This is what the future of media looks like | Hamish McKenzie
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What if the polarizing mess of social media, clickbait headlines and
addictive algorithms isn't a breakdown of media but a transition to
something better? ...
Showing posts with label bikes. Show all posts
Showing posts with label bikes. Show all posts
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I stumbled across this car parking stand-off in Calton. The cars are parked behind an apartment block. The laminated note attached to the toy car reads:"DO NOT REMOVE. This is the property of unit one. We pay rent for this carpark and thus shall utilize it for whatever vehicle we see fit".
Classic.
Mind you, when it comes to sustainability I guess the space occupied by car parking is often hotly contested. The battle lines are drawn a little like this:
Trees + bikes + pedestrian friendliness & walkability + safety
vs
car parking spaces
vs
car parking spaces
Sometimes we have to choose between a street tree or a car parking space. Of course trees provide obvious environmental benefits; they reduce green house gases, filter pollution in the air, and reduce the amount of heating in summer. A car parking space on the other hand is probably never going to contribute much to sustainable suburbs - although whether providing a car park is actively 'bad' depends on how many of them are available. If you provide 'enough' car parking spaces, then by definition you're facilitating the use of the private cars; the easier it is to get a park, the more likely you are to drive and the less likely you are to use public transport. But by strictly limiting the amount of parking available then you can begin to tip the balance the other way.
At other times we have to choose between having a row of parking or a dedicated bike lane. You can guess which one of those two options wins out in the green stakes.
Christopher Alexander suggests that no more than 9% of any neighbourhood or development should be given over to parking. He recommends this partly to reduce the amount of traffic (and encourage pedestrian life and public transport use), but also because higher concentrations of parking (on ground level) tend to have a negative affect on the urban fabric. Walking through big expanses of parking is nowhere near as pleasant an urban experience as walking past a row of shops, or along a leafy footpath. And it's no coincidence that on TV the bad guy is always shown kidnapping innocents in the car park as they're walking to their car...big car parks feel exposed, dangerous, and alienating.
Bike rack on Brisbane Bus
Sometimes you just don’t feel like riding home, or there’s a howling head wind, or your public transport route involves a 20 minute walk at the end. We need to be able to take bikes on all our buses and trains. They’re working on it in Brisbane, we can’t we make it easier here?
A lot of people live in small houses in my neighbourhood, and as densities increase living areas will probably get even smaller. Providing secure bike lockers on the street would make it easier for people to own bikes, especially those not living on the ground floor.
It's also a nice visible "sustainable living marker" - a lot of sustainable design features are not really visible, so it's good to have something which.. I don't know.. declares a sustainable intention.
Hopefully, if we work on it, we can create a bike parking problem too.
Click on image to enlarge
Firstly, we can try to increase the amount of people cycling instead of driving. To start with, we could set up a fine network of bike paths, bike lockers, and a woonerf system:
Bike Lanes: Improve safety and linkages
On the main roads (Wellington & Gold Street & Alexander Parade) we could replace the existing on-road bike lanes with off road paths in the style which are common in Denmark and the Netherlands.This would improve safety for cyclists by protecting them from turning or swerving traffic, parking cars and opening car doors, and overtaking motorbikes. It also makes it safer for kids to ride, who are sometimes too unpredictable to ride on the road.
If we want to increase rates of cycling – it’s also important to improve the linkages or connections across the city wide bike network. A bike lane is no good if it doesn't go anywhere, or stops existing for 200m right at a busy intersection. In one sense, this is difficult to address on a local level, on the other hand, if everyone tried to improve their own local bike networks, the larger system would look after itself.
The plan above is the 'ideal' design (as per the approach discussed earlier), when other considerations are included it may not be able to be this extensive.
Before & After Slideshow - showing possible configuration of Wellington Street with bike paths on the same level as pedestrians
Bike lanes in Copenhagen are commonly configured so that they run alongside the footpath, rather than between parked cars and the traffic. The images in this post are from the great blog Copenhagenize the Planet, which also has this cycle-cam video of a ride through the city: it really shows what a difference it makes to have good consistent, uninterrupted, bike paths to travel on.
