Unconventional Sources

According to testimony given to the U.S. Senate Committee on Banking, Housing and Urban Affairs today, we can expect the amount we drive to double by 2030 if current trends continue. That’s not bad for our free time. It’s bad for the environment as well, as pollution from transportation currently accounts for 28 percent of greenhouse gas emissions, a portion that’s rapidly increasing.

Thankfully, there are organizations that are trying to reform American transportation, promoting increased efficiency, community redesign, and increased usage of efficient modes of transportation already available: Walking, bicycling and public transportation. Among these organizations is the Institute for Transportation and Development Policy – check ‘em out.

A note that makes me wish I were in California – and that’s a rare thing:

May 11-15 is California Bike Commute Week this year. That means that you’ve got less than two weeks to prepare for that week of bike commuting, so maybe you want to get a bit of practice in – a day or two of bike commuting between then and now.

Map out you route, and take a bit of extra time, and enjoy yourself. You’ll be saving money and helping the clear the air in the process.

Well, you have a long time to prepare, it’s in September. But, I just love, love, love this idea, and I can’t wait that long to write about it.

The Bike Commute Challenge has a great strategy for encouraging people to take bicycles to work instead of driving. It encourages groups of people from the same workplace to sign up for the challenge, and then compete to see who can do the most commuting by bicycle.

“For health. For the earth. For fun. For glory.”

Glory be. The only problem I can think of with this web site is that it has a bias in favor of people who live further, rather than closer, to work. Maybe it could measure trips taken instead of miles ridden… except then it would have a bias in favor of people who live closer to work, and have an easy ride, instead of those who are really working hard to make a longer trip.

Well, these details miss the main point: However long you have to ride, please, just take your bike to work!

It’s a small service, really, but blogger Paul Dorn is assembling information from other sources at Bike Commute Tips. It’s a bit heavy on the quotes from other news sources, in my opinion, but useful nonetheless.

What I can’t believe from there is the article on how easy winter bicycling can be – from a newspaper in Boulder, Colorado, where the air is so dry that there’s hardly ever much winter precipitation – easy for them to say. It comes with a photo of the difficult winter conditions they have to deal with in California – fog. Have mercy!

For a more realistic, if not less adventurous, perspective on the matter, go take a gander at the winter biking tips from IceBike. That’s more like it.

I’m glad to see the bike commuting promotional site Bike Commute Week, which seems to be connected to another site at the address of MayIsBikeMonth.com – but isn’t really about May being Bike Month at all. That second site is just a commuter club site for the Sacramento area.

A little quibble about the Bike Commute Week site too – it doesn’t say when the Sacramento area’s Bike Week actually is. Small detail.

On to the positive: What I love about this site is its inclusion of this one fact, from the Sacramento Air Quality Management District, on the air quality impact of last May’s bike-to-work program there:

“The number of commute and errand miles ridden last May saved 366,551 pounds of global-warming CO2 and 5,092 pounds of other air pollution from our atmosphere. The cyclists also saved 18,854 gallons of gasoline (worth about $65,047).”

366,551 pounds of CO2 not pumped into the air just from one city’s efforts in one week. That’s a good confirmation that if we could have a sustained transition to a bike commuting lifestyle in the USA, we could save ourselves an awful lot of trouble.

Something I’m starting to notice about bicycle commuting web sites: They’re mighty heavy on the ads – and not just ads either, but some maybe-not-so-ethical relationships with bicycle manufacturers as well.

Take as an example the Bike Commuters blog, which has some really good writing about bike activist events, but then they’ve got articles like a review of a bike by Dynamic Bicycles, which just so happens to have supplied the writer with a free sample. I don’t know if I can really trust that review. I’ll have to go elsewhere to find some other opinions that aren’t so gifty-biased.

I think I’ll try to read their articles on actually commuting, while ignoring the flashing ads and disregarding their product reviews.

I’ve given some rather half-heartedly enthusiastic recommendations about the bicycling sites I’ve found so far, because they’ve been about the recreational side of biking, rather than the practical, day-to-day way of a bicyclist’s life.

I’m happy to pass you on, therefore, to Commute By Bike. I’m particularly grateful for their Beginner Tips – because in a world like ours, where people regard driving a car as a more natural activity than even walking, it doesn’t hurt to have the car-free bicycling lifestyle spelled out in a very simple form.

Also, if you’re not prone to fits of despair, read their article on the 10 worst cities in which to commute by bicycle – but Washington D.C.? What about their Capital Crescent Trail?

I hate the phrase bike commuting, because the idea of a commute is such a drag. It’s suggestive of burden and separation, and submissions to the requirements of an employer. What I really want to talk about in this new series of articles about bicycling sources I’m exploring is functional bicycling. I’m talking about bicycling as an integrated part of our lives.

This means not bicycling as recreation. Using a bicycle to get around and do the things you need to do is a very different thing than doing what Lance Armstrong does (especially given those doping allegations). People who dress up in special bicycling clothes in order to do recreational bicycle riding are a very different sort than those people who have decided to use bicycles instead of cars.

People who really use bicycles as a form of everyday transportation don’t put on slick racing outfits. They do need to think about ways to keep their bikes in shape, not just for speed, but for sturdiness, and for carrying capacity.

How do you go grocery shopping with a bicycle? How do you move a family around if you’ve got bicycles instead of cars? What are the best bikes for roadside repair, and what do you really need to carry with you in order to accomplish this? What about biking in the winter?

These are the kinds of questions I’m looking to get answered, and I’ll spend the next few days talking about sites that I’m finding in my search for information.

This is a personally important thing for me because I’ve decided to go back to a car-free life for the first time in about 10 years. Before, I lived in a big city in the South, with buses, and lots of things in walking distance. Now, I’m living in a small village about 11 miles outside a fairly small city (25,000 non-college population) in the North. Before, I was single. Now, I’m married with three kids. I’m really not sure how I’m going to go about this, but I’m dedicated to giving it a fair shot.

I’m posting these articles under ecology and economy because my decision to substitute a bike for a car is due to a combination of these two factors. I’m sick of spending so much money on a car, and the time has come environmentally when I really do feel that it’s necessary to recommit to a lower level of energy consumption. We can’t just keep waiting around for Congress or President Obama to get their acts together. We the people need to lead the way – under our own power.

Let me start out with a general site: The International Bicycle Travel Forum.

The International Bicycle Travel Forum didn’t work for my particular purposes, but I love the basic idea of people who visit the site: Tourism on bicycle instead by car. Bicycling is a great way to get to know an area, and not just the pinpointed destinations that ordinary tours emphasize.

To be frank, the IBTF site wasn’t very functional for me, though I love the idea of it. A lot of the site was flavored by people bragging about how far or how fast they can go, as opposed to working out the very literal nuts and bolts of how to get around. The people who use the site seem to regard bicycle tours as something enjoyably outside the ordinary, and what I want is to find a way to integrate a bicycle into the ordinary aspects of my existence, where I live and where I need to go most of the time.

On toward another bicycling site that’s more on target tomorrow…