Wheelchair accessible. 4’x8′






was constructed in order to demonstrate some of the ways in which “Pedicabs” can be re-configured, maybe even re-conceptualized, in order to make full use their potential. They are now operating in many other urban spaces, in countries across the world. In some, they are already being converted to electric operation en masse, by law, in order to help improve the breathable air. Attention to their siblings, cargo and delivery cycles, is expanding exponentially, with next hour/same day/next day service the rule now. It is time to think about this subject seriously, rather than dismissing it as a bit of strange overpriced, nostalgia.
The CAT is:
Only 40” wide, (it might like to be 48” to better accommodate side-loading wheelchairs), The city permits pedicabs to be 55” wide
Seven feet long, with an additional 40” for the foldable extension, which can provide for a second wheelchair or cargo use
Seven feet tall, in order to enable a 6’+ tall person to stand inside comfortably and provide some space for ancillary equipment
Depending on weather, is surrounded by clear polycarbonate windows, that can be folded away when not in use.
In order to maximize capacity, conserve space and provide for different postures, standing/leaning is possible and safe with restraints
It is steered with a tiller, and pedals provide some power, as well as controlling the speed, which maxes out at 15 MPH.
The roof is covered with solar panels, that can produce up to a third of the energy needed to move the vehicle during the day
The underside of the vehicle contains spaces for a number of re-chargeable batteries which can be charged in place or changed out
There will be a variety of services offered, Wi-Fi, device charging, telephone connecting, some now, some later
Operators of vehicles need to be very familiar with their territory and can profit substantially by providing job, space, and other help
Ideally there can be regular routes for vehicles, with ties to all local merchants and cultural and educational resources
Can serve on-call customer rides, wheelchairs, neighborhood and many other tours, cargo and freight, group rides
Wheelchairs can load from either side, the sidewalk, or from the back with a movable ramp to serve all openings
There needs to be room for up to 8 passengers in such a conveyance because sometimes there is that much need to fulfill
It’s called the CAT, because felines are some of the most interesting, engaging, loving, ferocious, and ubiquitous fellow mammals
Also beautiful, puzzling, graceful, proud, individual, soft, as hard to understand as they are to dismiss, not unlike us, planet-mates
Leaping and pouncing, curling up and stretching out, demanding and self-possessed, mysterious and predictable, like us.
NYC-legal pedicab (and potential cargo-carrying) vehicle. Ten feet long, four feet wide, and six feet tall. It can be partially or completely open to the weather or totally enclosed. Its low platform permits it to be both an ADA-legal wheelchair and a hand truck accessible, by a ramp, which can serve either sidewalk or the street. There are two potential pedalers and room for four or more additional passengers. The shell is made of clear, weather-protecting, polycarbonate. There are 500 watts of solar panels on the roof. The comfort and safety of passengers are paramount. It can transform into a stationary source of local news at intervals.
I was one of the two founders, over 25 years ago, of this industry in NYC. Unfortunately, rather than an important, new form of transportation, pedicabs have come to exist, virtually entirely, as an expensive way to experience Central Park. The potential of this activity to provide the public with a needed new means of getting around the city, with huge environmental benefits and positive effects on healthfulness, was lost when the taxi industry successfully lobbied to limit their impact on their industry. Many regulations need to be brought up to date. For instance, If they were to be permitted to be just a few feet longer than the current 10’, they could accommodate as many as two handfuls of people and ply regular routes, at a modest pace, as a supplement to the current options. They could be made unique, by artists and craftspeople from right in the City and its environs, even supplemented by creative efforts from around the country and the world. (Please take a look at the World’s Fair page that is adjacent to this one, as one possible way to further this idea.)
The very substantial, independent, and valuable employment created here can be in the form of individual entrepreneurs, establishing their presences, within geographically-defined communities, through their regular routes. This could be seen as a version of the traditional sidewalk newsstand, a conspicuous local statement about being a worker in, and therefore as a citizen of, a defined community. By becoming, perhaps the most knowledgeable person, about all of the business events and activities along their route, through the simultaneous posting of the very real and also virtual advertising, of real estate, employment, eating and entertainment and services, from legal to physical therapy, serious income, and status too, can be earned. Eventually, transport could be free (with tips allowed of course) if other income opportunities prove sufficient.
I call this design the Half because the rest of the story is still out there. It may be perfect in some ways to me, but it is not meant to supplant everything there and become the new standard. I hope it serves to do the opposite, a means to demonstrate the possibility of a wide range of the most different and exciting additions to the streetscape, while at the same time expanding fully accessible transportation options and helping to develop a quieter, cleaner, and more beautiful city.
Each suggests a different approach to designing and deploying our lightest and most accommodating, slow-speed, urban vehicles.
Each provides for the users to determine how much of a cover is being provided for an otherwise almost completely open platform, depending on weather conditions and other factors such as the desire for quiet or privacy.
One has a capacity of up to nine people, the Other only three, and maybe personal, passenger, cargo, or multi-modal. The Half provides for wheelchairs and hand trucks. A version of the Other Half could also.
Most users will be provided with resting places that permit them to choose their posture, recumbent, sitting, leaning, or standing.
Foot and arm cranks will enable energy to be generated, and channeled, into the electrical system, to be used when needed.
They use the least material to accomplish several important tasks, durably, beautifully, economically, sustainedly, and creatively.
One element of this effort is to design for, and have a strong effect upon, over time, the way in which these devices are deployed and the conditions under which they are provided to their operators.
Financing these vehicles, in a manner that enables the eventual ownership of them to be provided to users, is a common feature of the Halves.
Their uniqueness can give local identity to these conveyances and, over time, making them unique through their design and decoration, can emphasize local history and the identity of current residents, can transform these objects into a new medium of expression, education, and needed direct communication.
All local economies can benefit from having a live local employment exchange, a listing of local spaces to be rented, or even sold, offers to donate things that are being discarded, music being played, public and private services available within the vicinity, etc. which also incorporates a digital element.
Since there are three 1/3 day shifts available for the Half, it is likely that there will be groups of two, three, or more different individuals attending to one route. A mechanism for resolving disputes and a system for ensuring equitable activity will be developed. Means of enabling this arrangement could help foster similar, small group, local, beneficial, efforts.
The Other Half is a personal/3-person/pedal cab/cargo vehicle, which also has the ability to move forward in both its 3’ and 6’ directions so that it is possible to sit abreast instead of behind one another, somewhat more “sociable”.
While using advertising and commercial sponsorship as one means of gaining income from the operation of these vehicles, it is expected that these sources of income would be derived from local businesses and professionals.
These machines conform to current NYS and NYC legal regulations regarding these forms of transportation, are and perfect solutions to urban congestion, yet there is nothing resembling them on the roads at the present time.
Tip-only, free transportation along the regular route could be economically feasible if the income generated by other means is sufficient. Tours, place to place travel, and other higher income-producing activities can be blended in.
There are intended to be two versions of this vehicle. One, as currently pictured, is largely made of aluminum and polycarbonate, both fairly expensive materials. The second is intended to use the same basic design, but to be constructed primarily out of available materials, wood 2x4s, etc. Both are slated to use $125 “transport” wheelchairs, employed to carry patients from their rooms to the curb as structural anchors, and wheels and pedals up-cycled from discarded bicycles. The more expensive version is intended for use in urban spaces throughout the world, all plagued by excessive traffic and the social and dangerous environmental damage being caused by our present system. The less expensive model can be used in those places with limited resources but the same needs for clean, comfortable, convenient, and economical urban transport. The construction methods are relatively simple and accessible.
In order to conserve space, and thus maximize capacity, users will be provided with a device that helps them be comfortable in a somewhat standing position, supported in a number of different ways. While sitting can seem perfect, part of the reason for this is our natural proclivity to relax but also we do it to go along with prevailing norms. We are compelled, from the youngest age, to accommodate ourselves to seated positions, at church, school, and the dinner table. Certainly, there are times when this is ideal, but we are bipedal creatures, and while we don’t climb trees much, we walk and run and stand around talking like this is our most natural posture. If we can be erect, with some modest support offered to our glutei maximi, an enhanced perspective, and other advantages can chime in, along with the health benefits.
Ten
Eleven 120″ x 42″ x 75″
One version allows the rider to determine his posture when moving, from standing straight up to sitting or leaning or even practically lying down. Since maximum visibility is needed to provide safety, conspicuous extensions are deployed above the vehicles, aided by LEDs, to make certain that trucks, vans, buses, and cars are able to be aware of their presence at all times.
What is not there, are fully weather protected, stable and comfortable, up-to-date trikes. If vehicles are light enough, human power is relevant, and by using solar/electric assistance, travel can be pleasurable and healthful too. Until all of the relevant technologies evolved to this point, motors, batteries, controllers, etc., this advance was impossible. We have the tools now, to bring our bloated urban transportation systems, down to the Human Scale, to take a giant leap into a survivable future, and a much more beautiful and visually arresting place.
Most public spaces around the world have, historically, been monopolized by dangerous, oversized vehicles. The relevance of minimal transporters is now being acknowledged by City governments everywhere, and most of the public too. Whereas cars are too big, it is also true that hoverboards and scooters, even bikes, may be too small. They are all used, almost exclusively, only in fair weather. This is understandable, since cold can be magnified when you are moving, and rain is not much fun, and it makes pavements slippery and radically lowers visibility for drivers in dangerous, nearby cars. If every place were Copenhagen or Amsterdam this would matter less. Here and elsewhere, we have accustomed ourselves to a very high level of physical comfort though. We need vehicles that can be enclosed when necessary, and open when not, evolved designs that allow for group riding instead of just solitary, and as much artistry, creativity, and ingenuity put into these protective vessels as humanly possible.
Just as important as making it, is making it to last. There is a challenge, to make these things so they can well withstand the wear and tear of riding on rough roads, and that multi-person use of something is going to inevitably entail. There was a time when it was understood, that you made something to last as long as possible. Following that we had “planned obsolescence”, and trivial design changes to remain the “latest”. Now we need to go back to the original idea. Trolley cars lasted decades, even as they were updated and improved. Durability, especially when you are being punished by imperfect conditions, is crucial. It will also matter to have facilities that are able to provide repairs and improvements to a growing industry.
Safety matters greatly. Nobody should be expected to be harmed by the use of your product. Smooth loading and unloading of passengers must be assured. While in transit, users must be provided with comfort and ways of securing themselves to maximize their pleasure in this passage. No sacrifices are being asked for here. The point is to raise quality, access, and affordability, all at the same time by bringing things down to our “Human Scale”.
The street is also a theater. Sidewalks are full of audience members, and customers as well. Those operating these vehicles are putting on a show in which they are the star. The object is a stage and also a prop, a costume, and a statement. It cries out for lights and bright colors, to be as fantastic as it is practical. If it has been hired for a child’s birthday party it might assume one shape, if they’re for a wedding, something else. Have a Winter guise and a Tropical, a somber mien and a celebratory one.
An organization is being formed, which is intended to act as an expeditor, to instigate this activity everywhere, and help to expand the influence of this work. This effort is intended, partly, to ratify the good sense of using a kind of International Cooperative, as a model for taking action on urgent matters such as Extreme Weather. It is a way of exploring the energy that can be generated, by identifying one another, according to our interest in, and participation in, a relevant aspect of our common lives. This can be done by breaking down geographic and other nominal and irrelevant barriers to a peaceful, well-fed, and dignified population, able to move about freely and fully acknowledge each others’ humanity.
Along with agriculture, transportation has been scaled up, such that the consequences of the few players’ policies, are invisible to these immensities. Economies of scale can benefit us sometimes, but can also give all of the discretion to the largest factors, who will do anything to secure their status. A successful effort to radically improve the terrible working conditions under which those in this profession ordinarily endure may also help to make it possible for other groups, who are currently at the lowest end of the occupational ladder, to mobilize themselves, to generate the resources needed in order to improve their common lives.
The ultimate goal of this undertaking is the widest proliferation possible, the soonest, of the most environmental, healthy, unique, beautiful, and practical, human/solar/electric-powered vehicles. Some of these would be for-hire, passenger, and wheelchair-carrying models. Others would be intended for personal use, and still, others are designed to be used, primarily, to move goods. All of this is most suitable for dense urban environments since their speed would need to be limited, to maximize their safety for users and others. Making them no larger than they need to be, will permit more valuable space to be provided on often congested and crowded streets.
The expectation is, that as the public becomes completely comfortable with this needed transformation, the continuous acceleration of the process to replace the existing system, with one that is so much better, is assured. The durability of the objects produced must be of dependable and remarkably high quality. Their popularity, and the pleasure they provide, will make certain that nobody even pretends that they miss the old, deep-fake “ideal” system, that we had been convinced was our only alternative.
There is not enough room for the unlimited multitude of enormous trucks, buses, limos, delivery trucks, and private automobiles that jam urban spaces everywhere currently. Even if many of them were essential to our survival, they deny, rather than affirm, life. Adding fees has had a minimal influence on the volume of traffic. Even if some provide for needed services, while also representing a huge investment by their owners, they are, by and large, alienating, dangerous, bullying, toxic, homely, oversized, and out-of-place. To an infantilized population, all that activity may be fascinating and titillating, but the insanity of it is drowned out by its sheer volume and the zombie-like acceptance of all of this by the masses, propelled by media, all of which are addicted to the income earned by pushing consumerism.
The amount of time being wasted, the out-of-proportion helpings of food, and continuous noise, meld together and help to justify one another, to convince us that this is the only way. The disorientation that is the ordinary response to overloads of change, is to be expected. AI and the Pandemic are not just moving the goalposts, they are moving the poles. Horse stable owners at the turn of the last Century had the same problem. One had to do with sanitation, which biology rendered unsolvable. The other crisis had to do with the rapid increase in the scale of everything. Three-story buildings turned into 13, then 30, now 100+ stories. The success of cities is based on their ability to grow infinitely, giant black holes swallowing nearby stars, appearing to be inevitable. Unfortunately, this can fail to take into account the effect of all this change on ordinary people
Now that the effects of our common lifestyles are revealed to have been earned at the expense of the possibility of risking our survival on this planet, while also making an infinite number of other people miserable, recognition of the extreme danger that this distressing realization affords, is much closer. The remedies being offered to provide relief for this serious malady are very few and most are without sufficient effect to offer any hope of avoiding the worst of the looming alternative disasters. If the forests continue to burn, floods and droughts multiply, and the permafrost delivers enough methane to poison our atmosphere and render it unsurvivable, will the raising of MPGs by 2050 really matter? Even if it were 2040 or even 2030, this is the use of an umbrella in a hurricane. If there is a remedy here, it is going to have to arise out of the desperation of those many who realize the gravity of our situation and decide to devote some portion of their energies to meeting this serious challenge to our very existence.
There needs to be a wholesale re-evaluation of many aspects of our society, such as food, but the most pressing one is transportation, with its dramatic effect on our climate crisis. Soon, a fortune will be spent upgrading some transportation facilities, but almost all of it will be an effort to fortify existing bad habits while comforting the voting population that they will not tumble off their bridge any time soon. The amount devoted to supporting meaningful change in our behavior, which might provide us with some relief from the onrushing catastrophe that we are facing, will be minimal. There is no lobbying group with any major influence, that is asking the public to give anything up. That is not how you gain people’s support.
For that reason, the idea of generating an entirely new urban transportation system, based on lightweight, human, and solar/electric power, and, most importantly, creative energy, is so important. We are born ingenious but discouraged from employing this faculty or even appreciating it in others. Everything we would ever need is already here, we are told, and our role is merely to be a proper user, if possible by employing no more than a finger or two. We need to be careful that the new medium of virtual reality doesn’t become the final nail in our coffin, as we are convinced to abandon this imperfect plane, for one filled with ersatz majesty and unlimited possibilities, no matter how unreal.
Getting two hands and two feet fully back into the picture at this stage will not be easy. Designing and making things that work, especially at the highest level of the craft, requires serious effort. Few people have the personal freedom to simply devote themselves to creating something, no matter how important it might be, and neglect their other responsibilities. Help has to be found to provide some assistance to those endeavoring to do this. This project needs a framework, to encourage the artists, engineers, mechanics, and others who can contribute to this process to step forward. Putting up rewards, prizes and the potential for acknowledgment will be needed, to gain attention and motivate participants. This must be done, hopefully, without selling the “branding” opportunity that supporting this project might provide, especially to those with sketchy environmental credentials, who could use this for the purpose of Greenwashing their ordinary activities. That “help” would undoubtedly trivialize this quest, even negate it.
If this all can be financed and promoted by individuals, genuinely interested, preferably smaller, businesses, groups, and relevant non-profits, even enlightened Transit Agencies, it can happen now, in many places at the same time, and be both serious in intent and joyous in spirit. It is notoriously difficult to launch efforts of this magnitude, without the cooperation and financial support of some large entity. The likelihood that it will be misdirected or exploited increases considerably though when there is an “overseer”, especially when the intent of this program is to initiate the widest assortment of designs and approaches, rather than consolidating influence and rewards in any one place. It might be somewhat more difficult to utilize a bottom-up strategy to gain needed support, but this is the same energy direction that a human-powered device like a bike uses, and maybe it should also be the one that propels the movement to expand its growth and impact.
Bringing Pedicabs into the 21st Century, all the way from the 19th must involve a complete re-conceptualization of this opportunity. Factors include urban transportation, localization, entrepreneurship, and information. There is no historical model for this approach, and to some extent, it is now possible only due to recent advances in technology. In New York City, and in many places with similar density around the world, there is a need for the creation of a service such as this. It would:
Call for the construction of vehicles, fully accessible to wheelchairs, no larger than the 120” x 54” limits now in effect in NYC regulations guiding pedicabs. These conveyances would be fitted with movable solar roofs and wall panels which can be consolidated, when the weather permits, allowing the vehicle to be completely open to the outside, like a bike. At other times, all of these clear windows will be closed to provide for the comfort of riders.
Allow the use of these vehicles to be varied in the course of the day. There would be two or three operators of each vehicle since it would be operational during a long day. It would be available for very profitable tours, private passenger or package delivery, while a portion of the time, it would ply an established route. These 20-60 minute circuits would take it to local transit locations and other important features of their neighborhood. A serious attempt would be made to hold to an approximate schedule. Locals would come to expect this service to be available on a regular basis. Depending on the neighborhood and the desires of the operators, this would happen five times a day or 35 times.
