The Outspokin’ Cyclist: Women’s liberation through bicycling

Phillip Barron
The Herald Sun

For many, the nineties were a time of political advancement and financial success. The economy was doing well, failed policies from previous administrations were being turned back, manufacturing was on the increase, and progress was the buzz-word in board rooms and parlors.

This national excitement had something, more than a little, to do with the fact that the 1890s were also the height of the bicycle boom in the United States. In 1897 alone, approximately three hundred manufacturers in the US sold more two million bicycles, doubling production from the previous year.

The bicycle had been invented only thirty years earlier, and the constant stream of improvements to its design was a celebrated sign of progress. The bicycle’s adoption by women of the era made the bicycle literally and metaphorically a vehicle of social change.

In the 1930s, local newspaper columnist Wyatt T. Dixon wrote a few articles reflecting on bicycles’ popularity in 1887. B.L. Duke and Company’s furniture store rented high wheelers (the kind of bikes with a front wheel nearly as tall as the rider and much smaller rear wheel) for ten cents an hour. If you could afford it, renting bicycles and learning to ride the wobbly contraptions was a popular form of entertainment in 1887. Watching the cyclists fall off the bikes was equally entertaining for the crowd that formed every weekend.

Cycling, as Dixon reports it, was a man’s activity.

dowd.jpgSource: Kostyu, Joel A. and Frank A. Kostyu. Durham: a Pictorial History. Norfolk, Va.: Donning, 1978 — purchase the book here.

Between 1887 and 1890, the number of cyclists in the US doubled. “The vast majority of new purchasers, many of whom were women, favored the new ‘safety bicycle,’” says David Herlihy in Bicycle. The safety bicycle resembles what we now think of as a bicycle: two wheels of equal size with a chain-driven rear axle and lever-operated brakes. Its invention and mass production propelled cycling’s popularity.

In a photograph dating to roughly 1895, young Durhamite Mamie Dowd poses proudly with an Overman Victoria bicycle. The Victoria, Overman’s drop frame woman’s model, was a fixed gear safety bicycle outfitted with solid rubber tires. According to The Smithsonian Institution, “the drop frame bicycle was developed so that women could ride while wearing a long skirt. It’s adoption greatly increased the popularity of the bicycle, and helped make cycling a popular sport for women, as well as, a means of transportation.”

Peter Zheutlin echoes the point in his biography of Annie Londonderry, the first woman to bicycle around the world; “a woman with a bicycle no longer had to depend on a man for transportation.”

No wonder then that in 1896 Susan B. Anthony said that bicycling had done more than anything else to emancipate women.

durhamelectriclightingco_1890.jpgSource: Kostyu, Joel A. and Frank A. Kostyu. Durham: a Pictorial History. Norfolk, Va.: Donning, 1978 — purchase the book here.

Dowd claimed to be the first woman in Durham to own a bicycle, though the authenticity of her claim is challenged by another photograph. In the second, two men and a woman pose in front of the Durham Electric Lighting Company in 1890. The two men stand in suits and top hats, while the woman wears a Victorian dress and hat. Notably, she is sitting astride a bicycle. The photo itself is a celebration of two major innovations of the time: the bicycle as well as Durham’s first electricity provider.

We know from accounts that conservatives of the time saw the bicycle as a symbol of unwelcome social change. While it was a celebrated technological innovation and an admirable source of amusement for men (and even boys), the bicycle’s role in women’s liberation kept it mired in controversy.

In his 1901 memoir, traditionalist James Battle Avirett reminisces antebellum values and derides the bicycle for ruining “the grace of woman’s attractive movement.” His comments parallel a June 6, 1895 article in Statesville’s daily, The Landmark, which notes that while “the number of women who ride bicycles is growing with great rapidity… even in the best and prettiest of costumes, no woman looks dignified while riding a bicycle.”

For conservatives, what was unwelcome about women cycling had as much to do with the resulting changes in women’s clothing as it had to do with these so-called ‘new women’ traveling on their own.

Zheutlin explains that “cycling required a more practical, rational form of dress, and the large billowing skirts and corsets started to give way to bloomers.”

In short, when it came to women, “cycling, and the dress reform that accompanied it, challenged traditional gender norms,” says Zheutlin.

Durham embraced the progress perhaps more easily than other cities its size. Women were working in tobacco factories as early as the 1880s, and local historian Jean Anderson notes that in 1896 “continuing efforts toward independence” led Durham women to create their own literary and social clubs, splintering away from male-dominated groups.

morehead1.jpgImage courtesy of the Rare Book, Manuscript, and Special Collections Library, Duke University.

