bicycle itself be invented
Speaker 1: by That was at the beginning, but towards the end
Speaker 1: we started seeing patents being filed for battery operated bicycles. However,
Speaker 1: that being said, as far as I could tell, there
Speaker 1: wasn't like a lot of production for electric bicycles early on.
Speaker 1: There are a lot of patents, but that doesn't necessarily
Speaker 1: mean people made the stuff that they came up with, right. Um. However,
Speaker 1: if you look in the mid twentieth century, you start
Speaker 1: seeing some of those designs actually work their way into production. Um.
Speaker 1: But then it was even just a tiny niche of
Speaker 1: the overall bicycle market, right It wasn't like it was
Speaker 1: the common element. I mean, I never had a bike
Speaker 1: that had any kind of electronic assist to it. I
Speaker 1: had just regular old, you know, human powered bicycles. But
Speaker 1: we're starting to see the market grow rapidly today, particularly
Speaker 1: in regions such as Europe and Asia, but we're also
Speaker 1: seeing it start to grow in the United States. We're
Speaker 1: seeing a lot of interesting innovation in that spot. So
Speaker 1: the pedal assist versions. You have a motor that kicks
Speaker 1: in once you hit a certain threshold and it ends
Speaker 1: up taking over of the work so that you know
Speaker 1: you're still doing In most cases, you're still doing some
Speaker 1: work as you're peddling, but the motor is taking over
Speaker 1: any uh any excess so that you don't have to
Speaker 1: pedal extra hard in order to get over that hill
Speaker 1: or whatever. Some other ones that like a true electronic
Speaker 1: bicycle where the motor can provide full propulsion, might have
Speaker 1: throttle control, so it would essentially be like you know,
Speaker 1: a pedal or more likely something that's in the handlebars
Speaker 1: that allows you to control the throttle and write it
Speaker 1: more like it was an electronic motorcycle, and then you
Speaker 1: can switch to manual by easing off the throttle and
Speaker 1: starting to pedal. Uh. And there are a lot of
Speaker 1: really cool products that allow you to turn existing regular
Speaker 1: old bicycles into e bikes, although not all of them
Speaker 1: are are actually available on the market, but they're you know,
Speaker 1: coming out soon, like the the fly Clie smart wheel
Speaker 1: and the Copenhagen Wheel. Have you heard about these? Both
Speaker 1: of these are super cool. Copenhagen wheel was developed I
Speaker 1: think by M I. T. And uh fly Client was developed.
Speaker 1: I want to say it was Eastern European company that
Speaker 1: made that, but both of these are similar concepts. They
Speaker 1: are replacement wheel for the rear rear wheel of your bicycle.
Speaker 1: So you would, you know, dismantle your bike, take the
Speaker 1: rear bike wheel off, put this wheel in its place.
Speaker 1: You gotta get a little greasy, Yeah, you gotta get
Speaker 1: a little greasy, and then you replace the drive system,
Speaker 1: which I'm imagining would for most of these bikes is
Speaker 1: going to be a chain driven bike. There are other
Speaker 1: types of drive trains for bicycles, but chain is one
Speaker 1: of the most popular in common. Uh. And there's the
Speaker 1: fly wheel. It stuff as motorized. It's inside the hub
Speaker 1: of the bicycle wheel, so it looks like a regular
Speaker 1: wheel on the circumference. There's spokes that lead in, but
Speaker 1: then the hub is much larger, like dinner plate sized
Speaker 1: as opposed to a little round circle the very center
Speaker 1: and that flywheel is what kicks in and gives you
Speaker 1: the pedal assist. Uh And uh, you know, it's depending
Speaker 1: upon which version you have, you have different options. Like
Speaker 1: the fly cli has a Bluetooth connection that connects to
Speaker 1: your smartphone. That and that you can set what your
Speaker 1: top speed limit is going to be. Because these things
Speaker 1: can let you go pretty fast, like in excess of
Speaker 1: thirty miles per hour on a bicycle. Um, but you
Speaker 1: can set that that speed in your app and say,
Speaker 1: I don't let me do that. That would be dumb
Speaker 1: of me. I don't and I don't trust me, so
Speaker 1: you make sure I don't do that. But there are
Speaker 1: other ones, like I know, the Copenhagen wheel in particular,
Speaker 1: is supposed to allow you to set a specific threshold
Speaker 1: for physical exertion and say this is how hard I
Speaker 1: want to pedal, and anytime you encounter terrain that would
Speaker 1: require you to pedal harder than that, it automatically kicks
Speaker 1: in so that you are constantly peddling at the same
Speaker 1: physical exertion from beginning of ride to the end, no
Speaker 1: matter what kind of stuff you encounter. So even if
Speaker 1: you hit a really steep hill, you're okay. I love
Speaker 1: that idea because Atlanta does have quite a few hills,
Speaker 1: and I have a feeling I'm going to need all
Speaker 1: the help I can get. Um. But these are just,
Speaker 1: you know, kind of concepts of stuff that allow you
Speaker 1: to convert your existing bike into that. And I don't
Speaker 1: think the Copenhagens available yet. But the fly Cli had
Speaker 1: a Kickstarter and I think for five fifty bucks you
Speaker 1: could get one of those wheels. So it's almost it's like,
Speaker 1: depending on what kind of bike you get, it's about
Speaker 1: the price of a bike. So you're just you're doubling
Speaker 1: the price of your of your bicycle at that point. Um.