Although it increases the complexity, the most beneficial use of this opportunity would involve vehicles plying regular routes, during part of the day, while providing a host of other helpful transportation and other services at other times. There are other informational and community-based assets that could be enhanced this way, through the design of appropriate vehicles and the establishment of the resources necessary to educate, orient, and deploy local entrepreneurs as specialists in public information. If you have the latest and best information as regards living and working spaces, especially shared ones, you are entitled to use this information to provide you with some income. The same goes for local jobs, services, and educational and entertainment connections. There needs to be a legal framework designed and implemented, a way for charges to be billed, for instance, a way to track the location of vehicles on missions, etc. These resources need to be put into place, to provide operators, everywhere, with the tools needed to fulfill these tasks, as part of a non-profit cooperative. A corresponding digital, online reference point, must also be put in place, to expand the reach of these activities. In time, this element could become one of the most important and profitable ones.
It is expected that local travel, on its regular route, could be offered at no charge, although tips would be invited. This unusual arrangement is possible if the earnings from real estate, jobs, advertising, private transport, and other activities turn out to be sufficient, to provide for a very substantial livelihood. This does not take into account the other potential ways, in which involvement in this profession could enhance lives. Becoming a relevant part of an ongoing community can open up other avenues, social and business connections, and access to positive situations and possibilities. One can become a roving, but also fixed, element of the surroundings. In fact, some time should be spent, by each vehicle, at suitable locations within their routes, so that they might be accessed by locals who want to provide them with relevant information or access it. This provides for a rest period, perhaps a snack, and closer interactions with the rest of the local community, including the provision of free terminals. Some literature can also be available, and some resemblance of this phenomenon to the city’s historic network of local newsstands can be established. Any local publications can be provided with an outlet, including some of the more esoteric, art, poetry, literature, etc.
It is understood, that operators would need to be helped to master the skills needed to make this a very profitable and satisfying way to make a living. They would also need to perform their duties to a high standard of excellence to be enabled to continue their efforts. The plan here is that successful operators would need to agree to spend a certain minimal amount of time orienting new operators and helping them succeed. The intention here is to form a community of operators, who will democratically establish the means to guarantee the high quality of these activities, while expanding the operations continuously, in order to enable more people to craft these meaningful opportunities, to improve their own, as well as everybody else’s, lives.
It is expected that those involved in this program would begin their careers as operators, after appropriate orientation, etc. to determine whether they enjoy and are suited for this work. Once they are established, it will be possible for them to begin to earn ownership of the vehicle and the business associated with it. Over time, the multiple operators of each location will have an agreement among them that outlines their responsibilities and possible rewards. This requires a high degree of responsibility and maturity and will need to be guided by a set of mandatory practices, and a process for dealing with situations where these regulations are being ignored. Without one fully-operational example of this actually working, it may be difficult to convince anyone that all of this is possible. Granted, there are many unique, and therefore as yet unproven, elements here, and the right individuals will need to be recruited, initially, to maximize the possibility that it will work well, but the quality of this opportunity is such that it should attract the best candidates to take it on.
This will be organized as a profit-making venture, partly under the jurisdiction of a non-profit entity. It is a business that, along with being profitable and relatively trouble-free, also has the goal of humanizing this activity, aiding the urban environment, and providing a full measure of dignity to those engaged in the enterprise. It is being designed to do this, while also helping to enable local communities everywhere, to find their own voices, and generate the best available means of providing the essentials of life to all of their inhabitants. One feature here is in the form of an ultra-local, Craigslist-style resource, that can guarantee that unwanted resources can find a home, and would be welcomed by everyone.
The Half is an NYC legal pedicab, designed with some of these functions in mind. Regardless of its excellent suitability, it is hoped that, over time, other highly individuated and attractive designs for these vehicles will emerge and be put into use. If created with respect for the unique surroundings that it plies, these designs can come to represent their individual streets and neighborhoods, their history, and special assets. As well as being the most useful objects imaginable, they could also become some of the most distinctive and beautiful ones as well.
Small-scale transportation, like bikes, is becoming more popular and, it is increasingly realized, essential, all of the time, especially for use in crowded urban spaces. Here though, instead of a 21st Century masterpiece of a people-carrying vehicle, we have an enlarged baby carriage. Along with the outdated, Colonial Era, humans as draught animals, and equipment, we have archaic laws to go with them, and practices as well. This type of vehicle has the capacity to be the most desirable, sensible, environmental, friendly, and appropriate form of short-distance urban travel possible, so it needs to be encouraged in every way possible, not subjected to crippling, senseless restrictions. While conditions vary in different places, needed changes in New York City include:
Small, clean, and quiet electric motors, must not be prohibited as a matter of humane working conditions. There is extreme, unhealthy difficulty in pedaling around with human cargo that could easily reach 500 pounds. Preventing access to this modest improvement is inexcusable. Besides, in spite of their being prohibited technically, 95% of New York City’s fleet of these three-wheeled vehicles already employ them.
There is an unfair and unnecessary limit to two or three passengers. If they are to be part of the transportation system, rather than a service limited to deep-pocketed tourists, it must be made economical. (The Boston system is currently free-of-charge and tips are sufficient to keep drivers happy.) It is possible, given the additional power available with the use of these small electric motors, to sensibly and safely convey 6 individuals.
More than one person should be able to supply energy to the battery/electric system at the same time. There are many riders who might enjoy the opportunity to get some exercise while riding along. Fitness means healthfulness and needs to be encouraged. If rewards can be provided to those putting in the energy being used to move ahead, that would go a long way toward motivating this activity. The current prohibition was initiated as a way to prevent “conference” bikes with a half dozen riders from operating in a dangerous fashion but was mistakenly applied to all other bikes as well.
If we are only moving at 15 MPH or slower, standing should be permitted. It is fine in trains and buses that go three or four times faster. Appropriate handholds and specially-designed places to lean can provide safe transport. In fact, many people would prefer to be somewhat upright, if given the opportunity, to feel stable and comfortable, and as an added advantage, it is economical of space. Security belts can be available and provided to those desiring one.
It must be unacceptable for drivers to get soaked or be frozen, while working, or otherwise subjected to dangerous and unhealthful conditions. They must be given proper cover and reasonably comfortable surroundings. People can not be regarded as “Coolies” or treated as draught animals.
There should be no limits on the lighting of the vehicles. Except for classic Yellow Cabs, no other means of transport is forbidden or required to look a certain way. Individuality and diversity need to be encouraged and owners should be helped to become positive contributors to our visual environment.
Not being able to pick up different persons, en route, prevents this service from realizing its most beneficial identity, as a form of public transportation that also does work as livery and for private purposes sometimes
Mandating a “Unibody” construction for pedicabs makes no sense, especially since cargo bikes are utilizing all forms of trailers and, are now proliferating through every city. Their ability to lessen the burden of too many oversized trucks clogging streets is being seen as a potential boon to urban traffic flow, and that goes for pedicabs as well.
Given that these vehicles are also a form of public service, and are relatively small and unobtrusive, they ought to be allowed to park overnight along suitable curbs in some selected places, to help enable their widespread and convenient use.
In order to lessen concern that drivers will rampage down streets using motors, a voluntary speed limit of 15 MPH may be agreed upon by all of those in the industry, to eliminate the need for regulation. The safe operation will be enhanced this way.
At least some of the fleet must be made wheelchair-accessible. One result of this would be the same vehicles that carry persons could use their design to also accommodate cargo easily and expand their money-earning possibilities and overall utility. Besides, it is the law that at least a portion of any fleet works to expand handicapped access. An entire fleet of wheelchair-accessible vehicles could be deployed citywide this way as a serious improvement to the current access-a-ride system.
One use of this opportunity, perhaps the most beneficial, would involve some vehicles plying regular routes during part of the day while providing a host of other helpful services. There are other informational and community-based assets that could be enhanced through the design of appropriate vehicles and the establishment of the resources necessary to train and deploy local entrepreneurs as specialists in public information regarding employment, real estate, education, and entertainment activity.
Failure to display rates properly should cause you to lose your permit if done more than once. Negotiated prices must be permitted but accompanied by a clear understanding of potential charges. The good reputation of this industry must be restored.
Eventually, there will need to be a great many more of these vehicles, preferably scattered throughout the five boroughs. This should happen once the existing regulations have been modified in order to make them as fair and beneficial as possible. This can be thought of as an important early step in the urgent need to re-frame urban transportation, down from the industrial to the human scale.
has recently been revolutionized and the same is needed here. It will involve more than motors, dimensions and the number of wheels. In order for this profession to reach its potential to provide benefits to both its participants and the general public, the original stunted, politically-charged legal process that defined the field and set the conditions, must be started over. The importance of the climate crisis, the defeat of congestion pricing as a way to improve vehicle circulation, the advances in helpful technologies and the ever present need for healthy, dignified, profitable and beneficial forms of making a living, demand that this subject be treated seriously. It should not be about a nostalgia gimmick, with operators subjected to bad weather while their clients enjoy comfort and splendor, but rather an honest attempt to maximize the improvements to our public spaces that a real program could provide. Design competitions and robust community discussions must be part of this, along with whatever incentives, financial and otherwise, can be gathered and mobilized.
The negative aspects of the current situation must not be permitted to conceal the larger questions. Otherwise, there may be some improvement in the most negative elements of the picture, but no real structural change in the nature of this activity, its definition as a minor form of entertainment instead of a major form of transportation, an important spur to local community development, and a form of artistic expression. The potential to fuse private and public travel, wheelchair and elderly transport, educational and pleasure tours, cargo, delivery and other improvements in urban life, is well worth exploring. If all that is asked is to throw out the bums, that is all that will ever happen. Even if that were to be accomplished, which is far from a certainty, that will be a total waste of an important opportunity to do much more.
We could use the participation of academic institutions. Some different public schools and Universities need to be contacted and invited to be part of something. We have a lot of them here, especially New York based ones, all can be given a chance to participate in this. It is about engineering and art and urban space allocation, the environment and employment and entrepreneurial opportunities, tourism and disability transport. There are advocates in each area, nonprofits and famous pioneers in their respective fields. I believe that the seriousness of this effort will determine its efficacy and scope. Sure, demanding big, lit up license plates on current pedicabs and fair and enforceable regulation is a worthwhile goal, but it is also essential that the relevant co-factors in this urgent and important work be mobilized and encouraged to make their contributions to this task.
Tel.: 212 431 0600
Email: stevenstollman@gmail.com
Find a pad of paper and a pencil or pen and look in the library for helpful information.
Begin to imagine what a different kind of vehicle might look like and how it might work.
Call a friend or two so that this can begin to be a cooperative group project
Make a poster with an email describing this project and what you hope to accomplish.
Find some unused space to work or put the request for one on the information poster.
Contact local hardware, and second-hand stores, to ask them to contribute needed materials.
Offer all local businesses the opportunity to sponsor and provide resources for the group.
Collect a basic hand and power tool kit and selection of nuts and bolts, tape, epoxy, etc.
Offer other locals, with an interest in this process, the opportunity to become involved.
See if there are engineers, mechanics, artists, craftspeople, or anyone willing to pitch in.
Let the local media know what you are doing so they can publicize and help you.
Post your progress on AMovement.org so you can invite comments and help.
Follow the advances that other groups are making and continue to learn from them.
Bring local officials into the picture and encourage them to pursue your ideas seriously.
Learn the history of transportation in this country and how it has been manipulated.
Give everybody rides in your vehicle and begin re-evaluating and re-designing it.
Use the experience of the following something from idea to reality to solve other problems.
Establish the value of believing in yourself and learning to be as creative as possible.
Persuade all local educational establishments to consider beginning their own project.
Work to use the results of these efforts to bring forth actual enterprises and products.
Ride around and show off what you have done in order to inspire more similar efforts.
1. This is an invitation to individuals and groups, literally everywhere, to design and construct examples of the kind of transportation we need in order to survive this period. Must be as minimal as possible, with a human-powered component and a solar/electric one. This can be for individuals or small groups and should pay attention to a variety of factors, ease of construction, low cost, durability, beauty, originality, safety, comfort, reproducibility, energy use, sympathy with local social preferences, and culture, and weather.
2. Word of this project will be spread through the cooperation with Worldwide contacts in the educational, art, health, governmental, and environmental communities, who have the willingness to help initiate, and publicize, this activity. This could be the City of New York, perhaps on behalf of the countless different nationalities, and diverse lands of origin, of the current residents of Queens, home of two historic World’s Fairs.
This bottom-up and continuous event, taking place everywhere simultaneously, is the complete opposite of the classic version of these spectacles. Still, the creativity, the rides, and pleasurable aspects, the International factor, and the important research into new designs and technologies that are badly needed at this time, all capture the essence of our memorable past events.
3. Instead of expensive temporary pavilions, the Internet will serve as the reigning Colossus, enabling full communication among participants, exchanges of ideas, and sharing of resources. Rather than using competition as the means to encourage involvement, this approach has the potential to create a worldwide family of contributors, and cooperation that can be a model of participatory democracy.
4. A unit can be formed with the task of identifying local sponsors and enabling them to connect to local efforts. Bringing local governments into the picture is valuable and their support can be crucial, especially if the local school system becomes involved, but this can be done, anywhere, without asking anybody’s permission. Having a shop or workspace can make this much easier, but any garage or other not-precious space can serve this purpose. If a car repair shop decides to help, their access to tools and expertise can be crucial. If a school is willing to adopt this program into their existing ones, that is fine too.
5. The goals here are to maximize participation while demonstrating the ability of communities to use their own human resources to contribute, profoundly, to solving their problems.
While it is very ambitious, it is also intended to put emphasis on the smallest unit, the group of friends, the class, and the family. Changing discarded bikes into a method for developing a full-service, local transportation system, can be done with hand tools and widely available knowledge, of design and fabrication. It can involve seamstresses and carpenters, welders and mechanics, cyclists and electricians, digital magicians, teachers and organizers, artists, craftspeople, and local residents, all anxious to strengthen their neighborhoods and clean their air.
while most comfortable, vehicles possible is the aim here. Users should be able to assume any posture which is their preference, from standing, to leaning, to sitting and recumbent. Also, the clear, outer, weather-protecting shell, must easily be partly, or entirely, rendered minimal, in accordance with the weather and desire for privacy. This is a low-speed vehicle, roughly the same as bicycles, 15-25 mph, most suitable for urban/suburban use. Multi-modality is optimal since it enables the most economical operation. A higher speed version, more suitable for less dense environs, presents a host of additional safety issues, which will, naturally, take more time to successfully resolve.
This is a serious matter but a case can be made regarding this process as similar to the one that motivated the creation of the Kinetic Sculpture Movement. It has been amply demonstrated that a human-powered vehicle, even without the added benefits of a solar/electric element, can be phenomenally efficient, while also being construed into an infinite variety of disguises and presentations. It can be a duck, or a fly, a mock Cadillac convertible or guided missile, and still function magnificently as a conveyance. It can also add a huge element of pleasurable whimsey and otherwise colorful creativity to grey concrete sidewalks and dark asphalt streets.
The surrender of our public space to oversized, dangerous, toxic, and homely machines has negated these spaces’ suitability for any other, more appropriate purposes. Recreation and relaxation, while surrounded by loud and ill-mannered devices, are impossible. Unless in a park or other designated space, the atmosphere is so obnoxious that only street workers, like deliverers, who must be there, regularly populate it. Urban spaces are becoming more and more congested, some impassable, and finding refuge from them by avoiding them, is the most popular remedy.
While people who must be there, like vendors working hard to make a living, are regarded as a nuisance, an array of obnoxious machines are welcomed to monopolize the space while pumping poisonous gases in their wakes, as long as they are a lubricant for profit-making, tax-generating activity. Given the current environmental catastrophe, they are also a clear threat to our future. Unmentioned and completely unacknowledged is the tremendous psychological damage caused by our submission to these constant assaults on our physical and mental health, without any measurable resistance.
Efforts to improve this situation must be urgent yet joyous. This does not involve anyone having to give up anything that they now utilize. To a society in the grip of various addictions, to ease, for instance, the threat of losing anything once possessed, would be fatal to the enterprise. This plan involves providing access, eventually to everyone, to an entirely new fleet of the most creative, fun, and efficient vehicles imaginable.
Fortunately, the result of this undertaking will be the diminution in the use of the ugly, uncomfortable and environmentally and psychologically damaging multi-ton monstrosities, which now fill our streets. This opportunity should serve to draw the attention and participation of many creative and caring individuals from everywhere, since virtually no developed places on this earth are free from the life, and injury-threatening impacts, of having to share their vital public spaces with endless marauding armies of treacherous machines. The talent that is needed to do the work is out there. It just needs to be aroused and focused on the task at hand, to save this planet, while having a wonderful time doing it.
The new Mayor of New York has made it one of his first priorities to reduce the number of roadway casualties in that city to Zero, from the 271 who currently expire each year, in addition to the 65,000 who are injured. This is more than an ambitious and very difficult, though thoroughly admirable, goal. It is really an effort to evolve the entire population of this place, past the assumptions of unavoidable brutalities that this transportation system invariably provides, as a “normal” feature. It is gratifying that the Chief Executive seems to understand that the need here is tectonic and not cosmetic.
Partly this is a matter of enforcement. Setting up an operation in Brooklyn where cars were ticketed for failing to yield to pedestrians was a trial balloon, to see if the publicity surrounding this was sufficient to have an effect on driver’s behavior in the short and long run. Another much less successful effort, to ticket pedestrians for jaywalking, became a disaster when a Chinese-speaking man was apparently thrown to the ground by a police officer and sustained head injuries. Regardless of such anomalies, everybody understands that the ultimate purpose here is to reduce harm to unprotected pedestrians, and cyclists. In a city with a 30 MPH speed limit, 60 MPH is standard. The Mayor is the Commander in Chief of the Police Department and he can single-handedly direct a comprehensive overhaul of our traffic rules and how they are enforced.
I believe that the other most important factor in engineering this change will be the rapid proliferation of small, safe, human-scale vehicles, to replace the far more dangerous industrial-scale ones that currently dominate the landscape. Not only will this result in saving many lives and preventing numerous serious injuries, but it will also provide major health, environmental and other significant benefits to society. Regardless, It is not going to be easy reining in the taxis, flying down the street, the enormous garbage trucks and buses, and huge SUVs with their relatively limited vision.
In order to accelerate the process of providing ourselves with a new range of vehicles, we will need to incentivize the designers and builders of these devices with both recognition and financial benefits. Pavlov proved that animals are motivated by rewards and will respond to them in a predictable way. Since there is no marketing venue for these objects their introduction over time has been nearly impossible. The advent of the internet and its means to inform the public about novel ideas and attainable objects can help to overcome the historical resistance of the conventional marketplace, bike shops, and car dealers, to provide us with access to these machines. When Rob Cotter used Kickstarter to get his seed money to produce the first multi-modal ELF it signaled a new channel opening up between makers and those who know that this is a vital path to explore. Building on that realization is a new task and a welcome one. His current success in expanding his enterprise will alert many to the increasing value of these new opportunities. Hybrid human/electric-assist vehicles are the wave of the future, and nobody can deny it anymore.
