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--- transportation:bikes [2023/02/14 22:25] – [Articles] timb
+++ transportation:bikes [2025/07/21 03:29] (current) – [Maintenance / Repair] timb
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 https://www.treehugger.com/fear-of-cars-biggest-biking-barrier-study-6979522
+== How The Netherlands Built a Biking Utopia ==
+In the 60s and 70s the Dutch government was building car-centered cities. Here's how and why they pivoted.
+Michael Thomas - Mar 8, 2023
+The Netherlands used to have as much traffic as America
+Today the Netherlands is known for having some of the best biking infrastructure in the world. Its cities, like Amsterdam, The Hague, and Utrecht, are often praised for their sustainable city planning and design.
+As a result, The Netherlands has far fewer transportation emissions, obesity rates, and traffic fatalities than the United States. (More on all this below).
+https://www.distilled.earth/p/how-the-netherlands-built-a-biking
+== New Study Suggests Cyclists are Better People than Drivers ==
+The Journal for Environmental Psychology says that riders are more interested in the common good than drivers.
+Updated Nov 2, 2023 - Alvin Holbrook
+Orientation towards the common good in cities: The role of individual urban mobility behavior
+Are cyclists better people than drivers? A recent study published in the Journal for Environmental Psychology found that people who navigated cities by cycle were more interested in the common good than drivers. “Duh,” you’re probably saying to yourself.
+The study looked at a pool’s orientation toward the common good by looking at four key indicators: political participation, social participation in organizations, neighborhood solidarity, and neighborly helpfulness. Their data showed that the predominant throughline was that these folks were more likely to participate in active transportation (walking, cycling). This news isn’t necessarily new, as previous studies showed how proper urban street design can increase community engagement. But it does reinforce things we already know.
+https://velo.outsideonline.com/urban/are-cyclists-better-people-than-drivers-this-study-say-so-urbanist-update/
@@ Line 264: / Line 291: @@
 https://oa.mg/blog/do-bike-lanes-lead-to-more-cyclists/
+==== Emergency Vehicles ====
+== Bike lanes and narrowed streets don’t slow emergency vehicles ==
+People love to complain about traffic calming, but it makes roads safer.
+Jonathan M. Gitlin - 7/29/2024, 1:20 PM
+Although driving is a privilege, some Americans treat it more like a right. This entitlement leads them to get upset with policy proposals that try to increase road safety by prioritizing vulnerable road users over the wants of drivers. But a new study suggests that a common complaint—taking away lanes from cars makes emergency response times go up—about traffic calming isn't actually true.
+American roads aren't particularly safe, and while much of the blame of late has been directed at ever-bigger trucks and SUVs, the problem is more complex than just big cars. Like the built environment, standard American road design, with a pair of lanes going in either direction, makes it very easy to drive much faster than the speed limit, which is often over 25 mph.
+This is where road diets come in—they're a relatively cheap and simple way to slow traffic and significantly cut the accident rate along a stretch of road. You take a four-lane (two-way road) and repaint it so there are now three lanes for cars: one in each direction, with a center lane in the middle for turning. The remaining space on either side becomes bike lanes (physically protected ones, please).
+The study, conducted by a group of researchers at the University of Iowa led by Nicole Corcoran (now at Arizona State University) and published in Transportation Research Interdisciplinary Perspectives, sought to do a couple of things: First, survey emergency responders to find out how they feel about road diets, and secondly actually quantify the effect of road diets on EMS response time.
+https://arstechnica.com/cars/2024/07/ambulances-arent-slowed-by-bike-lanes-and-traffic-calming-measures/
@@ Line 283: / Line 330: @@
+===== City / State / Country Info =====
+== How to Bike Across the Country ==
+Ben Brooks - (Viewed 14 April 2025)
+I spent 51 straight days on my bicycle last year, traveling 3,900 miles through high desert, mountain passes, endless prairies, and rolling hills from San Francisco, California to the eastern coast of Virginia. I did the majority of the route (Sacramento to Virginia) solo. Yet I didn’t even own a bike until two weeks before the trip. How'd that happen?
+After shutting down my startup in summer 2024, I was burned out and unsure what to do next. Accordingly, I sat down to brainstorm a few crazy ideas in hopes of tackling a meaningful challenge and taking time to clear my head. I considered, but ultimately ruled out due to skill/weather issues, ideas to sail across an ocean or hike the Appalachian or Pacific Crest trails. Bicycling across the continent seemed like the perfect blend of crazy and possible.
