Recently, I was riding to a friend’s house to do some bike part swapping. I was a riding the route I typically use to his house. I was nearly injured or killed by a driver on a cell phone because they some how thought the bike lane was also a right turn lane. I came…
Excuse me while I go scrape my jaw off the floor. General Motors, yes the enormous, global maker of the 4-wheeled, gas-powered vehicles we call cars, announced this week that it will begin offering a bike sharing program for its 19,000 or so employees at the 330-acre Warren Technical Center campus in Warren, Michigan. The…
In my haste and excitement of my first post, I neglected to introduce myself. My name is Kohl Martin and I am originally from St. Louis, MO. I have been in Tucson for about 3 years and this is an awesome bike community. I am also a musician. I play saxophone, flute, and I do…
I’ve been doing a lot of driving lately. A lot.Recently I was driving on Interstate 10 between Phoenix and Tucson. I noticed something — some things — poking off of the front wheel of a semi truck: spikes jutting out several inches from each wheel lug where only short nuts should be necessary.Naturally I pulled…
THE DAILY COMMUTE Most you know how the everyday commute is a stress reliever as much as it can be a stress inducer. It took me quite awhile to find the route with the least amount of traffic as well as the all-around safest route i.e. dodging sketchy neighborhoods and avoiding pothole strewn streets as…
Suppose you were going to be on a small deserted island for up to a year and you had to pick some bike commuting accessories to take with you.Okay: Not you, but me.And not a small island, but the fourth largest island in the world.And definitely not deserted: Population 22 million or more.What I’m trying…
Is it ok to listen to music while you ride your bike? It’s a question that’s almost as controversial as the great helmet debate. And it’s a question that appears to never really be settled. As long as there have been portable noise making devices and bicycles, people have been putting the two together and…
A big drawback to using a pannier that doubles as a messenger bag is that, at some point, without thinking about it, youre going to throw it over your shoulder and smear road-dirt and dried mud all over the back your clean work shirt. But thats about the only drawback to Thules Pack-n-Pedal system commuter…
Pop-Up Bike Lane
Until we moved to perpetually sunny Arizona, sunglasses were an occasional accessory, purchased at Target to wear while driving or at the rare trip to the beach. I just didnt put much thought sunglasses and because I tended to lose them so often. During undergraduate school, I quickly lost the only pair of expensive sunglasses…
A Skirt Solution for Cycling
I learned about a fascinating new topic this week thanks to Vox. Apparently, when women started riding bicycles en masse in the 19th century, doctors coined a fictitious disease called bicycle face in an effort to scare then off from cycling. From the Vox article: “Over-exertion, the upright position on the wheel, and the unconscious…
It’s been said that for every activist there’s an equal and opposite reactionary. So I’m just asking: Are these “Rollin’ Coal” trolls just the natural polar-opposites to Critical Massholes? Rollin’ Coal, if you haven’t heard of it, is a phenomenon where people modify their diesel trucks to make them less fuel efficient. The modifications, which…
When I returned to bicycle commuting in 2008, my backup plan for handling problems out on the road was pretty simple: I carried a spare tube, a set of tire tools, a multi-tool and a cheap frame pump. If I encountered anything I couldn’t handle with that basic kit, I carried my cell phone to…
The other day, I stumbled across a tweet and reply that made me question the ubiquitous bicycle friendly term “Share the Road“. I decided to jump in on the fun by trying to come up with a new and improved version of this pithy but now under-mined slogan. Nothing of any real merit sprang to…
This absolute gem of a video found its way to my inbox yesterday. It’s titled “Terrifying Facts About Bicycling” and was created by BuzzFeed, the most prolific makers of lists on the Internet today. Please take the next 2 minutes to watch this video. Wow. May I be the first to say WTF just happened…
No doubt, I inherited my aversion to buying used vehicles from my parents. As Great Depression era kids, they were used to having possessions which were always secondhand, but I think the final straw came when my father returned from Europe and started looking around for a car in post-WWII Chicago. The automakers in Detroit…
Well, we could probably design a study to answer that question… This week, the National Institute of Transportation and Communities (NITC) at Portland State University released an enormous study looking at protected bike lanes in Washington D.C., Chicago, Austin, San Francisco, and Portland. The purpose of the study was to evaluate protected bike lanes to…
You see a bike rider riding where a bike shouldn’t be ridden, or in a manner contrary to your refined sense of cycling civility. What do you think? If you’re like me, you’re a judgmental rage turd before you catch yourself, and you calm yourself with the mantra, “They’re not in a car. That’s a…
What happens when two very good, well intentioned modes of transportation come together in a densely populated, busy urban corridor? Well, if it’s the Tucson Streetcar and the fleet of Tucson bike commuters, the results are starting to get ugly. The Sun Link Streetcar is now in the final testing phases in the bustling University…
Its 2014 and Tech Startup Culture/Silicone Valley/Ambitious Teenagers have been going strong with producing great consumer focused companies for over 10 years now. So what about bikes? When I look up bicycling Startups at Angel List, its not that they are non-existant. There are some interesting and meaningful efforts being made. But when I see…
I have traveled into the Safeway parking lots, among the glass filled shoulders, through the misery of forgetting my spare tube. I have lugged grocery bags on my handlebars and arrived to gatherings late and sweaty. I have cursed and sworn with befuddlement at being ill-prepared to make my way through the world on my…
Protected Bike Lanes
Here at Commute by Bike, we get a lot of emails from folks launching projects on Kickstarter asking us to help promote their campaigns. A number of the projects look awesome, inventive, and definitely worthy of some attention. While we can’t write individual articles about all of them, I decided to start a semi-regular feature…
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