The Seattle Bike Commuter

Month Two of Being a Former Bike Commuter

2012-02-10T19:46:00.000-08:00

Since my company moved to a downtown location in December I have stopped biking to work - completely. After two months of this radical change in lifestyle, here are some observations, positive (+) and negative (-):

(+) I have more time to read. I actually finished all my recreational reading before my next book club meeting. To fill in the time I purchased the complete works of H. P. Lovecraft for $1 on my new Kindle (Christmas present!) and have been working my way slowly through.

(-) I've been having a terrible time getting rid of my holiday flab. This is an annual ritual where I weigh myself after Christmas, discover I'm five pounds too heavy, and spend January getting back to my target weight. January came and went and I'm still 3.5 pounds short of my goal. It's hard to replace 1000 calories/day, even with a new on-site health club membership. (Half an hour on an elliptical only consumes 300 calories, and I can't imagine doing that for an hour and a half).

(+) The bus commute (Community Transit, routes 511, 413, or 415) is actually pretty nice, even though I have to walk two miles in the morning to get to the bus stop at the Mountlake Terrace Park & Ride. I never check a schedule - buses come frequently enough that it's unnecessary.

(+) The Community Transit riders are a civilized lot! They line up nice and neat in a row as they wait for the next bus. If the line is particularly long I just wait through two buses - by declining to board the first bus I move up in line and get a primo seat on the next one.

(-) I miss my bike!

(-) I'm less informed. On my bike commute I got a whole lot of good audio input through my iPod Nano (sixth generation): NPR Morning Edition or All Things Considered, podcasts of This American Life, A Prairie Home Companion, On Being by Krista Tippett, The Vinyl Cafe, the odd audio book, and my son's latest rock music interest (Mutemath! Radiohead! Adele!). All but TAL have pretty much disappeared from my life.

(+) I'm getting familiar with the modern health club scene. I can actually explain what an "elliptical" is and how to use it. Oh, yeah!

(-) I have no more time than I had before. So maybe this should be neutral, rather than negative, but I really expected that commuting to a well-connected downtown core, rather than center-of-the-funky-universe but out-of-the-way-transit-wise Fremont, would save time, especially considering I'd be using a vehicle capable of sustained speeds greater than 15 mph. But no - it still takes typically an hour and twenty minutes door-to-door, not much different than when I was biking. Harrumph.

(+) I don't get sweaty.

(-) I still haven't figured out a suitable replacement exercise. The health club is fine, but I've got no enthusiasm to go there, convenient though it is. It's boring. It's a chore. And I haven't managed to go more than twice a week since the move. I'm not sure this is going to work out.

(-) I've got nothing to write on this blog. OK, so I've never been exactly loquacious, but I think once in a while I find something useful to write. Now I never know whether a post will be my last. And both of my readers will be the worse for it!

So, the final tally is: five pluses and five minuses. As with anything in life, there are tradeoffs; nothing is all good or all bad. (OK, so maybe Josh Powell was all bad - but I'm willing to concede the possibility of a tiny bit of good even in him). But I do know that one way or another I'm going to get back on my bike again, whether it's part of a regular commute or not. So fear not, loyal readers, my pen isn't completely dry yet!

A (Nearly) Bike-Free Month

2011-11-15T22:28:00.001-08:00

What's it like to not be a bike commuter? I got a glimpse of it this month. For various reasons, I have biked to work only a couple of times this month so far. The reasons aren't all that interesting, but here they are anyway:

I had a breakdown in my Inclement Weather Management System (my waterproof bicycle trunk doesn't fit my new rack so I'm back to plastic bags).
It's National Novel Writing Month and I need every spare hour I can get.
My youngest moved into a dorm at the UW and I now have sole use of our spare vehicle.

It didn't take long to (re-)discover the downside of car commuting. Last Tuesday I was driving southbound on Aurora approaching 125th when I slowed down to let someone in who was waiting in a parking lot to my right. The light at 125th was red and I was slowing to a stop anyway, so it was no big deal. Suddenly a horn sounded behind me, repeatedly. Looking in the rearview mirror I saw an irate woman gesticulating wildly and mouthing, "GO! GO!" I held out my hands in the universal "what the...?" gesture, but she only grew more irate. I waved the driver in anyway, then looked back again: more irate still! The 'F' word was clearly discernible on her lips this time, and her wild gesticulations had grown even more exaggerated.

Traffic was starting to move by this time, but I turned around to mouth "chill out" a couple of times. More 'F' words followed. Once we were moving she aggressively passed me on the left and cut in front of me at the earliest opportunity, nearly clipping a bus that was stopped at the bus stop just past 125th. She turned right a couple blocks later. All that to gain two car-lengths!

If I ever needed a reminder why I hate car-commuting, I got it that morning. The rat-race mentality that kicks in whenever you can't go where you want, when you want, is blissfully absent on my bike commute. A bicycle, 99% of the time, can go where it wants, when it wants. Sure, we have to stop for red lights (and yes, I do), but rarely is our mobility hampered by the behavior of other commuters. Bike-riding, simply put, fits the human psyche better than car-commuting.

Bike Safety, Part II

2011-08-27T21:54:00.000-07:00

In a previous post I made an attempt to quantify how safe bicycle commuting was for me, personally. I concluded that for my specific situation it was probably safer than driving, and that the lifetime risk of death was at an acceptable level.

Since then, the north end of the Burke-Gilman trail has been closed for much-needed repairs and improvements, and the lack of a good detour has forced me out onto the streets for a shorter but more harrowing commute down the Interurban corridor. After two months of deprivation I have a renewed appreciation of how great an asset the Burke-Gilman trail is. And an incident this week underscored just how hazardous it is when bicycles and cars share the same pavement.

The Interurban trail is a work in progress. I get on just north of 185th and enjoy uninterrupted (if less than ideal) trail riding until 145th. Then it's onto the streets to 130th, back onto a dedicated trail, and then back to the streets for good at 110th and Fremont. This is where things get dicey.

Fremont Avenue north of Woodland Park is a low-traffic street, presumably good for bicycling. The problem is that every minor intersection is uncontrolled, with a small central barrier serving to slow traffic and suggesting (but hardly enforcing) a roundabout pattern of traffic flow. Bicycles can cruise straight through - but they shouldn't. In most cases visibility down cross-streets is poor until you get really close to the intersection, so the only way to ride safely is to cross at low speed. For southbound riders the geography is uniformly downhill from 105th through 85th, so this means continual braking.

On Thursday this week a young woman passed me at 105th. Concerned, I watched her slow down as she approached 104th, so I stopped worrying. Six blocks later I found her on the ground, in the middle of the street, with a car stopped by the central barrier and a concerned couple ministering to her needs. I didn't see the accident, which evidently was mercifully minor, but it was clear what had happened. My unease with the route increased.

South of 85th I head east to Greenwood, where I share the bike lane with buses and opening car doors. It concludes with an exhilarating, high-speed bomb down Fremont Avenue south of Woodland Park where the safest course of action is to share the lane with traffic, which in general is aware of and quite tolerant of us numerous bicyclists.

I haven't tried to recalculate my odds of survival over the next 10-20 years, since this is a temporary situation, but in just two months it has become abundantly clear that my ride is far less safe now. Unfortunately, just about the time the Burke-Gilman trail is scheduled to reopen my company will be moving its office out of Fremont to the International district, way down on the south end of downtown. I haven't tried to work out the best route there yet, but I really needn't bother: there's no question it will be much worse, worse even than my current commute.

Two months of street riding have me all but convinced that this is no way to spend two hours of every weekday. Sad though it is, I think my bike-commuting days may be numbered. My tentative plan now is to bike six miles to Edmonds and take the Sounder train downtown when the weather is good, and walk a mile and take a Community Transit express bus when it isn't. I'll have to get in my biking some other way.

I've worked my way through the Kübler-Ross stages of grief scale (though I think I skipped stage 3, Bargaining - just who would I bargain with?) and have now arrived at stage 5, Acceptance. I'm already finding upsides: less joint pain, more time to read, less total commute time. But I know I'll have to find some other way to stay in shape, and I'd like that to involve bicycling in some manner. Weekend rides with my wife to Redmond for breakfast? The occasional bike tour? Maybe I'll even finally sign up for one of the Cascade Bicycle Club rides I read about in their monthly newsletter.

Whatever happens, 2011 will go down as a Year of Change: a daughter married off, our son heading off to college leaving us in an empty nest, a historic Scandinavian tour...and the end of a decade of bicycle commuting.

Biking in Copenhagen

2011-08-10T21:28:00.000-07:00

Copenhagen, the most bicycle-friendly city in the world - and I got to see it this summer.

