I’m still astonished at how many people continue to “race” total strangers. There seems to be an endless supply of fools. And it gets even weirder when you consider that people still want to “beat” me when I’m riding the Dahon—dude, it’s an 8-gear, 20-inch wheel folding bike! It’s not a speed machine, we’re talking Food Chain Number of 12 here.

In truth, many of the people who want to beat the funny looking bike with the small wheels are riding a department store MTB/BSO, pushing their platform pedals with feet in tennis shoes. [I'm not sneering—for many, many years my cycling footwear of choice was the Dunlop Volley.]

Of course, many of these bold racers go out too hard, too early—I think some of them put in an extra hard effort to bury the rider on the funny bike. And that’s a mistake because what they don’t realise is that my funny bike is powered by Audax legs. Sure I may not be fast, but I can keep up my pace all day if necessary, so if you want to bury me on a short ride to work, you’d better be able to keep up your pace for a long time. Many wacky racers can’t, and they’re usually easy to spot.

But yesterday’s ‘contender’ was priceless. I was just tootling my way home when I saw him coming up from behind: the full department store MTB stereotype, he was riding with head down, elbows out, mashing those flat pedals for all he was worth. The veins were standing out on his forearms. He practically had a big neon sign over his head saying “I’m red-lining!”

A monumental blow-up was on the way, and with a wicked taste for schadenfreude I wanted to see it when it happened. So I picked up the pace a bit, just enough to keep him within sight without getting close enough to egg him on. He was the classic wacky racer, riding erratically and selfishly, darting in and out, recklessly overtaking, squeezing pedestrians…you know the scene. At one point he cut another rider at an intersection of the path, I slowed up to let the other rider in, remarking that this loony wasn’t going to slow down for anything or anyone, and confidently predicted his meltdown within two minutes.

As it turned out, I over estimated by 90 seconds. To this point the trail had been flat riverside pathway but when the path made a minor bump up to the old road level at Morrell Bridge—a barely noticeable hillock—Wacky Racer couldn’t handle the incline and dropped speed like he’d just ridden into a vat of porridge.

I tinkled my bell cheerfully as I breezed past at my easy, steady pace. Wacky Racer disappeared backwards and I never saw him again.

Bike path heroes shit me. But sometimes they are very, very funny.

[via audax-oz]

Go anywhere machine

Rant of the month is by HG for his recent post on getting a sense of adventure back into MTB:

I see my mountain bike as my go-anywhere machine. Singletrack, roads, firetrails, 4WD tracks, up hills, down hills, over boulders, through creeks, snow, sun or rain. Sure, I might need to walk or even carry my bike for some bits, but I don’t want my ride to be restricted by the confines of a bunch of signs pointing me towards the next bit of track.

Yeah.

Go anywhere daydream

10 places to ride your bike before you die [twitterer]

Beach Road

Video: Beach Road Legs

Spoken for

29 inches, 36 Spokes… That’s how I roll!

The Wacky Races: Official Rules

It’s Not A Race. Wow, on the folding bike I can bump my Food Chain Number up to a very defendable 12! That’s a comfy place in the peloton of plonkers.

Forester reviews

John Forester reviews ‘Cycling and Society’ [PDF] [via chainguard]

Ride to school day

Cycling or Walking to School Will Not Be Tolerated! [via chainguard]

Cam

The Holy Grail of bike-cams? X170 review

Geek Speak

Wow your friends with your inside knowledge of Tour de France speak:

Yes, you too can sound like a complete cycling dork just by carefully studying and memorizing the most commonly used words and phrases in the sport of competitive cycling

Bloggage

• Bicycle Pirate
• Girls and Bicycles: “Advocating beautiful girls on bicycles in a city addicted to cars.”
• Bikejuju
• NewmaForma
• Milano Fixed

I don’t get it

The BILF shirt: “If you don’t get it, then this shirt is probably not for you or anyone you know.” [twitterer]

Doom or Possibility

Which Cycling Politics: Doom or Possibility?:

Because cycling is not very risky. The average bicyclist – and this includes all those ones who ride in a less-than-competent manner – will travel about 4 million hours before experiencing a fatal crash. That is equal to 456 years of non-stop cycling. Cyclists who follow the basic rules of the road will travel significantly farther before a fatal crash. But we focus way too much on these rare crashes, instead of on the hundreds of millions of miles cyclists travel every year without incident.