Bike lanes in Copenhagen are commonly configured so that they run alongside the footpath, rather than between parked cars and the traffic. The images in this post are from the great blog Copenhagenize the Planet, which also has this cycle-cam video of a ride through the city: it really shows what a difference it makes to have good consistent, uninterrupted, bike paths to travel on.Woonerf: Streets are for Playing On
On the local streets (Charlotte, Hotham and Keele) we could implement a series of Woonerven. The Woonerf is another dutch concept (which translates as something like ‘recreation yard' or maybe 'living street') ; the idea is that you create a zone where pedestrians and cyclists have legal priority over motorists. Vehicles entering the area are restricted to ‘walking pace’ (about 7-10km per hour). Pedestrians, including children, use the entire street and kids are encouraged to play in the street. Yay!It has the other advantage of encouraging people to keep off 'local traffic' roads unless they are actually local traffic. The City of Yarra (our local council) are looking at putting in a bunch of speed bumps around our neighbourhood to stop drivers taking short cuts through the back streets at peak hour. A property developer who worked for Central Equity once told me that a speed bump outside your house knocks $20 000 off the value the property because of the annoying 'bump-scrape-bump' noise each time a car goes over the hump - I bet nobody ever lost money on their house because the traffic outside passes slowly enough for the local kids to play a game of hopscotch on the street.
According the great blog Copenhagenize (the planet), in Denmark you can now borrow a bike and trailer at Ikea to get your stuff home. Apparently 20% of customers in Copenhagen ride to the store, even though both stores are located in a 'box industrial' area 10km & 20km outside of town.
We went to 'Hell' lately (as my partner has christened ikea, in response to the labyrinthine- daylight-depriving- endurance sport which is shopping there) and we bought a whole bunch of stuff including a black board, table and chair set, bibs and cushions etc - and we managed to get it all (and us) into the Christiania.
Of course Ikea is really not far us, 3-4km maybe, so I reckon a lot of people would ride if they could.
This is the last week of the semester's teaching - and the pace of life has slowed enough for me to spend time on some more personal interests, including this blog. Maybe the most exciting news is that we bought the Christiania bike!
We hesitated a little, because well... they're not cheap, and certainly much too expensive for us to justify as a 'weekend toy'. Too big for a toy as well; you certainly can't hang them up in the hall the way you can with a regular bike.
But as it's turned out; it's become the family work horse. I've driven the car twice in last three months, and the pram almost as rarely. We use the trike for multiple trips each day - to drop the little one off at childcare & pick her up, shopping, cafe trips and the commute to work.
In fact we're thinking about selling our second car (which is an old bomb anyway), if we do maybe we can join flexicar so that we have a car available when we need it; they have a car located just around the corner from our house.
We saved a bit of money by buying the heavier steel framed version, and by just getting the frame without the box. We made our own box, and for the time being we're just strapping our daughters car seat in to carry her around, when she's a little bigger we'll make a bench and seat belts.
Steel frame with no box
The box in progress
The finished bike, our friends used it as their 'wedding car', here they are on route from their wedding to the reception. Crossing Punt Road was hilarious - honking and cheers.
Our daughter has become very possessive of the bike, and has been known to defend it vigorously against any other poor child who gets too close.
We did the Colac to Beech Forest rail trail. Beautiful, but bloody hard work. And the Christiania bike is really not designed for off-road riding.
We looked at getting a cheaper knockoff. And they really do look very similar to the Christiania bike, they've even used the same font in their marketing graphics. Bit cheeky really.
These bikes are much much cheaper than the Christiania (30-50% of the price), but I really don't know if they could stand up to the workout a cargo bike gets. The Christiania can carry 100kg whereas the knockoff can carry 80kg, but besides the frame, the main difference to me seems to be that the Christiania has Shimano disk brakes, and internal gears whereas the other has external gears and drum brakes. Having internal gears means you can change gears immediately, which makes a massive difference when you're trying to go up a hill with a load, or even over a small bump from a stop. And of course, when you're scooting down a hill with 190kgs on board (including rider), disk brakes provide a certain comfort.
In fact when I think about the trouble I have with the external gears of my two wheeler, I think buying the cheaper bike would have been an very expensive mistake. Yes we do love you Christiania.
Sorry it's been a while since my last post - it's been the first week of teaching so I've been busy, and besides that... I've fallen in love.
Peter Santos from ps bikes has given us a one week trial on one of his Christiania bikes from Denmark. And we all love it.
Does this mean we can get rid of one of our cars? We have a work vehicle, and a family car; the bike is capacious, but it's not quite going to replace the ute... perhaps the family car?
Hmmm...
We were looking at buying one of those sexy new Fiat Puntos, but the advantage of this is that I'll get exercise as well! Goodbye baby curves! But of course; they're not cheap, in fact I reckon it's worth more than the car we have now.
It comes with a little rain cover and a shade cloth. Have ridden baby and her Dad around in it. Hilarious, but effective. Anyway - if you want to find out more, here is the Christiania site, and p s bikes in Melbourne. The photo albums on each site are fantastic.
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