Within five minutes of arriving it was clear that this city was like none other I'd seen. Check out the bikes parked in front of the train station:

A block away I encountered a full-width lane dedicated for bicycles, physically separated from car traffic. Turns out the whole city is like that - and the lanes are packed.

Sounds great, doesn't it? But if you picked up a Seattle biker and dropped him in the middle of Copenhagen the response might not be as euphoric as you'd think.

Did I mention the bike lanes are packed? That means that a substantial portion of the population (the city itself claims 35%) is commuting by bicycle. And it looks it - the bicyclists represent a true cross-section of humanity. High-heel wearing, cell-phone-toting commuters abound, sometimes texting while they pedal. They pile up in great crowds at stop lights.

I suspect a Seattle cyclist would be pulling his hair out in frustration if he thought he could make the same kind of time getting from point A to point B in Copenhagen as an equivalent trip would take in Seattle.

I floated this theory to a friend I met up with who had moved to Copenhagen a year ago. He rolled up to our rendezvous point by bicycle and deftly locked it to a stand with a one-handed flick, acting impressively native, I thought. He confirmed that it took him a while to adjust his expectations and adopt an "I'll get there when I get there" attitude.

The good thing is that everyone seems to have adopted this attitude. I saw no evidence of the short tempers and aggressive weaving I would have expected (and have at rare times experienced) in such a crowded field of cyclists. Somehow, despite the crowding, the Danes have avoided creating a bicycle rat race.

This gives me hope that such a fate can be avoided in Seattle, too, as bicycle usage rises and our routes get crowded with ordinary people (i.e. not Racers and Fitness Geeks). Let it be so.

A Dose of Sanity

2011-04-10T10:01:00.000-07:00

With some trepidation, I checked out the details of the Burke Gilman Trail capital improvement project set to begin construction next month. The project summary says all the right things: twelve-foot-wide asphalt surface, a gravel side path, improved sight distances. The descriptors that I wasn't sure how to interpret were "improved intersection and crossing treatments" and "new signage."

As a resident of Lake Forest Park I've long suffered the ignominy of residing in one of the most backward-looking communities of the trail system. Six stop signs dot a half-mile section of the trail between 147th and about 155th, some of them protecting nothing more than driveways. 1300 - 2200 bicycles per day are expected to stop for a dozen or two cars per day? Insanity! Welcome to Lake Forest Park.

King County has long wanted to bring the LFP section of the trail into conformance with the rest of it, but has been strenuously resisted. In 2006, after lengthy discussions and debates with residents, the Lake Forest Park city council passed Ordinance 951, which attempted to regulate the section of the Burke-Gilman trail that passes through the city as a "conditional-use" trail, subject to restrictive local regulations such as:

A speed limit of 10 mph (the trail standard is 15 mph)
Yield or stop signs for bike traffic at street crossings, even if the crossings were no more than driveways
Setback standards from adjacent property, even if that meant narrow trails and poor sight distances

To legal arguments that the Burke-Gilman trail was an "essential public facility," giving it enhanced standing over purely local pathways, the council gave a collective shrug. It was as if the city of Lake Forest Park decided to take control of a section of Interstate 5 and impose a 40-mph speed limit, traffic signals, and lane restrictions.

I participated in a public hearing prior to its passing, in which roughly three-quarters of the public comments were vehemently against the ordinance. Nearly everyone who spoke in favor of the ordinance resided along the trail and presented classic NIMBY arguments. A lawyer assured the council that the ordinance would be challenged and almost certainly overturned (it was); a traffic expert pointed out that the proposed signage was contrary to common practice and common sense. Nevertheless the council (one of whose members actually lives adjacent to the trail) passed the resolution.

Shortly after its passing, the Cascade Bicycle Club joined King County in challenging the ordinance, and in 2007 it was overturned by the Central Puget Sound Growth Management Hearings Board. King County subsequently embarked on the improvement project, and four years later they're ready to break ground.

So what about the "improved intersection and crossing treatments" and "new signage"? The future state is specified in great detail in the project documents, and after looking them over in detail I can report that the future is bright, indeed:

All trail-facing stop signs will be removed from 147th through 165th (I hadn't dared hope for 165th), to be replaced by "Look" warning signs.
All roads and driveways crossing the trail from 147th through 165th will have stop signs and improved visibility of the trail.

Score one for common sense!

Now if someone could just help Shoreline out a little...

Bright (bike) lights, big city

2011-01-21T21:53:00.000-08:00

The Burke-Gilman trail is poorly-lit north of the University of Washington campus, necessitating the use of headlights for night-time travel. This has resulted in a biking etiquette challenge: how best to enhance your own vision without blinding others?

The brightest bicycle lights out there are blinding indeed. When faced with an oncoming 1000-lumen mini-star aimed straight at my forehead I can't see the trail, the pedestrians, or the hand in front of my face unless—well, unless I put my hand in front of my face for shielding. And the problem with a bike trail is that it's difficult to illuminate that narrow ribbon of pavement in front of you without also illuminating the oncoming traffic.

Biker behavior varies. North of the UW, most riders sporting bright headlights will shade them as they approach each other, though it's hardly universal. But on the southern stretch between Fremont and the UW the ambient lighting is bright enough that oncoming headlights aren't totally blinding, and no one bothers to shade.

As usual in the biking culture, aberrant behavior invites vocal criticism. I'm no exception, having informed a great many passing riders that their light was luminous to the point of discomfort, and would they mind ever so much shading it upon subsequent encounters. Actually, my wording might have been somewhat more terse. Although I try myself to err on the side of shading more than I need to, I've also been occasionally chastised for my 200-lumen Cygolite Hi-Flux LED headlight, which is aimed, I admit, somewhat higher than necessary (I'll explain why later).

A recent Cascade Bicycle Club blog by Miss Panniers gives some bicycle lighting guidelines that are eminently reasonable, though the online version doesn't discuss whether to shade or not to shade, as the print version did. The print version claimed that if your light is properly oriented to illuminate the surface in front of you, it will not be blinding to oncoming traffic. Since shading my light is no fun and even a little dangerous (try hitting a pothole while holding on to the handlebar with just one hand), I thought I'd put that assertion to the test.

I turned off all outside lights this evening and parked my bike such that its headlight was aimed straight down my driveway. Then I walked down the driveway and turned and looked, and it was, in fact, rather blinding. I then readjusted the light to point more downwards, walked back out, and the light seemed less blinding.

All well and good, but that was kind of unsatisfying. How much less blinding was it? I needed some way to measure. So I set up a camera on a tripod and took some pictures (f2.4, 1 second exposure). The camera was about 35 feet away from the headlight. Here are the results:

Glare when the light is aimed straight ahead

Glare when the light is aimed at the pavement about 20 feet in front

Glare when the light is aimed at the pavement about 12 feet in front

Clearly there's a massive difference between aiming the light straight ahead (top picture) and aiming it downwards. There's less of a difference between the two downwards-facing cases, although aiming the light at a spot 12 feet in front is noticeably better than aiming it 20 feet in front.

I don't know where I originally had the light aimed (I neglected to measure it before I started fiddling with it), but it was closer to 20 feet than 12, and probably even farther out than that. The reason I had it aimed so far out was that the first part of my commute is a rapid sprint down steep, dark Perkins Way in Lake Forest Park on which I effortlessly achieve speeds of 25-30 mph. A light aimed 12 feet in front of me would give me all of 0.27 seconds to react to upcoming potholes, downed branches, and crossing squirrels and raccoons (all of which I've seen). That's simply not enough time. I need at least 25-30 feet of warning.

This raises a dilemma. I want to be a good bicycling citizen; but I also want to be safe. Neither re-aiming my light to 12 feet nor shading my light and riding one-handed are safe for my particular commute. A better option would be to have a way to click from one setting to another, but my light doesn't offer that. Another possibility would be to build some kind of slideable shade; I may try that (though my mechanical abilities are nothing to shout about).

In the meantime, I'm keeping my light fastened loosely enough that I can manually re-aim as needed. I'll try aiming it outwards while I sail down Perkins, and then aiming it downwards once I get on the trail. If it turns out I can get away without shading my light, then I'll look for a more permanent solution. However it turns out, I have no doubt my friendly fellow-commuters will let me know how well it's working.

Increasing rudeness on the trail

2010-12-09T20:49:00.000-08:00

As I've posted before, one reason I love bike commuting is to escape the rat-race mentality. The ability to go where you want, at the speed you want, without being hampered by heavy traffic, leads to a calmer ethos on the bike trail than you find in a car at rush-hour. But perhaps bike commuters are beginning to pay the price of their own success. As more of us take to our bikes, tensions inevitably will rise.