A fair observation

Of all the potentially dangerous things you are legally allowed to do riding your bike without a helmet is not one of them. Why?

Boring

Cycling should be dull, not an extreme sport.

Employers benefit

Life Cycle UK provides a guide for Cycle Friendly Employers:

Cycling offers real benefits to employers such as freeing up valuable land for development, creating a healthier workforce, helping staff get to work more reliably, as well as helping the more general business climate through reducing congestion and pollution.

Yeah, what he said

Cycliquette

And two rights, one wrong?

Clean it

• Quick: Baby wipes – what can’t they do?
• Thorough: Clean your bike this weekend for improved performance
• Extreme: Polishing bicycle parts

Fold it

Is a bike with collapsing wheels really a good idea? Gizmodo says no.

Map it

• Cycling Profiles takes an opposite view to Bikely.com: no do-it-yourself input but the maps and profiles are pretty good quality.
• Trailmapping: “A community based around mapping trails and logging trips for mountain bikers, road bikers, runners, hikers, kayakers, rafters and explorers of all kinds.”
• Here comes the Google Street View trike [Thanks tom]
• Ebb and Flow of Melbourne Trains (or how it’s supposed to work) [Thanks woowoowoo]

Sail it

This Bike is a Boat, Lady. [via Bikejuju]

DIY

• Bicycle Lantern. Yep, they do mean lantern, as in “paraffin powered”. You too can light your way with a naked flame. What’s not to love about that?
• How to set up cleat positioning

Special facilities

• Unicycle Lane
• The world’s worst cycle lanes

Real bikes for real people

Bikes For The Rest Of Us:

Sometimes I wish Greg Lemond never won the Tour de France in 1986…bike shops across the country began putting aside their single speeds, 3-speeds and cruisers to make room for expensive, lightweight, “high-end” racing bikes. In other words, bike shops lost interest in selling regular bikes to regular people.

Shweeet cruiser

Zeth:

Zeth is our star pick this season…a formidable machine that is inspired by the fluid expressions of kinetic sculptures, as well as the shadowy artworks portrayed of Gotham City. It is also nicknamed ‘Dark Knight’ – to capture a fantastical experience of roaming the streets on a modern iron horse.

[Thanks woowoowoo]

Movember

It Mo time again and “Treadly and Me” is raising funds to help fight prostate cancer and depression in men. Feel free to donate in our name. Any and all contributions gratefully accepted.

So now I have one – but I don’t know how to use it. I either ring it too close, and the victim jumps three feet into the air…Or I do it from too far away, and…nobody notices, and then it’s too late to ring again

Bollocks.

I’m amazed when cyclists try to float the argument that there’s something difficult or confusing about using a bike bell. Surely anyone who has mastered the complex trick of balancing on two wheels can get the hang of something as simple as a bell. You would have thought, at least.

This whole thing about not knowing how and when to use a bike bell is just a rationalisation. Another similar argument says that if you ring your bell pedestrians turn to look and in doing so step into your path. I’ve tested this before—I actually counted the number of turn-and-look incidents and found that it’s actually pretty unusual for someone to step in front of you (on my local shared path, at least).

I suspect that the real reasons cyclists are reluctant to ring lie not in the (imaginary) complexity of using a bell but in embarrassment at two things. Firstly, it’s seen as childish. I don’t know why but it seems that “real” cyclists don’t tinkle bells—”real” cyclists left bells behind with training wheels. The second is embarrassment at being misunderstood, as Ben Thomas explains:

Personally, when I’m on foot, I don’t like bells. I can never get past the undertone of reprimand. The Highway Code says car horns should only be used “to warn other road users of your presence”; and bells are to “let [road users] know you are there when necessary”. Yeah yeah. The fact is that car horns don’t say “Ahem…”, they say “Oi, dickhead!”, and for many pedestrians, bells do too.

