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--- transportation:bikes [2024/05/05 04:20] – [Maintenance] timb
+++ transportation:bikes [2025/07/21 03:29] (current) – [Maintenance / Repair] timb
@@ Line 291: / 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 310: / 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/
@@ Line 363: / Line 410: @@
 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 411: / Line 494: @@
 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/