It is not a motorcycle but it is a cycle with a motor, so even the language conspires against us. It is built on the scale of a bicycle, minimal, so the contribution of human power is relevant, and the stored energy is supplied through advanced design batteries rather than fossil fuels, petroleum, so it is considered exotic. In fact, many of the best designs were already made in the 19th century and will simply need to be updated for this day and age.
The contributions of creative people, artists, and craftspeople are the critical element. The importance of fresh thinking and the use of incredibly durable materials, like polycarbonate and composites, will change the game. Just this week it was announced that an important breakthrough had been made in the use of sugar in batteries, far more powerful than current ones and much cheaper. The amount of effort going into the research into nanomaterials, carbon fiber and all the rest is bringing home the relevance and importance of weight and scale in the design of better forms of transportation.
Mr. DeBlasio’s declarations about safety need to focus on the greatest challenge, reducing the throw weight of the lightly-guided missiles that fill all of our streets. As long as something has a certain bulk and weight, it is automatically a candidate to be regarded as an offending object due to its potential to do harm. The problem with industrial-scale vehicles is their momentum, calculated as weight times speed. Being hit by a multi-ton object moving at 40 miles per hour is often fatal. When the speed is reduced to 20 or 30 miles per hour this hazard is greatly reduced. When the weight of the vehicle can be measured in tens rather than tons of pounds, the risks are practically eliminated. Human-powered, electric-assisted vehicles are nearly on the same scale as a person walking along a road. At the 10-15 MPH that they normally move, the danger is further made smaller and the visibility provided by a relatively open design adds to their safety too. Of course, they must be operated responsibly.
The Mayor is to be commended for taking on such an important task but errs, at least modestly, in his campaign against carriage horses in this Year of the Horse on the Chinese calendar. We need to remember where we came from and to cultivate our awareness and appreciation of our ties to the rest of the animal kingdom. You don’t have to raise goats or love mice but making the connection to your fellow species and acknowledging this linkage is a good thing and along with such arts as handcraft and Yoga, puts you in touch with forces, otherwise invisible to the naked eye. Muscle-power is awesome, both our own and that of other creatures, and recognizing its appropriate role in a world ruled by mechanical and electronic forms of power is essential to our self-understanding and self-realization.
Whitey, the horse that pulled my Father’s fruit and vegetable wagon along, in the early years of the 20th Century, made it possible for him to cover enough ground to pay his bills, start a family and make his way up in the world. How could he have done it otherwise? The tiny One Horsepower motors required to help food deliverers and pedicab drivers do their jobs without having to punish their bodies are just as vital to our ability to provide a humane and decent world, as is our willingness to co-exist with our natural counterparts.
Banning little electric-assist motors, for no real reason, is just as cruel as it is to send the carriage horses to their doom, to erase them from our sight. Because of the excellent fertilizer that they manufacture can not find its way to a Community Garden nearby? It seems, in fact, that they are extremely well taken care of, at least at the current time. Replacing them with multi-ton “replicas” will only heighten our sense of artificiality, Disney on steroids, which is already far too prevalent, and permanently wipe out one of the few fragments of natural and historical authenticity remaining. Sadly, Mr. Mayor, It will do this harm while simultaneously reinforcing the mistaken and unhealthy sense of entitlement, that the oversized and overpowered urban-inappropriate forms of transportation, that are so hazardous to our health and which currently dominate our space, depend upon. Let’s hear it for muscle-power (with just a little electric-assist please).
The original colonial Tea Party was a bit of blame-the-victim, racist, black-bag op terrorism, with a spoonful of patriotism, and so is the current one for many of its most passionate adherents. The difference is that back then, we were rising up against protected monopolies and giant corporations, whereas the current version is largely funded by these megaliths.
We can do better, much better. If we need a theme song, how about the Automat’s egalitarian and inclusive “Let’s have another cup of coffee”? We can organize friendly people in all the coffee shops and let the people who have trouble with including everybody have tea shops. We can have Starbucks and the corner diner and the morning breakfast table and they can have the crumpets. We can have meetings morning noon and night, all over town, to figure out how to take back this puppy from the beast. Confused and frightened people, looking for help are being told, ”Sharing is Socialism”. So elevators and trains must be hotbeds of Marxism, and water mains and sidewalks a sinister, devious plot, to tie us together and make us dependent.
So what is COCOA, Coffee Conversation Action? It’s not a Party exactly, (even though a little fun is always a welcome relief from the tedium), or a means to anoint the already too self-important with additional titles and privileges. Rather it’s a minimal mechanism for building an energetic, ongoing, constantly-evolving plan to maximize the chances that our species can have a healthy future on this rock. It is also an action agenda, without hysterical, lying demagogues, and without non-stop, one-dimensional self-interest masquerading itself as the common good and crushing our humanity in its path. We had sound-outs and teach-ins, but we need a continuously-refreshed framework that frees us with the truth instead of confining us in lies, open for business wherever and whenever sippers meet.
That’s the Coffee Conversation Action Agenda, COCOA2. Namely: Move over a little so there’s room for everybody and when it’s freezing out there, who doesn’t need something hot to drink to help take off the edge? No matter how cold the facts get out here, friend, in the coming days, please remember what your Mom told you about what you had to do if you wanted to get into Heaven, and make mine hot Cocoa thank you, not hate-filled Cuckoo.
We need water, air, and the occasional snack, to survive. Clothing and a roof over your head may not be quite as essential, depending upon local climate and social customs of course, but are still pretty important. If you are a person of deep faith, you have the conviction that all of this will arrive, in good time, due to the grace of the Almighty. All that is required of you is patience and fortitude and the ability to suffer the pain which comes from realizing that there is still something missing from this picture. It can even feel as if all of this seemingly undeserved and unnecessary distress was put there on purpose, to put your faith to the test, since it feels otherwise to be so purposeless and random.
If you are more modern in your ideas, you might consider it the job of the government to make sure that you can fulfill these basic, human needs. Some would put companionship in the “absolutely needed” column too, but, aside from our sentimental preferences, we have a demonstrated ability to exist, even prosper, without any nearby two-legged accomplices, for quite some time. Got to have drinkable water and breathable air no matter what though. So why are our supplies of both under attack and in jeopardy? Are we completely out of our minds? Do we think that playing Russian Roulette with our essentials makes the game more interesting, raises the stakes and creates excitement out of the mundane? Is it possible that what we have always taken for granted, as belonging to us, is being completely commodified, and that everything has, or will soon have, a price tag, even the air we breathe?
Meanwhile, if so much has been reduced to numbers, pushed so far into the abstract that we can hardly recognize its connection to our reality, how do we push back and reassert the need to recognize, acknowledge, even celebrate that linkage? Since passivity is the ocean that we swim through to reach our life rafts of activity, it is no wonder that there is so little coordination amongst us in this continuous, ongoing process. Each person is too involved in staying afloat, paddling towards their destinations and making sure that there is plenty of oxygen in the immediate vicinity, to worry much about anybody else, except their own blood and kin.
So, if a problem arises which requires the coordinated effort of these various arbitrarily-distanced souls, there is no mechanism for enabling that to take place. The institutions we formerly relied upon, as narrow-focused as they were, religion, proximity and the rest, are moribund. Sports teams serve as place setters for real community and symbols replace actuality. You root for the home team, maybe win a few and probably lose the rest. Then a Karina happens and we are all brought back down, for a little while, kicking and screaming, to reality. Then the Dream Machine kicks in again and we are glued into our easy chairs, back on the program, waiting for the next wave to break.
The ultimate injury suffered here can not be quantified and in most cases does not even have a name. It is embodied in a concept which we named “empathy”. It is the ability to share someone else’s pleasure or pain, accomplishment or loss. It is natural to us, as is the mechanism which permits us to shut it off and become absorbed in ourselves. If you listen to popular music, the most common word in songs is always “you” and close behind that “love”. The focus is constantly directed to the other, because that is where your affirmation lies, with your lover or your child. The ability to care more for them than for yourself is the path we have been given to escape the tyranny of our own bodies and selves, to displace our attentions and affections on another. Since the other primary drive programmed into us by our natures and our conditioning is to focus on ourselves and to relegate others to bit parts and extras, this is the exposure of our centers to the light, the closest we may ever come to a revelatory experience.
When we can provide all who are alive, and all that is alive, with the grace afforded by these flashes of unselfishness, and unification with what is outside of ourselves, this can be a long sea voyage to the land where change lives. Without mechanisms to sustain you on your way, it becomes very difficult to hold your course though, so we need to become designers and builders, to re-form the institutions and methods that we have contrived, or which, in most cases, been imposed on us over time. Since so much of this existing framework was contrived with only minimal feedback from the consumers of all of this society-building, there is a lot of slack to take up.
When the equipment provided to us to help in our encounter with raw nature has been in the manner of weapons, to force nature back into a predictable and beneficial state, for the sake of distributing better prizes to the populace, there is no reckoning of the long-term effects of so much manipulation of our resources. This is a giant experiment gone off the tracks. Literally, when it comes to trains and figuratively when it comes to everything else. Take the food supply. Here is one thought about how to help put it back on the tracks.
PUCK magazine, in downtown New York City, gave political satire its most powerful boost. Its momentum has propelled it 150 years into the present day in the form of Comedy Central and millions of youtube videos. The impatience of these cartoonists with corrupt politicians, greedy accumulators and the webs they jointly constructed to rid us of our fortunes and futures, put them in the role of wise surrogate parents, preparing us for the real-world conditions that we were going to have to face in the post Civil War economy and society of the United States, in a difficult and fast-changing environment. PUCK U. printed 80,000 gaudy diplomas a week and awarded them to anybody with a thin dime and a little time, to laugh at power and privilege and its alleged prerogatives.
In the print world, it revolutionized its impact with full color. This took the movie industry another half-century to do and the Electronic version still another half-century. Mobilizing amazing humor, courage, and wit, it is a MAD magazine, Vanity Fair and the New Yorker today, and most lately CHARLIE HEBDO. If we did not have the benefit of the perspective that the revelations of absurdity provide, we could not survive the strange occurrences that surround us daily. Without the ability to capture and highlight the obvious, and often unavoidable contradictions, that arise out of the self-serving testimonials, of all of the one-dimensional purveyors of this ideology, or that web of mystical beliefs, how can we sort through them and figure out where we stand within them?
Our teachers are Socratic and skeptical and need to be since there are so many contrary notions competing for your fervid loyalty and so little proof that anyone is any better than all the rest. Many of us sift through the lot of them and pick and choose elements that appear to hold together, the way you would in a supermarket, looking for ripe ideas, squeezing them to ratify their readiness to be consumed. You do this at the same time as you are computing the value of venturing down the paths currently on sale, seduced by their sometimes ridiculously low prices, or put off by the high tariffs. We’re careful shoppers but we’re also captives of our habits and histories, and not that interested in what the person next to us is doing. That is until the walls start shaking and the small stuff starts mattering a whole lot less.
If you are going to hold up to ridicule those who have the means to harm you, the rich and powerful for instance, you must accept the possibility that they will take offense and try to do something to lessen your ability to do them damage. They may buy your publication and find a new editor or withdraw their advertising from it or start their own. When PUCK magazine began to exert its influence, a group of those with opposing views, mostly defenders of the status quo, formed JUDGE, a practically identical journal in style. They pirated some of the PUCK’s best cartoonists by offering them higher remuneration and relied upon the code of the illustrator, which is to give the client what they ask for, to deliver them of a counterbalance to their rival’s popular messages. Fortunately, the public appreciated the quality of the original and remained loyal to it, and it enjoyed a longer and much more robust influence than its copycat’s.
The co-option of anything is still one of the most insidious and dangerous effects that economic competition can produce. It is easy for the most powerful truths to be diluted down to punchlines in a situation comedy, with a laugh track primed to hold up to vigorous ridicule, any serious deviation from “acceptable” behavior. We are constantly being conditioned to enforce stereotypes on all individuals and commentaries according to categories that we hardly knew existed. There is even, inevitably, a character who is charged with challenging convention who must be portrayed as too complex to really understand, or secretly conflicted about his, or her, identity or worth. Our attitudes are manipulated the way a piece of french bread dough is, pulled and pounded and shaped until it fits the popular mode and then baked into its permanent shape. Unfortunately, a lot is lost in the process. Think of the difference between a perfect baguette, still hot out of the oven, and its fluffy replica, sealed in a plastic bag and devoid of taste, crust or character and you have the model of the actual in all of its glory and a world of sad phoniness.
It is true that creativity is not easy to find. We are, by and large, copiers and adaptors. Nothing wrong with that but the accompanying self-congratulations and inevitable egoism which is associated with calling oneself an “artist” or a creative person in general, too often barely conceals an army of sycophants copying somebody else’s homework not tortured souls giving birth to difficult notions. Repeating the mistakes of the past, endlessly, by dressing them up in new costumes and disguises, preserves a sense of freshness on that which is perched on top of a mess of out-of-date rottenness.
The common bicycle broadcasts a powerful and important message, just by its existence. If “lighter is better”, a principle that has invaded and conquered the information and communication universes lately and lain them to waste, is applied to transportation, the age of the “bike” is upon us. The Internal Combustion Engine, ICE Age, is already over and what TESLA doesn’t turn into yesterday’s news, the “Shareable” and “Wearable”, pared down to its minimal expression, will. The opposite effect is happening in many parts of Asia like Vietnam and South Asia like India, where heavier motorcycles (some admittedly electric powered) are replacing bikes, as symbols of higher status.
Being carried along, without conspicuous effort, can feel almost magical. Preserving the element which can be defined as “self-propelled” or “muscle-moved” is essential though, for any vehicle that wants to call itself a “bike”, or it just becomes another kind of motor transport, and we certainly have enough of them already. We may be lazy by nature but there is no doubt that this is the way we are being aggressively nurtured. Self-drive cars? Will robots shave you too and brush your teeth? Can you manage a fork and knife at the same time so that your food can be broken down into bite-sized pieces or will that need to be done for you too, like you were still two years old? If you are too weak and rendered unably, it is understandable. Otherwise, it is not.
At the same time as we are miniaturizing the personal equipment that we depend upon for many tasks, the systems that maintain these devices are growing larger and more consolidated. This is a good thing in many respects because the economies of scale provided by this massive adoption of personal communication devices have brought the costs down considerably. Meanwhile, there is the ever-present danger that this consolidation will result in huge monopolies that will manipulate the charges and raise them into the upper atmosphere while thwarting better technology and ignoring risks to the environment or insults to human dignity. The beneficial effects of competition can evaporate on overheated trading floors. There is also the matter of tacit conspiracies in various industries, among the few large companies that invariably control each one, to maintain a certain level of charges for all of their sakes. This is not just an attack of paranoia either though these kinds of tacit arrangements can not always be proven very easily, no matter what the facts clearly reveal.
The recent victory for “Net Neutrality” gives hope that concerted action by millions of stake-holders can influence public policy after all and restrain the influence of the largest factors. This is not the way that these things usually are decided though and it is not easy to keep your constituency constantly on the alert and ready to send in all those emails and sometimes it just doesn’t work, no matter how much effort is put into the struggle. If you do care what is going to happen next, you are already used to the hills and valleys that make up expectations and accomplishments, so you are also used to that rocking motion while you’re rolling. Eventually, we are going to fully remember how exciting the creative process can be, when you are not so frightened to use it that it is locked in an access-proof vault, in a part of your mind that only comes into being in your dream-life.
Please visit www.LightWheels.com for some examples of what I think are the missing links in our current transportation systems. My intention is to build them. If you want to help, let me know. Also please consider making a comment about them, sweet or sour, in the space provided below, to help spice up this bubbling stew of words.
Pickers and gatherers of produce, People getting their hands dirty, by pulling roots and breaking stems, filling baskets and boxes, are making about a penny a pound for their work, give or take. When the final products of their efforts are passed along to the consumer, the price will be measured in dollars a pound.
If retailers were willing to mark prices in increments of 5 cents (not a common figure currently) this could be used to signify that they are passing this much down the line, to these hard-working men, women and children, an additional 5 cents per pound for their hard labors. Consumers can make certain this way that those employed to supply them with their needed nutrients are being compensated in a more reasonable way than is common today.
How are foreigners and migrants going to be able to keep track of and report what they are due? Rewarding cooperating growers with better sales will help and a well-monitored program of verification and tracking of funds. Of course, a mechanism must be implemented, to make certain that these funds are not diverted before they reach their intended recipients. For these reasons, one cent of the five will need to be used to devise and operate an efficient and honest process to make certain that everything works as well as humanly possible.
Any funds not needed to administer this program are to be used to enable other populations who are accustomed to receive a minuscule portion of the profits generated through their sweat-fueled efforts, apparel workers, etc., to accomplish this same purpose. Perhaps clothing prices will include a 25 cent additional payment to the gatherers of the raw materials, along with those who sew or dye the cloth, with $.25 prices reflecting retailers’ participation.
Will employers simply lower wages by the amount of these “bonuses”? Unfortunately, some will try to, so effective means must be employed, and constantly improved and updated, to thwart humanity’s worst impulses and habits or nothing will change. Great public shame must be heaped on criminals who rob the poor to help themselves and they must know that they will be identified, blackballed and ejected from civilized commerce.
The details needed to make this a reality must be gleaned from a number of conferences, by telecommunications and in person, and the participation of all those to be affected by these measures, workers, growers, retailers, distributors, and consumers of food. Time is of the essence since this has already taken far too long to implement. These actions must be carried out in harmony with not in place of other attempts to improve the working conditions of all farm laborers.
While there is almost no image more elegant or romantic than a person simply riding a bike, we are constantly being enticed into embracing something grand, a car, a nice big house, which is intended to inflate our sense of well-being. Seldom on display is the ragged couple, exhaustedly dragging themselves into that home, in that car, the lines of worry deeply etched into their foreheads, trying to figure out how they are going to make the next payment on these behemoths or finance a needed repair. Of course, the second home, or second car, has now entered the picture and how can the Jones’ ever keep up, when it is only a matter of time before the next generations appear and begin to assert their right to all that the earth provides, without limit? The Merry-Go-Round keeps spinning faster and faster and even historic floods and droughts are not enough to slow it down enough to get on or off, without the aid of an accompanying power failure.