Sure, no-one wants their courtesy mistaken for rudeness or aggression, but it’s easy to turn this around—and it’s something that’s really wonderful about bikes. On a bike when you pass close to another human being, you can actually speak to them. How about that for a novel idea? So just say “Hello” or if they’ve moved aside “Thanks” might be appropriate. That’s something you can rarely do from a car, and it invariably puts your bell-ringing in the right context. Whenever I ring my bell, I always greet the other person as I pass and more often than not they will say “Hello” or “Thank-you” back.

Of course, depending on the local customs where you are, the reactions to a bike bell might well be very different.

So for the confused and/or shy, here are my tips for safe and happy bell-ringing:

• fit a loud bell or horn (but not too loud—the AirZound is overdoing it for shared path use!)
• ring it early, ring it loud and proud
• don’t be afraid to ring it a second (or even third) time as you get closer, if you’re not sure the person has heard
• if you think you need to clarify, call out which side you’re going to pass (e.g. “Passing on your right”)
• as you come alongside the other person, greet them cheerfully—you are having fun after all!
• repeat as required

And one more point from Ben Thomas, which I can agree with: on a shared path, pedestrians have the right of way so the onus is on cyclists to pass with care.

Last November I had an encounter with a pedestrian that left me a little sad and angry.

The location

Firstly I should describe the location. At its city end the Gardiners Creek Trail crosses the Yarra River, makes a sharp-ish left-hand bend then descends to ground level down a ramp running parallel to the Yarra Trail before it joins the latter through a kind of gateway, into a Y-shaped intersection. Here’s the spot on Streetview:

View Larger Map

Zoom in for a better look. Note the there are standard “Give Way” markings at the bottom of the ramp.

Anyway you get the idea: it’s a potentially dangerous intersection where caution is required.

The incident

I was descending this ramp and, as is my usual practice, I looked over the railing back along the Yarra Trail to see if there was any oncoming foot or cycle traffic to be avoided. There was a jogger approaching on my right but the timing was such that I’d reach the junction of the trails safely ahead of her. In any case, I sounded my honker horn and proceeded onto the Yarra Trail.

Then the jogger went ballistic, shouting at me that I was supposed to give way, and more. She really served it up and before I could get a word in, she’d turned around and was off back the way she’d come.

Phew! What had I done to deserve that? I thought I’d been pretty cautious and considerate. Despite my calls to wait, she clearly wasn’t hanging around to discuss things.

Now I was a bit agitated myself, and made a hasty U-turn (if somewhat ill-considered—sorry to the bloke who had to swerve around me!) and followed the jogger. I rolled up beside her and spoke politely, apologising if I had alarmed her but pointing out that I had actually taken due care and had clearly signalled my intentions. It seemed pretty clear that she wasn’t specifically angry with me, rather she was just fed up generally.

What really shook me about our brief discussion was that the jogger was visibly very distressed as she told me that she’d used the Yarra and Gardiners Creek trails for years but now felt unsafe because of cyclists, especially on the Gardiners Creek trail. I agreed with her on that point, saying that I’ve started avoiding most of the Gardiners Creek trail because it’s so busy these days.

She also said that she is frequently shouted at and abused by cyclists.

And this got me thinking

Although this was hammering it home in a way that I couldn’t miss, I’ve long noticed that some of my fellow cyclists do show a disgraceful disregard for other trail users, both pedestrian and pedalist.

This put me in mind of concept of the dominant threat on the roads:

Is it because the transport mode which poses the greater capacity to endanger others (The Lorry as the “Dominant Threat”) is legislated for and treated with, the additional responsibility which goes hand in hand with driving a vehicle capable of more damage and casualty if not driven correctly.