I had two experiences within a week of each other that lead me to believe we are beginning to see a transition. In the first, I was approaching 15th Avenue NE in the U District from the east. There's no traffic light there, but there is a stop sign, so I always do a "biker's stop" before crossing, meaning that I slow down enough that I could stop cold if I had to, and then assess the situation as I approach the street. In this case there was another biker in front of me who came to a complete stop, so I moved left to pass, checked the traffic, and saw that the only approaching vehicle was a shuttle bus coming from the south. Since I could easily cross before it got near I accelerated across the street and settled back into my ride.

A block or so later the biker who had stopped caught up with me and started yelling. From her perspective it appeared that I had simply powered through the stop sign, making me one of the bad guys giving bicyclists a bad name. I defended my actions (in the heat of the moment I claimed to have actually stopped, whereas the truth was that I had merely slowed down), but of course there was no agreement. It ate at me for awhile, and then I put it aside as an unfortunate misunderstanding.

A few days later I was approaching 65th from the north, slowed to a crawl, and then proceeded when the lone approaching vehicle slowed and was apparently waiting for me. As I crossed I waved, as I always do, but when I got across the street I heard a string of invective from the driver. Evidently I had misunderstood his intentions. This incident disturbed me even more than the prior one, because it made me wonder whether in fact I was as much in the "good guys" camp as I had thought. Could it be I was actually one of the aggressive bicyclists that everyone hates?

These two incidents have made me change my behavior. Although I had considered myself one of the more conservative riders on the trail, I have become even more conservative. But after much reflection I have come to the conclusion that I really am, and always have been, one of the "good guys." The fact that I'm encountering more conflict recently is, I believe, due to the increasing tension that increasing numbers of bicyclists causes. Drivers have had more negative experiences with bikes, and are therefore quicker to lose their cool. Other bikers, stung by bikers' increasingly bad rep, are quicker to judge their fellow commuters. It all leads to greater tension, and the beginnings of the rat-race mentality I so much want to escape.

I think we've reached an inflection point. Seattle has recently been named one of the most bike-friendly cities in the nation, but we're still nowhere near where some European cities are. We're moving in the right direction, and we have recently crossed a threshold where car drivers encounter bikes with such regularity that it's no longer just the odd circumstance when a road is shared by both cars and bikes, it's the norm. But we don't yet have a good enough network of trails and bike-only lanes to bring some order to the process.

As a hopeless optimist, I see all this as generally a good thing. More bikes is better, and though the inevitable conflict it engenders is unpleasant, the future is bright. Let's see if we can all keep this perspective. And if you happen to see agressive behavior by a biker with a big black trunk sporting an "I brake for lemonade" bumper sticker, give him the benefit of the doubt. He's doing the best he can.

How safe is bike-commuting?

2010-05-20T10:19:00.000-07:00

There are 1.25 fatalities for every 100,000,000 miles driven in a car. That doesn't seem like much, but if you travel 20,000 miles per year for 50 years it works out to a better than 1% chance that you will die in a car crash.

The statistics for bicycling are less complete, but such as they are they suggest that the rate per mile is about ten times as high compared to driving. To keep calculations simple let's just call it 10 fatalities per 100,000,000 miles.

Call me chicken, but this is alarming. Applying the statistics directly to my own situation, I ride upwards of 5,000 miles per year, giving me odds of 1:20,000 of dying this year while biking. Over a 20-year career that's a one-in-a-thousand chance of getting killed. Compare this to other risky activities:

Skydiving (per jump): 1:100,000
Killed by lightning (lifetime): 1:100,000
Plane crash (per trip): 1:1,000,000

The EPA, when assessing the risk of pollution levels, typically sets one in a million as unacceptably high. I'm comfortable with a one-in-a million risk; one in a thousand, not so much.

So how can I go about mitigating this risk? Quite a lot, I believe. What I see on the road convinces me that there is a lot of opportunity for bicyclists to improve their own chance for survival. To be honest, I'm astonished at the foolhardiness of many bikers. Here is just a small sample of behavior I've seen:

Crossing a busy intersection without checking whether car traffic is aware of you. I actually saw someone get hit crossing 65th this way, and I've seen several close calls on Stone Way. How hard is it to look left and right?
This one's similar: going straight through an intersection without looking for oncoming left-turners, or right-turners coming up behind you. At least one recent fatality in Seattle was caused by this situation. It's not much comfort to claim that the car was at fault.
Riding on unsuitable roads, such as Aurora Avenue North (which also happened to be the location of the above-mentioned fatality).
Riding at night in dark clothing with no lights. As a car driver with aging eyesight, I can assure you this renders you practically invisible.

I maintain that simply by taking common-sense precautions, the risk of accident can be dropped substantially. Statistics back this up. For example, one blogger has assembled data showing that young, inexperienced cyclists incur accidents at greater than ten times the rate of experienced cyclists.

But even experienced cyclists take risks that I myself avoid, so I believe in my case the risk is lower still. I know I've annoyed many a bicyclist with my cautious riding on the Burke-Gilman trail. Because of poor visibility I slow nearly to a stop at 70th and 65th to make sure no one's coming; I won't cross in front of a car until I make eye contact with the driver and have been given a clear signal to cross, particularly at high-traffic crossings like Blakely.

Recently I've been looking for the best route between Fremont and the Interbay Golf Course on Magnolia. My first attempt took me over an unacceptably steep hill. On my second attempt I tried a route that crossed the Ballard bridge, taking me within a few blocks of my destination, only to find that the pedestrian walkway on the other side didn't continue along 15th NW. My only options were to follow the safe route away from my destination, or to ride on the street. One look at the street convinced me to bail. I ended up taking a 15-minute detour just to avoid the traffic. Finally on my third try I found a suitable route that was pleasant, direct, and safe.

I have the added advantage that nearly 90% of my commute trip is along the Burke-Gilman trail, away from auto traffic entirely except for the street crossings. Cautious riding, experience, and a favorable route combine to reduce my personal risk to perhaps as low as 1:100,000 lifetime, I estimate.

That's still not one in a million, but it's almost certainly lower than the risk I would incur driving to work instead. Yet one more reason to ride!

How much does it REALLY rain in Seattle?

2010-02-27T21:23:00.000-08:00

For twelve months now (March 2009 through February 2010) I've been keeping track of weather conditions for my bike commute. I have been telling everyone for years that I really don't get rained on that often, even in the winter - and now I have the stats to prove it.

First some basic definitions. I decided to code every commute on the following scale:

DRY - Totally dry commute
MISTY - Encountered some mist or very light rain, but not enough to get wet.
LIGHT RAIN - Encountered light to moderate rain, enough to have to hang up my bike clothes to dry, but not a soaking rain.
HEAVY RAIN - Got as wet as you can get - had to wring out my socks after arrival.
UNRIDEABLE - Weather looked so icky I wimped out and took alternate transportation
N/A - Didn't bike, but for reasons unrelated to the weather.

There were a total of 261 work days last year for a total of 522 potential commutes. 192 of those fell into the "N/A" category, meaning I was either on vacation, worked from home, or commuted some other way for reasons unrelated to the weather.

Here's a chart showing my commuting statistics by month:

The first thing that should be obvious is that most of the chart is green - 76% of my commutes were completely dry, and another 9% had only a little misty rain. Even in the rainiest months over half of my commutes were dry. How can that be, when Seattle gets rain 138 days/year? The answer is that on rainy days it usually doesn't rain ALL day. Often I get lucky and stay dry even on days that get a lot of rain.

Here's another chart that illustrates what I mean:

The column on the left shows commuting statistics on days that had measurable rainfall. 67% of those commutes were DRY or MISTY, meaning I only got wet one-third of the time. On days that had no measurable rainfall, of course, nearly every commute was dry. The one day that I wimped out was because of cold, not precipitation. (We had that stretch of weather in the teens in December).

This still doesn't tell the whole story. Suppose I look outside my window in the morning and see that it isn't raining, and furthermore I check the radar and can see that it won't rain for at least another hour, so I'm guaranteed a dry morning commute. What is the probability that my evening commute will also be dry?

According to my year's worth of statistics, the answer is 91%. There were 139 morning commutes coded as DRY or MISTY; 126 of them were followed by evening commutes coded as DRY or MISTY. On only 13 occasions was a dry morning commute followed by a rainy evening commute.

Is Seattle cloudy a lot? Yes. Does a light, misty rain fall frequently? Also yes. But the statistics prove that you won't get very wet very often. So get out there and ride!

Interurban Trail - Where Are You?

2009-12-14T14:19:00.000-08:00

On a recent day off from work my wife and I decided to check out the Interurban Trail north of Seattle. According to maps obtainable here, the trail runs continuously from just north of Lake Ballinger in Mountlake Terrace all the way up to Everett. Sounded like fun.