+https://www.brooks.team/posts/how-to-bike-across-the-country/
+==== France, Paris ====
+== Paris Closed 100 Streets to Cars for Good. Now, the City Is a Cyclists’ Paradise. ==
+Turns out when you banish cars for bikes, it’s a blueprint for urban bliss.
+Micah Ling - Feb 06, 2024 9:14 AM EST
+All eyes are on Paris as we inch closer to this summer’s Olympic Games, but the city is also in the spotlight because of what they’ve recently put into place in terms of infrastructure and transportation. Paris now has more than 100 city streets that are closed to motorized vehicles year-round, and the effect it’s had on the capital city has been profound.
+Most recently, the city voted to triple parking charges for the biggest, most polluting cars. According to CNN, Parisians voted Sunday to make it very, very expensive to park an SUV on most streets. The vote came following a proposal by the mayor’s office as the city aims to cut air pollution and tackle the climate crisis.
+https://www.bicycling.com/culture/a46651907/paris-closed-100-streets-to-cars-for-good/
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-===== Maintenance =====
+===== Maintenance / Repair =====
 == Are Modern Bicycles the End of DIY Maintenance? ==
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 https://www.outsideonline.com/outdoor-gear/bikes-and-biking/modern-bicycles-the-end-of-diy-mechanic/
+== Tennis Balls Serve As Decent Bicycle Tires That Don’t Easily Puncture ==
+Lewin Day - April 3, 2023
+Pneumatic tires provide a great ride, great grip, and yet have one fatal flaw — they’re always getting punctured and leaving you stranded. [The Q] decided to solve this problem with a unique design: tires that use tennis balls as the cushioning medium instead.
+The build begins with small cut sections of plastic water pipe. These are used as housings to hold tennis balls, which are pressed in with a unique tool of [The Q]’s own construction. The individual ball assemblies are then bolted into a standard bicycle wheel, and a tread from a regular bike tire is stretched around the outside for grip.
+It goes without saying that these tires won’t offer the same quality of ride as regular pneumatic bike tires. Nor will the performance be as good, due to the significant extra unsprung weight. They are eye-catching and fun, however. Plus, if you live in an area with tons of nails or prickles, you might find these are just the ticket. Maybe.
+https://hackaday.com/2023/04/03/tennis-balls-serve-as-decent-bicycle-tires-that-dont-easily-puncture/
+== A love letter to bicycle maintenance and repair ==
+-02-06 - Tegowerk
+It was the 28th of June, 2020; the perfect summer day. I remember it distinctly because of two important events that took place on that day. The first was the unfortunate discovery that I am highly sensitive to the venomous hairs of the Oak processionary caterpillar. If you’ve never wished you could use a cheese grater to remove the skin off your arms and legs just to be rid of the itching, then you can’t really understand how I felt for two whole weeks that summer.
+The second thing that happened on that 28th of June was the seemingly inconsequential purchase of two secondhand bicycles. My wife and I drove out to a local park to test ride a couple of ’90s-era Trek 970 bikes that a guy had restored in his garage. We didn’t know a thing about bicycles, but we liked what we saw; the bikes worked great and felt very nice to ride around the park–the fact that I also happened to ride through a floating cloud of Oak-processionary hairs would only become apparent the next day.
+https://tegowerk.eu/posts/bicycle-repair/
+== Bike Manufacturers Are Making Bikes Less Repairable ==
+Charlie Sorrel - October 14, 2024
+The bicycle is probably the canonical example of something that anyone can fix. Spares from all brands are mostly interchangeable, and you can do most repairs with wrenches, screwdrivers, and Allen keys, or some fairly standard tools for bottom brackets and chainrings. But that’s all changing.
+Just like cars, tractors, computers, and seemingly every other product category, bikes—and especially e-bikes—are going all black box on us. Instead of using standard parts that can easily be swapped or upgraded, bike makers are using more and more proprietary parts. At the same time, cheap bikes are getting worse and are designed to fail, or rather, they are not designed to last, which is pretty much the same thing.