A third photograph from the era, this one also from 1895, shows a young boy and girl straddling bicycles in the driveway of the Morehead House on Duke Street.

Despite its high cost, the bicycle’s popularity transcended class. “Hundreds of thousands in the United States,” says Youth’s Companion magazine in the summer of 1896, “saved ‘every spare penny’ to buy a wheel,” and to the detriment of other businesses. As these photographs of turn of the century Durham show, bicycle fever transcended age and race as well.

Although it is unclear whether Dowd was the first woman in Durham to have a bike, later in life she did become the first judge of Durham’s Juvenile Court. Whether her bicycling days had anything to do with her later successful social reforms is up to you.

The photographs mentioned in this column are part of Bull City Bicycles, a month-long exhibit of bicycle related photography on display at Bull City Arts Collaborative, 401 Foster Street. Visit http://www.bullcityarts.org/ for more details.

This column is part of a ongoing research project into the history of Durham’s cycling community. If you have anything to share (photographs, memoirs, family lore, or personal stories) about cycling in Durham, I would love to hear from you.

The Outspokin’ Cyclist: World needs your old bicycles

Phillip Barron
The Herald Sun

Mark in Cape Coast, GhanaIn Ghana, the availability of a reliable bicycle turns a 2 hour walk to school into a 25 minute ride.

In Guatemala, it means that someone who previously could not carry their wares to a market now has a way.

In Namibia, where specially equipped bicycles become pedal-powered ambulances, it can be the difference between life and death.

“Bikes empower people to change their lives,” says Merywen Wigley. As an HIV/AIDS professional working in international health, Wigley has witnessed personally the difference two wheels can make.

An avid cyclist before ever stepping foot in Africa, she was moved by seeing healthcare workers traversing rural Zambia by bike to deliver medications and check on patients.

She learned that many communities in the developing world receive their bicycles as donations, salvaged castaways from countries like the United States. Since 2002, Wigley has volunteered with Bikes for the World.

According to their website, Bikes for the World’s central mission is to collect unwanted bicycles and related material in the United States and deliver it at low cost to community development programs assisting the poor in developing countries or in the Washington DC metropolitan area. As much as possible, Bikes for the World (BFW) uses the donated bicycles to help set-up self-sustaining bicycle repair operations which can make enough money to pay the shipping costs for subsequent container shipments of donated bicycles. Since 1995, BFW shipped more than 30,000 bikes overseas. Wigley and other Durham residents are starting a new Triangle chapter.

On Saturday, March 29th, local BFW volunteers will see how many bicycles they can pack into a 24-foot UHaul. They hope to get at least 200.

To do that, they need your help.

That Saturday is a Triangle-wide collection drive. In a parking lot in Research Triangle Park, volunteers will be receiving your donations, making a few mechanical adjustments to each bike for more compact shipping, and loading the bikes onto a truck bound for Washington, DC. From there, BFW will load the cycles into a shipping container bound for either Africa or Latin America.

Road bikes, mountain bikes, kids’ bikes, or adult bikes all make great donations. BFW asks that you please donate whole bikes rather than parts and frames. But a bike with flat tires, broken cables, or a rusty chain is fine. “As long as everything on the bike turns, we can use it,” Dan Gatti explains.

“We also ask for a $10 donation with each bike to offset the cost of shipping.” It costs $20 to get a bike from the collection point to the community in the developing world. “Bikes for the World pays half, and we ask the folks who donate a bike to pay the other half,” Magill says.

“Besides,” says Marcus Rogers, “anyone who has ever boxed and shipped their own bike knows that $10 is a deal.”

Jack Warman, a member of the Durham Bicycle and Pedestrian Advisory Committee, decided to get involved with BFW after hearing a recent BBC radio-documentary on the Bicycle Empowerment Network in Namibia. “Through groups like BFW,” says Warman, “you can take something that we, who are extraordinarily spoiled, would throw away and turn it into something that can change someone’s life.”

Emily Dings agrees. “Bikes have been a great avenue for me to find meaningful activities, and this seems like another one of those meaningful activities,” she says.

Meaningfulness also ruled the day in a recent test of creative mettle.

Software giant Google and bicycle component manufacturer Shimano teamed up to sponsor a contest challenging inventors to create the next radical shift in cycling technology. Innovate or Die, the contest’s name a harbinger of the high stakes on inventiveness in the age of global climate change, drew entries that range the spectrum from the next super-light frame material to the successor to the derailleur.