Now that the school year is in full gear it may be instructive to project oneself back into the time when each of us was enrolled in one of these august institutions. Fitted with a book-bag, (now a backpack), we were dropped off, or made our own way, into a crowded classroom filled with kids just like ourselves, wondering if we would be able to do what was expected of us and meanwhile get along with the others. Another big issue was behavior. If the teacher was temporarily absent we spent the time ribbing each other over something trivial, an article of clothing or a new haircut or misspoken word and the wisecracks and teasing went on until the teacher appeared. Often, for at least some of us, that was not enough to stop the errant activity, but soon order was restored and the sound of chalk on slate brought us back into line. Some kids kept it up, as often as not, and had to be shushed or berated to sit down and behave themselves. Restlessness prevailed regardless since the young are naturally energetic and spontaneous until they have been tamed and disciplined into orderly automatons. Slowly, the pressure to conform and fit in is applied and few escape its gravity.
Most of us could not wait until the time between classes when we could have a few minutes to whoop it up and get to the next classroom. This varied from grade to grade and kid to kid and the rules of the school about talking and being restrained in our behavior, but the time gaps between sitting there, and being told not to move around too much and keep quiet and not disturb the class, were precious. Even more important, in the midst of all those calls for self-control, were lunch periods and recesses, where you could move about more freely and express yourself more completely, where you could, in effect, be yourself. Since we are all different and especially when it comes to how we regard and relate to others, this was a unique experience for each of us and could be troubling if you didn’t think you fit in quite right or had problems that few recognized or related to very well. Peer-pressure starts early and has a powerful effect on all of us, although much more on some than others. Going along and doing well is the most important thing for many, while the opposite is true for a significant number of others and these patterns can continue for a lifetime, for quite a few.
There are some factors that affect everybody in that class though. You must become comfortable in a seated position, facing forward and being as passive as possible. Sure, you need to answer a question if the teacher has one, although not too eagerly or often or the other kids will think you are a nerd or kiss-ass. Acting or speaking out of turn will earn you a reprimand and really outrageous behavior on a trip to the Principal’s office. If you do it often enough you will get some pills to take and will be regarded henceforth as a troubled child, in need of extreme discipline or worse. Order is what matters and going along with the program. There are too many bodies to manage and not enough time to master the essential skills, reading, math, and comprehension, so there is no time or patience for being too spontaneous or expressive. This is a giant Viking ship and all of the oars must be pulled in unison or the voyage will be delayed or misdirected. We are being trained to be little conformists, to find our rightful places and fit in so that needed jobs can get done and good order preserved. Ergonomically disadvantageous sitting down becomes more natural than standing or lying down. Or running.
Consequently, for many, sports becomes an important release. There is the ability to get physical at a time when the body is growing and vigorous activity provides an outlet for the energy that we possess in abundance and is always looking for a channel to express itself. There can be tension too, (do you make the team, are you good enough, is your team a winner?), but the participation alone is gratifying and healthy if it doesn’t get too competitive. The bad news is that recess is in a recession, takes away valuable time from studying for the standardized tests that teachers and principals are judged on, requires resources that are in short supply and is being eliminated along with the music and art programs, that experience shows do so much to motivate and improve attitudes. We are in a death spiral when it comes to providing a really well-rounded education, along with the memorization and drills. The impact on our mental health and ability to truly understand who we are and where we want to go in this life are being short-circuited and demolished, by one-dimensional measurements and lack of depth in these venues.
Why is it so difficult for this society to get the point about what matters the most and how to reach it? Mostly it comes from a lack of understanding of the nature of society and how it functions. A cab driver from Haiti last week, a hard-working fellow enjoying the music on his radio, commented about the life here and the lack of connections among people. His country, one of the poorest on the planet, with deprivation as common as sunshine, is a wonderful one to him he said because everybody regards each other as family. What is good for you is good for me. Here, we are all in a race, sometimes described as one between rodents, and what benefits your neighbor may mean that it is costing you. The media embraces this message and amplifies it until it is deafening. If your own kid is doing great, that is what matters. If your city’s team is winning you should be happy. If your country’s economy is improving, who cares if the other guy is in trouble. What is missing from the picture is the way in which your economy is dependent upon the other’s, that their problem is soon yours. If the educational system is producing mostly losers, unsuitable for more than the merest tasks and rewards, how long will it be before this malaise undermines your own kid’s fortunes? This lack of connectedness is fatal to the big picture’s health, and so-called recessions elsewhere can easily turn into depressions here.
One way in which this process has evolved has to do with the wealth which is now in the hands of different races. We are now aware, following the economic disaster recently barely averted and still poised to swallow us all in its potential aftershocks, that the material holdings of those called “White” people, conventionally those descended from Europeans, is 20 times that of those we call “Blacks” or African-Americans. Latinos are only slightly better off. Is it any wonder that vast swaths of our population regard themselves as persecuted and unfairly treated? Certainly, it does denote a shocking disparity and distance from the egalitarian ideals that we are all taught to embrace and respect, as part of the American ideal. Furthermore, does it come as a big surprise that the average person, of any race or nationality, living from week to week and enveloped in insecurity, feel immersed in worry?
Our habitual wasting of the material resources that have been provided to us, (whether or not we deserve them), is nothing compared with the waste of human resources that we perpetually witness every day all around us. It is so considerable that it barely scratches our consciousness. Nowhere is this more obvious than in transportation. Whereas one horsepower is enough to get us where we are going, we expect to have 200-300 to get the job done, without a second thought about all of the resources needed to feed that mighty herd. 80% of the time, only one-sixth of the seating capacity of the vehicle is in use. I can remember many long hours standing by the side of a windy or rainy highway, wondering why nobody would consider sharing that empty space with a needy, non-threatening looking civilian, with his thumb hanging fruitlessly in mid-air. This machine sits idle 90% of the time and that is alright we compute since it is there when we want it, with nary a thought about who might really need it at that moment. It is giving us a wide variety of maladies, from heart disease to diabetes, kidney malfunctions, and bad backs, but we think it is an unalloyed blessing. We are deluded and living in a fantasy world constructed from TV commercials and smug assumptions of our superiority and dangerous fantasies in regard to the permanence of these conditions.
Lately, I have spent a lot of time making models of tricycles with a variety of features that are missing from our conventional forms of mobility. I wonder why, since we ordinarily avail ourselves of a variety of postures during a given day, from prone to standing, sitting, leaning, maybe even crouching, we have been conditioned from an early age to sit, the most unhealthy of them all, according to medical authorities, almost all of the time. Your car, your desk, your dinner table, and train or bus, all demand that you assume this position and stay there. The conveyances that I am currently construing, permit the assumption of the widest number of different body positions that are possible. In school, past kindergarten, as I have just asserted, sitting is the only permitted way to position ourselves. We are not even given the choice between a tall stool and a conventional chair. We may not crouch or stretch out on the floor lest we get “dirty” or encourage undisciplined behavior. It is either follow the rules or get out. Instead of listening to our bodies, which crave some difference in attitude and position, we are commanded to obey, and we do. It is claimed that there is an inner logic to this, that we are too young and stupid to understand, but really it is just for the convenience of our managers, who want to encourage “responsible” predictable behavior and who must enforce their commands without fail.
The second variable element is the source of the motive power, conventionally either a motor or leg power. To these choices, I would like to add arm power as well. The “Rowcycle” is one already well-developed example of this. To these, I would add the choice of an electric-assist motor as well. The combination of the three, arm, leg and motor, is superior to any one of them by themselves but is virtually unavailable in any vehicles with the exception of some recumbent and disabled vehicles that use two or more of them in tandem. Why not all three? Because it has not been the rule up to now and we are creatures of habit and captives of the conventions that have been most popular. Some of it is technological since the advent of lithium-ion batteries has now made practical the inclusion of electric-assist motors on primarily human-powered vehicles easy and economical. Mostly it is the difficulty of popularizing any radical variations on what we have been accustomed to. There is no retail marketplace that is available to sell and display and offer free test rides of these variations on the usual, so they are virtually invisible. The internet will change that somewhat but the pace needs to pick up much faster and that will require more ambitious and energetic ways to get the word out.
In addition to needed changes in available postures and power generation, there is the matter of rolling resistance and road condition. (Ignoring for the moment such heavyweight considerations as self-image and convention). Two wheels have many advantages over three, most of them based upon the greater efficiency of a single-track vehicle over one with three tracks like a tricycle. These advantages disappear when the need to minimize the weight of the vehicle is reduced due to the addition of the electric-assist motors. Lessening rolling resistance demands high-pressure tires, and the increased bumps and shakes produce by the triple-track vehicle makes the ability to steer around them of a single-track machine vastly superior. But if you can use bigger and softer tires, which are much better at absorbing these imperfections of the roadway, that advantage inefficiency is reduced greatly and more than made up for, by the increased stability and utility of a three-wheeled device. Since we have just begun to enjoy these electric-assist motor benefits, the advanced design of these three-wheelers is in an infant stage. Creative designers are just beginning to evolve the formerly slickly-aerodynamicVelomobiles of yesterday, into the comfortable and safe and reasonably-efficient, rather than maximally-efficient, conveyances of tomorrow.
Weather protection is an essential feature of any up-to-date vehicle. Rain, hot sun, wind, airborne grit and dust, cold, all discourage riding out in the open all of the time. In order to become the ordinary means of transport, a vehicle must be able to protect the rider against the worst effects of these annoying elements. Nobody expects a car, or bus, or train, to expose the rider to a host of unhealthful and disturbing elements but bike riders bundle up and assume that this is part of life and unavoidable. This reduces the number of users of human-powered vehicles tremendously except in the most forgiving climates. Putting an umbrella above a bike is to invite a gust of wind to carry you into oncoming traffic, a dreadful thought. Assuming a lower position, (while providing visual signals of the presence of the rider, flags, LEDS floating above, streamers and the like), offers great advantages, through a lower center of gravity, aside from greater comfort at times. Additionally, Three wheels and an electrical-assist motor and its batteries, add weight down low, where it contributes the most to safety, and guard against the negative effects of the increased surface area that weather enclosure requires. We have some wonderful weather-resistant and very lightweight materials available today that allow for tight, transparent enclosures to be made that can be easily stored when not needed, so this improvement in the usability of the vehicle can be deployed only when necessary. No industrial-scale vehicle can offer this kind of variability to the rider. Tiny battery-powered also relatively easy to provide and wind-screens are easy to deploy on stable tricycles.
The bike is essentially a single-person device. There are tandems but they are rare and require good coordination between riders. With appropriate designs, we can have side by side or tandem-style multi-person human-powered vehicles that, because they are on a stable three-wheel platform, do not require anything special from the riders. One could even be severely-disabled and it would be of no consequence. Even three or more people could ride on a single vehicle with no problem. We have sen this so seldom that we don’t consider it even possible, but it is not really a problem, just very unusual. The multi-person ”Sociables” of the 19th century laid the groundwork for this development but have, sadly, subsequently disappeared. We can bring them back and build on that tradition, expand the common bicycle into the multi-person vehicle it always had the potential to be.
All of these improvements in the safety, utility, enjoyment, practicality, and range of features available for muscle-powered, electric-assisted vehicles, primarily (hopefully shared) futuristic tricycles, are ready to be deployed today. They will change the expectations that we have for the most appropriate use of materials and resources that we, in any event, need to cultivate for our own benefit and survival. There is a full century of slack to take up in the opportunity for innovation in the field of human-scale transportation. This will involve no sacrifice of comfort or other pleasures, in fact, will enhance our existence in numerous ways, help us to be healthier and more vigorous in closer touch with our surroundings and each other. It is the reason I am devoting my energies to the development of these possibilities, and suggest that you do too.
Late 19th-century ‘Socialable’ bicycles put riders side-by-side, unlike tandem bicycles. Modern examples are still being custom-made.
Oct 19, 2014
Times Article Viewed: 49086
especially as the weather turns wet and cold. What’s needed to make them viable year-round are creative solutions that meld form and function into the perfect Light Electric Vehicle.
While there is almost no image more elegant or romantic than a person simply riding a bike, we are constantly entangled in innumerable schemes to wed us to something grand, a car, a nice big house, which is intended to inflate our sense of self and give us a greater sense of well-being. Seldom displayed is the ragged couple dragging themselves into that home, in that car, the lines of worry etched deeply into their foreheads, trying to figure out how they are going to make the next payment on these behemoths or finance a needed repair. Of course, the second home, or second car, has now entered the picture and how can the Jones’ ever keep up when it is only a matter of time before the next generations appear and begin to assert their right to all that the earth provides without limit? The Merry-Go-Round keeps spinning faster and faster and even historic floods and droughts are not enough to slow it down enough to get on or off without accompanying power failure.
Also see EV World’s interview with William Mulyadi on the Virtue enclosed tricycle featured at the 2014 Interbike show in Las Vegas.
Now that the school year is in full gear it may be instructive to project oneself back into the time when each of us was enrolled in one of these august institutions. Fitted with a bookbag, (now a backpack), we were dropped off, or made our own way, into a crowded classroom filled with kids just like ourselves, wondering if we would be able to do what was expected of us and meanwhile get along with the others. Another big issue was behavior. If the teacher was temporarily absent we spent the time ribbing each other over something trivial, an article of clothing or a new haircut or misspoken word and the wisecracks and teasing went on until the teacher appeared. Often, for at least some of us, that was not enough to stop the errant activity, but soon order was restored and the sound of chalk on slate brought us back into line. Some kids kept it up, as often as not, and had to be shushed or berated to sit down and behave themselves. Restlessness prevailed regardless since kids are naturally energetic and spontaneous until they have been tamed and disciplined into orderly automatons. Slowly, the pressure to conform and fit in is applied and few escape its gravity.
Most of us could not wait until the time between classes when we could have a few minutes to whoop it up and get to the next classroom. This varied from grade to grade and kid to kid and the rules of the school about talking and being restrained in our behavior, but the time gaps between sitting there, and being told not to move around too much and keep quiet and not disturb the class, were precious. Even more important, in the midst of all those calls for self-control, were lunch periods and recesses, where you could move about more freely and express yourself more completely, where you could, in effect, be yourself. Since we are all different and especially when it comes to how we regard and relate to others, this was a unique experience for each of us and could be troubling if you didn’t think you fit in quite right or had problems that few recognized or related to very well. Peer pressure starts early and has a powerful effect on all of us, although much more on some than others. Going along and doing well is the most important thing for many, while the opposite is true for a significant number of others and these patterns can continue for a lifetime for quite a few.
There are some factors that affect everybody in that class though. You must become comfortable in a seated position, facing forward and being as passive as possible. Sure, you need to answer a question if the teacher has one, although not too eagerly or often or the other kids will think you are a nerd or kiss-ass. Acting or speaking out of turn will earn you a reprimand and really outrageous behavior a trip to the Principal’s office. If you do it often enough you will get some pills to take and will be regarded henceforth as a troubled child in need of extreme discipline or worse. Order is what matters and going along with the program. There are too many bodies and not enough time to master the essential skills, reading, math, and comprehension, so there is no time or patience for being too spontaneous or expressive. This is a giant Viking ship and all of the oars must be pulled in unison or the voyage will be delayed or misdirected. We are being trained to be little conformists, to find our rightful places, and to fit in so that needed jobs can get done and good order preserved. Ergonomically awkward sitting down becomes more natural than standing or lying down. Or running.
Consequently, for many, sports becomes an important release. There is the ability to get physical at a time when the body is growing and vigorous activity provides an outlet for the energy that we possess in abundance and is always looking for a channel to express itself. There can be tension too, do you make the team, are you good enough, is your team a winner, but the participation alone is gratifying and healthy if it doesn’t get too competitive. The bad news is that recess is in a recession, takes away valuable time from studying for the standardized tests that teachers and principals are judged on, requires resources that are in short supply, and is being eliminated along with the music and art programs that experience shows do so much to motivate and improve attitudes. We are in a death spiral when it comes to providing a really well-rounded education along with memorization and drills. The impact on our mental health and ability to truly understand who we are and where we want to go in this life is being short-circuited and demolished by one-dimensional measurements and a lack of depth in these venues.
Why is it so difficult for this society to get the point about what matters the most and how to reach it? Mostly it comes from a lack of understanding of the nature of society and how it functions. A cab driver from Haiti last week, a hard-working fellow enjoying the music on his radio, commented about the life here and the lack of connections among people. His country, one of the poorest on the planet, with deprivation as common as sunshine, is a wonderful one to him he said because everybody regards each other as family. What is good for you is good for me. Here, we are all in a race, sometimes described as one between rodents, and what benefits your neighbor may mean that it is costing you. The media embraces this message and amplifies it until it is deafening. If your own kid is doing great, that is what matters. If your city’s team is winning you should be happy. If your country’s economy is improving, who cares if the other guy is in trouble. What is missing from the picture is the way in which your economy is dependent upon the others, that their problem is soon yours. If the educational system is producing mostly losers, unsuitable for more than the merest tasks and rewards, how long will it be before this malaise undermines your own kid’s fortunes? This lack of connectedness is fatal to the big picture’s health and so-called recessions elsewhere can easily turn into depressions here.
One way in which this process has evolved has to do with the wealth which is now in the hands of different races. We are now aware, following the economic disaster recently barely averted and still poised to swallow us all in its potential aftershocks, that the material holdings of those called “White” people, conventionally those descended from Europeans, is 20 times that of those we call “Blacks” or African-Americans. Latinos are only slightly better off. Is it any wonder that vast swaths of our population regard themselves as persecuted and unfairly treated? Certainly, it does denote a shocking disparity and distance from the egalitarian ideals that we are all taught to embrace and respect as part of the American ideal. Furthermore, does it come as a big surprise that the average person, of any race or nationality, living from week to week and enveloped in insecurity, feel immersed in worry?
Our habitual wasting of the material resources that have been provided to us, (whether or not we deserve them), is nothing compared with the waste of human resources that we perpetually witness every day all around us. It is so considerable that it barely scratches our consciousness. Nowhere is this more obvious than in transportation. Whereas one horsepower is enough to get us where we are going, we expect to have 200-300 to get the job done, without a second thought about all of the resources needed to feed that mighty herd. 80% of the time, only one-sixth of the seating capacity of the vehicle is in use. I can remember many long hours standing by the side of a windy or rainy highway wondering why nobody would consider sharing that empty space with a needy, non-threatening-looking civilian with his thumb hanging fruitlessly in mid-air. This machine sits idle 90% of the time and that is alright we compute since it is there when we want it, with nary a thought about who might really need it at that moment. It is giving us a wide variety of maladies, from heart disease to diabetes, kidney malfunctions, and bad backs, but we think it is an unalloyed blessing. We are deluded and living in a fantasy world constructed from TV commercials and smug assumptions of our superiority and dangerous fantasies in regard to the permanence of these conditions.
