If you're interested in a Bike Friday ...

Years and years ago -- pre-children ... hence it seems like forever -- the boss and I became interested in traveling with our bikes.  After much thought and research we settled on a pair of custom Bike Friday travel bikes.  I have a lot of experience with the bikes: maintenance, club rides, touring, pulling the kiddies, and so on.  Given that I get around in the cycling world, I often receive lots of questions about the bikes as well as questions about ordering Bike Fridays.  If you're thinking about getting a Bike Friday, then this post is for you.

My picture of the person typically interested in a Bike Friday is someone with some cycling experience and is likely much more dedicated to the sport/activity than the average citizen.  I will discuss things in an order that reflects importance and how often a particular question is asked.  More generally, realize that a lot of what is written here is simply my anecdotal experience somewhat backed by some real and pseudo experimental evidence.  Most of my explanations here are edited for brevity with an eye on who is a likely reader.  However, this might be inappropriate for others, so I'll be more than happy to elucidate further in response to either a comment or personal e-mail.

Our bikes with the Burley at a local park

It rides great.  If you're a fast/slow rider on other bikes, you'll be a fast/slow rider on a Bike Friday.  For those familiar with bike geometry, the bike will handle like low-trail bikes that were popular in the past and have a growing set of followers today: the bike will be more and less sensitive to steering inputs at the handlebar and body inputs to the bike, respectively.  For those of you who could care less about geometry and simply want to ride, the bike will be a little "squirelly" in the beginning but easily accommodated with a little practice.  Handling improves considerably with a front load such that I recommend a handlebar bag or something of the sort instead of a saddle bag.  What is the effect of the small wheels?  In my experience with a variety of wheel sizes -- 16" through 27" -- the small wheels certainly have some effect but that effect is small relative to other determinants of handling and performance.  There are pluses and minuses -- see here for a positive spin on them -- but they definitely make a huge improvement on folding, packing, storage, and general portability.  More about small tires/wheels.  Everyone always asks whether the bike is fast.  Really ... it's not about the bike: it's the motor that is important.  Looking back at GPS records of some old 60-mile hilly training rides through Northern Virginia with the Bike Friday and my road bike, it is the case that the road bike was about 5 minutes faster.  But my Bike Friday is a 26 pound touring bike whereas the road bike is about 6-7 pounds lighter with a more aggressive position.  Without doing any fancy calculations, that difference sounds reasonable and I imagine that if instead one purposely built a Bike Friday for aggressive road riding that most if not all of that 5 minutes would disappear.

Much of what I wrote above depends on how well the bike fits you.  In my experience, a well-fitting bike is necessary for "the motor", as well as, for the bike to perform well.  If you are more performance oriented and expect to get road bars with the swan stem, I highly recommend getting the Bike Friday fit stem for sizing a custom ultralight or adjustable stem.  The fit stem allows an incredible amount of adjustment: plus or minus four inches in height and a reach from 50 to 150 mm.  I also recommend getting one with a faceplate will let you swap and try out different handlebars on your new bike.  A low-trail bike with small wheels is a new experience for a lot of riders.  You might find that you want a different amount of weight on the front handlebar or that the relative position of the crank to the saddle results in small changes for the best personal fit.  The lack of a top tube might encourage you to use different handlebars with more space for "stuff".  I can go on and on; but the point is that I think that you'll discover that having the bike with you will result in a better fit than simply sending your measurements in to Bike Friday.  Alternatively, if you plan on using an ahead-type stem, then there is already some sizing flexibility.  Remember that Bike Friday can split most aluminum handlebars with a 25.4 or 26.0 mm clamp area.  So there is little need to go with the standard bars that Bike Friday offers with their models; although the Bike Friday H-bars and STI-bars are easy to pack and pretty good for recreational riding.


A folding bike for general use and travel is quite useful.  In addition to getting the bike into a suitcase, realize that on a lot of trips, you might drive or take a taxi to get from A to B at some point.  Since the boss and I can fit both of our bikes into the trunk of a Toyota Echo, just about any ordinary car can take us and our bikes for whatever purpose without a rack.  Whenever I do long solo ride, I generally take the Bike Friday since I were ever to bail on the ride or have a big mechanical failure, calling a cab is an easy option.  Many public transportation systems have prohibitions against bicycles but allow folding bikes to be carried onboard.