The winner, though, is simpler. It’s a bike that stores water and filters it while you pedal.

That such a unpretentious, utilitarian bike won this international contest of ingenuity serves as a reminder that bicycles are tools as much as they are toys. They are vehicles with a long history of liberation through simplicity.

As Warman muses, “bicycles can change the world.” Read more

The Outspokin’ Cyclist: Durham man to pedal for peace across Israel

Phillip Barron
The Herald Sun

When Martin Luther King said that true peace is not merely the absence of tension, it is the presence of justice, he had in mind the idea that lasting, real peace is possible only when we actively take responsibility for it.

Marv Axelrod is tired of hearing promises of peace in the Middle East only to be later disappointed by the dissolution of dialogue. He’s tired of all the news coming out of Israel being about conflict.

Axelrod is not someone who complains about something he is not willing to help solve. “I want to do something rather than just sit around and wait for someone else to fix it,” says the seventy-two year old.

This May, he is planning to pedal a bicycle three hundred miles across the Negev Desert in Israel to promote peace. While he has never ridden a bike in desert conditions before, Axelrod is a busy man by anyone’s standards.

When he retired from the New York City board of education fourteen years ago, a friend told Axelrod that the key to growing older would be to remain active.

The high school English teacher moved to Durham and quickly got involved in his new community. In the time he’s lived here, Axelrod has taught ESL courses through Durham Tech and Duke’s Continuing Education program, has made presentations for the Durham Arts Council, he has taught English in Latin America, he performs for retirement homes with the Village Players, and writes articles for the Menorah, the monthly newspaper of the Durham-Chapel Hill Jewish Federation.

“I also do programs for the Carolina Health And Humor Association (HAHA),” says Axelrod. “It’s Jewish humor. It’s stand up comedy; but sometimes I get tired and sit down.”

axelrod.jpgFrank Ferrell of Ninth Street Bakery thinks he first met Axelrod the way he meets many people: when Axelrod came in to Ferrell’s shop as a customer. “We have a similar sense of humor,” says Ferrell, “and he’s raising money for a good cause.” Ferrell has pitched in to help Axelrod meet his fundraising goal of $3600.

Riding his bike this summer is a way to keep moving, too, to remind others that age is not a barrier to staying active, Axelrod says.

He’s been a cyclist since he got his first bike, his uncle’s heavy Schwinn with a horn on the handlebars, when he was Bar Mitzvahed at thirteen. As he grew older, he developed a taste for longer rides. After retiring in New York and moving to North Carolina, he completed both the MS150 and the Ride Across NC in the late 90s.

He’s no stranger to riding a bike in a foreign land — he and his wife have biked around Holland, Spain, and Nicaragua — but he’s never had to raise so much money nor felt so committed to the cause.

The 2008 Israel Ride is a fully supported benefit ride, raising money for the Arava Institute. Arava is an academic, environmental studies and leadership institute situated in the Negev Desert. The institute welcomes Israeli, Palestinian, Jordanian, and other Arab students and researchers to study regional environmental issues. “If peace is possible in the Middle East, then we have to work together,” says Axelrod. “If people can come together, survive in the desert, learn how to get the desert to bloom and desalinate water, then there can be peace.”

For more information

Israel Ride
http://www.israelride.org

Arava Institute
http://www.arava.org/

To support Axelrod, you can donate through the Israel Ride website (choose Sponsor a Rider and search Marv Axelrod’s name) or send a check payable to the Arava Institute to:

Marv Axelrod
116 Brook Lane
DURHAM, 27712

The Outspokin’ Cyclist: Driving the kids with a bicycle

Phillip Barron
The Herald Sun

Four days a week, Teddy Salazar takes his son Theo to school just like most parents. Instead of a car seat, however, Theo rides in a trailer towed behind Salazar’s bicycle. Weaving around potholes and climbing hills along four miles of west Durham’s streets, Salazar tows his son to and from pre-school. Hard work though it may be for Salazar, “it’s actually lots of fun,” he says.

“We wave to people on their porches on Carroll Street. We get all sorts of comment like, ‘Look at that!’ or ‘How cute!’ when we ride by Duke. It’s really easy to stop for coffee, a snack or a potty break. It’s a long commute after all.”

Theo rides in a Burley Solo, a single seat trailer crafted by one of three major bike trailer designers. Burley joins bicycle manufacturers Giant and Trek to offer trailers that are designed specifically for hauling children.