We easily found the south end of the trail and jumped on. It took us through some pretty woodsy areas and past the outdoor batting cages of Funtasia on 220th. Then, after only a mile or so, it abruptly ended on 212th. No signs were posted anywhere suggesting where we should go next.

So we worked our way north on side streets, hoping to intercept the trail again at some point. Unfortunately I hadn't brought a map with me, so it was pure guesswork, and by lunch time we still hadn't found it.

After lunch we headed back by a different route and happened across a different section of the trail purely by accident. We hopped on, and in less than a mile it too ended, again with no signage of any kind. But we recognized where we were, and this time we were able to navigate along the streets (two left turns and then a right) to the first segment of the trail we had ridden.

Alright, I know this Interurban Trail is still a work in progress, but does no one in Lynnwood have any concept of helpful signage? If not, I suggest you take an educational tour of the Burke-Gilman trail and note all the helpful signs posted along the way.

We hope to give it another try some time this month, and this time I'll take a map with me. It feels a little like leaving civilization and embarking on a quest, like Lewis and Clark's search for a route to the Pacific. I'll make sure to have a camera along to record our adventure. Wish us luck!

Why the Zig-Zag Route?

2009-08-17T20:48:00.000-07:00

A new section of the Interurban trail opened about two years ago, offering a welcome overpass over the busy intersection of Aurora and 155th, and another one over Aurora itself just a long block to the north. For a north-south commuter like me this is a great addition to the trail system. In 1993 I used to commute this route without any trails, and the best option at the time was to ride right on Aurora between 155th and 145th. Ah, to be young and foolish!

So why am I getting ready to complain? Am I never satisfied?

Here's why: to cover the short stretch from the southwest corner of 155th and Aurora to the east side of Aurora at 157th, a biker must negotiate a tight 180° off-ramp that sends you away from where you want to go, around a blind corner at the base of the bridge to head back north again, to a stop sign that doesn't seem to serve any useful purpose (since changed to a yield sign, through a fit of common sense), back up a tight 315° on-ramp, and finally down a more rational north-facing ramp back to street level.

Walkers can shorten the trip by using stairs, but bikes (and wheelchairs) have to follow this tortuous route. I have to ask: why all the zig-zags?I can think of a couple reasons, both of them cynical:

The powers that be do not want bikes traveling at a high rate of speed, so obstructions were put there intentionally. There is a precedent for this: the Burke-Gilman trail through Lake Forest Park was "unstraightened" to slow bikes down as they approached driveway crossings. This is a sin that appears on its way to being corrected; why do more of the same in Shoreline?
The powers that be are clueless about what makes a suitable bike trail.

Although the situation at 155th and Aurora seems almost intentionally obstructionist, I'm leaning toward the second explanation, chiefly based on evidence from the very same trail just a mile farther north. Between 175th and 182nd the trail makes its way along a wide grassy expanse between Aurora to the west and Midvale to the east. Though the two roads are perfectly straight along this stretch, the trail meanders left and right between the two, no doubt for obscure aesthetic reasons. Just before 182nd it lurches to the right towards Midvale, lurches left across 182nd, followed immediately by 90°, 135°, and 45° turns before heading north again. What the...?

It looks for all the world like someone penned in a gracefully meandering trail to serve as counterpoint to the surrounding Cartesian asphalt grid, then smacked their head at 182nd and said, "Whoa, there, we can't cross here next to Aurora, it's too dangerous! Better head over to Midvale!" The result just seems too lame to be diabolical; it must be incompetence.

So as a public service, I hereby offer my expertise as a dedicated bicycle commuter to the poor clueless schmucks trying to spend the trail dollars we've approved. I have a couple principles that, if followed, will make life better for everyone:

Straighter is better. Meandering trails are great for hikes in the country; for commutes through the city they just mean added distance and reduced speed.

Wider is better, too. Pedestrians are safer, collisions are reduced, and bikers are happier.

When bike traffic exceeds car traffic at an intersection, aim the stop signs toward the cars, not the bikes.

Sectioned concrete is great for sidewalks, but it's terrible for bike trails. Use asphalt, please.

In many places bikes are still not seen as real vehicles, doing real business. Eventually the word will get out that there are large numbers of us for whom bike riding is a way of life, not a weekend diversion. Shoreline hasn't got the message yet, but the changes coming to the Burke-Gilman trail in Lake Forest Park give me hope that other places have. The future is on our side. Let's all do our best to make it come sooner rather than later.

Top Ten Things I want in my Next Bike

2009-06-10T21:05:00.001-07:00

It's bound to happen. I'm going to need a new bike. Putting 4500 miles a year on a bike takes a toll, and eventually the cost and trouble to keep the ever-deteriorating wreck in good working condition is going to exceed the cost and trouble of just replacing it. I'm four years into my latest commuter bike, a 2005 Specialized Crossroads, and it's holding up relatively well; but it's definitely well into middle age by now. The front fork shocks have frozen in place; one brake lever is crooked after my 16-year-old son accidentally rammed it into the lawnmower with a '74 beetle; the brakes shriek; mysterious rattles are appearing.

I purchased this bike without a great deal of research, and I've come to regret that decision. By not fully checking out its ergonomic suitability, I've consigned myself to chronically aching wrists and elbows. My next bike will be precisely the bike I want, scientifically fitted to my body dimensions and commuting habits. Although it's a year or two off yet, now's the time to figure out exactly what it is I value in a bike. For no particularly good reason, I've decided to list my desires in the form of a top ten list. Let's get started...

10. Economical

Since this is a count-down, the fact that "Economical" heads the list means that it's the least important attribute. At this time in my life I have a bit of disposable income, and I'm more willing to pay for and less willing to compromise on features that are important to me. That said, we're still talking low thousands here, not top-of-the-line, diamond-encrusted opulence. I'm all about practicality, not sparkle.

9. Performance

Performance is a nice-to-have, but it will be the first thing I compromise on if it means getting items 1-8. I'm not about to suddenly develop an interest in racing that was completely absent in my first 49 years of life.

8. Comfort

This is a hard one to define, actually. You'll notice I've got "Ergonomic" higher in the list as a separate item. The distinction I see is that a comfortable ride may not necessarily be the one that's best for my body over hundreds of hours of riding. It's certainly more comfortable to ride upright, but my experience has been that my spine must be in a horizontalish, suspended position, rather than an upright, compressed position, or I'll get back pains.

But within the constraints of an ergonomic position, I want a comfortable bike. How about a nice seat that doesn't iron permanent wrinkles in my bum? Cushioned handlebars, shock absorbers — bring 'em on!

7. Minimal Maintenance

I've written before about the high monetary cost of maintenance. Of equal concern to me is the high time cost. Every two weeks (about every 200 miles) I clean and oil my chain. This is a sort of middle-of-the-road position — I know some people to do it after every ride! — but for the kind of riding I do every two weeks seems sufficient. Every three months I replace my chain. Brakes need readjusting, wheels need truing, and cables stretch, requiring adjustments in gearing; these things I leave to the professionals, whom I visit a couple times a year.

Contrast this to my car. Aside from the need to keep feeding it gas, it pretty much just runs. Once a year I get a major tuneup and replace the synthetic oil, and it's good for 10,000 more miles. There's no reason a bike can't be equally reliable — for the right cost, of course.

Here's where my desires start to diverge pretty far from your standard off-the-shelf bike. The only good way to avoid frequent chain maintenance is to get rid of the chain, or at least enclose it to protect it from the elements. I think my next bike will have to have one of these features.

6. Pimpability

I attach quite a lot of peripherals to my bike:

a comp
a rack
a waterproof, lockable, removable trunk
a bell
a kickstand
fenders (decent ones, not those ridiculous 1-point-of-attachment toys)
a water bottle
strong headlight with a 6-hour battery
taillight
Kryptonite lock
toolkit

Not every bike is amenable to taking so many attachments. It was pretty tricky keeping my rear rack attachment from interfering with the disc brakes on my current bike. So my next bike will have to be able to accept all of the above attachments without undue hardship.

5. Reliability

This is similar to Minimal Maintenance, but on a shorter time scale. When I leave in the morning, I want to be assured (as much as possible) that I will arrive at my destination without a breakdown. This means no flat tires, no broken chains, no broken spokes, no snapped cables. After replacing the inferior rear wheel on my Specialized and installing flat-resistant tires, my current bike has been quite reliable. I can only remember two incidents in four years that cut short my commute. One was a broken shifter that would let me shift to a higher gear but not back to a lower gear (no way I could climb the final hill to my house!), and one was a flat tire that went unnoticed for so long that I totally destroyed the sidewall, making tube replacement impossible.