Lately, I have spent a lot of time making models of tricycles with a variety of features that are missing from our conventional forms of mobility. I wonder why, since we ordinarily avail ourselves of a variety of postures during a given day, from prone to standing, sitting, leaning, maybe even crouching, yet we have been conditioned to sit, the most unhealthy of them all according to medical authorities, almost all of the time. Your car, your desk, your dinner table, and train or bus, all demand that you assume this position and stay there. The conveyances that I am currently construing, permit the widest number of different body positions that are possible. When we get to school, past kindergarten, sitting is the only permitted way to position ourselves. We are not even given the choice between a tall stool and a conventional chair. We may not crouch or stretch out on the floor lest we get “dirty” or encourage undisciplined behavior. It is either follow the rules or get out. Instead of listening to our bodies, which crave some difference in attitude, we are commanded to obey, and we do. There is claimed to be an inner logic to this that we are too young and stupid to understand but really it is just for the convenience of the managers, who want to encourage “responsible” predictable behavior and will enforce their commands without fail.
The second element is the source of the motive power, conventionally either a motor or leg power. To these choices, I would like to add arm power as well. The “Rowcycle” is one example of this and I would add the choice of an electric-assist motor as well. The combination of the three, arm, leg, and motor, is superior to any one of them by themselves but is virtually unavailable in any vehicles with the exception of some recumbent and disabled vehicles that use two or more of them in tandem. Why not all three? Because it has not been the rule up to now and we are creatures of habit and captives of the conventions that have been most popular up to now. Some of it is technological since the advent of lithium-ion batteries has now made practical the inclusion of electric-assist motors on primarily human-powered vehicles easy and economical. Mostly it is the difficulty of popularizing any severe variations on what we have been accustomed to. There is no retail marketplace that is available to sell and display and offer free test rides of these variations on the usual, so they are virtually invisible. The internet will change that somewhat but the pace needs to pick up much faster and that will require more ambitious and energetic ways to get the word out.
Two wheels have many advantages over three, most of them based upon the increased efficiency of a single-track vehicle over one with three tracks like a tricycle. These advantages disappear when the need to minimize the weight of the vehicle is reduced due to the addition of the electric-assist motors. Lessening rolling resistance demands high-pressure tires and the increased bumps and shakes produces by the triple-track vehicle make the single-track one vastly superior. But if you can use bigger and softer tires, which are much better at absorbing these imperfections of the roadway, that advantage is more than made up for by the increased stability and utility of a three-wheeled device. Since we have just begun to enjoy these electric-assist motor benefits, the advanced design of these three-wheelers is in the infant stage. Creative designers are just beginning to evolve the slickly-aerodynamicVelomobiles of yesterday, into the comfortable and safe, and reasonably efficient, rather than maximally-efficient conveyances of tomorrow.
Weather protection is an essential feature of any up-to-date vehicle. Rain, hot sun, wind, airborne grit and dust, cold, all discourage riding out in the open all of the time. In order to become the ordinary means of transport, a vehicle must be able to protect the rider against the worst effects of these annoying elements. Nobody expects a car or bus or train to expose the rider to a host of unhealthful and disturbing elements but bike riders assume that this is part of life and unavoidable. Putting an umbrella above a bike is to invite a gust of wind to carry you into oncoming traffic, a dreadful thought. Assuming a lower position, while providing visual signals of the presence of the rider, flags, LEDS floating above, streamers, and the like, offer great advantages through a lower center of gravity. Three wheels and an electrical-assist motor and its batteries add weight down low where it contributes the most to safety, and guard against the negative effects of the increased surface area that weather enclosure requires. We have some wonderful weather-resistant and very lightweight materials available today that allow for tight, transparent enclosures to be made that can be easily displaced when not needed, so this improvement in the usability of the vehicle can be deployed only when necessary. No industrial-scale vehicle can offer this kind of variability to the rider. Tiny battery-powered heaters embedded in clothing and body-heat itself can be quite efficient and the rush of air past the body is a form of air-conditioning that has always been there. Shade to block the sun when needed is relatively easy to provide and windscreens are easy to deploy on stable tricycles.
The bike is essentially a single-person device. There are tandems but they are rare and require good coordination between riders. We can have side-by-side or tandem-style multi-person human-powered vehicles that, because they are on a stable three-wheel platform, do not require anything special from the riders. One could even be severely disabled and it would be of no consequence. Even three or more people could ride in a single-vehicle with no problem. We have not seen this very often so we don’t consider it possible but it is not really a problem, just very unusual so we are unaccustomed to the possibility. The multi-person ”Sociables” of the 19th century laid the groundwork for this but have, sadly, subsequently disappeared. We can bring them back and build on that tradition, expanding the common bicycle into the vehicle it was meant to be.
All of these improvements in the safety, utility, practicality, and range of features available for muscle-powered, electric-assisted vehicles, primarily futuristic tricycles, are ready to be developed today. They will change the expectations that we have for the most appropriate use of materials and resources that we need to cultivate for our own benefit and survival. It will involve no sacrifice of comfort or other pleasures, in fact, it will enhance our existence, help us to be healthier and more vigorous. It is the reason I am devoting my energies to the development of these possibilities and suggest that you do too.
Jun 08, 2014. Times Article Viewed: 8317
Ebikes weigh 60 pounds. Cars weigh 3000. That is a factor of 50. A car is driven about 10,000-15,000 miles a year, at typical speeds of about 30-60 miles per hour. This computes out to about an hour a day, about 1/25th of the time. Cars provide comfort and speed. We can make human-scale vehicles that allow for changes in body position and provide other advantages that make them far superior to industrial-scale vehicles in a variety of ways. We need to create and deploy automobiles’ replacements.
We can evolve electric bicycles while developing a system, for them to be handed from person to person, during the 20 hours that we are active each day, as an alternative means of travel. When you multiply the excess weight of cars, by the wasted time that they sit unused, multiply 50 by 25, and you arrive at 1250 pounds/hours expended. By this calculation, the person who is using the car is wasting 1230 units out of the 1250 units used, in order to accomplish the same task, to provide mobility for a person, every day.
Neo (Keanu Reeves) awakes in the movie ‘The Matrix’, finding he has been asleep all his life and dreaming in a computer-generated world
If I was a fan of conspiracies, which I sometimes am, I would say that we are so rich that, in order to maintain the same social system, a way had to be found to keep us poor, or at least deeply in debt. This methodology, inserting us back into a padded mechanical womb, has the added benefit of rendering us dreamily unconscious so that we are incapable of offering any defense against this savage assault on our well-being. We are required to be regimented from birth, in order for us to be deprived of our natural tendency to cooperate and instead be set against one another, continuously, in unnatural formations, called classes, races, sexes, or social orientations. We want to find and establish the ways that we are not the same as everyone else, as a way to assert our individuality and specialness. Being tied up in that quest takes a lot of energy. What is left over is seldom enough to achieve lift-off?
We find that our self-esteem, to some serious extent, is being measured by our capacity to generate waste. Being concerned about issues such as this, can put you in the category of somebody who may not be able to pay their bills promptly, or is suffering from some other debilitating stress. You have to project an attitude of ease and comfort or you could be on the skids. This attitude of nonchalance, whether on the receiving or the delivering end, includes the ability to totally disregard the needs and concerns of others, to be a virtual monarch in your own dimension, living high and acting like a big baby.
To foster this addiction to competition and loss of empathy, we are constantly being reminded of the pecking orders that surround us. Superstars in their bling rule. If you are in a certain profession, it is understood that you will behave in a certain way. Businessmen and women wear cleanly-pressed garments and speak in measured tones. The food servers are usually extra-friendly and smile even when it is not called for, as a way to lessen the chances that they will displease you and be called out for their behavior. Kids play their games and choose their friends and soon begin to treat others differently, depending upon a host of signals that are unspoken but ironclad. If you hang out with this one, that one doesn’t want to know you and vice versa. The popular kids know it and begin to use the value of their friendships as bargaining chips and so the game begins.
Part of this is biological and has to do with choosing mates and improving the species, but a lot is learning where you belong and adjusting to the realities. That one is faster. That one is smarter. That one is prettier. Here is where I fit. Here is what I have to do to get along. Good educators know that you can break down these classifications and the limitations that they impose on our ability to appreciate the unique contributions that each of our fellow creatures may be able to make to our common lives. It takes skilled workers to help kids to do this though, and paying professionals to do this is too expensive for most school systems.
Bullying is just an extreme form of the tiny slights and little signals that define our relationships to each other and to the world. If you look around at all the subjects which interest you the most, sports, music, business, etc. it is clear that there are only a tiny number of big winners and a huge army of wannabes, and you soon get the message. The realization that this is the nature of our society or at least its dominant trend, puts some into a frenzy of determination to be the winner, sometimes at any cost, while many others collapse into despair, full of the realization that they can never reach the pinnacle. The frustration that ensues can take many forms, but anger and hostility are one. Unfortunately, there has never been a good system for identifying anti-social individuals at a young age and helping them to modify their behavior. These days, it is easier to give everybody the anti-ADD behavior-modification pills and disregard the underlying problems.
We are constantly receiving messages and sending them, what we like, what we accept, what drives us crazy. When they are not received and responded to we get bent out of shape and behavior becomes more extreme. Identifying issues becomes difficult or impossible as, often, those with the same view of the world become friends and cliques grow based on a wide variety of factors, including insensitivity to the pain of others. Mall rats watch their parents’ consumption patterns and start copying them early. The owner/manager class is anxious to pass down the skills and habits needed, to preserve position and status, to their offspring. Often these lessons are ignored or actively opposed by the next generation and the materialism and shallowness rejected. Just as often, they are absorbed and used to give a further advantage to the advantaged.
How we respond to this situation defines our personality, and we are a product of our perceptions and actions, and they also determine how others see us. All the jockeying for status takes a lot of energy. Extreme rejection by your young peers can be destructive and permanently damaging but it is also a way for your fellows to let you know that you had better change your ways, that you are not fitting in. This can be a good thing, for instance, if an overweight kid decides they are tired of being made fun of and are ready to put the work in to get themselves into better shape. Someone can be tired of being called stupid and start studying more. Usually, the result is the opposite though. We are cowards and conformists and peer pressure does more to intimidate us than to teach us. Our sense of the possibility of a common future or a commonplace is destroyed over time, by the realization that people live in every kind of condition, from horrible to exalted, and that this is not only considered alright by many, but it is also seemingly becoming more so every day.
The remedy for the angst associated with understanding your place in the world is to foment a system in which the inessential differences between us do not prevent everybody from getting a modicum of what is needed to survive and prosper. The essence of that enterprise is shared access to needed resources, like transport for instance. NYC is blessed with an underground railroad that carries the majority of people around without clogging up the streets. Most other communities are reliant upon various forms of surface transport and face endless lines of barely moving, smoke-spewing motorcars every day.
In addition, in NYC, there is now a shared bike program that is enjoying great success. It is proving to be safe and convenient and attracting use from every sector of society. It is still not being deployed everywhere around the city where it is needed, and the economics are still being tweaked to get it to work better, but no fatalities after a year and widespread joy at its installation, have made it possible to consider expansions and variations on the theme. If it is better to be able to use something than to own it, what implications does that have on everything else? If your status is a product of what you do, not what you have, what does that do to the current model of Paradise?
Only .8% of us commute by bike. It is too much hard work early in the morning unless you are a very fitness-conscious person. The troupe is tiny, but growing to be sure, especially in big cities, where distances are modest and a lot of young folks are moving into the workplace. The fashion now is “fixies”, incredible machines of under 20 pounds, that can be hauled upstairs with aplomb and use coaster brakes (mistakenly described as “no brakes”) so they are as trim as many of their riders. Like messengers before them, they connote style and are streetwise fashion leaders. Clunky electric-assist bikes are considered to be a sign that you are not at the height of physical condition and therefore a few notches down on the ladder to perfection, for the cool, Brooklyn crowd. Pride of ownership is a big deal at this time with this crew too. The notion of sharing their prize possession is anathema. There is nothing inherently wrong with bonding with your ride, I suppose, although it is a little kinky.
The current bike culture is the enemy of the future bike culture. It is still very trendy and fashion-conscious. Whether you ride a classic clunker or a $10,000 carbon-fiber masterpiece, defines, to some extent, who you are and how you are. Being a rebel on wheels was a great image for decades, a symbol of those who rejected the central tenet of the consumer society. Now, you are riding a big, heavy shared-bike, with ugly advertising on it, but it doesn’t matter because it is only a 15-minute ride and much easier and more fun than the subway. It doesn’t matter how you look, it matters that you can go nearly door to door in minutes and without mussy hair from wearing a helmet. The barriers to riding are breaking down. Older people are getting over the fact that is has been decades since they rode and doing it.
Even on the smooth and level roads of the city, it still takes effort to move the machine. That discourages a lot of people, accustomed to our no-sweat lifestyle. There are moments when you want to minimize that effort because you are tired, or feeling lazy, or loaded down with gear. Voila, the electric-assisted bike. Transportation for the other 99.2% of people who are not accustomed to making muscle-powered transport their mode. I don’t think that even 1% of the public has ever been on an electric bike. They are being used by a bunch of food delivery people and a handful of older folks. Everybody has seen them in motion but almost nobody has ridden one.
That’s a shame because once that has happened, a million free rides later, the public is going to turn into a loud cheering section, demanding their availability. The only way to accomplish this task expeditiously, aside from the manufacturers unleashing a host of free rides at block parties, etc., is to deploy shared-e-bike schemes. They are already underway in San Francisco and Berlin and many other places and will soon be everywhere. The slack is ready to be taken up. By connecting to existing businesses, the huge expense of automated kiosks can be avoided by giving local establishments first dibs on handling the action in their neck of the woods. Instead of putting existing bike stores out of business, as was reported in Bloomberg News this week, this program can be used to infuse new traffic into neighborhood businesses, who will welcome it and the income it can bring.
It has to be made possible for the machines to be taken home at night by commuters, who are only charged a reasonable fee for the privilege. They need to be made so rugged that they can hold up under constant use, and have their components replaced on a regular schedule along with other kinds of maintenance. They will need to be electric-assist and require pedaling to move, not just throttles so that they are not in conflict with existing bicyclists, some of whom are already displeased at this prospect. There can be an infinitude of designs and we can shake out the best producers and shapes and configurations, through feedback from the users. The evolution of these devices from the crude imitations of standard bikes that we have now, into the fully-functional, safe and comfortable transport of the future, has to come from the bottom up. This pertains to the weight and impact of these transporters as well as the hand-crafted, constantly-changing nature of the devices.
Many of these new vehicles need to be trikes rather than bikes. Even though two wheels have the advantage of less rolling resistance and overall weight, lean steering and easy storage, trikes bring stability and a way to mount the weather protection, inflatable mostly, in place, along with copious storage. Multi-passenger vehicles, like virtually all existing cars, will become the rule rather than the rare exception for cycles. It will be possible for multiple persons to use their muscle-power to contribute to the movement of the vehicle too, both for fun and for energy efficiency, and side by side configurations will make the experience more social and comfortable.
Replacing the giant-esque automobile with something more suitable for dense and congested urban spaces is inevitable, and does not have to take forever. Sparking innovation is not easy, but in this case, everybody is familiar with the concepts; it is just the equipment that is temporarily not yet available. That situation will change dramatically when a few designs are being produced more widely, like the ELF, which proves the viability and popularity of these ideas. Programs like www.SharingUmbrellas.org will help encourage more creative activity. Full legalization will advance. Peace will find away, and so will we. Or I’m a monkey’s uncle.
Times Article Viewed: 8317
Jun 02, 2014. Times Article Viewed: 6804
It now appears that the New York State Senate will move the bill legalizing electric bikes forward. This welcome move comes at the very end of the session and leaves just enough time to pass it and reconcile it with another bill that is ready to pass the Assembly. That bill contains two restrictions which will put painful limitations on use: persons under 16 may not ride as passengers and helmets are required for adults. Since you can ride a kid on a Harley-Davidson or a Schwinn, why are e-bikes singled out as especially hazardous? I’m not sure that this restriction exists anywhere else in the country or even the world. I think it may be motivated by a sincere desire to protect the vulnerable from harm, but by doing it this way, it prevents electric-assist transportation from evolving into its fullest expression, as family-friendly vehicles, at least in this state. It is hard to blame someone for not seeing that minimal vehicles can provide for weather protection and passenger capacity if you have never seen one, or even a picture of one. It is not in your experience and it is not in your imagination, so it doesn’t exist.
Bike groups, from the NY State Bicycle Coalition to the city’s Transportation Alternatives, including all of the major national organizations, are consistent in their recommendations that individuals use bike helmets. They are also all, however, strongly against making this a requirement under the law. The fact is that the number of riders is reduced tremendously by this requirement, and research shows that this makes it much more dangerous for the resulting riders. There is safety in numbers after all. Also, importantly, car drivers get closer to helmeted bikers and cyclists tend to be more adventurous and less risk-averse since they feel protected by their headgear. Adults can decide if they want a plastic bowl on their head, or even a full-tilt jet fighter pilot helmet, with an outside air supply, but almost everybody agrees, let it be a personal decision, not the law. It is perfectly understandable that a public official would be inclined to want to protect his constituents from harm when possible and helmets are a bit of safety gear. This is a counter-intuitive situation however and requires study and independent thought. Regular bikes go 30 MPH and faster and these electric-assist models go only 20 MPH max. They should be considered more dangerous? It doesn’t make a lot of sense.
The two legislatures will need to work out these questions over the next couple of weeks, in a conference committee context. They may well do this now, 13 years after it was first introduced in the Assembly, especially since the NYC legislature is ready to pass a resolution urging them to do this. Last year, this was not the case. Even though these same bills passed the transportation committees in both houses, unanimously, a call from the Mayor was enough to kill them. He didn’t want it to look like he favored the riding habits of restaurant deliverers. This year, there’s a new Mayor and City Council, and Rafael Espinal and Ydanis Rodriguez, chairs of their committees in the NYC Council, are working to help provide us with access to this important new form of healthy, high-tech transportation. What a difference a year can make. It is still not decided but there is a good chance that this can actually happen.