Salazar and his wife Sarah chose the Solo because its seat doesn’t push the helmet forward over Theo’s face when he sits back, buckled-in. The Solo attaches to the quick-release skewer of Salazar’s rear wheel. And aside from keeping their speed under 15mph, the trailer seems stable enough not to require the cyclist to do anything special, says Salazar.

On my ride home from work one October evening, I ran into Reuben Stob along the American Tobacco Trail. Behind him, his son Arie was singing and bobbing along in a Burley D’Lite. Stob said he had just moved to Durham from Lithuania and used the trailer to carry his son home from daycare.

Later that same evening, I stopped Anga Pohlers on Erwin Rd to ask her about her trailer. Even before Erwin Rd was repaved and striped with bike lanes between the Duke Hospital and Ninth St, Erwin was wide enough to ride with a trailer behind, Pohlers said.

Aside from variations in color, the trailers all looked the same to me. So, I stopped by The Bicycle Chain for some help understanding the differences. Chris Phillips walked me through two of models they had in the store.

First up is the Trek Doodlebug, a lightweight aluminum alloy trailer ($280). It holds up to 100lbs, and comes equipped with two seats. Each seat has a “three-point harness with one point between the legs and shoulder straps over each shoulder,” says Phillips.

“If you’re going on a picnic, going to the store or to the neighborhood pool,” adds Phillips, “there are small internal side pockets and storage space behind the seat.”

Salazar’s goal is to make Theo comfortable. “Parents who want to try towing their kids should be aware that” the kids will closer to the road — something to think about in summer heat — and closer to automobile wheels — something to think about in wet or dusty conditions.

On warm sunny days, the mesh covering that comes stock with the Solo or Doodlebug will suffice, but Salazar says he rolls down the Solo’s plastic shell for rainy or windy days. The rain fly costs extra on the Doodlebug.

The Doodlebug, like most trailers mounts to the rear axle of the bike. It comes with a longer replacement skewer for the rear wheel; the new skewer holds the rear wheel of the bike in place and connects to the ball-and-socket joint that tows the trailer.

The ball-and-socket hitch design allows the trailer to pivot at most any angle so that the bike can move laterally independent of the trailer. Many parents choose to use trailers over bike-mounted child seats, says Phillips, since the trailer won’t be affected if the cyclist loses balance.

The Burley D’Lite ($450) has a few safety features the Doodlebug lacks. It comes standard with bars on the trailer’s sides that deflect trees or bollards around the trailer’s wheels. If you’ve misjudged the the width of a trail’s entrance, you might appreciate those bars. There’s an integrated rain fly, a parking brake, and a unique hitch-mount design that doesn’t require you to replace your skewer. The hitch clamps to bike’s chainstay instead. For storage, the D’Lite also folds down smaller than Doodlebug.

Tim Griffin, a research fellow in Duke’s Bioengineering lab and a member of the Bicycle and Pedestrian Advisory Commission, tows his two daughters in a Burley D’Lite.

“I’ve found that drivers are pretty considerate when you have a bike carrier,” says Griffin. “In fact, the first morning I took the carrier to work with me cars were giving me wide clearance.”

Other considerations for first time trailer haulers are the extended turning radius and the additional width that trailers add. For being seen on the road, each trailer comes with an orange flag, “but we also recommend blinkie lights if you’ll be riding after dark,” says Phillips.

Salazar recommends taking it to the store for hauling groceries or running some other errand first. Before strapping more precious cargo in those seats, “find out how long it takes to clear an intersection, what stopping is like or going up hill. There’s a strange rubber band effect when trying to accelerate fast.”

All of the people interviewed for this article also noted that they found their trailers through either Craigslist or the Herald Sun classified ads.

The Outspokin’ Cyclist: Cyclists don’t like concrete islands

Phillip Barron
The Herald Sun

Willetha Barnette, of Durham, rode her bike in traffic for the first time on October 4th. Encouraged by her friend Cynthia Ferebee to join the Critical Mass ride, a monthly group bike ride through the streets of Durham, Barnette said that she enjoyed the freedom to ride on the streets in safe numbers, but that she would not feel comfortable riding alone.

As the group made its way down Anderson St, Barnette said, “it’s uncomfortable. Drivers don’t seem to be used to sharing the road. They seem annoyed, frustrated that we (cyclists) aren’t going as fast as they are. That’s the way it feels to me.” Afterwards, she said it felt “dangerous” to ride down Anderson St., even with new traffic calming measures in place.