4. Ruggedness

This is similar to reliability, but is more related to the load I put on it. I tend to carry a lot of stuff with me when I commute: a change of clothes, my lunch, a notebook, whatever book(s) I'm currently reading, my medicine kit, etc. This adds up to enough weight that a normal aluminum rack won't stand up to the strain. After snapping three or four $40 aluminum racks I finally bought a hefty $100 stainless steel rack from Germany (rated at 100+ pounds) that can handle the abuse I give it. My bike needs to be made of similar stuff.

I've had skinny-tired racers that go out of true if you ride over too large a pebble; I need something that doesn't mind if I ride off (or onto) a curb, or hit a pothole full-tilt with a 30-pound load.

I want dray horse that just works day after day, not a temperamental thoroughbred that can race like the wind but whose leg is apt to snap at any moment.

3. Ergonomic

Now we're getting to the really important stuff. I'm getting tired of sore wrists and elbows, and I think it can be fixed if I get a bike better fitted to my riding habits. (Of course, I might just be getting old, in which case there's nothing I can do about it. But it's worth a try).

I have never had a bike fitting, but I'll be getting one for my next bike. I hope they know what they're doing...

2. Safety

You might think that safety is more a matter of riding habits than a characteristic of a bike, and you may be right, but that's not the whole story. I've toyed with the idea of getting toe clips, but this trades off safety for performance. (Don't try to tell me toe clips are just as safe once you get used to them. They just aren't. Admit it, you know it's true). Since Safety is #2 and Performance is way back at #9, toe clips lose out. I want to be free to jump clear of my bike whenever I want and as quickly as I can.

This also plays into the decision about whether to go for an incumbent-style bike. It seems like a neat idea, and Ergonomic is way up at #3, but I'm worried that a low-slung rider is less visible on a city street that an upright one. Let me know if you think I'm wrong about this, but it seems logical.

1. Practical in the Rain

Since I ride in all weather conditions except snow, I need a bike that can handle wet Seattle winters. Most bikes have all their mechanical bits right out there in the weather, making them subject to rust, grit buildup, and water damage. An automobile, by contrast, protects all the sensitive stuff inside a weather-proof cocoon. What's wrong with doing the same thing for a bike?

I've touched on this already, but chain and gear maintenance are some of the most onerous things about regular bike commuting. What if you put all that stuff inside a cocoon? There are a few types of bikes out there now that either enclose the chain in a weather-resistant housing, or do away with it altogether with a direct-drive mechanism. Gearing can also be enclosed in a hub like the 3-speeds of old. I wish there were a greater variety and a longer history on these innovations so I could be more confident of their long-term durability, but I must say that they attract my attention strongly. I may have to experiment with one on my next purchase.

So where does this leave me? I don't have a particular bike in mind yet, but I'm certainly open to suggestions.

Spare Time

2009-04-04T19:32:00.000-07:00

Commuting by bike takes time. It takes me two hours and fifteen minutes to get to work from the time I wake up. So to be at work at 8:00, I have to wake up at 5:45. If I were to drive I could sleep until 6:30 and on most days still get to work by 8:00. Multiply this difference by two and it amounts to an hour and a half of lost time every work day. Ouch!

Time is a precious commodity for most people who have both a job and a family, and I'm no exception. I can't count how many books I could have read or projects I could have accomplished if only there were more hours in a day. As my kids have matured I've begun to experience more free time, but it still isn't enough. How can I justify losing an hour and a half every day of the week just so I can ride my bike?

One justification could be that I'm in better shape because of it, so I feel better and have more energy, so it's not really that much time, blah, blah, blah. While there's some truth in that, it's far too fuzzy an analysis for my taste. Who's to say I couldn't come up with an equally good way to get exercise that doesn't take so much time? Like, say, join the Sound Mind & Body gym across the street and work out during lunch. Or do yoga while watching the 10:00 news.

Instead, I'm just going to start from the fact that I like bike commuting and I'm going to do it regardless, and then try to estimate the true cost in terms of free time, similar to the way I estimated the true financial cost of bike commuting. I maintain that I lose far less than an hour and a half, once all factors are taken into account.

I used to be a dedicated bus commuter when I worked in Bellevue and had a decent, transfer-free route to take. This was when the kids were small and free time at home was nearly non-existent. It got so I looked forward to the bus ride because then I finally got to sit down and work on whatever project I wanted to for nearly an hour, uninterrupted. I intentionally avoided getting to know my fellow commuters, the better to read books, study whatever my latest kick was, and basically have two hours of total self-indulgence. It kept me sane.

When I became a full-time bike commuter I had to give that up, and it was painful. Though the ride was still cathartic, I got less reading and studying done, and I missed it. If there had been a decent bus route I would probably still be primarily a bus rider, but there wasn't, so I'm stuck with the bike commute.

(Okay, so I'm not "stuck" with it. I could drive, but driving is simply not an option at this point. Just jumping back into the rat race once a week so I can join my coworkers after work for golf at Interbay feels yucky. I could also ride a van pool, but I find even that doesn't allow me to escape the stress of the commute, because my fellow riders seem to be obsessed with finding the best way to beat traffic every day. It's nothing like the anonymous, care-free bus commute I gave up).

Well, then. After a couple years I decided to start listening to the radio during my commute. I found a nice over-ear radio that doesn't interfere with the helmet, and started listening to NPR's Morning Edition and All Things Considered. Eventually I realized that I was getting all my need for news fulfilled, and didn't get much out of the daily paper anymore. So I reduced my newspaper-reading to a quick skim, or sometimes didn't read it at all. That's a half-hour saved.

Eventually the news got too depressing (starting late 2002 — you figure it out), and I decided two hours a day of this stuff was too much. Talk radio was out (how can anyone can stand to listen to that stuff?), and baseball wasn't on frequently enough. I started listening to music more. But I didn't really hit on the right solution until a year ago or so when I discovered audio books. Put them on an iPod and away you go!

In the space of a few months I had listened to Jules Verne's "The Master of the World," Chesterton's "The Man who was Thursday," Thoreau's "Walden", and Wodehouse's "My Man Jeeves," all of which are in the public domain and available for free from Librivox. OK, so the quality of the volunteer readers isn't uniformly excellent, but most of them aren't bad at all.

Later in the year I learned how to record streaming audio as an mp3 file using the excellent program Audio Hijack Pro (available only for Mac, sadly). I have it set up to automatically record A Prairie Home Companion from KUOW's streaming audio every Saturday from 3-5 p.m., and it takes just a minute to transfer it to my iPod. I've been adding the occasional podcast also — two shows I listen to regularly are This American Life and CBC Radio's The Vinyl Cafe.

As I've moved away from news and into podcasts and audio books, I find I'm reading the newspaper a little more frequently again, though it's not really equivalent. The newspaper is very similar in content and depth to what I read on Yahoo News at odd moments during the day. NPR gives me much deeper reporting. But in general I'm getting my weekly news fix partly during my commute and partly other ways, and still finding plenty of time for my podcasts and the occasional audio book.

So let's get scientific about this and compare the free-time cost of driving versus bike commuting. The bike commute takes about 15 hours/week and the car commute 7.5 hours/week. Here's how that time is spent:

Activity	Bike	Car
Preparation (changing clothes, etc.)	3:00	0:00
Listening to NPR/other news	4:00	6:30
Radio shows	3:30	0:00
Audio books	1:30	0:00
Music	1:00	1:00
Silence/thinking	2:00	0:00

These are rough estimates, and it varies widely week to week. But I think it's clear that I make good use of the time spent on my bike, and my "lost time" is really only the roughly three hours extra preparation per week it takes — rolling up my work clothes into a bundle, packing up my bike trunk, filling the water bottle, changing three times a day. (You'd think all that would take less than 3 hours, but the stats don't lie).

Now we can talk about whether the sacrifice is worth it. Three hours a week to stay in shape, feel better, get ten hours/week of biking in the fresh air (hey, I like to do this), escape the rat race — well, what do you think?

Trail Types

2009-03-28T17:21:00.001-07:00

When you ride the same route day after day, year after year, you start to notice patterns of behavior in your fellow travelers. I've been keeping a mental list of "trail types" for years, and I finally decided it's time to put some of these observations down in writing. Some types are comical, others irritating, and some are just plain weird. I hope you find this amusing.

The Regular (Pedestrian)

A Regular is a pedestrian who knows what's what on the trail. Regulars always walk in straight lines, usually on the right side of the trail; they never bunch up and block traffic; they generally move steadily and briskly. They usually are either alone or with a single companion.

Regular walkers recognize and greet us regular riders when we pass. Sometimes friendships are formed. I often see Suzie (not her real name) exchange hand-slaps with each of the Old Geezers (see below) as they ride past, and they sometimes stop to talk. The trail is a real, if mobile, community.

