:Cyclostat

Who would win in a race between a car, a pedestrian and a bike? Some may remember a Brazilian race of a similar style, which I posted about a few months ago. Since I don’t have the ability to organize a proper race, I tried to figure this out with some simple math and Google maps.

For the fake race, I chose one of the longest roads in Somerville to use as a preliminary example – Broadway. From Teele Square in Somerville, down broadway, and then continuing into Charlestown has got to be one of the longest stretches of road in the whole Cambridge-Somerville-Charlestown area. Yes, there is Mass ave, and Beacon St. and Somerville Ave, but they’re not quite as long. Mass ave from rt 16 to memorial drive is a curvy 4.2 miles, while Broadway from Teele Square to the Charlestown navy yard is about 4.5 miles – and almost a straight shot.

Here’s what I’m talking about:

View Larger Map

Most car rides are under 4 miles, and this also happens to be the maximum length you can really travel and stay within the boundaries of route 16 and the mystic river. So, this seems like an appropriate length to race a car vs. a bike. Pedestrians can be eliminated at the start, since google maps says it will take an hour and change to walk this length, and 40 minutes by bus (assuming you catch the bus – NOW).

So, it comes down to the car and the bike, by which I mean:

DRIVING VERSUS CYCLING: THE ULTIMATE SHOWDOWN

This is tough, because google maps doesn’t have a “bike” function and cyclists vary quite a bit in their speeds. If you’re a casual cyclist, maybe you ride between 5 to 10 mph, meanwhile some others might have trouble biking in a straight line at those speeds. People faster than me claim to ride at 25 to 35 mph, but to be honest I doubt that they maintain those speeds for very long. Personally, I cruise around 15 mph, but thanks to a low gear ratio I spin out around 20-25 mph.

For cars, this obviously isn’t an issue. Google maps put the expected time for this trip at 13 minutes. This seems reasonable, until we refer to other trip times (like route 16 to the mass ave bridge through harvard square taking 10 minutes), it becomes clear that traffic is not directly included in the google algorithm.

However, we can gauge the current traffic, but using google’s traffic indicator.

For reference, google has only recently begun recording traffic for Broadway, so there wasn’t enough data for them to figure out what the traffic will look like on Monday at 9am. The above screen capture, with the red lines all over the street, is for Sunday at 11am, which I would presume is less than Monday commuter traffic.

So, you may ask yourself, “What does RED mean?” – good question.

Red basically means LESS THAN 25 MPH. Although another poster claims it to be between 10 MPH and 25 MPH.

So, cars. It seems that the playing field is even.

Personally, I can get from Teele Square to the Navy yard, riding comfortably and stopping at necessary lights, in about 20 minutes. When I am bookin’ it, I can be there in a sweaty and panting 15 minutes. This means that I am moving between an averaged 13.5 MPH and 18 MPH, respectively.

Has anyone else made this trip? I’d be interested in hearing what the time is by both bike and car. I don’t know how average my personal times are, and I’d be curious to see how much of an impediment the traffic and red lights really are.

I know you’re all excited about cryptic clue fest day 4 (or 5 or whatever), and Rachel Uchitel, but c’mon – today is a beautiful day to test a hypothesis.

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Once, Robert Plant said that sometimes words have no meaning, and in reviewing the inventory for the Somerville Bike auction, right now I am convinced that Plant and his giant cock were right.

Figure 1: A sample from the Somerville Bike Auction inventory.

VIA

Sure, I appreciate the idea of posting the bike inventory online, but the amount of information here pretty much amounts to “Yeah, we got some bikes.”

Before reading the inventory, I knew that there would be some shitty bikes, and maybe some OK ones that I could fix up. After reading the inventory, I was basically in the same place, which makes the net information transmitted equal to zero.

Specific Criticisms:

1) Why would you list the speed. No one cares, and no one is going to buy a 21 speed over a 12 speed. I’m assuming that most of these bike are going to need new back wheels.

2) Really, what matters is the original quality of the frame and parts – information that is not provided. If the Bianchi listed is a forgotten Dolomiti, then it would be worth getting out of bed early. If it is one of those terrible comfort bikes, then I might sleep in a few more hours.

3) Which brings me to make – what they have listed here is the Brand. Fuji is a brand that made dozens of models. Some are amazing and some are pieces of crap. Saying Fuji is like saying you have a General Motors car – it would be helpful if the model was listed.

4) I don’t care about the color. Basically everything here is going to look terrible, until I fix it up in some way. Bikes can be painted – and these bikes probably should.