Barnette is referring to a series of concrete islands that the City of Durham installed along the hills and curves of Anderson St this summer. The islands were installed in an effort to slow speedy traffic. Anderson St is a wide street, but is lined with houses and parks. It connects Duke University’s west campus with the Lakewood community and Chapel Hill St and is a major traffic artery for daily commuters.

However, since the concrete islands, or “neckdowns” as they are often called, were installed they have raised the ire of many cyclists.

The sentiment of a string of emails to the durhambikeandped listserv in July is, “why did the City put concrete barriers in the bike lane?” While Anderson St doesn’t have designated bike lanes, there are stripes marking the outer limit of the lane which are several feet from the curb and narrow the lanes of traffic significantly. Many cyclists interpret the wide space of pavement between that white line and the curb as a bike lane, feeling that riding in that space and out of the flow of automobile traffic is the safest place to ride.

But mix in artificially placed concrete islands every few hundred feet, and Anderson St. now feels like an obstacle course. When approaching one of the islands, cyclists have the choice of either entering the lane of traffic or navigating a 2 ft wide gap between the island and the curb.

Lawrence Trost, in a letter to the Herald Sun editor dated July 25th, said “the problem with the neck-downs is that because of overhanging tree branches, uneven pavement and debris between the barrier and the curb, a cyclist can’t safely ride on the inside of the barrier. Instead, they force a cyclist to weave unpredictably from the shoulder to the center of the lane each time they pass a barrier.”

Riding predictably and in the lane of traffic is the safest way for cyclists to ride on city streets, but Anderson Street’s “steep hills will prevent most cyclists from taking the lane the entire length of Anderson for fear of being rear-ended,” says Trost.

From a driver’s perspective, the islands are equally confusing. Alexis Richardson, a teacher at Hillside High School, encountered the islands for the first time at night.

“I was taken completely by surprise when I turned on to Anderson Street and I saw some obstruction in the road to my right,” Richardson said. “I squinted and it registered that there was something there, but I had no idea what it was.” When she later learned they were designed to be traffic calming devices, Richardson “was appalled because they seem downright dangerous. I have perfect vision, and I could hardly tell what they were.”

Dale McKeel, Durham’s Bicycle and Pedestrian Coordinator, says that “a contractor will be planting landscaping in the neckdown islands this fall” to improve their visibility. He also noted that a consultant will be evaluating the neckdowns, after which the City will decide whether the remove them or how to improve their compatibility with bicyclists.

Feel free to share your thoughts on the concrete islands or other cyclist-unfriendly traffic calming measures with Dale McKeel in the City’s Transportation office at dale.mckeel@durhamnc.gov or 560-4366.

The Outspokin’ Cyclist: Hybrid car pitch a step backwards

bliss_article.jpgPhillip Barron
The Herald Sun

September 14th marked the 108 yr anniversary of first pedestrian death at the hands of an automobile in the United States. On September 13th, 1899, Henry Bliss stepped from a streetcar on Central Park West, in New York, and was struck by a taxicab. He died of his injuries the next morning. The event was reported on the front page of the New York Times.

In 2005 alone, 39,000 automobile crashes in the United States accounted for 43,000 deaths.

Given the anniversary of Bliss’ death, it’s appropriate to think of September as an automobile awareness month, culminating in International Car Free Day. September 22nd is the day that cyclists, transit access activists, and municipalities the world over celebrate a moment of independence from the automobile.

But with the local Smart Commute Challenge moving to the spring (it will return in April 2008) and neither Durham nor Chapel Hill hosting any Car Free Day celebrations, September 22nd came and went much like any other day in the Triangle. The Triangle Transit Authority’s Fare Free Day, on Friday Sept 21st, was the closest thing going.

Many places around the world celebrate their car free days more enthusiastically. This year, Montreal closed off sections of its historic district to private automobiles on Friday, September 21st. Last spring, Mexico City’s Marcelo Ebrard launched a series of weekend efforts to encourage bicycle usage. By closing off selected city streets, the mayor creates ciclovias, or bike paths, on Sundays. Ebrard arguably borrowed the idea from Bogotá, Colombia where approximately 75 miles of its city streets are closed to motor vehicle traffic every Sunday. These car-free programs allow cyclists to gain confidence on the road before relying on their bikes as transportation.