+https://www.ifixit.com/News/101675/bike-manufacturers-are-making-bikes-less-repairable
+===== Manufacturer =====
+==== Lopifit ====
+== Bizarre bikes: This 15-mph electric scooter somehow doubles as a treadmill ==
+For when you need to get your steps in but also have someplace to be, there's the Lopifit treadmill bike
+Abhimanyu Ghoshal - July 20, 2025
+We're usually in the business of bringing you the latest and greatest innovations in science and tech, but this odd personal mobility contraption from several years ago deserves your attention. And that's not only because it still kicking around a decade since launch, but because it's an especially bold attempt at killing two birds with one stone.
+At first glance, the Lopifit looks like an oversized kickscooter with bicycle tires and a large deck. Get in closer, and you'll notice a battery pack in the luggage carrier, and a treadmill built into the footboard. The idea is that you can walk while you ride this electric scooter, so you actually get your steps in as you speedily commute to your destination and make good time.
+I came across the Lopifit in this roundup of neat biking inventions showcased at the Eurobike 2025 expo, which concluded in Frankfurt last month. It included other neat stuff like this tiny motor drive that instantly turns any bicycle into an ebike, but this one stole the show for me.
+https://newatlas.com/urban-transport/lopifit-electric-scooter-treadmill-bike-walking/
@@ Line 333: / Line 467: @@
 https://schollz.com/blog/bike/
+== Meet the Tech-Savvy Sleuths Who Will Hunt Down Your Stolen Bike ==
+If they can’t find it in two weeks, they’ll give you a new one—guaranteed.
+Tom Vanderbilt and Photography by Parker Feierbach - Apr 14, 2022
+One evening late last summer, the owner of a white 2019 VanMoof S2, which retails for upwards of $3,000, parked the bike at home, a Manhattan residence, locking it to a fence with a sturdy Abus lock. By 7:00 a.m. the next day, the bike was gone. Later that morning, the owner filed a police report, adding the bike to the thousands-strong roster of bicycles reported stolen every year in New York City—a list representing only about 20 percent of all bikes stolen there. Nearly all are never seen again by their owners.
+Before notifying the police, however, the owner did something even more important: opened the VanMoof iPhone app and pressed a button marked “Report stolen.”
+This set several events into motion. First, the bike switched to “stolen mode,” turning off the e-assist and any “smart” features. Second, the following day, the company activated its team of Bike Hunters—employees who are tasked with tracking down stolen VanMoofs.
+https://www.bicycling.com/bikes-gear/a35429606/stolen-bicycle-theft-vanmoof-bike-hunters/
+== Where do stolen bikes go? ==
+An experiment in Amsterdam reveals how pilfered bicycles are put to use.
+Peter Dizikes | MIT News Office - February 15, 2023
+Amsterdam is one of the most bike-friendly major cities in the world. That also means the city is a happy hunting ground for thieves, who steal tens of thousands of bikes per year — a substantial chunk of the estimated 850,000 or so that Amsterdam residents own. Which raises some questions. Where do all the stolen bikes go? Are they shipped elsewhere and sold? Tossed in canals? Or just reused in the city by other people?
+Now an MIT experiment, in collaboration with the Amsterdam Institute for Advanced Metropolitan Solutions, has found answers by equipping a fleet of Amsterdam bicycles with mobile trackers and following their whereabouts over time. It turns out that, at least in Amsterdam, the vast majority of stolen bikes remain in the local area. A substantial amount appear to get resold, meaning most simply keep circulating in the city’s bike fleet, one way or another.
+https://news.mit.edu/2023/where-do-stolen-bikes-go-0215
+==  Find my… bicycle? ==
+Knog's Scout gives bikes a motion-sensitive alarm and Bluetooth tracking.
+John Timmer – May 6, 2025 7:54 AM
+We've reviewed some pretty expensive bikes here at Ars, and one of the consistent concerns we see in the comments is the fear of theft. That's a widely shared fear, based on a whole bunch of videos that describe how to hide an AirTag tracker where a potential bike thief won't notice it. There are also a number of products available that will hold a hidden AirTag in a reflector, a bike bell, or the head tube.
+But Apple has also made it possible for third parties to plug their devices into its "Find My" system, and a company called Knog has made a Bluetooth bike tracker called the Scout that does just that. The Scout goes well beyond tracking, though, providing a motion-sensitive alarm system that will alert you if anybody tries to move your bike.
+https://arstechnica.com/reviews/2025/05/find-my-bicycle/