The Foghorn (Bike)

This one's a puzzle to me. You know how when cell phones first started getting popular it took users awhile to figure out that you didn't have to shout into one to be heard, regardless of how difficult a time you were having hearing? The cell phone shouter seems to be fading into the past, but his bike-riding cousin is alive and well. The Foghorn can be heard approaching from 200 yards away, gabbing constantly and LOUDLY to his companion(s). Here's a typical conversation:

FOGHORN: ...SO I WAS AT THE GYM WHEN GUNTHER TOLD ME ABOUT THE PARTY AT JOJO'S.

COMPANION: (inaudible reply)

FOGHORN: NO FOOLIN!? THAT'S WHAT I TOLD HIM TOO!

COMPANION: (barely audible mumble)

FOGHORN: OH, I KNOW, I KNOW! IT'S LIKE THAT TIME WHEN WE WERE...

and so on. It sounds like one side of a phone conversation until they get within a few feet, when I might catch a word or two from the companion before they pass.

This type is always a hard rider, which makes me wonder whether there's some physical connection between the leg muscles and the diaphragm that expels the words out forcefully during a hard workout. Or possibly the Foghorns are loud all the time; I'll never know since they disappear so fast.

The Old Geezers (Bike)

There's a group of retirement-age men who ride the trail every day from somewhere around Matthews beach up to Third Place Books in Lake Forest Park. I don't believe they ever miss a day, regardless of how nasty the weather is.

They're a class unto themselves, and a wonderful addition to the trail culture. They ride slowly, usually two-by-two, but are conscientious to make room for anyone who wants to pass. Quirky adornments add to the character of the group, like an amusing bell, or a little flag flying from a helmet.

I once told them I'd like to join their group when I retire. I was informed that would automatically make me president until I could find a newer member to pass the responsibility on to. Here's hoping they're still around when that day comes.

The Commuter (Bike)

This is my group, of course, so I'm probably not qualified to provide an unbiased description. I'm not so sure we commuters really have a whole lot of traits in common, though. One common trait is that we all generally have a waterproof way to transport our clothes. I have a hard plastic trunk, but Ortlieb panniers or packs are more common.

Commuters run the gamut from slow to fast. Some Commuters seem to also be Fitness Geeks or Racers (see below).

The Clueless (Pedestrian, usually)

The first really warm spring day brings out the Clueless in droves. They wander all over the trail or stride right down the middle, huddle in packs, dart unpredictably, and generally raise the danger level on the trail for everyone, especially themselves.

Another prime viewing time for the Clueless seeker is the first week of fall quarter at the UW. Clueless freshmen (particularly athletes, for some reason) have no idea what "shared use" means, and they show up in incredible numbers. They provide a valuable source of data for researching how long it takes to clue in. Next fall I hope to conduct some experiments, but from memory I'd say it generally takes about two weeks to convert them all to fine, upstanding members of the trail community. Here's a rough outline of their progress:

Day 1: Unresponsive to voice or bell; appear confused when they hear, "On your left."

Day 3: Look annoyed when you ask them to make room; but at least they notice you.

Day 5: Look resigned when you ask them to make room; start to walk in straighter lines near the edge of the trail.

Day 10: No longer plug the trail in packs; look over their shoulder before crossing.

The Newb (Bike, Pedestrian)

The Newb is clueless but enthusiastically interested in the "trail" experience. They smile at and greet everyone they pass, which is sort of nice but you just can't keep that up forever. Newb bikers make copious use of their new bell, often unintentionally frightening pedestrians by not signaling soon enough. They tend to weave back and forth, sometimes in cadence with the downstroke on their pedals. Be nice to them; they mean well.

The Fitness Geek (Bike)

The Fitness Geek is on a schedule, and woe to the biker or pedestrian who becomes an obstacle in his path. You can see the heart rate monitor strapped to his arm as he blows past, head down so he can keep track of the readouts on his comp. Sometimes they're on some kind of program with varying intensity levels, because I'll see them later, riding slowly and actually looking around a little.

The Racer (Bike)

This type is closely related to the fitness geek. He, too, is very goal-oriented, but the goal isn't related to heart rate or time, but to the destination. Anything that slows the Racer down is an intense irritant: traffic lights, Clueless pedestrians, even slower riders like myself.

A Racer is not thrilled about sharing the trail with you. You are tolerated only if you are conveniently off to the side and by yourself, so that he can pass without breaking stride.

Here's a diagnostic trait: when riding past Gasworks Park, a Racer eschews the official trail because of its sinuous path from road to sidewalk and back, and instead just rides on Northlake Way, a pot-holed two-lane road with no shoulder. I estimate they save at most two seconds by this maneuver. I haven't yet discovered the calculus by which they conclude that this is worth the risk.

The Quirks

This is just a catch-all category for the interesting unclassifiables I run into. You've got your power-assist bikers here, your unicyclists, your shopping cart ladies, your tai-chi practitioners. For a year or so I was seeing someone riding a hyper-tall bike — no idea where he came from or why. I used to see a woman regularly running the trail near 77th — backwards.

The trail is for everyone. Why not add your own quirky self to the mix? We'll all be the better for it.

The (Un)Reliability of Bikes

2009-02-26T21:15:00.000-08:00

In an earlier post I tallied up the maintenance cost of my bicycle, and concluded that it came to an average of $0.067/mile over the lifetime of the bike. In this post I'd like to address the question as to whether this is reasonable.

How much should one spend for maintenance? It turns out that in the engineering world there is an answer to this question. When I worked as a consulting engineer for the pulp & paper industry we used to estimate annual maintenance costs for any piece of major equipment at between two and five percent of the installed cost. So say you put in a shiny new oxygen delignification system for $40 million; you can expect to pay $800,000 - $2 million annually to keep that baby in top running form.

But much of the installed cost of major equipment is stuff that just sits there: big tanks with tons of expensive steel. What about something with moving parts, like a pump? One estimate for pump maintenance costs is $13-18 per horsepower per year. A typical installed cost for an industrial-scale 100 horsepower pump is around $60,000, based on EPA cost curves. Put these together and you have an annual maintenance cost factor of ... 2-3%. Hmm, pretty much the same.
OK, well maybe vehicles are just more complicated. Let's see what maintenance costs are for a car. In my earlier post I had determined that the cost of maintaining my 2003 Honda Accord was $0.042/mile. This was based on total maintenance cost of $2,086 over 5 years and total mileage of 50,000 miles. With a purchase price of $17,500, the annual maintenance as a percent of the purchase cost is 2.4%. I'm noticing a trend here!

OK, I won't keep you in suspense any longer. When I run the same calculation on my bike, I get 40.5%.

WHAT?? Can that be right? Let's double-check: $975 total maintenance costs in 3.4 years of operation, purchase cost of $707:

(975/3.4)/707 = 0.405

Yes, it's true: the maintenance cost of a bike is TEN TIMES as high as other moving machinery. This is such a stunning statistic that it's worth digging a bit into the details. Here is my complete list of bicycle maintenance costs, rounded to the nearest dollar:

8-29-05	Chain, fender	47
3-2-06	Chain, tuneup	86
5-26-06	Tuneup, new rear wheel	224
9-21-06	Chain, tuneup	98
3-15-07	Chain, disk brake, tuneup	128
4-30-07	Tube, tire	39
4-29-08	Chain, tuneup, rear cassette	224
5-8-08	Shifter	44
various	Chains & tubes	85

What can we conclude from this? Simply, that even supposedly "quality" bikes are the equivalent of Yugos.

This is actually a fairly apt comparison, not just another cheap shot at the Yugo. The Yugo was a perfectly functional car, so long as you rigorously maintained it. According to Wikipedia,

One critical issue specific to the Yugo was the need for regular replacement of the interference engine's timing belt — every 40,000 miles (64,000 km). In a non-interference engine, timing belt failure does not cause further damage to the engine. In an interference engine, however, timing belt failure disrupts synchronization between pistons and valves, causing them to smash into each other (hence the name interference engine), thus destroying the engine. Though this requirement was stressed in owners' manuals, it was too frequently overlooked by owners.

In the same way, a bicycle will slowly become non-functional (though not in such a catastrophic fashion as the Yugo) if not given regular maintenance. Where a car can go months between lubes, a commuter bike has to be lubed every few weeks. A car's tires last five years; a bike's last one or two. And on, and on, and on. This despite the fact that a bike is much simpler, mechanically, than a car.

But maybe that last point is part of the problem. There are many people who actually enjoy working on their bikes. A bike is simple enough that it doesn't take a shop computer to tune it up. I have several friends with a bicycle stand and a full complement of tools who do all their own maintenance.

