Viva the Velorution! The SafetyCycle! Rides Again
April, 2005
After reading about the horrors of depleted uranium in the Coastal Post last month, I could hardly sleep. I was sure I must have snorted up one of those nano-particles floating around. My brain was working oddly. I had trouble remembering people's names. That's not so odd, but these were the people I lived with. This is not my beautiful house. This is a halfway house.
When you're having trouble sleeping anyways, why not take a road trip? Go Whole Hog. Nothing makes me more cheerful than getting away. It was time for a burst of good cheer. Normally I would rather be caught gratefully dead than getting on an overnight bus to Washington D.C.
Logistically, however it was the only way I could get to the League of American Cyclists' National Bike Summit, the biggest convention in the country for bicycle safety enthusiasts. Who better to unveil the Safety Cycle to, I thought.
You never know where a train of thought will go when I start typing. Last month I started working on traffic safety, and came up with the New, Improved SafetyCycle! It will revolutionize the world. Again. Neither nature nor humans have ever created a more efficient method of moving than human on bicycle, a Velorutionary evolution.
The pedi-cycle was invented around 200 years ago as just that, two wheels joined by a framed contraption. You walked while sitting on it. Until you went down hill, then hang on. It took a hundred years of this battering until creative tinkers came up with steering handlebars, pedals, chains and gears. Probably the French, thus derailleur. They also called it the Safety Cycle, but this was before brakes.
It's all in marketing. The first Safety Cycle took the world by storm. Broke down class structures based on the expense of carriages and horses, property size based on feeding a horse or two. For the caloric value of cabbages, bicycles gave a peon the speed of a king in a carriage.
The popularity of bicycles by the turn of the 19th century gave rise to the first suburbs, paved roads, and eco-tourism. Then came the cars, like soldiers following behind missionaries, relegating most bicycles in America to toys in the garage.
Aside from tweaking materials, not a whole lot has changed since the diamond frame. It may be missing a few facets, but most bicyclists use the same propulsion system and posture as great granddaddy. Ain't nothin' wrong with that, except for numb nuts, tweaked knees, sore hands, crunched necks, and going face first over the handlebars on sudden stops.
Recumbents are definitely more comfortable, possibly safer if they're visible, but you die on hills. That's when the electric motor kicks in, on my new, improved SafetyCycle! To protect the rider, the bicycle is encased in impact absorbent aerogel. Like pedaling a big, padded Egg down the road. (Note: research aerogel wholesale.)
It's hard to perfect perfection, merely difficult, rather than impossible. That's why I'm sure my new SafetyCycle is a better mousetrap. For one thing it really will be safer. Not to put down bicycles, but there's a lot of ways to hurt yourself on one of them. Two wheels are inherently unstable and cyclists are invisible to some motorists, who squash them.
Didja Say Your Name was Ramblin' Rose?
Now to get it out the door. You can't expect people to beat a path to it, if you don't have one. That's why I decided to take the mountain to Mohamed. Seeing how the SafetyCycle! was more of a concept than a reality, I had to take a bus to the Convention. I e-mailed the League's communications guy and lined up a press pass to get in free. He was suspicious of my credentials, so I told him the Coastal Post was a heroic rooster of a paper that bravely covered the hidden truths about the bicycle scene in Marin County, California. Didn't mention our anti-semantic, mountain bike trashing reputation.
The bus ride was not something I was looking forward to, but I rationalized once the SafetyCycle! concept sold to the highest bidder, I'd fly back, first class. Unless I'm on some no-fly list because my name is similar to that rambling writer for the Coastal Post. That's not me, sir. I'm pretty sure it's a pseudonym. Uh, no need for the cavity search, I'll be taking Amtrak.
Don't get me wrong, I've ridden on plenty of buses. I still fondly remember an overnight Greyhound to Gainesville from Ft. Lauderdale, when a hippie chick named Sunshine got on for Clearwater. By the time she got off the bus, I was ready to quit college and live in a commune. Still, whether urban stop and go, or long haul "express", you're rarely sad to get off yourself.