5) Style – Boy or Girl? Just say Mixte frame, or Step-Through frame. I don’t really know any girls that ride a girl bike. Who wrote this? What is a racer frame? Could this be a pursuit? Or is it the only road bike in a shit storm of comfort/hybrids?

I guess we’ll have to find out.

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Is it weird that I find this photo strangely arousing?

VIA

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People don’t tend to have a lot of questions about their bike mechanics. Usually, if they are in a bike shop, they tend to trust them and their decisions.

But one question many people ask is, “Is my mechanic Christian?”. And now finally, via Craigslist, we have ONE mechanic who has stepped up and answered this question. Yes, here is a christian bike mechanic.

FINALLY, right? From the makers of witch trials, President Bush, and immortality, comes a new brand of bike mechanic. Christian Bike Mechanics – after all, bikes didn’t evolve from fish!

Calling (himself?) themselves the Holy Spokes, they are located in Union square – so watch out Open. Actually, I think that Open charges less for basic tune-ups – which is weird, considering Open has overhead charges.

Holy spokes also sort of sounds like the holy rollers:

Holy Rollers

I’d love to take advantage of the great deals offered by the christian mechanic, but my bike was raised Jewish, and sort of finds discussions of Jesus to be gauche. Personally, I’m cool with it though.

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Dear Boston Bikers,

As a fervent advocate of procrastination, I like to check out the websites of local governments and catalog cyclist oriented budget expenditures, and report them here – on my amazing blog. If anyone else wants to check out the proposed 2010 budget for somerville, you can find it here.

The first thing I’d like to talk about are bike lanes. Hey! They’re coming! I know that 2 miles isn’t much, but it’s more than nothing. Plus, somerville is really only 4 square miles.

Figure 1: Two miles of bike lanes in the budget.

I was really happy to see that urban cycling initiatives still made the list, albeit nearly last on most lists.

Figure 2 Shape up somerville

The fiscal year 2010 goals gives away where next years bike lanes are going to be. Elm (woo!) Mauslin (?) and Washington (that just makes sense).

Figure 3: List of Goals

Oh and this is the first I’m hearing of a Cambridge, Somerville, Belmont bikeway (figure 4). WTF is this? They are budgeting for both design and engineering projects, so I assume that they are still figuring out how to work it.

In any case, I’m psyched that this was budgeted in. I’m sure a lot of people in the know (Shane, I’m looking at you) already had an idea of these projects, but a) I don’t keep up with this and b) you don’t really ever know until the budget comes out.

Figure 4: The Bikeway

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Bike shop in the UK, around 1949. Photograph by William Sumits for Life magazine. Can anyone tell what type of bike that is? I’m assuming Raleigh, but I can’t see any markings or head badges. By the way, I like the brooks.

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FFFFFFFFFFFFFFFUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUU

I WANT this T-shirt. VIA

Original FFFFFUUUUUUUU guy

For the uninitiated, the FFFFUUUUuuuu guy is the punctuation to every MS-painted mishap on the bike forums and bostonfixed forums.

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The Time published an article yesterday about the problems that Paris is having with their Velib’ program. For those of you who don’t know Velib’ is a bike-share program initiated in Paris around 2007. You pay 1 Euro a day to rent a bike, or you can buy a 30 Euro annual pass. The Chic Cyclist has a few articles on the program, one of which I will link to.

Velib’ is a portmanteau word for Velo (bicycle) and Libre (Free), and it seems that periParisian youth are taking this a little too literally: http://www.nytimes.com/2009/10/31/world/europe/31bikes.html?_r=1&emc=eta1

Apparently they are stealing and vandalizing the bicycles, which cost around $3,500 each, which is a whole fucking lot for a free bicycle.

So, why should we, as Bostonians, care? Because we’re basing our new Bike sharing system off of the Velib system. We have just as many teenagers as the Parisians, although perhaps there isn’t as much to be resentful about in Boston. I don’t think suburban teenagers from Marblehead are going to feel disconnected from the glamor of Boston proper, but they might still just do it for standard teen age reasons (because they can).

But there is a bright side to this.

If you are a mechanic, this could mean a whole shit-ton of work for you and your bike shop. The Parisian vendor for the Velib program has had to hire a fleet of mechanics to combat the neglect, abuse, and vandalism of the bicycles. Since spending anything less than $3,500 would technically be considered saving money, I would anticipate this to be as a fresh source of income for Boston’s bike shops.

Liberty Hotel Bike Share

And by the way, I think the liberty Hotel has had a bike-share program going for a while now. I wonder how they avoid vandalism and neglect and whatnot. Anyone know>

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