I'm not like that.

Every hour I spend working on my bike is an hour lost from reading Cryptonomicon. This weekend I replaced the chain on my bike, only to discover that I had threaded it incorrectly and had to redo it. When I finally managed to unhook the special gold link, a piece of it fell off and disappeared. The next day I found it, rethreaded the chain, found I had done it incorrectly again, unhooked it a second time, and finally got it right on the third try. Say what you want about my mechanical skills — I will happily admit to it all — but I want an industrial-strength bike that just works.

Fortunately, there's a new movement afoot with just this aim in mind. As more and more of us take up bike commuting, our voices are beginning to be heard above the roar of the racers and mountain bikers. Bikes are being produced with chain guards and enclosed hubs that better keep road grit away from the chain. Some even do away with the chain altogether. Disc brakes are an incremental improvement, though they still require too-frequent adjustment. Self-sealing tubes and puncture-resistant tires are easy to find, so flat tires are quite a rarity for me now.

Dekra D-Drive Chainless bike

I'm looking forward to the day, maybe not far away, when I plop down good money for a truly industrial-strength commuter bike. Every six months or so I'll get a quick tune-up for $50, and that will be it for maintenance. Let's say that through superior design, materials, and workmanship the maintenance cost of a commuter bike is reduced to 5% of its purchase price. That implies my dream bike would cost $2,000, three times what I paid for my current bike. But it would be worth it. Simple economics shows that I'd get my money back after seven years. If a seven-year payback is good enough for the paper industry (and it was, when I worked in it), then it's good enough for me. And besides, I'll get more reading done.

Unwritten Rules of the Road

2009-02-04T19:26:00.000-08:00

My son has been learning to drive. It has been an education both for him and for me. For him, of course, everything is new, and he has been soaking up the rules of the road like a sponge. He has surprised me with a few things that you'd think I'd know by now. (For example, did you know that yield signs are not yellow, but are actually red and white? Blew my mind.).

But, as in any learning situation, there are rules that can be written down, and then there are rules that defy codification and can only be learned through experience. The example that came up with us recently occurred at a four-way stop. Here the written rules are clear:

First one to the stop sign gets to go first.
If it's a tie, the driver on the right gets to go first.

Three cars were approaching the stop. The first to arrive was the car directly across from us; we were second; and the car to our right was last (see diagram). So according to the

rules, we should have proceeded in the same order in which we arrived. But there was a twist: the first car, shown in green, was turning left in front of us, and the third car (yellow) was signaling a right turn.

So instead of waiting his turn, the yellow car started to go while the green car was still in front of us. My son got steaming mad (he is 16) and honked, incensed that the yellow car had gone out of turn. After he cooled down a bit I explained that it made more sense in this situation for the yellow car to go before us because he had freedom of movement while we were still blocked by the green car.

In other words, this case presented an exception to the written rules. Although the case of a four-way stop is probably small enough in scope that you could, if you wanted, write a comprehensive set of rules that covered every possible arrival sequence and turning pattern, it's more efficient to just lay out the main rules as guidelines, and learn the specifics in practice.

In biking, there are even fewer written rules than there are in driving. One rule is, "bicycles should follow the same traffic laws as cars." But in Seattle there is an explicit exception to this rule that gives bicyclists permission to ride on sidewalks, where cars are prohibited. And there are other exceptions that prohibit bikes (and pedestrians) from going onto freeways. These rules recognize the fact that bicycles are not exactly like cars, and they're not exactly like pedestrians. They are something in between.

Unfortunately, no one has ever really tried to write down what the rules should be, exactly, for bikes. The law, as far as I know (correct me if I'm wrong), has very few bike-specific rules. So once in awhile some misguided cop decides to start enforcing vehicle traffic laws on bikes, which most of the time make no sense. (A full defense of this statement would take another entire column. But anyone who has regularly ridden the infamous"many-driveways" portion of the Burke-Gilman trail in Lake Forest Park will understand how absurd it is to try to enforce the many stop-signs along that stretch).

I've been riding 4,000 miles a year for many years now, and through experience I have learned many of these unwritten rules. For example, when coming to a legitimate stop-sign such as the one on the Burke-Gilman trail at 65th (unlike the illegitimate ones in Lake Forest Park), the most reasonable thing to do is slow down enough that you could stop if you had to, and then either proceed, if there is no traffic, or, if there is approaching traffic, wait for a clear signal from drivers to either proceed or stop. Any variation from this rule only causes more problems.

Let me take one paragraph to defend this statement. First, let's say you, as a newbie biker, decide to follow traffic laws rigorously and come to a full stop every time. Now if a car happens to be approaching the crosswalk while you are slowing down, chances are it's going to slow down and wait for you; 75% of cars do just that. The driver's expectation is that you will proceed across with dispatch, causing him minimal delay. When you act contrary to his expectations, you increase his delay (and probably his aggravation). Furthermore, you will make him less likely to slow down next time he approaches the crosswalk, surprising the next biker to come along. When it comes to traffic flow, causing surprise is the worst thing you can do. Behaving in a predictable way is the best thing you can do. Only experience can teach you what the "expected" behavior is.

I'm completely comfortable with the ambiguity inherent in the rule, "do what's expected." But there are certain personality types that can't stand such fuzzy logic. (I think traffic cops are disproportionately of that type). All I can say is, get over it. This is life, and life is complicated. Stop acting like a sixteen-year-old.

Stop for Lemonade

2008-12-10T21:40:00.000-08:00

I brake for lemonade

That's a bumper sticker I have on my bicycle trunk; it's also a true statement. I have never, in recent memory, failed to stop at a trailside lemonade stand. I just can't get enough of that sticky, sour-sweet liquid goodness.

Actually, there's more to it than that. You may remember, if you were a trail-rider or just a follower of the local news, that in 2006 teenager Laura D'Asaro raised thousands of dollars selling lemonade on the Burke-Gilman trail just north of Matthews Beach, which went towards improving the local playground. I was a regular customer, and as the summer wore on she started calling me "trunk guy" because of the afore-mentioned bicycle trunk (sans the afore-mentioned bumper sticker, which came later). Besides getting a nice refreshment midway through my ride, my contributions were going towards a cause.

Then there are the young entrepreneurs that I feel good about supporting. It takes a certain level of initiative to put together a lemonade stand, and I want to reward that. Once there were two stands within a couple hundred feet of each other near the Ronald McDonald house on 40th. I stopped at both of them, had a couple of lemonades, and sloshed my way home.

But neither of these really get to the heart of the issue. I stop for lemonade because — well, because I can. If my life is too busy or my commute too rushed to take five minutes to enjoy a cup of lemonade, then my life is too busy, and my commute is too rushed. And that is not the way I want to live my life.

Some people ride the trail for exercise, decked out with heart rate monitors and whiz-bang computer gizmos that tell them exactly how much of a workout they're getting. I see them whizzing past, heads down, legs pumping, weaving around obstacles without slacking their pace (I plan to write a column at some point on trail types — these are the fitness junkies). Others are heads-down commuters on a schedule. I'm a commuter, yes, but I'm doing it to escape the rat race, not just participate in a different form of it. Stopping for lemonade is a way to prove to myself that I haven't back-slidden into commuter hell. The day I have to pass up a lemonade stand because I don't have the time is the day I need to take stock and figure out what needs to be changed. Lemonade stands are my personal canaries in a coal mine.

Sadly, there are precious few lemonade stands. Aside from the anomaly of 2006, when Laura's very reliable stand was a daily fixture, I doubt I stop more than half a dozen times in a typical year. What happened?

I'm trying hard not to use the phrase, "In our culture...," an overused subordinate clause that irritates me no end; as if everyone were some kind of anthropologist. But really, what's going on when a perfectly viable means means of earning spending money is not being taken advantage of? What else can it mean but that the kids that in former generations needed to earn cash are, today, just given everything they need by their doting parents?

Perhaps lemonade stands are coal-mine canaries in another sense. When they die, they are an early indicator of an unhealthy consumerism and materialism in a ... no, I won't use the word! Just end it there: unhealthy consumerism and materialism.

We've been hearing since the 1980's that consumer spending drives the economy, and that we're actually doing a good deed when we spend as much as we possibly can, because every dollar we spend cycles through the economy x number of times and increases the national wealth by a factor of ... yada, yada, yada. Evidence from the trail tells me that today's parents have taken that teaching so much to heart that their children no longer feel the need to work for their toys. Call me a fuddy-duddy, but I think that's a shame.

If this financial meltdown we're now in the middle of turns into a major recession or depression, things may change. When parents start scrimping and saving, and maybe even, perish the thought, skip one generation of Wii/XBox/PS, what will their children do for entertainment? Might they actually have to (gasp!) rustle up some spending money all on their own?