Speaker 1: And of course that's just like a middle run, uh,
Speaker 1: metropolitan style bike. They can get pretty expensive if you're
Speaker 1: very serious about this stuff. Then there's the bike of
Speaker 1: the future the future. Yeah, it's called the Denny. So
Speaker 1: that sounds of futuristic. Well there were there was no
Speaker 1: I did read about this one, and it does sound cool. Yeah.
Speaker 1: This this was part of a design competition. There was
Speaker 1: a design competition. It began way back in like twenty eleven,
Speaker 1: I think, and there were a bunch of different groups
Speaker 1: that were all interested in designing what would be the
Speaker 1: bicycle of the city of the future, Like what what
Speaker 1: would be the elements that you would want to include.
Speaker 1: And some of the bikes were I mean, all of
Speaker 1: them are really cool ideas. All the ones that made
Speaker 1: it to the finals and then were voted upon, uh,
Speaker 1: we're all nifty And some of them had things like
Speaker 1: GPS sensors so that if someone took your bike, you
Speaker 1: could totally find out where your bike was. Uh. Some
Speaker 1: of them had uh you know, very lightweight materials that
Speaker 1: were printed in by a three D printer, so like
Speaker 1: lots of neat stuff. But the Denny was kind of
Speaker 1: an e bike on steroids. So it had a motorized
Speaker 1: front wheel, not the rear wheel like the Copenhagen or
Speaker 1: the fly Client, but same sort of concept. Pedal assists
Speaker 1: that could kick in and help you out. Uh. Had
Speaker 1: a had an automatic shifter to control the gears that
Speaker 1: was puterized, so you never had to worry about shifting gears.
Speaker 1: If you wanted full manual control, it would shift gears
Speaker 1: automatically to give you the best experience for whatever, you know,
Speaker 1: situation you happen to be in. Uh. It cuts down
Speaker 1: on splash back if you're running riding your bike and
Speaker 1: you're hitting puddles or it's raining. Um. Instead of having
Speaker 1: a fender, which is why most bikes that are designed
Speaker 1: for that kind of travel that's the way they handle it,
Speaker 1: it actually had a little, uh little thing that stuck
Speaker 1: out behind the rear wheel with bristles to break up
Speaker 1: the water droplets. As they get kicked up. So yeah,
Speaker 1: so yeah, you don't have this big fender covering your
Speaker 1: back wheel, just this these little bristles that it's almost
Speaker 1: like a little broom that breaks up the water. And
Speaker 1: apparently it's really effective. Smart. Yeah. Uh, I'm really curious
Speaker 1: to see how many times I show up to the
Speaker 1: office with like a a streak of road grit down
Speaker 1: my spine from riding the bike and and and weather
Speaker 1: that was not so great. Um, I'm hoping it's not frequently.
Speaker 1: It also had handlebars that could come apart, detached from
Speaker 1: the bicycle and act as a bike lock, So not
Speaker 1: only are you locking your bike, but you've removed the handlebars.
Speaker 1: So it makes makes anyone stealing the bike less likely
Speaker 1: to do so because it's now they can't steer it. Um.
Speaker 1: And that was kind of interesting. So it was the
Speaker 1: one that actually won this design competition. There was some
Speaker 1: coverage on it in in mid two thousand and fourteen,
Speaker 1: and um, I haven't seen it's supposed to go into
Speaker 1: production because the winner of the competition was supposed to
Speaker 1: get like a a production of these. Don't know how
Speaker 1: many are going to be made, and I don't know
Speaker 1: how expensive it's gonna be. I have a feeling it
Speaker 1: will probably be outside of my price range for a bicycle.