Every day is an automobile awareness day in some parts of London. Since February 2003, London has levied tolls on drivers who take their automobiles into the core of the city. Congestion taxation, as the practice is called, aims to reduce private automobile traffic in dense urban areas by charging drivers fees, then reinvesting the profits in public transportation. Since 2003, congestion in London is down 30%. Michael Bloomberg has openly endorsed a similar tax program for relieving congestion in New York City.

But this September, we took another step backward in the US, another step tpward furthering our dependence on the automobile. A post on Google’s official GoogleBlog put out the word that the software giant is soliciting proposals from entrepreneurs who think they can design the next generation of electric hybrid automobiles.

The fact that Google wants a hand in designing electric automobiles is not so surprising,considering that Tesla Motors is a Silicon Valley start-up company. Tesla Motors makes an all-electric Roadster, a $98,000 two-seater that outpaces Ferraris on the drag strip. But perhaps it is because Google is known for outside the box thinking that their request for proposals strikes me as a step in the wrong direction.

Entrepreneurs who answer Google’s challenge are likely to produce exactly what it asks for — new designs for electric hybrid automobiles. The continued focus on the automobile is a limitation on creative thinking. A shift from the era of the Ford Mustang and Porsche Cayenne to an era of electric Ford Mustangs and Porsche Cayenne’s is not the radical shift in our transportation design that this country needs.

Teslas and Google cars may not run on gasoline (though, as hybrids the Google cars probably will), and weaning ourselves off petroleum products will surely reduce greenhouse gases. But keeping transit focused on the free-wheeling automobile will do nothing to address the 40,000 deaths per year that result from automobile crashes.

After all, the taxicab that killed Henry Bliss was electric.

————–

highwaycrash.png
A crash on a Durham highway in 1948 killed a pedestrian
Image courtesy of the Herald Sun

The Outspokin’ Cyclist: Don’t fret, downtown getting bike racks

Phillip Barron
The Herald Sun

Durham Rising brought a lot of people downtown on Saturday — 12,000 by some estimates. A surprising (yes, even to me) number of those folks were cyclists. So, if you walked around downtown at all that day, you surely had to step around some of their bikes. There wasn’t a lamp-post, street sign, or sapling that didn’t have a bike chained to it. Outside Bull McCabe’s, the new Irish pub replacing Jo and Joe’s, signs and lamp-posts secured two and three bikes a piece.

Where were the bike racks?

I left downtown that day feeling disgusted, and no, it wasn’t from gorging on Locopops.

The city of Durham spent more than sixteen million dollars on its Downtown Improvements project as the civic investment in re-energizing downtown. They developed a new central plaza, realigned streets, and marked pedestrian crossings with stamped brick designs. But no bike racks? I was incredulous.

Turns out, bike racks were on their way. They just weren’t installed yet.

Hopefully, you’ve been back downtown since June. As of the end of August, one city program installed bike racks downtown, and one will continue to install them throughout Durham.

First, the streetscape project did include bike racks; they simply couldn’t be installed by the Durham Rising event. Ed Venable of the City says that bike racks were installed in eight locations in July. See them outside the Professional Center, the Empowerment Center, and the CCB Plaza among other spots inside the loop.

bike_rack.jpg
Second, the CityRacks program secured funding from the state and federal governments to install bike racks all over Durham. Under a Congestion Mitigation for Air Quality (CMAQ — often pronounced see-mack) Improvement Program, Durham will be installing bike racks all over the city. CityRacks, as the CMAQ funded program is called, will install “inverted U” bicycle racks on city-owned property. Look for them to start popping up this fall.

There’s a common story told on many college campuses (whether myth or fact doesn’t matter) about how it was decided where sidewalks should go. It usually goes something like this. Suppose you want to lay out a campus, and you want to put in sidewalks only where the students will use them. The best way is to wait a few years to see what pathways the students wear into the lawn, and put the sidewalks there, because those are the pathways students use to get from building to building. Otherwise you’ll have sidewalks, and then you’ll have pathways across the lawn where the students actually walk.

The CityRacks program takes a similar strategy with bike racks. By letting citizens (cyclists) request where racks should go, the City ends up installing racks where they will be used.

Dale McKeel, the city’s new Bicycle and Pedestrian Transportation planner, says that the first bike racks were installed downtown in August at locations selected more than a year ago. Before the 2007 year is out, a total of sixty seven racks will be installed at parks, commercial districts, museums, universities, and libraries. For those of us cyclists, that means we will no longer have to lock a bike to a No-Parking sign outside Brightleaf or Ninth St.