When I tried to describe the current situation to somebody this week they were incredulous. How could electric bikes be illegal and stretch Hummers fine and dandy? Is this legal jumble the primary reason that millions of these handy devices are sold in Europe every year and mere tens of thousands here? The Federal law from 2002 says clearly that their law supersedes State laws that are more restrictive, but over 30 States regulate these machines the way that they feel like it anyway, with some defining them as mopeds and others as motorized vehicles. The companies who are selling these products are not of the magnitude needed to engineer a massive public relations and public information campaign to put their products on the map. Laws that restrict the use of your legal product can be challenged but it is a costly campaign. The issue has not been pushed yet by the environmental movement or health groups, except in all of their ads, which feel almost naked without a bike in the picture.
Imagine a world in which the telephone land-line companies had been able to stop the spread of cellphones, what we now like to call smartphones. We would have been left in a world of only dumb phones, with no other features besides fixed-location voice communication, and we’d still be spending $2 a minute for long-distance, plenty more if an operator is involved. Now it is a penny and the operator is a robot who always sounds like it is happy to hear your voice. We are in that place now when it comes to transportation technology. If you thought AT&T was hard to budge, just think how difficult it has been to do anything about industrial-scale transportation and its well-heeled and well-mobilized adherents. The resistance to change is a natural phenomenon Those who are in control are willing to use any means, natural or unnatural, to maintain their hold on the situation. Making roads too dangerous for pedestrians, and small vehicles have been a major weapon used against human-scale travel for a century. Lax enforcement of traffic offenses, the forgiveness offered to drivers who end up being an instrument of death, are others. A recent news story featured a dapper fellow with a Ferrari, who had just gotten his 15th DUI, and was ready to get back on the road.
The spectacle of the privileged pumping poison gas into their vicinity, while they semi-reclined in air-conditioned splendor within their cocoons, also serves to discourage the unadorned and unprotected, from disturbing the status quo. The chemical stew in which we are being marinated, in our close urban quarters, on a nice hot day with no wind, is being concocted out of an unknown combination of substances, with letters and numbers for names. It is not dope in the sense that we would begin to shudder and shake if we left the city for the piney woods and found ourselves outside of its fumes for a period of time, but we really don’t know how it operates and what it is doing to us. It is not a matter for conspiracy theories, it is a subject for serious scientific research, much of which is neglected because its conclusions could require changes that those in power do not want to have to deal with if they don’t have to. What happens to populations that are surrounded by different mixtures of these chemicals over time? Do they become more passive and accepting of these substances? Is this the physical manifestation of what we call a self-fulfilling prophecy?
The problem with epidemiological studies is their cost, the time they take and the need to establish control groups, in order to isolate causative factors and relevant comparisons between different populations. They are the most reliable evidence of a phenomenon, the kind that can not be ignored. In contrast, anecdotal information, which merely relates the experiences of a particular group and issue being studied, can be fragmentary and therefore not entirely convincing. Does this mean that we should ignore what is before our eyes? Do we need to study whether oil trains can be derailed, if there are reports of it every week? We know that living in the vicinity of a big highway, especially one that suffers from congestion, is going to send your asthma rates through the roof. Your kids are going to have trouble concentrating in school and local streets are a powerful magnet for those avoiding the traffic on the big road, so playing on the street becomes a version of Russian Roulette.
Sure, it used to be worse when all those dirty factories were working away, and no environmental laws even existed or were enforced in any serious way. We have much to be thankful for and not everything is just going downhill. We can’t use that progress as an excuse to not look hard at what is in front of us though. We have no larger responsibility then to be the protectors and preservers of what deserves to be there. We don’t yet have the most effective means to collect our influences and focus them, and we are deeply distrustful of all movements and organizations and rightly so. Some wish that an alien would alight, give us a reason to recalibrate and recalculate. That is just waiting for the messiah in a secular guise. We don’t need a planetary awakening to know that there is work to do here.
Politics is always a contest, who is right, who is wrong. When we are all wrong, or all right, that should be enough. If we did nothing but exhaust those issues about which we, practically all agree, we could get them out of the way and move on the more fractious and difficult ones. Ralph Nader, our National Conscience, has begun to search out areas of agreement among those of ostensibly different, even contrary, views, and use those overlaps to help advance worthwhile causes. That sounds about right. We are never going to agree about everything and trying, causes a lot of conflicts. If we can not agree to agree on those matters that we do agree on we are, clinically speaking, nuts.
This does not mean that those who continue to dissent should be treated like yesterday’s french fries. It is just that we need to prioritize. If we can’t even get down the list, past the things that nobody in their right mind would disagree about, the need to make sure that everybody has access to drinkable water for instance, where can we go, what hope is there left? We are doomed if we allow ourselves the indulgence of endless conflict when the urgent business at hand goes neglected. It is easy for the emotional element of this to overcome the reasonable and lead us into an invisible cul de sac. We throw all of our energy into our own dilemmas so there is nothing left over for anybody else. We have been offered one last chance to prove, for all time, that we are not simply addicted to the chase and therefore fatally bored with the prize. This may or not be true but, in the final analysis, it doesn’t matter. The problem is that nobody likes a sore winner.
Times Article Viewed: 6804
May 25, 2014. Times Article Viewed: 5726
OK, I admit it. I hate the New York Post. I used to love it. There were writers like Murray Kempton, who fashioned poetry out of the muck, and dazzled us with the hard evidence of his enduring love affair with words, and our humanity, and inspired us with his justifiable suspicion of everything else. He was only associated with two material objects in this universe, aside from his typewriter and pencil, and they were a pipe and a bike. He was a minimalist to the core, although his sentences sometimes led through long and dimly lit caverns. He told the truth, never pretended to know anything that he didn’t and showed you how to find enough irony in a situation, to keep you from having to shed real tears about it.
Rupert Murdoch, the current owner, spends a fortune each year to provide himself with an editorial sidearm and the political leverage which comes with it. Now, this former illustrious rag, is a nail-studded, poisoned club, to be swung at its “enemies”, in angry drunken lunges, devoid of reason, truth or compassion. They get almost everything wrong if it has a political dimension. One of the problems with this modern-day version of William Randolph Hearst and his “You supply the photographs and I’ll supply the war” mentality, is their fealty to their advertisers. One day’s worth of ads in a shrinking world of tabloid newspaper advertising is the old reliable, in his case 29 pages long, car ad section. Counseling any reduction in the consumption of anything, is halfway between treason and heresy. Since he also owns the Wall Street Journal, this article of faith has been elevated to the level of Prime Principle.
One consequence of this arrangement is that this classic tabloid, America’s oldest newspaper, the NY Post, is in an unrelenting war against anything having to do with human-powered transportation. Economical bikes are the enemies of the people and those who ride them are barely human. Before bike-share was established they had regular screaming headlines, claiming that this was going to result in something resembling a battlefield, the streets littered with the bodies of both cyclists and their victims. Ambulances would need to cruise the streets constantly, to pick up the bodies and get them out of the way of legitimate vehicles. After 7 million rides and zero casualties, they are in trouble. Pedicab drivers from other countries are their new devils and restaurant deliverers a constant target. Only 1% of us commute by bike, so pandering to the other 99% comes naturally to them. (This is in spite of their ordinary sympathy for the wealthiest 1% when their interests are threatened) They can even do it self-righteously, with phony allegiance to principles that don’t even exist.
We owe a debt of gratitude to one of the richest men in this country, Michael Bloomberg, also the master of a media empire, who could, due to his wealth, resist the automobile industry’s stranglehold on the political system. He pushed for congestion pricing because he knew it would cut down on traffic considerably and improve the air outside at least as much as his smoking bans did indoors. He couldn’t get past the outer boroughs addiction to easy passage for their beloved cars, but he decided to do the next best thing and put in lots of bike lanes and even a bunch of bus lanes. Unfortunately, he had a City Council that was totally beholden to the usual suspects and unable to do much more than step aside and let it happen. The new Council is much more activist though and totally behind the current Mayor’s Zero Vision plan, to slow speed limits and rein in dangerous misbehavior by those tooling around in multi-ton machines, texting and talking their brains out.
Last week we were treated locally to an event put on by the titans of the bike industry in this country, INTERBIKE, who puts on the yearly show out west and Bicycle Retailers Magazine, BRAIN, and Outdoor Retailer. They assembled a small handful of electric bike manufacturers, a tiny fraction of the industry, and provided them with an opportunity to give rides to journalists at a fancy resort in New Jersey, a 90 minutes car ride away from New York City, the city with the lowest rate of car ownership in the country. This recognition, by the largest factors in the bike business, of both e-bikes, and the East Coast of the United States, is very welcome, albeit long overdue.
When I first became involved in this issue, the “Bike Show” was one floor, and a mere fragment of, the “Toy Show” here in New York City and obviously strongly tilted towards the young. A few major manufacturers dominated the industry and the most original element of any given show was likely to be based on snazzy paint jobs. Now that Las Vegas, one of the least bike-friendly places on the planet earth, is the home of the yearly INTERBIKE show, our side of town has become almost incidental to the process.
This is all in spite of the density of population on the East Coast and therefore the relevance of slower means of travel, like bikes, to the transportation systems. Besides bikes are not often considered transportation. They are for sport, for exercise and pleasure. They are marketed to young people primarily, although somewhat less than in the past, and there is a real dichotomy in their demographics. They go largely to the upper and upper-middle classes and the lower classes, delivery workers, etc. They are either the only affordable, or at least most economical, way to travel, or just another recreational option, a way to get out into the country.
In Scandinavia and the Netherlands, 25%-50% of trips are made by bikes, not 1%, and we all have the same arms, legs, hearts, etc. We also have the same need to keep those limbs functional and in that regard, we in the US are also way behind, in health, vitality, life span, etc. Breathing the by-products of hydrocarbon incineration, daily, at close range, is clearly not a good idea, whether you are in Beijing or NYC.
Is this a plot by doctors to make us unhealthy? Not really, but many are concerned, that they do far too little, to exert their influence on the political process, especially when it comes to policies that either damage or improve our health profile. They should be riding and promoting bikes like mad. What activity could be more supportive of good health?
It is notable that the 5-Boro Bike Tour, which had its big ride and accompanying Expo only a few weeks ago, had 85 exhibitors rather than the tiny handful in New Jersey. In the afternoon, bike store owners were invited to ride some of the bikes on display around the grounds of the golf club and residential development surrounding it. While there were surely benefits to this demonstration and exhibit, I could not help wondering where everybody was? Wouldn’t it have made more sense to have this affair in NYC itself, on some piece of private property, like it was in NJ, which also currently bans electric bikes from its roads? Since the NY City Council and State Legislature are going to be voting on this issue, within the next month, could invitations have been provided to all of its members and their staff, to have what will probably be their first ride on these devices? We know that the level of positive responses from those who have actually ridden one of these machines is stupendous.
The US Open attracts over 10,000 journalists to its event. The NYC press core alone is huge. As rare as such an event has recently been, maybe it suggests a stronger East Coast presence on behalf of the industry in the future. A great many journalists and store owners from Philadelphia, Boston, Washington DC and Europe might find their way to a great demonstration event, with a chance to try a wide variety of machines. The public too is hungry to see what the fuss is about and could be a part of such an undertaking. Being in NYC puts you in the middle of the media industry, from magazines to web companies, Google, etc. etc. The interest in this subject, if you measure it by the number of stories written about it and mentions it, is immense. It is an anomaly, that there is a subject, about which almost everybody knows only a little tiny bit, especially regarding the legality, and what they think they know is usually wrong. The industry needs, but can’t afford apparently a huge public information campaign. When it includes a multitude of free rides at County and State Fairs and block parties, and a scattering of celebs, the breakthrough will come in a big rush.
The missing piece has been, as is so often the case when it comes to worthy causes, the financial one. The cost of machines has been a few thousand dollars, significant for bike stores but not enterprises like car showrooms and TV stations, where multiple $10,000 bills are expected. The profit margins are a bit better than ordinary bikes, but the volume, at today’s low level of awareness, is still very small. In New York State electric bikes have not been approved by the Department of Motor Vehicles, so they are technically not permitted. Some argue that the Federal law grants them rights to the road, but there have been problems for some users, especially restaurant deliverers, whose ignominy is magnified by their need to get there as quickly as possible. Regardless, stores are nervous about renting them, which would provide the key step in giving the public a chance to find out if they work for them, all due to the liability risk that accompanies a product in legal limbo.
The problem with determining its relevance is that 99+% of people have never been on an electric-assist bike. They have no idea how pleasurable and empowering it is to realize that you have the ability to decide when and how much handy power you want, in moving along. Even car drivers do not get to make this choice. Since our health ultimately depends heavily on how well we are able to keep ourselves limber and use our faculties, this is not a small matter. It is an immense advantage that human-scale transport has over industrial-scale solutions. Cars kill and not just when they hit you. They are slowly killing you while you are sitting there when you could be standing, pedaling or even cranking. The key question is: who makes the choice, you or the machine? Are you controlling it, or is it controlling you? Is the answer $60,000 multi-ton robots or $6000 shared devices, measured in tens of pounds?
If you are in heavy industry, there is no question, this beneficial adaption would be a catastrophe. If you are insuring things or loaning the money to purchase them, this will not please you at all. If you are tired of wasting time in traffic and ready to get closer to the ground and in closer touch with nature and what is around you, this will be a positive development. Whether it is a wheel or a shoe, transport is bottom-up. When we begin to direct its development from down here on the ground, rather than in the boardrooms of the petroleum and automobile industries, much can change. I am afraid that there are decisions being made on behalf of the bicycle and e-bike industries, that are also not fully appreciative of the immense potential here, both for themselves and for others as well.
We are in the initial stages of a new “Movement” as it applies to movement and it is being propelled via a new “Medium”, Hybrid Human-Electric power. The question “How do I get there?” turns out to have so many answers, applications and varieties that it qualifies as a creative “Medium”, like Dance or Sculpture, not just a mechanism. Unlike those classic arts, its history is one of suppression rather than expression, its prospects held down by its own “leaden” identity. It is now an opportunity, to open up the issue of expedited movement, to artists and other creative makers. Sure, it is a functional exercise, mostly engineering, on one level, but it is also the key element in the re-design of our streets and public spaces and our relationship to them re-conceptualized. We are talking about what is beautiful, unusual, unique and fantastic, something that changes how you view the world.
There is work that needs to be done here, to forge links between the health, environmental and other public interests involved with this issue. One person who is already part of this coalition is Tim Blumenthal, the President of Bikes for People, who was the main speaker at the NJ Charged-Up event. His organization has been known for their pro-bike activities, and happily, he and his group are completely supportive of electric bikes. This has both symbolic importance and practical benefits as well, as better information begins to circulate. There have been times historically when this was not so when the strength and endurance needed to take part in cycling was considered essential to its nature and identity and motors were considered “cheating”, a sign of weakness, or an unwillingness to suffer the pain that athletes must endure. That self-limiting attitude, fortunately, is in the past now.
This more recent acceptance of diversity within the cycling community is a vital step on the path to legality and legitimacy. The League of American Bicyclists (a 120-year-old organization originally known as the “League of American Wheelman”) has also taken the same enlightened position. Their support will be essential in the struggle across the country to craft rules that will enable us to accept the blessings that bikes, with helper motors, can provide great swaths of our population. The complete acceptance of the many forms of cycling and its evolution into a fully functional and refreshingly diverse, healthy and vibrant element of our transportation system is now possible. It is clear, that if we would legalize the future, we would immeasurably improve the likelihood that we will have one.
Times Article Viewed: 5726
May 11, 2014. Times Article Viewed: 5762
“There used to be a little grey cloud that followed me around and rained worry on me all the time, about the environment and things like that.”
“Sounds like a drag. Is it still a problem?”
“Not really. I took care of it.”
“What did you do?”
“It was easy, I just moved into that cloud. Now it’s somebody else’s problem.”
“Don’t you mean me?”
“That could be. There’s plenty of room up here if you want to join me though.”
“But if everybody moves up there, who is going to take care of everything down here?”
“It’s probably too late to do anything about anything anyway, so it makes no sense to worry about it.”
“Aren’t you afraid that it could all just fall apart, trap your grandkids in a deluge or avalanche of grief?”
“Yeah, I’d probably have to really increase my dosage, of whatever it is that they’ve been giving me.”
“Does it concern you that you may be witnessing the total breakdown of the world you were gifted with at birth?”
“If I cared about anything, I suppose that is something that I might care about, but honestly I don’t.”
“Maybe there is some secret technology breakthrough that will solve all of these crises, a reason to hope?”
“More inanimate devices seem unlikely to re-connect us to the life-force, which has been in open retreat.”
“What happened to the concept that your whole life is devoted to enhancing the prospects of your heirs?”
“It was discarded as archaic, selfish and unrealistic, as they are unworthy, undeserving, and unappreciative.”
“Don’t you worry that your kids will abandon you in your dotage, ignore you and forget you exist?”
“They’ve been practicing that day and night since they were little tykes, have got it down pretty good.”
“So you don’t care if there is a habitable planet left when you are carried off onto your next adventure?”
“I doubt if a piece of rock has many feelings for me and the sentiment is just about the same over here.”
“What about all the plants and animals, and all that fervent praying for everlasting life, etc. etc. etc.?”
“Well it’s nice to look at all that stuff and music in church is sometimes cool but none of that really matters.”
“You mean that was all an act, a charade, a Big Lie, just a way to get what you wanted on the cheap?”
“I guess you could say so, but I was just doing the same thing everybody else was doing, no big deal.”
“But don’t you see that not paying attention turned your chicken coop into a fast food joint for the foxes?”
“You vegetarian-types think it’s all about the “Big Picture” but you forget it can be pretty rough down here.”
“Does anybody think that emptying out the oceans of anything alive, down to the plankton, is survivable?”
“More hysteria, whipped up by professional environmentalists who depend upon these wild exaggerations.”
“What about the fishermen, whose empty boats and long faces speak loudly about their changing daily lives?”
“They can get jobs as truck drivers or plumbers, tell stories about how great things used to be sometimes.”
”But if this isn’t just one cog in the wheel, is it possible that it could be a crucial one, that we can’t do without?”
“Look, maybe our species is like a restless teenager, tired of the routine, looking for some risky behavior.”
“Sure, but don’t you hear all the time about a terrible accident, where one of these kids goes over the edge?”
“And girls have babies when they’re too young and maybe we expect too much of those who are in power.”
“Once you take on those responsibilities though, shouldn’t we expect a much higher order of behavior?”
“Only if we are delusional since they have demonstrated historically that they are just like us, only bigger.”
“So what about the guy who writes this blog, who thinks that we all have to make new kinds of bikes, jump to the human-scale, etc.”