In other words, the duty of caution should lie with the mode of transport more likely to cause injury.

A similar concept was discussed last year on YarraBUG radio, where the argument was put forward that the legal liability for a collision between a car and a bicycle should lie with the motorist, unless and until it can be proven otherwise. That is, strict liability.

On the road, cyclists are naturally pretty much at the bottom of the victim chain; we are almost always the most likely to be injured. But on the shared paths it’s a different story. Putting aside the fact that in a pedestrian-cyclist collision the chances of injury are pretty equal on both sides (or maybe even greater for the cyclist), due to weight and speed differences it is the cyclist that is the dominant threat over the pedestrian.

This is an unusual situation for the cyclist. We generally need to be a bit more combative (or at least assertive) when riding on the road, where we are almost always the least dominant threat. However, this mindset is not suitable to the shared pathways. I reckon too many cyclists forget to turn off their on-road aggression when they get off the road and onto the trails.

Not just pedestrians

And it’s not just pedestrians that are given a hard time—inexperienced or slower riders are sometimes mercilessly squeezed by faster riders.

I remember another encounter with a selfish bastard at Burnley Harbour, where the ramps are a bit narrow and can be a bit scary for inexperienced riders:

I saw Mr Selfish-Bastard coming up behind me and he clearly wasn’t going to be slowed by anything—not me or the couple of trundlers who were just about to go down this ramp in front of me. I saw what was going to happen a second before it did: Mr Selfish-Bastard sped up, overtook and swerved in front of the other (clearly inexperienced) riders while they were on the ramp.

I caught up with him at the top of the hill at Loys Paddock, and our friendly discussion went like this:

ME: You know, there was no real reason to pass like that back on the ramp.

BASTARD: Well, I have an expectation that you’ll keep left.

[That's rich, isn't it? Blasting by on an "expectation"—bugger due caution.]

ME: But it wasn’t me that you were passing.

BASTARD: I know.

ME: Well you really scared the shit out of that woman back there.

BASTARD: I know.

ME: You don’t give a shit about anyone else, do you?

BASTARD: No.

ME: You’re a prick.

It staggers me that people can ride like this and with the same breath condemn motorists who drive with exactly the same might-is-right attitude.

In the media

Coincident with my run-in with the jogger were two articles that appeared in the Sydney Morning Herald, one about cyclists being ‘doored’ and another on a nasty shared path collision:

Drawing on Ms Guliano’s case, a new study from the NSW Injury Risk Management Research Centre found that the shared zones had “increased the risk of conflict and collisions where the pedestrian is vulnerable”.

It found that the potential for collisions was often exacerbated by inadequate design, the high density of users and the inability of councils to enforce basic rules such as keeping left and overtaking on the right, and predicted that the fatality rate would increase.

(It was not long after this that Harold Scruby had his little brainfart about shared paths. Remember that?)

The problem of walkers and cyclists coming into conflict on shared paths is clearly not going to go away on its own. It’s interesting that the design of paths is mentioned in that study. As I ranted recently, most of Melbourne’s shared paths are currently not safe and efficient transport routes.

Just as an aside, I find it interesting that the Herald Sun saw fit to pick up the Manningham walkers story and feature it on its home page as the second-top story in Victoria. Is it that important? Wow, slow news day. Here’s how they presented it:

Why did they illustrate it with a picture of cyclists riding on the road? Was it the only shot they had of cyclists with a motion blur?

Dialogue required

I have no problem at all with the Manningham residents mounting a campaign to make shared paths safer. I’m all for that. But let’s not presuppose the solution, particularly a punitive solution that has the potential to make paths less safe and certainly less accessible. Hopefully Manningham Council will have the good sense to open up a dialogue with all groups of path users and find a solution that will benefit everyone.

How much extra distance did the bike trail add? What do you think? As little as 100 metres? 500 metres? 1km? Maybe 2km?

I was expecting it to be about 0.5–1km at the most. To my surprise it was 2.4km longer to travel by the bike trail—that’s 30% extra distance over the shortest route.