Piedmont Parks, Inc. of Greensboro won the $48,000 contract to install the racks, and the upside-down U design was chosen by the Durham Bicycle and Pedestrian Advisory Commission, who says this style bike rack is the most secure.

In 2008, the City Racks program will focus on installing bike racks at public schools throughout Durham. And in 2009, the public will again be invited to request bike racks at locations around Durham.

—-
Jim Reingruber, using Google Maps, has started a website noting all of Durham’s bike racks — at least, all the ones he can find. Check it out at http://www.durhambikeracks.com/

For the full list of all planned bike rack locations, see the pdf available at http://www.durhamnc.gov/departments/works/bikerack_form.cfm

functionless bollards

why couldn’t these have been bike racks?

bollards.jpg

bollards3.jpg

The Outspokin’ Cyclist: New Durham cabs are pedal-powered

Phillip Barron
The Herald Sun

On a recent Sunday, while I was dropping off some donated wheels and frames at the Durham Bike Co-op, two of Durham’s newest taxi cabs stopped by for repairs. MarcDreyfors parked his cab on the sidewalk, jacked up the front end to remove the front wheel, and brought the wheel inside the Co-op for aligning. After a few minutes in the truing stand, his wheel was straight, and he popped the front wheel back on his pedal-powered taxi cab.

Pedicab1.jpgphotos by Marc Dreyfors

A pedicab, as it is known, is basically a giant tricycle. It looks like a regular bicycle in the front (with one wheel, handlebars, and a seat above the pedals for the driver), but the rear expands to a convertible, padded two- or three-person seat stretching across the back end’s stabilizing pair of wheels. The pedals power a two-wheel drivetrain, geared like a mountain bike with 21 speeds. The rear of the cab has brake lights, turn signals, and all the benefits of riding a bike without any of the work –that is, if you’re the passenger.

Riding in the back you feel the wind in your hair, the connection with the street, and without the sweat or muscle burn.

Rickshaws — more commonly used to ferry sightseeing tourists around cities of the Far East, west Africa, or Manhattan — will soon be shuttling folks around the Bull City.

“Greenway Transit is the merger of our green transportation business and Greenway Pedicabs, which opened in Chapel Hill in 2006,” says Marc Dreyfors, owner of the business. For shuttling people around the Triangle, Greenway Transit offers a 6 passenger minivan that runs on ethanol and 12, 15, and 34 passenger buses running on bio-diesel. But modeled on the success of their pedicabs program in Chapel Hill, Greenway Transit’s pedicabs will take to the streets of Durham in May.

I have said before in this column that Durham’s hot spots of commercial activity are like islands — Ninth St, Brightleaf, Five Points, American Tobacco — and that the areas between can be difficult for pedestrians to navigate.

Throughout the summer, Greenway Transit’s pedicabs will provide an alternative mode of transit between Durham’s islands. Dreyfours expects to run shuttles between Ninth St and Duke’s campuses, between the Durham Bulls Athletic Park and Durham’s downtown core, and between downtown Durham and Brightleaf.

Just imagine it; from dinner at Xiloa on Ninth St you could take a bicycle-based taxi to a Bulls game, from a Full Frame session to Amelia for coffee, or from The Federal home safely.

Thirteen year old Mike lives near Greenway Transit’s industrial facility near the intersection of Alston and Angier Avenues. Curious how someone could make fuel from vegetable oil, he started hanging around the business to learn about biodiesel. Dreyfors perceived Mike’s mechanical inclination right away and started teaching Mike what he didn’t already know about bike repairs.

At Durham’s Earth Day event, Mike drove a pedicab around the festival’s parking lot demonstrating the pedicab concept and helping get the word out.

“He came back to me at the end of the day asking what he should do with the money he made,” says Dreyfors. “I told him he could keep it.”

“Riding people around Earth Day was fun,” says Mike. “I carried six people. Kids were pretty amazed by it, telling their moms they wanted to ride.”

Dreyfors echoes Mike’s observation. From the driver’s seat of a pedicab, Dreyfors sees people break into smiles and wave when he rides by. “We need to get back to the sense of neighborhood, sense of community, and [the pedicabs] do that,” he adds.

While we’re talking, Dreyfors hands Mike a multi-tool so that the young apprentice can adjust the handlebars of the two-person pedicab. Later, Mike takes me for a spin down the sidewalk. He says the hardest thing about driving a pedicab is remembering that it’s wider than a regular bike. “You have to be careful about the sides.”