Speaker 1: It would be hard for me to justify that expense
Speaker 1: to my wife, like, you have a bike, Uh, it
Speaker 1: works well, but it's not like you're getting a car.
Speaker 1: That's true. Well, if I did get a car, she'd say, now,
Speaker 1: this was a colossal waste of money. Don't have a license.
Speaker 1: What were you thinking? You know, speaking of not driving cars,
Speaker 1: I had one more thought about how the future of
Speaker 1: bike friendly cities could look even better than it does
Speaker 1: so far, and that's autonomous vehicles. Yeah. I think self
Speaker 1: driving cars as they enter the market, On one hand,
Speaker 1: they will be a very tempting technology to take advantage of.
Speaker 1: So well, I mean, yeah, of course I want to
Speaker 1: ride in a self driving car. I can do whatever
Speaker 1: I want while I'm riding. I don't have to worry
Speaker 1: about all that my nails or right. But it's also,
Speaker 1: as we've talked about many times on here, I think
Speaker 1: we're all three pretty convinced that self driving cars are
Speaker 1: going to be massively, massively safer than human drivers. The
Speaker 1: fact that the Google cars alone have been on the
Speaker 1: roads for more than a year and only have been
Speaker 1: involved in two accidents, both of which were driver fault,
Speaker 1: not human fault. Yeah. Yeah, that tells me that this
Speaker 1: is this is a good pathway, and I think they're
Speaker 1: only getting better. Yeah, I think. And also, I mean
Speaker 1: almost all accidents are caused by humans human fault. Sure,
Speaker 1: they're there are things that could have been avoided if
Speaker 1: people had been better drivers. Sure, and the cars that
Speaker 1: are driving themselves are better drivers than you are. This
Speaker 1: is yet one more factory that I think is going
Speaker 1: to increase the safety of cyclists on the road and
Speaker 1: just generally decrease the stress I imagine. Yeah, cars can
Speaker 1: be way more aware of what's going on around them
Speaker 1: than a driver can. I mean, just human limitation. Right,
Speaker 1: I'm not even saying that there are people out there
Speaker 1: who are terrible drivers. The best driver in the world
Speaker 1: cannot have three D and sixty degree awareness of his
Speaker 1: or her surroundings like an autonomous car with the right
Speaker 1: sensors could. Sure. Sure, And I mean, you know, as
Speaker 1: people get more used to see eeing bikes on the road,
Speaker 1: I think that that drivers are going to be more
Speaker 1: cautious about it, um more used to it and incorporating
Speaker 1: some of these infrastructure changes would would definitely help and
Speaker 1: you know, getting bikes out to a place where a
Speaker 1: car can see them before they make a turn or
Speaker 1: something like that. Um. And and giving the bikes a
Speaker 1: safe lane in which to ride, which is not you know,
Speaker 1: at the at the car's elbow, um, because cars have
Speaker 1: elbows now it is the future. Well um. And also
Speaker 1: on that same on that same pathway, uh, making the
Speaker 1: roads safer for bicyclists and and allowing for these kind
Speaker 1: of things and keeping them outside of the lanes for cars. Uh,
Speaker 1: ends up being less stressful for the motorists in general
Speaker 1: because they're no longer trying to you know, they're no
Speaker 1: longer complaining about that guy who's weaving through the traffic
Speaker 1: lanes because they're on a bicycle so they're going right
Speaker 1: between two line lanes of cars or there, or it's
Speaker 1: someone who is running through a a stop sign or
Speaker 1: a red because now we've got an infrastructure where, because
Speaker 1: the support being there, bicyclists don't there's there's not any
Speaker 1: incentive for them to break rules, right right. But but hypothetically,
Speaker 1: you know, as as good as this could be, yeah,
Speaker 1: I think that automated cars could could do a much
Speaker 1: better job of it just by virtue of what they are. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I feel really good about the future of bicycles. Actually,
Speaker 1: I didn't know what I thought before I started researching
Speaker 1: for this episode, but the more I've read, the more
Speaker 1: I feel like, Yeah, I think the future for bikes
Speaker 1: in cities is very strong. Yeah. Yeah, So thank you
Speaker 1: so much for writing to us, Richard. This is a
Speaker 1: really fun topic to dive into. And if any of
Speaker 1: you out there have a similarly fun topic that you
Speaker 1: would love us to tackle something that's future oriented, and
Speaker 1: you should get in touch with us too and let
Speaker 1: us know what you think and we'll be, you know,
Speaker 1: doing a lot more of these kind of episodes in
Speaker 1: the future. So to get in touch with us, you
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