Taking a Peter Pan bus to Washington D.C. on a redeye from New England, meant pulling into a string of small towns' rear alleys. Looking for the Lost Boys, I guess.
Blame it on the long winter, but I was feeling talkative. I've learned you have to approach the people around here slowly, or they shy off. The good thing about a bus though, is it's easy to corner them.
There are a lot of cranky people on this bus, with no sense of humor, but as dawn approached I found H.S. Thompson in the back. At last someone on my own wavelength. Unfortunately, he had a good point, "This egg sucker cycle will be so damn light that when some semi- goes by, it'll squirt off the road like an on-side kick." He told some funny, crazy stories, before he got off the bus. Went out the back door.
I was left to my own bleak thoughts at the darkest hour of the night, rolling through miles of strip mall highways and gated communities. I hate disappointment, like when reality sets in.
I knew that aerogel was going to be a problem. The good thing is the rider won't be injured, (note: make sure they float). Marketing could build that feature in, like an X-sport. More fun than riding in a clothes dryer.
In the Shadows of the
Mountains of the Moon
It was hard to stay positive, with a deflated SafetyCycle concept. My New Year's resolution was teetering. It was as bad as the Depleted Uranium WMD fears. I got on a negative train of thought about the criminal quality of public transport. Those poor suckers who can't drive a car because of age, youth, impairments, enforcement, income or whatever are forced to use them, or risk their life on a bike sharing the road, or walk one foot in the ditch.
Transit was allowed to deteriorate into soot belching buses with graffiti on every surface, from little bastards with magic markers. Buses are never on time except when you're late. They invariably take at least three times longer than a trip by automobile.
There was a time when every city and most large towns had an electric trolley line or two, packed with riders. Passenger trains ran across the country with accommodations ranging from basic to baroque.
The first automobiles were just rich men's toys at the turn of the 20th century. Mr. Toad's wild rides. Within a decade, wives of bankers and doctors preferred a private car to frottage with the workers on the crowded trolleys. Then every aspiring bourgeoisie had to have one. Public Monies went into roads, traffic management, enforcement, and parking. Transportation Planners and Engineers geared entirely towards automobile/truck/bus transportation. Progress.
Electric trolley lines were bought up and ripped out while bus systems were funded or politically mandated. A consortium of General Motors, (with subsidiaries Mack trucks and Greyhound buses) Standard Oil, Phillips Petroleum and Firestone Tires used holding companies to buy up trolley systems around the country. With complicity of politicians they began tearing out the tracks and replacing them with diesel buses through the Depression and after WWII.
They were convicted of criminal conspiracy in 1949 and fined a paltry $5,000. They had stripped the country of an affordable, effective mass transit system to enrich their own special interests. The politicians were never held accountable.
Buses can be a lot cleaner if they burn vegetable oil for diesel, or use high efficiency electric motors that are already being used in Europe. Buses could provide a practical alternative to private cars for more commuters than "light rail" at a much lower price.
The city of Curitiba, Brazil figured out how to transport two million people a day on their bus system- efficiently, on-time and affordably. I read that in a
book I'd brought along, Massive Change by the Institute Without Boundaries. You have to do some research if you want to solve the Big Problems of the world.
With enough funding for affordable, safe, on time and convenient buses, more people would use them, even in America. They aren't as glamorous as the retro light rails being proposed and funded across the country now, but they would be far cheaper. Once you've lost rail lines they're no longer affordable. Most modern rail transit has been enormously expensive, on a cost per passenger basis.
BART cost a few billion and tapped out the federal budget for other mass transit projects for decades. Funding that's always been notoriously skinflint and virtually ignored bicycle and pedestrian transportation. When you ride BART you're subjected to the most irritating screeches, swaying ride and poorly maintained stations.
Marin wisely refused it then, but now wants to fund a rail system to the ferries option to get from Sonoma to San Francisco and back. A long costly trip by any estimate. There's nothing light about these passenger trains and they are worse than boats as money drains.
People in Marin support the idea because they want the other guy to use them to make their car commute quicker. That belief will prove hyper optimistic. I'm all for optimism, but Subsidizing Transit Underused by People Is