After a short trip, we switch places. While I pedal Mike back to the Co-op, he says “it’s cool; it’s like being chauffeured.” But the best part about driving a pedicab is the attention, Mike says. “People just sit and stare,” when they see the pedicab driving down the road, he adds.

“You can make some pretty good money on the weekend shifts,” says Dreyfors.

Though the details of the incentive structure for drivers are still being worked out, Dreyfors says driving a pedicab can be “a good part-time job; you set your own hours and, after an initial buy-in, you keep what you make.” He tells the story of a UNC student and pedicab driver in Chapel Hill who, because the student is willing to work the late shift (i.e. 12AM — 3AM), can make more than $125 in one night.

Anyone who wants to learn how to work a pedicab shift, rent the pedicabs for an event (a wedding or party), or learn more about the company can reach Greenway Transit at 957-1505 and find them on the web at http://www.greenwayrides.com

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The Outspokin’ Cyclist: Repaving N.C. not right for Durham

Phillip Barron
The Herald Sun

David Hartgen’s plan to repave the state of North Carolina might be accepted in some towns, but not in Durham.

Hartgen, a professor at UNC-Charlotte, recently released a study of transportation planning that looks at urban areas around the state. His conclusions simply amount to statistically backed reasons why urban areas should reduce transit spending, divert saved funds to highway construction and road widening, and embrace the private automobile as the keystone species in the ecology of economic progress.

The 200+ page study is available for download from the John Locke Foundation’s website, and I encourage you to read it for yourself. At the very least, read the 15 page section on Durham because it is rife with interesting tidbits that don’t sit well with his conclusions.

By his own admission, single-occupancy driving declined in Durham between 1990 and 2000, the time period at which his academic gaze is focused. The data show, and so he also admits, that carpooling and use of public transit increased. He notes further that “Durham is the only urbanized area in the state to report declining solo driving times and increased carpooling and transit shares between 1990 and 2000.” You might think, then, that the conclusions he reaches for Charlotte or Raleigh ought to differ from the conclusions he reaches for Durham’s future.

Across the state, however, it’s all the same. Eliminate transit. Widen roads. Pave early and often.

His consistency reveals his incorrigible proposition. Any good social scientist knows that an “incorrigible proposition” is a belief that answers to no one. It is a telling sign that you’ve fallen prey to an incorrigible proposition when your prejudices guide your research in such a way that you always conclude what you previously believed to be true.

“I think that Hartgen essentially approaches the issue with blinders,” says Durham resident Barry Ragin. “He assumes that ‘congestion’ is the problem which needs to be solved.” In the case of Durham, congestion is the problem that just hasn’t happened yet.

Hartgen guesses (but can’t cite any studies to back him up) that a slow economy explains why people ride the bus and carpool in Durham. So if his prognosis is that the personal automobile is the cure for what ails Durham’s economy, then, you might wonder what Hartgen recommends for combatting ozone pollution and bringing the city into compliance with federal standards. That’ll take care of itself, he says, “as vehicles get less emittting.”

But emissions aren’t the only concerns swirling around the monolithic transportation infrastructure Hartgen dreams of. “Hartgen calls for government to spend heavily on more roads without imposing any land-use restrictions — a combination doomed to fail,” says Kevin Davis, senior IT manager at Duke. “If we don’t introduce transit and bike/pedestrian services in combination with smarter growth, we’ll end up as gridlocked as poorly-planned, car-centric cities like Houston and Orlando.”

Instead of car-culture’s monolith, a thriving city is one with a truly multi-modal transit authority. That is, the more options people have for getting around town, the healthier the people of the town and the healthier the economy. Hartgen implies that congestion limits individuals’ freedom by restricting their use of the personal automobile. But a city without buses, without bike lanes, without trains is a city without options. Meaningful options are what people want, and those options don’t always look like more asphalt.

“This report suggests that the state should spend money here on traffic-signal optimization instead of public transit. That’s ridiculous,” says David Mills a Durham resident and Executive Director of the Common Sense Foundation. “Durham needs visionary leadership to make public transit viable, not backward studies such as this one.”

Durham’s residents have spoken loud and clear on this issue. In response to the North Carolina Department of Transportation’s current plan to widen Alston Avenue, which would turn it from a neighborhood street into a mini-freeway, citizens and government representatives expressed a united voice to say that Durham values its pedestrians being able to cross streets safely.

Whether DOT will side with the John Locke Foundation or Durham residents remains to be seen, but the question remains for each of us to consider.

Do roads exist to serve people or cars?

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