“He’s just like all the rest, except worse, because he fosters the hope that there is actually a way out of this .”
“Well, we have our hands and brains so shouldn’t there be a way to use our ingenuity to crack this case?”
“Nobody beats the rap unless somebody gets to the judge, which is why politics actually matters.”
“So if it doesn’t help that he writes this thing, the proof is that nobody, at least hardly ever, comments on anything?”
“That’s how I would interpret this lack of response, either nobody is actually reading it, or nobody cares.”
“Then, does it even make sense to keep going on about this stuff, creative designs, World’s Fair blah, blah?”
“I’d suggest there be a pause, see if anybody noticed, to open up the discussion to everybody else and see.”
“Maybe that Disqus system doesn’t work just right and the comments get swallowed up and disappear?”
“I suppose, or very few people get through those 2000 words all the way to the end where the comments are.”
“Or do readers think that you said it all, and it really doesn’t require their commentary on your commentary?”
“There is really no way to know what they are thinking if they won’t say anything even when you ask them to.”
“So should I stop writing every week? I’d like to ask you to decide. Is there anybody there? Anybody care?”
Please create your own Commentary and begin a conversation. Help put the Common back in Commentary.
And identify yourself and let us know that you exist. Check-in. It makes this all worthwhile. Thank you.
Times Article Viewed: 5762
May 04, 2014. Times Article Viewed: 7600
While a focus on the rewards of unbridled wealth, and the lurch towards hyper-consumerism, are two trends that I normally abhor, there is, regardless, much to be admired about the Hammacher Schlemmer catalogs and their cornucopia of treats and sometimes very practical devices and objects. Next month their cover will feature my friend Rob Cotter’s revolutionary “ELF”, the vehicle that has begun to change a million minds about the practical nature of hybrid human/electric powered vehicles, from its economics to its aesthetics. One of the ways that the world changes, is as a result of people voting with their wallets and generating buzz, and by earning profits and fueling entrepreneurism, inspiring more breakthrough projects.
As usual, this month the catalog features a variety of mobility devices. They range from the Worksman Trading Company’s genuine ice cream cart tricycle to a gizmo that projects laser lines on to the ground at night so you can make your own bike lane as you go along. Even stranger are two machines that are as odd as they are provocative and both use human power as their essential feature. One is an edition of the “Monocycle” that was featured in the closing ceremony of the Beijing Olympic games [pictured above], its slowly spinning rings of light providing a serene parade, symbols of balance and coordination based on our energies, the human element. This was a beautiful, almost magical display, with a strong statement to make about our capacities and abilities.
While traveling inside a giant glowing ring has its charms, I have long felt that we could stand to make our lightweight vehicles, in such a way that the passenger can travel very close to the ground, for the sake of minimizing wind resistance, improving safety by lowering of the center of gravity and the stability that this provides, while enhancing the comfort of the rider. This still allows for this person, or even the number of persons, to use pedals or hand cranks to propel the vehicle in an ergonomic, efficient and comfortable fashion. Of course, the problem that immediately comes to mind is that buses and trucks and tall SUVs, could squash you like a bug that way, plead that they hardly knew you were there, and drive away without so much as a summons.
The solution is lighting, contained within thin telescoping filaments, projecting 8 or 10 feet high, deployed when needed only, flashing unmistakable signals that there is a small, perhaps hard to see, vehicle alongside you. This can also be a means of developing the personality of these modes of travel, by focusing on the graceful aesthetics of gently moving objects and how much they can lend to the landscape, instead of being huge, endlessly repetitious examples of the same massive, personality-less, potentially-lethal objects. While you ride peacefully, nice and close to the ground, all that commotion up there can be fresh and surprising, intermittent instead of continuous, colorful and fun. Accompanying this eye candy with sound displays, musical and otherwise, (the sound of a flock of birds seems appropriate), adds another variation, and one that can contribute to the safety of nearby pedestrians too.
The catalog’s other featured vehicle is propelled by electric energy, which is being generated by the four passengers, through the use of rowing bars. The manufacturer claims that it can reach speeds of 60 MPH and costs $60,000. One of its most interesting aspects is the mechanism whereby their rowed energy is converted into electric energy stored in a battery, which is used to power the motor which actually propels it. It is described as “battery agnostic” meaning it can be “upgraded as future battery and motor technologies advance”. While it has the flavor of the wonderful Kinetic Sculptures from the 1980s, it is also a very serious lesson in the art of combining power-sources and having a good time. It is reminiscent of the wonderful tiny railroad-tracked vehicles, that were moved by the up and down exertions of the two operators. It is another version of Derk Thijs’ excellent Rowbike from the Netherlands, a proven winner for decades, which also cleverly employs cables to carry the power to the wheels.
Getting around is recently becoming much more of a subject of interest to the geek community. Communication has been conquered. One push of a button and you are in the Land of Infinite Apps. Information is ubiquitous. We speak now of “overloads” and the impossibility of turning it off. Both have been shrunken down into something that fits into the palm of your hand, soon to be an amulet around your wrist or neck. Minimalization has proven to be the key to accelerating our access to what had preciously existed as two trivial factors, that we barely knew existed, clunky black phones and their fat yellow paper directories.
Now it is time for Transportation’s close-up, to be followed by its right-sizing, which, if history is any guide, means it’s on the road to virtual disappearance. It is the next mountain ready to be turned into a molehill. This will be even more fun than taking on TV Networks and Ma Bell. This is the really big one, that fills the streets and empties out the bank accounts. There is no aspect of our lives riper for revolution than transport. This is the next step beyond Social Media to the Mobility Movement, the MoMo. Who’s riding with who and where has implications even beyond the Human Be-Ins that rocked the sixties with Peace and Love and all that other good stuff.
There will be, and already is, a monumental change in this arena. We are getting ready to subtract, from the personal monetary equation, its second-biggest factor, your domicile being the one that requires you to take on the greatest amount of debt. (Schooling, of course, is starting to rank up there with the top causes of “voluntary” serfdom). Cars take up an exaggerated amount of both real three dimensional-space and, if you live in the country especially, virtually control the ability to access essential services. With the advent of bike share and car share though, rideshare is on the horizon and nothing could be a greater threat to the hegemony of the current automobile paradigm than a sharing economy. This doesn’t just threaten the auto and oil companies, this is a potential attack on the entire mall culture and a return to local shopping, slower living and an ethic of greater cooperation on all relevant issues before us.
The “Autocracy” is also a huge element in electronic media, TV, cable, and satellite. You can not avoid the pitches for brands that go on constantly, much less the ads for car insurance and oil companies, injury lawyers and finance companies. Programs themselves feature cars as top prizes on game shows and the essential instrument of heroic cops speeding around to catch the bad guys. Traffic reports dot the news stories and horrifying accident pictures are reliable fodder. Aside from work-related associations, we have accustomed ourselves to ways of life that permit us to largely seal ourselves off, from all but family members or a few intimates, in any meaningful activities or exchanges. We treasure our privacy more than almost anything else, even though it does nothing for us but give us some seeming protection from others. Do we have so little to offer each other that we should want to remain at these distances and with these barriers in place? As the importance of what you drive becomes less important than what you have to say, (and recent surveys suggest that, in a radical departure from the past, young women are much more interested in guys with practical vehicles than flashy ones), many sacred “truths” are being questioned.
Granted, folks ignoring each other, is far better than the anti-social activities featured in the news stories about civil wars and bar fights, but does this constitute a society? We are happy to be safe and secure in our houses too, and nobody says that this is not important, but we don’t even imagine a world, in which the conditions that exist are not inevitable and unchangeable. TV reinforces the same stereotypical ideas and attitudes that prevail. If you tilt right you go to Fox, Lefties congregate on MSNBC. It’s almost like High School, with the jocks and the nerds in everlasting battle. So the jocks get the girls, but later on, the nerds will marry them because they have a better sense of humor and earning potential. The missing element here is the artists, who don’t buy any of it, who thrive on total social interaction and crave change instead of being frightened and alienated by it.
The many parents who testified at the Vision Zero hearing about the death of their children under the wheels of multi-ton vehicles were touching in their deep concern. The Chair, Councilman Ydanis Rodriguez, let them speak their piece and seemed genuinely moved by their stories of loss and despair. Nobody had to recruit them to speak. They are compelled to right this wrong, to bring us to our senses. Some responsible legislators are asserting a new reality, in which local streets are not allowed to be high-speed highways and cars not permitted to rudely nudge and intimidate pedestrians out of the way. I like bikes but shoes are the ultimate human-powered vehicles and NY’s Mayor DeBlasio is kicking an important program into gear, with his Vision of safe and friendly streets for pedestrians. He has the Police Department re-arranging its priorities and adding new programs to enforce traffic laws more stringently, especially involving the most dangerous infractions by motor vehicles. It’s not going to be enough but it is a start. Smaller and slower vehicles, along with better laws and enforcement, are the best paths we have to safer streets.
Linked here is a flier we prepared for the 75th Anniversary Celebration of the opening of the 1939 World’s Fair, and the Public Hearing on Vision Zero the same day. This Fair made one of the most persuasive arguments ever, for the total Automobilization of our planet. It is here, synchronistically encountering a bold proposal, to initiate severe and rarely, if ever, imposed restraints, upon oversized motorized vehicles’ domination of our urban roadways and spaces. This is a remarkable conjunction of events, possessing considerable historical irony. The additional coincidence, of the 50th Anniversary of the opening of the 1964 Fair, on the same day as “Earth Day” this year, further emphasizes the urgent need for new ways to move about, in smaller, slower, cleaner and safer vehicles, to reduce our consumption of space and all other resources, before we use them all up and run out of everything, including excuses.
Times Article Viewed: 7600
Apr 27, 2014. Times Article Viewed: 4811
April 30th marks the 75th Anniversary of the NY World’s Fair that brought us Television, lots of cars and many other modern miracles. On that same date next week, the Transportation Committee of the NY City Council, under its Chairman Ydanis Rodriguez, will hold an important Public Hearing on Mayor DeBlasio’s Vision Zero, his initiative to reduce the number of traffic fatalities here to that number. Every year, hundreds of pedestrians and scores of cyclists are killed by motor vehicles in New York City, fewer than previously but still a lot. This is in addition to the hundreds of motorists killed by other motorists as well. The count of injuries is in the tens of thousands and the Mayor has decided to confront this carnage and to begin the process of reducing it to, in his words, Zero.
At a Town Hall meeting before a host of City Council members, the head of the city’s Department of Transportation, and other luminaries, 100 different one minute long public comments gave a good picture of their neighborhoods’ concerns and their expectations, for this bold proposed step, to improve our transport infrastructure and make it less likely that a step off a curb lands you in a hospital or worse. Many residents pointed to a corner or intersection that they found particularly problematic, and the guys who represented the taxi and black car industries gave statistics that showed that professional drivers are actually less likely to be involved in accidents than some other categories of drivers, regardless of appearances. Well, maybe. Everybody was grateful that a blue-ribbon panel had descended into their midst and was listening to their serious concerns and gripes and was offering to respond to them. Not everybody thought that anything different would actually come out of this exercise, but they were all willing to take their time out to give it a try.
A top police official listened while the question of enforcement and the lack of it, in crucial areas, came up again and again. What good are laws if they are not enforced? The city promised a more aggressive policy towards speeders, those who don’t give pedestrians their right-of-way and DUIs. A lot of people pled that the whole traffic system is slowed down, especially in residential neighborhoods, even on some major arteries, with many more bike lanes a popular request.
One minute is very little time if you are trying to say something. I used mine to point out that this was the week of the anniversary celebrations of the Fairs that took place in this very Borough 50 and 75 years ago. These events were influential in convincing everybody that cars were the wave of the future. They were a factor in rendering our roadways rail-free and bike-free, which helped to guarantee the hegemony of the automobile. I’ve suggested that we use the reminder, that these historic happenings provide, to inaugurate a program to encourage the creative design of human-scale and human-powered vehicles, perfect for dense urban environments. There are few things that the political leaders of New York could do that would have as dramatic an impact on the safety and civility of the streets of the city. Sure, reining in marauding garbage trucks in the middle of the night is important too. The 22 different bills being presented on April 30th, on this historic occasion, address a whole range of problems and opportunities. Although not included in this first batch of street-calming and traffic-controlling measures, the creative downscaling of the machines we use to get around may be the healthiest response of all, to this dangerous and toxic traffic mess.
The formula for improving the safety on our roads begins with the issue of scale. We identify two forms of this phenomenon, one is the Industrial Scale and the other Human Scale. One is measured in tons of pounds and the other in tens. The lightest vehicles may currently share the roadway in many urban environments but most are banned from highways and discouraged from using many roads on which they are legal. Historically, the smaller vehicles fall into a few separate categories. Some, like mopeds, motorcycles, and scooters, can weigh hundreds of pounds and go fairly fast. Neighborhood Electric Vehicles are an odd duck that is not allowed to go more than 35MPH and is not allowed on roads which are posted at 45MPH or faster. Bad luck chum, you are wedged in a regulatory crevice from which you may only emerge in a planned community or golf course. They are Industrial Scale because they weigh 1000 pounds or more, but share some other vehicles’ problems with access to the road.
Pedaled bikes and electric-assist models, that can only be moved when the pedals are in use, are in their own category and it is the one with the most potential to aid the Mayor in his worthy goal. All Industrial Scale vehicles are inherently dangerous, just due to the combination of speed and weight which results in their substantial momentum. Relatively slow, 15 or 20 MPH, lightweight bikes, even those with electric-assist motors, can not do the harm that a 3000-pound compact can, even at a modest 30 MPH. It has been customary for us to use minimal conveyances, like cycles, only in fair weather. The exception has been the amazingly hardy food deliverers, who manage to get around under the harshest imaginable conditions when mere mortals are retreating into trains and taxis.
We have accustomed ourselves to use, almost exclusively, these single passenger vehicles we call bikes. When it comes to automobiles, only racing cars ever fit just a single person. In China, you were allowed to have a passenger on the back or bar of your bike if you were in the country, but not the city, due to safety concerns allegedly, but hardly enforced. Sadly, the “Sociables”, multi-rider tricycles of the 19th Century are now considered exotic and the social aspect of travel on the smallest scale has been absent for over 100 years apart from a few tandems and trailers for kids.
These limitations can be overcome in many ways and thereby improve utility tremendously. This is not to say that this task is not a demanding one: these are design challenges of the first order. You must make something that is going to share the road with monsters. The weather is going to change and that includes possibly strong winds. You want to be as portable as possible, but not easy to steal, lightweight, but not easy to break, unusual or unique and therefore somewhat unfamiliar, but still easy for anybody to use safely. This is a difficult assignment but fortunately, the world is filled with ingenious people, many of whom like tough cases, who want the satisfaction of solving complex and demanding puzzles.
Doing things on a human scale can also mean hand fabrication and wide customization as well as variety and diversity of design. Hand craftsmanship has become less and less evident as market imperatives and heavy competition demand economies of scale that can only be achieved through mechanization, sometimes even leading to automation. There are great advantages to having a machine that can crank out aluminum pipe by the mile and do it fairly economically, consistently, and in a wide selection of sizes and specifications. Regardless of the efficiencies that can be achieved through some use of highly automated machinery, many operations benefit from the contributions made by live attendants, monitoring progress or completing certainly associated hand-tasks. It has been demonstrated that the ability to add the human touch to a piece can both enhance its beauty and its value.
Many factory workers are recent immigrants from parts of the world where hand metalwork and woodwork and other crafts are still popular and have many practical applications, so there are a goodly number of people practiced in the arts of handcraft. If we shift from totally mechanized to moderately so and leave room for hand-painting, first-class leatherwork, a host of optional features, some of which require measuring the recipient and testing their tastes and needs, the product is upgraded considerably, life-span extended and otherwise made better. If the only focus is on profit than it is inevitable that the human factor will be minimized. Unless there is more bottom-up momentum, if the customer is not a known person and, like the maker, an anonymous, unidentified element, we will have lost an essential aspect of our goods. What was once passed down through generations is discarded now after a few uses. We need to regain our respect for both people and the objects that they help bring into the world, give them as much care and concern as we would our spawn.
Even though cars now come with sealed modules and big replaceable units, there are still plenty of mechanics who know how to take things apart and put them back together as well as modify existing parts to fit special needs. Our biology compels us to explore ways to fulfill our requirements continuously and we do not entirely lose the ability to contrive and invent simply because we use it so little. Those who are used to employing their ingenuity, of course, will find it easier to put it into use. Artists, for instance, would be lost without it. We could all stand to have a closer relationship with our basic natures, and in touch with the instincts and talents that go with it, whether they reside within ourselves or in others.
I would urge any readers of this blog who are in the NY metropolitan area to consider coming to this hearing and speaking on behalf of enhancing a city with more electric transportation of all kinds, taxis, buses, cars and all. The trains already run on Niagara Falls juice. Many are accustoming themselves to a world filled with bikes, thanks in large part due to the currently fragile but much-loved bike-share system. It is time to begin to incorporate the new, higher-tech electric-assist bikes of all kinds into the mix, in many cases to replace the huge and dirty vans that now fill the streets. The rapid expansion of same-day delivery is going to require a bouquet of new configurations, preferably with narrow profiles, and perhaps with three wheels, that will serve the now instant-gratification society, that Amazon and eBay have decided to further advance. The same improvements that will be made to cargo bikes will translate easily to passenger-carrying vehicles like pedicabs as well.
The food delivery business is making considerable strides in generating more positive practices in the industry to help lessen the unhappiness felt when a deliverer rides his bike on the sidewalk or narrowly misses colliding with a pedestrian. This is a difficult issue, since the congested streets of midtown Manhattan especially, mean a constant dance to avoid cars and other big and dangerous vehicles. Bikes (not just electric-assisted ones) are far less hazardous of course, but also somewhat less predictable since they may want to avoid going an extra four blocks when they can simply slip carefully up the current one. There will need to be increased civility by everyone, even including pedestrians, if a reasonable situation is to be reached under such difficult and stressful conditions. Meanwhile, encouraging as much activity to take place at the Human-Scale rather than the Industrial, improves our prospects considerably, lessens noise and smoke, hazard and threat.
Likewise, the 850 pedicabs plying the streets of NYC are now being deployed with greater care and concern about the quality of the fleet and their drivers. The rash of bad actors has mostly left town and the new administration may improve the operations of the department enough to restore some balance in this activity. One needed improvement is the legalization of electric-assist motors of course and the incorporation of the Fair Sex fully into the industry by humanizing the experience, making it less of an extension of brute strength. Better weather protection for both drivers and passengers and progress on other needed design changes is in the works.