I've got my eye on the trailside lemonade indicator. I'll let you know.

Escaping the Rat Race

2008-12-07T21:51:00.000-08:00

My dream is to retire to a small town that doesn't have a rush hour, preferably one small enough that I won't even need a car to get around. Let's just call it Port Townsend, for sake of discussion. But until that glorious day arrives, I'm stuck in a big city with a big traffic problem that will almost certainly not be solved in my working lifetime. So I'll have to learn to make the best of what I've got.

For the most part, this is pretty easy to do. I have a great job, a house that suits me and my family well, good neighbors, a good community. Most of my shopping can be done within a two-mile radius of my house; my church is just a mile down the hill. But there are times when I have to venture further afield, and that's when the reality of Seattle's traffic problem becomes unavoidable.

Which brings me back to my job. I live in Lake Forest Park, and I work in Fremont. There is no good bus connection. On days when I do drive, I'm drawn unavoidably into what I call the rat-race mindset. I rage at drivers who accelerate too slowly or drive too slowly or cut in front of me or do anything to stymie my intentions. On those days when southbound Aurora backs up past the zoo I sit helplessly, knowing that any alternative route I might contemplate will only be slower and more frustrating.

I've gotten better at adopting a fatalistic equanimity in the face of the fates thrown my way by the capricious traffic gods, but it takes constant effort to maintain it and I frequently fail. Fortunately the Burke-Gilman trail offers a stress-free alternative that never fails to satisfy: bike commuting. I've been a regular bicycle commuter since 2001.

When I first started commuting by bike I carried my lunch and a change of clothes in saddle bags and just enjoyed the scenery. Eventually I grew so accustomed to the scenery that I needed some distraction, so I bought a radio that would fit with my helmet and started listening to NPR during the ride. Recently I've discovered the joys of listening to podcasts and audio books on an iPod while riding. But whatever I'm doing, one thing that I don't experience is the stress of the rat race. It simply is absent from the trail.

I've done some thinking about why this is. I believe the primary source of stress in traffic is an inability to be able to drive where you want, when you want. If you want to drive a steady 40 mph, it's stressful to be forced by heavy traffic or ill-timed red lights to slow down or stop. Some drivers react to this by driving aggressively, which according to some psychological studies is enhanced by the anonymity of the automobile. Rude behavior of others adds to the stress.

On the trail, by contrast, you can almost always get around obstructions — slow bikers, pedestrians, or roller-bladers (which for some inexplicable reason seem to have nearly disappeared from the trail this year). You may have to wait for a few seconds for an opening, but then you're through and biking where you want, when you want again. Stress-free.

There was only one occasion I can remember where the rat race intruded on the trail. As I approached the south University of Washington campus, I encountered a large group of charity riders. I mean large. The trail was backed up at the 15th Avenue traffic light so far that I had to wait through two red lights. I was stymied. The group was too large to pass, and they were slow. I felt the surge of adrenaline signaling increased stress levels caused by the inability to go where I wanted, when I wanted. I sucked it up and got through the U district eventually, but there were still hordes of trail rookies in front of me, blissfully unaware that trail etiquette called for them not to cluster in big groups that prevented us regulars from passing. I finally escaped down to Northlake Way and raced westward along the street, working off my frustration in a burst of speed much greater than my normal trail pace.

Once in awhile a stressed-out biker will tarnish the trail with a rat-race attitude, aggressively weaving through congested spots rather than waiting a few seconds for an opportune time to pass. The rarity of this occurrence makes me think it's likely a trail novice who hasn't yet learned that the Burke-Gilman isn't his private velodrome. I like to believe that the trail exerts a calming influence that will eventually win over the most hardened road-rager if given enough time.

But in case I'm wrong, let me end this column with a plea: please do not bring the rat race to the trail. The day may come when the traffic has increased to the point where congestion is a real problem, and then even the most zen-like of us will be back in the rat race. But let's not rush it. Let it develop in its own sweet time, and who knows, maybe Seattle will keep building new trails quickly enough to handle the increased traffic that we all expect, and we'll never have a bicycle rat race. We bikers could have our own little Port Townsend right here in the middle of the big city. Now that's something worth dreaming about.

The Cost of Bike Commuting

2008-11-27T20:44:00.000-08:00

When I tell people that I ride my bike to work, invariably their first response is, "Oh, think of all the money you're saving!" Although money isn't the primary reason I bike to work, I always smile and nod and say something like, 'Yes, I suppose I do.' But I've always wondered whether I'm really saving as much as everyone seems to think.

Actually, it's easy to show that I'm not saving anything. I have been recruited into a van pool, which I sometimes take. The cost is covered 100% by my company. So I could reduce my commuting cost to zero if I felt like walking the 1.3 miles to the van pool pickup every day. Even bike commuting can't compete with zero.

Unfair comparisons aside, what does bike commuting really cost compared to driving? I woke up feeling bad one morning and called in to work sick. Later in the morning I was feeling better, so I decided to settle this question once and for all. The true cost of riding a bike needs to take into account fuel (I eat more if I bike to work), maintenance (I'm no bike mechanic), and depreciation (I've worn out several bikes in my years as a bike commuter). This column is a summary of my findings.

I decided to compare bike commuting with driving our nice new (2003) Honda to work and parking for free in the neighborhood. This is kind of a best-case scenario, stacking all the odds in favor of the car. But it's a realistic scenario; I don't think I'd be able to stomach actually paying for parking in the company parking ramp, and some of my coworkers manage to find neighborhood parking every day, so that's most likely the choice I'd make. My wife probably wouldn't be happy being stuck driving the 1974 VW Beetle to all her appointments, but if I were to car commute I would be the primary driver of the family, so taking the Honda would make the most sense.

The most difficult calculation to make is fuel. Just how much more do I spend for food when I'm biking? From standard charts I determined that I expend about 1,000 calories a day biking the 28-mile round-trip to work. I know I eat a bigger breakfast when I commute (call it one extra bowl of cereal: 220 calories, $0.40), that I get a snack more often mid-morning (call it a piece of toast with butter and honey: 250 calories, free), and that I have a handful of dried fruit and crackers before I head home in the afternoon (270 calories, $0.50). Adding all that up comes to only 740 calories.

Since I'm not slowly wasting away to nothing, I guess I must eat a bigger dinner at home when I bike. I dug out a bunch of grocery bills from the recycle bin, added up a month's worth, and divided by the number of calories our family most likely consumes in a month. Result: $0.002 per calorie. Multiplying that by the remaining 260 calories comes to $0.52, resulting in a total daily operating cost of $1.42, or about $0.051/mile.

As I write this, gas is down to about $2/gallon. So driving a 35-mpg car costs about $0.057/mile. Not much more than biking!

Next is maintenance. As I mentioned already, I'm not much of a bike mechanic. I can change a flat tire, oil my chain, and even change my chain once in awhile (I try to change it every thousand miles), but I couldn't true a wheel or keep my disc brakes in adjustment if my life depended on it. So I have to take it into a shop several times a year to get it whipped back into working order. And eventually pretty much everything wears out. I've had to replace my rear wheel and drive train many times in my eight years of commuting. What does this cost?

Fortunately I keep all my receipts. It was a simple matter to add up all the costs on my bike since I bought it in May 2005. Result: $975. Divided by my total mileage over that time (14,500 miles) the average maintenance cost is $0.067/mile. Working the same calculation on our 2003 Honda resulted in a maintenance cost for the car of only $0.042/mile. The car wins!

It's not looking good for my bike commute. Only depreciation is left: will that be enough to rally it to victory? In short, yes: the capital cost of a bike is far less than that of a car, even when taking into account the fewer miles that a bike typically covers. Here are the details, taking straight-line depreciation based on how long my previous bike and my previous Honda lasted:

	Honda	Bike
Purchase cost	$17,500	$700
Expected life span	140,000 miles	20,000 miles
Cost per mile	$0.125	$0.035

The bike is much cheaper to purchase. That's really where the win is. So here's the summary:

	Honda	Bike
Operating cost	$0.057/mile	$0.051/mile
Maintenance	$0.042/mile	$0.067/mile
Depreciation	$0.125/mile	$0.035/mile
Total	$0.224/mile	$0.153/mile

Not exactly a slam-dunk for bike commuting, is it?

It's never been about the money for me. It's about the fresh air, the exercise, the escape from the rat race. It's nice to know I'm saving money, too — a little money — but I'd still be a bike commuter even if it came at a premium. So next time someone exclaims about how much money I must be saving, I've got the data to set them straight. But I probably won't. I'll just smile and nod.