And despite the road route being hillier, my average speed was faster riding on the road as well.

What’s going on here? Why is the trail so much longer? And why is riding on the trial so much slower?

In a discussion on cyclists’ rights to use the road, Bicycle Victoria covers many of the relevant points:

3. The disadvantages of riding on shared paths

In Melbourne we also have a network of shared paths through parkland and along waterways which are fantastic for people walking the dog, bike riding families, kids riding to school and recreational cyclists. Shared paths are wider than a footpath and bicycles can legally use them…

However shared paths are less useful for utility cyclists who are trying to get to work, other destinations or training. On shared paths cycle speeds are slower, the route is often less direct, and the space is shared with walkers, dogs, rollerbladers, skateboarders, prams and scooters.

But there’s more. Many trails, including the Scotchmans Creek Trail, are in a pretty poor state. Despite what BV says, for much of its length the Scotchmans Creek Trail is not noticeably “wider than a footpath”, and its edges are often cracked:

It’s also frequently lumpy and cracked:

And, my personal favourite, it has numerous blind corners:

All of this adds up to a slow ride.

Not that there’s anything wrong with that. For all its faults, I rather enjoy the Scotchmans Creek Trail and often use it when I want to take a short trundle of 5–10km before dinner.

But I don’t use it if I want to get somewhere. That is, if I’m cycling for transport—if there’s a destination to be reach or an errand to be run—I’ll take the road, just like everyone else who has somewhere to go.

Get off the road

We often hear the complaint, “Why don’t cyclists get off the road and use the bike path?” A reasonable question, you might think. After all there’s a dedicated off-road bike path.

Let’s flip that question around. Why doesn’t the motorist take the freeway? After all, that’s a dedicated motor vehicle “path”. The simple answer is that the freeway doesn’t always take the motorist where s/he wants to go. And in heavy traffic, it might even be quite slow.

And it’s the same for the cyclist. No one wants to take a route that’s going to add 30% to the distance and make you travel slower.

But then, there are times when we want to slow down and take the scenic route. That’s what recreational bike trails are perfect for.

Build it

It’s good to see some clear distinction being made between recreational cycling and cycling for transport, as Harry Barber was quoted recently in The Age:

“In the past, bike plans have been muddled because they tried to be a recreational plan or a bike tourism plan,” he said. “But we want this to be a transport plan for bikes.”

Possibly, BV could be pushing for the kind of bike planning that David Hembrow refers to as The Grid:

Back in the 1970s the Netherlands went through a period of research into what works for promoting cycling…One of the conclusions reached was that good quality cycle routes are of no use if they’re not close together…It was concluded that good quality cycle paths should be a maximum of 500 m apart.

Melbourne is a long way from that and would need some vision, similar to that seen in Portland:

Since the mid-1990s Portland, Oregon has pursued a “build it and they will come” strategy by developing its bikeway network to promote increased bicycle use. Between 1992 and 2005 Portland increased its developed bikeway network by 215%, from 83 miles to 260 miles. During this same period, bicycle use in Portland soared. A comparison of 1990 and 2000 census data shows a doubling of bicycle commute trips citywide, with more dramatic increases in close-in neighborhoods.

[twitterer]

Taking it seriously

Karl has also been giving this topic thought recently, posting a straw poll on whether people prefer to ride on roads or off-road cycle paths:

Every single one of them said off-road cycle paths. So here we have a bunch of responsible adults, who’re keen enough to either get jobs teaching others how to ride bikes on the roads…yet not one of us would actually want to ride on the road, given the choice.

Why? Many of the reasons have to do with the relatively poor condition of bike trails but ultimately: “They never seem to connect to anywhere useful”.

What it comes down to is that if bike trails are not taken seriously as transport corridors, they simply don’t form part of the transport network. In another post, Hembrow spells it out clearly:

We’ve got recreational trails too, and they are very pleasant for “going for a ride”, but they’re not really part of the practical network in the city here either.