The groups that will be forming to design and build their own vehicles, might well consider making their project one that involves transport of people or, even better, one that is able to transform itself from freight to a passenger vehicle with ease. Providing capacity for the transportation-challenged also has to be high on the agenda. Lessening the pressure from an overabundance of large motorized vehicles will require a conscious process, of substituting multi-ton nightmares with minimal, muscle-propelled works of art, that doesn’t fill the air with poison or crush the unwary.
In his documentary “The City”, made as a prelude to the 1939 World’s Fair, the opening of which we are celebrating here, Lewis Mumford said, ”We used our hands and mastered what we put our hands-on”. This was part of his plea, to recover the values that once characterized our society, the competence and care that were so diminished, during a period of rapid expansion of industrialization, and consequent lower standards, with nobody “personally” responsible for what emerged. Re-connecting to our natural identities as ingenious creatures and re-making elements of our world, with our hands, beginning with those which we all have the greatest access to, like bikes, can help give us back the confidence we deserve and need, to move forward on all of the other issues which require this kind of creative and compassionate attention. Your contributions are welcome at SharingUmbrellas.org
Meanwhile, if you happen to be in the neighborhood, don’t forget to come to NYC City Hall on Wednesday, testify and celebrate the birth of a new Vision of getting around, one that goes way beyond GM’s slick Futurama, that thrives on the human-scale and protects and enhances the life-force, instead of diminishing it.
Times Article Viewed: 4811
Apr 20, 2014. Times Article Viewed: 7492
We are surrounded by machines, but it is still only through the earnest efforts of homo sapiens that anything ever actually gets done here. Our fuel, the most important source of power on this planet, (forget fracking), is measured in calories, a beneficial by-product of our neighboring star’s long-burning fires. These handy green shoots live in the earth until their synchronized internal clocks order them all to break out into the air and begin their transformation into Cheerios and cheeseburgers. Not that long ago, most of us spent most of our time tending to this element of our lives. In more recent years, the whole system has appeared to be on automatic pilot, seamlessly delivering the fruits and vegetables, grains and spices that we crave and need. Our re-created Eden often feels just right and few question the inevitability of all this or our qualifications to enjoy its benefits.
In the 1950s, with the rest of the world struggling to re-build and lots of wartime technology to translate into consumer goods, this made sense. In the 21st Century, with the fortunes of the most fortunate and everybody else seemingly heading into different dimensions, the social fabric is stretching to the breaking point and only the most oblivious deny that we are in a heap of trouble. Good jobs are as scarce as hen’s teeth and four-leaf clovers. Nobody wants to leave their current positions, no matter how tired they are of doing it, lest the economy suffers another sharp blow and their protein is called cat food. This dismal situation leaves fewer and fewer good opportunities, so recent college grads are moving in with their parents in record numbers, postponing starting families and wondering if anything will ever change. When you add the accelerating effects of automation and the out-sourcing of nearly everything, the clouds that have been gathering, threaten even darker days ahead.
Owing to a growing sense of uncertainty, we have begun to focus more on our futures. Where does it leave us, if we are fashioning machines to run our machines for us when the next generation of robots, automated cars, etc. appears to move us one full step further from the processes that are responsible for the manufacture of all of these products? Since this meant smokestacks and mines for a century, we heaved a great sigh of relief when more and more of this got off-shored, grateful for the freedom from the conspicuous burdens that accompany this dirty activity. Much later on, it sunk in fully, that there were no ready replacements for all of those missing jobs and whole regions of the country took a drastic nose-dive, while the rust-belt finished rusting. Compared to the noise and dirty dust of the Industrial Revolution, clean service industries like hair-dressing, retailing and food-serving, often paid less but, in some important ways, beat the pants off of dank factories, nasty chemicals and the endless repetition of the assembly line. We thought we were moving ahead.
If you are at a broken stop-light though, how does high tech save you? If you are Detroit and you can’t keep your streetlights on, how long will it be before the water stops flowing? We take everything for granted and we are not prepared for the next phase, whatever it may be. Tending the same burger grill or passing paper bags filled with low-nutrition, highly-processed treats, loaded with sugar and salt and an amazing number of chemicals that you have never even heard of, is also deadening, and it doesn’t take long to realize it. Since you must attempt to project a pleasant demeanor, no matter how you actually feel, there are special demands from this kind of work that even exceed those extracted previously. Monastery-like prohibitions on certain kinds of speech are ordinary, the recitation of insipid conversation, “Have a nice day” etc. is widespread. The loss of individuality and personality beneath a blaze of motivational messages and unending uniformity is the result of this model. A consumer is a puzzle to be solved or a piece to be moved. We are mysteries only to ourselves. Our habits and responses are carefully monitored and processed by a “Feedback Machine” that reinforces an artificial sense of belonging but robs us of our essence, our personhood.
I think the only remedy for this is a great burst of creativity. It is also important that this energy emanates from everywhere not just current centers of activity. When the tools, materials, and skills needed are widespread, so should the ideas and projects be disbursed as widely as possible. Since the issue being addressed here is transportation, the moving of persons and their goods, it is a universal need and a vital factor in the economies and social lives of all those living on this rock. Our growing reliance upon fossil fuels to enable us to get around and grow our crops can not continue. It will either bankrupt us or turn us against one another in the struggle to maintain our lifestyles and the identities that they give us. Droughts and storms are disrupting the supplies of essential foodstuffs and Beijing and Shanghai live in places so polluted that people wear masks every day just to stay alive. The climate-change denial goes on, like the burning eyes and the runny nose, without pause.
If you own a factory, you probably don’t want to hear about “Paradigm Shifts”. If your products become obsolete, you are in trouble. You may even want to slow down the process of change altogether since this is one way to prevent your fade into history. On the other hand, if you are a person looking to have a future, you are paying attention to the shifts in demand and fashion that are going to shape that future and to determine your role in it. This difference in agendas is inevitable, given the difference between institutions and individuals, the pull of the past and the needs of the future. It is more common for individuals to be carried along on the waves generated by institutions than for those organizations to yield to the needs or desires of mere people. There is a way to modify this relationship, to give more leverage to the individual and the key is scale and creativity. Working on the human scale, on lightweight muscle-powered vehicles, for instance, does not require any institutional help. A hacksaw, a discarded bike, and some epoxy or solder and you are in business.
Our hands and our imaginations are the portals to our alternate universes. The other essential ingredient is the appreciation, and help, that others can provide to a project. Cooperation is easy when you are an infant, impossible when you are a restless child and the path to progress when you finally grow up. It is most often brought forward when it is part of a sports program or other activity that is directed from above and requires you to relinquish your will in order to be provided with a role, one which was mostly pre-defined for you. Working from the bottom up without direction from above is uncommon, but that is where the action really lives. Expertise and experience are valuable of course, but the initiative is the first ingredient, along with imagination, and nothing follows without it.
There are three distinct types of small, slow, human-scale and muscle/electric-powered vehicles that need to be re-conceptualized and re-designed. Bikes, work-trikes, and wheelchairs are each deserving of their own study, but share more features than not. In addition, there are so many conditions, from weather to terrain, which is completely different from one place to another, that there is much variety that is absolutely necessary. Other differences, from access to financing options to earning potential, can also have a major influence on developments. Conditions found in highly urbanized spaces, in developed countries, and those in places with poor roads and poor opportunities to re-charge batteries, demand different solutions. The aesthetic element, not as important as the economic, in locales where access to resources is severely limited, may nevertheless be the key to accelerating the needed conversion, from industrial-scale to human-scale transportation. When the public realizes how much color and graceful movement can add to their surroundings, they will insist that this process be nurtured in every way possible.
It is not just here in the dense urban spaces of the Northeast of the USA that this condition, the pollution, traffic delays, threats of harm, and all the rest occur. This is an important matter everywhere. Now that Amazon has announced that they want to provide same-day delivery for groceries, along with everything else, the number of cargo bikes needed is going to multiply quickly. The range of vehicles available to fulfill this mission is small. The ongoing effort to encourage creative design in muscle-powered vehicles, SharingUmbrellas.org is one venue through which designers and makers can expose and share their ideas. We are also using pedicabs that were designed in the 19th century to be used by disposable drivers, who are not even afforded a little protection from the rain. Using small electric-assist motors, this form of transportation can vault into the 21st Century and provide a healthy green form of mobility, much better than the current version of it does. Again, it is a creative design that is the key to a more humane, efficient and colorful edition of this modality.
There are no prizes yet to mobilize this program and nobody denies the benefit of having plenty of resources to fuel activity such as this. It is also important though, to demonstrate that it is the energy provided by individuals, their muscle-power and brain-power, which enables us to take on and resolve the dilemmas that life puts before us. If we want to have our institutions serve us, instead of the other way around, we have to assert our priorities and act on them, not wait for someone else to do it. How many great designs for vehicles, the bike and trike in all of its infinite configurations, wheelchairs and new machines to help the transportation-disadvantaged, are already out there and ready to be evaluated and put into use? How many could there be, if we begin to give this development the attention and importance that it deserves?
The GM Futurama at the 1939 World’s Fair, on the eve of a World War already swallowing up countries and populations, promised a perfect environment. It is not fair to criticize them for being so good at selling their vision, to a public tired of Depression and Prohibition and ready for a consumer-driven society and economy. One consequence of their eventual success though is a roadway system that fills almost all of our spaces. Some of them surround the original site of the Fair itself now, like the infamous Long Island Expressway, referred to as “The longest parking lot in the world”. The peninsula that they lead to now houses millions.
There are possible remedies. Could our highway emergency lanes provide for a continuous flow of slow, (but in many cases faster-moving), small, muscle-powered and electric-assisted devices, protected from the weather and provided with many of the creatures comforts that we can no longer do without? The ELF and TWIKE are good beginnings – as is the mobile coffee shop featured above – but we need an infinitude of variations on the theme. This week begins our celebrations of the Fair that Automobilized our world, and SharingUmbrellas.org says that we need to apply ourselves, on a very broad basis, to redesigning the pedicabs, bikes, trikes and cargo vehicles (and cars) of the future around the human scale. This task belongs to many. At the same time, we should also be fixing the roads, turning some highways into safe 150 MPH speedways, so that our local streets can be turned back into the gardens and play-spaces that can sustain our lives and bring us together, instead of forcing us apart. Fairs, not Fears.
Times Article Viewed: 7492
Apr 06, 2014. Times Article Viewed: 5872
An invitation to use the power of the internet and crowd-sourcing to commemorate the 75th and 50th anniversaries of the New York World’s Fair.
As one way to take notice of these remarkable historical events, designers and builders, artists and engineers, mechanics and craftspeople, are all invited to help invent and make more real, the human-scale, human-powered transportation systems of the future. For the next two years, we are inviting individuals and groups from everywhere on this planet, to submit and exchange their ideas and be part of a massive crowd-sourcing experiment, both online and in your little, or big, neighborhood. We are suggesting that a small plot of public land, or volunteered parking lot or other private property, be provided locally, to help expedite the development of the most beautiful, and highly-functional, cycles and wheelchairs, cargo and passenger-carrying vehicles, the futuristic new machines best suited to serve the needs of our varied environments.
The emphasis must be on safety, affordability, durability, and accessibility but each project is an independent entity and may set its own goals and “rules of the road”. We know that 1HP electric-assist motors on bikes are legal by US Federal statute and important when needed to carry heavyweight or overcome wind or difficult terrain. We are choosing to abide by the 20MPH Federal speed limit on electric-assisted bikes. This project does not permit ICE (Internal Combustion Engine)-Age motors. Throttles are also forbidden, so that the vehicles produced must be pedal-activated and thus may be classified as bicycles, wherever they may be, and welcomed on the road.
Multi-passenger, weather-protected, unusual and unique vehicles are among the most desirable. It can be a drawing, a scale model or a working model. It can be imaginary or completely practical. We are hopeful that this endeavor will enable many connections to be made between creative individuals and others like themselves, who find that they are able to work together, as well as investors and governments, eager to expand this activity for economic, environmental, health or humanitarian reasons.
The World’s Fairs of old were devoted to bringing forth technology that could benefit mankind, were inclusive of all Nations, and endeavored to bring pleasures along with their lessons and marvels. These features are worth preserving. One of the participating sites in Flushing Meadows Corona Park, the site of two great Fairs in the past. Thanks to technology, this event can take place, at the same time, in your city and on your electronic device. In some ways, this may be the first true World’s Fair, open to everyone and devoted to our potential to learn and to dream. It may also be a mechanism to help coordinate the contributions that so many may be able to make to the establishment of an easy-to-negotiate, peaceful, just, and healthful place for ourselves and all others. Please consider beginning a local effort in your neighborhood.
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Mar 23, 2014. Times Article Viewed: 5779
I want to propose a simple way to begin to change society for the better. It costs just a nickel, but first, let me set the stage.
We need water, air, and the occasional snack, to survive. Clothing and a roof over your head may not be quite as essential, depending upon local climate and social customs of course, but are still pretty important. If you are a person of deep faith, you have the conviction that all of this will arrive, in good time, due to the grace of the Almighty. All that is required of you is patience and fortitude and the ability to suffer the pain which comes from realizing that there is still something missing from this picture. It can even feel as if all of this seemingly undeserved and unnecessary distress was put there on purpose, to put your faith to the test, since it feels otherwise to be so purposeless and random.
If you are more modern in your ideas, you might consider it the job of the government to make sure that you can fulfill these basic, human needs. Some would put companionship in the “absolutely needed” column too, but, aside from our sentimental preferences, we have a demonstrated ability to exist, even prosper, without any nearby two-legged accomplices, for quite some time. Got to have drinkable water and breathable air no matter what though. So why are our supplies of both under attack and in jeopardy? Are we completely out of our minds? Do we think that playing Russian Roulette with our essentials makes the game more interesting, raises the stakes and creates excitement out of the mundane? Is it possible that what we have always taken for granted, as belonging to us, is being completely commodified, and that everything has, or will soon have, a price tag, even the air we breathe?
Meanwhile, if so much has been reduced to numbers, pushed so far into the abstract that we can hardly recognize its connection to our reality, how do we push back and reassert the need to recognize, acknowledge, even celebrate that linkage? Since passivity is the ocean that we swim through to reach our life rafts of activity, it is no wonder that there is so little coordination amongst us in this continuous, ongoing process. Each person is too involved in staying afloat, paddling towards their destinations and making sure that there is plenty of oxygen in the immediate vicinity, to worry much about anybody else, except their own blood and kin.
So, if a problem arises which requires the coordinated effort of these various arbitrarily-distanced souls, there is no mechanism for enabling that to take place. The institutions we formerly relied upon, as narrow-focused as they were, religion, proximity and the rest, are moribund. Sports teams serve as place setters for real community and symbols replace actuality. You root for the home team, maybe win a few and probably lose the rest. Then a Katrina happens and we are all brought back down, for a little while, kicking and screaming, to raw reality. Then the Dream Machine kicks in again and we are glued into our easy chairs, back on the program, braced for the next wave.
The ultimate injury suffered here cannot be quantified and in most cases does not even have a name. It is embodied in a concept which we named “empathy”. It is the ability to share someone else’s pleasure or pain, accomplishment or loss. It is natural to us, as is the mechanism which permits us to shut it off and become absorbed in ourselves. If you listen to popular music, the most common word in songs is always “you” and close behind that “love”. The focus is constantly directed to the other, because that is where your affirmation lies, with your lover or your child. The ability to care more for them than for yourself is the path we have been given to escape the tyranny of our own bodies and selves, to displace our attentions and affections on another. Since the other primary drive programmed into us by our natures and our conditioning is to focus on ourselves and to relegate others to bit parts and extras, this is the exposure of our centers to the light, the closest we may ever come to a revelatory experience.
When we can provide all who are alive, and all that is alive, with the grace afforded by these flashes of unselfishness and unification with what is outside of ourselves, this can be a long sea voyage to the land where change lives. Without mechanisms to sustain you on your way, it becomes very difficult to hold your course though, so we need to become designers and builders, to re-form the institutions and methods that we have contrived, or which, in most cases, been imposed on us over time. Since so much of this existing framework was constructed with only minimal feedback from the consumers of all of this society-building, there is obviously a lot of slack to take up.
When the equipment provided to us to help in our encounter with raw nature has been in the manner of weapons, to force nature back into a predictable and beneficial state, for the sake of distributing ever bigger prizes to the populace, there is no reckoning of the long-term effects of so much manipulation of our resources. This is a giant experiment, which many reckon has gone off the tracks, literally, when it comes to trains and figuratively when it comes to everything else. Take the food supply. Here is one thought about how to help put it back on the tracks.
A Nickle’s Worth of Change
Pickers and gatherers of produce, People getting their hands dirty, by pulling roots and breaking stems, filling baskets and boxes, are making about a penny a pound for their work, give or take. When the final products of their efforts are passed along to the consumer, the price will be measured in dollars a pound.
If retailers were willing to mark prices in increments of 5 cents (not a common figure currently) this could be used to signify that they are passing this much down the line, to these hard-working men, women and children, an additional 5 cents per pound for their hard labors. Consumers can make certain this way that those employed to supply them with their needed nutrients are being compensated in a more reasonable way than is common today.
How are foreigners and migrants going to be able to keep track of and report what they are due? Rewarding cooperating growers with better sales will help and a well-monitored program of verification and tracking of funds. Of course, a mechanism must be implemented, to make certain that these funds are not diverted before they reach their intended recipients. For these reasons, one cent of the five will need to be used to devise and operate an efficient and honest process to make certain that everything works as well as humanly possible.
Any funds not needed to administer this program are to be used to enable other populations who are accustomed to receive a minuscule portion of the profits generated through their sweat-fueled efforts, apparel workers, etc., to accomplish this same purpose. Perhaps clothing prices will include a 25 cent additional payment to the gatherers of the raw materials, along with those who sew or dye the cloth, with $.25 prices reflecting retailers’ participation.
Will employers simply lower wages by the amount of these “bonuses”? Unfortunately, some will try to, so effective means must be employed, and constantly improved and updated, to thwart humanity’s worst impulses and habits or nothing will change. Great public shame must be heaped on criminals who rob the poor to help themselves and they must know that they will be identified, blackballed and ejected from civilized commerce.
The details needed to make this a reality must be gleaned from a number of conferences, by telecommunications and in person, and the participation of all those to be affected by these measures, workers, growers, retailers, distributors, and consumers of food. Time is of the essence since this has already taken far too long to implement. These actions must be carried out in harmony with not in place of other attempts to improve the working conditions of all farm laborers.
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