For most riders, ERTO 406 wheels are a far better choice.  For the unfamiliar, it turns out that there is more than one rim/tire size that is labeled 20 inches: ERTO 406 and 451.  Although ERTO 451 has a longer diameter and with some quality tires, most 451 tires are strictly road tires in narrow sizes and is generally unavailable at anything but a bicycle shop that specializes in recumbents and/or folding bikes.  Picking a size whose tires and tubes are scarce is probably not the best choice for a travel bike.  ERTO 406 is the popular BMX size.  Consequently, tires and tubes are widely available -- even at general stores like WalMart and Target -- whereas high quality 406 tires in all widths are available at good bicycle shops or mail order.  Note that all of the good 451 tires are available in 406.  Long story short, unless one is absolute positive that one is going to stick with narrow road tires and the slightly larger wheel is appealing, I strongly recommend sticking with 406.  Since I almost always recommend 406 wheels and typically these bikes are used for travel, I invariably recommend either the New World Tourist or Pocket Crusoe models according to how much the rider weighs.

Generally, I recommend sticking with the standard derailer drivetrain.  Moreover, getting low gears are not a problem with a Bike Friday.  Instead, determining how high of a gear you need is the problem.  I'm assuming that you have already read this summary by Green Gear Cycling and that you have some cycling experience.  The vast majority of people choose between a standard derailer drivertrain or the SRAM Dual Drive since internal hubs with wide gear ranges are much more expensive.  Before we begin discussing the choice, we need to understand that the 20" wheels directly leads to a drivetrain with lots of low gears -- gears where it is easy to spin the crank but not move fast.  But even recreational hybrids bicycles will still have top gears around 100+ gear inches.  Just based on personal observations, few people ever use those high gears with any frequency whereas having a low gear, particularly for touring, is quite helpful for long climbs.

The SRAM Dual Drive has several advantages/disadvantages relative to the derailer drivetrain:

1. No front derailer that can be damaged ... this is particularly good for folding the bike.
2. Lowering or raising the gear range is very easy ... just change the chainring.
3. A wide cassette leads to a very wide drivetrain; i.e., lots of low and high gears.
4. Three speed internal hubs are a very mature technology and very robust.  Although there are anecdotes to the contrary.  For instance, there are a few discussions on bentrideronline.com where people tell stories of their failures in various situations.  But my take is that three speed hubs have been around forever in a wide variety of uses.
5. Internal hub can shift at a standstill.
6. Annoying "clickbox" is at an exposed part of the bike: outside the rear derailer.
7. Parts can be hard to obtain.

The derailer drivetrain has several advantages over the SRAM Dual Drive:

1. It is the standard for bicycles and consequently much easier to repair.
2. It is about 1 to 1.5 pounds lighter.
3. A maintained derailer drivetrain shifts faster and crisper.
4. Supposedly the derailer drivetrain is more efficient; although other than some articles in the Journal of Human Power -- see issues 50 and 51 -- I see little evidence for the statement.  But my personal anecdote says that it is true and a lot of high-level technical people seem to believe it.   
5. Despite being subject to damage from travel and being dropped, derailers are still quite robust in my experience.  
6. Relative to the SRAM Dual Drive, there are much cheaper derailer options available.

My take on all of this is to go with a derailer drivetrain.  One, weight does matter with a folding/travel bike.  Sometimes you might carry the bike a long distance -- say you fold the bike and carry it through a train station.  When you travel with the bike it is my experience that airlines roughly check luggage size whereas they carefully check its weight.  Two, by my tastes, efficiency matters on anything other than short rides and keeping a well-maintained system is second nature to me.  Lastly, in the case of a travel bike, standard components that are easily and cheaply fixed are preferred to a system that is more robust but a complete disaster when broken.  With a derailer drivetrain, good advice and service is very easy to acquire.

The best derailer drivetrain will depend on the top gear you want.  Pick a Shimano Capreo hub/cassette if you want a top gear over 100 gear inches or wish to use index shifting; otherwise stick with a standard hub/cassette.  Essentially, the Capreo cassette will let a rider stick with a standard Shimano crank/chainring combination -- or presumably Campagnolo or SRAM -- that will shift really ... really well and be better for packing in a suitcase: a big chainring will get very close to the edges of a suitcase which makes it more likely to get damaged in transit.  Of course, going with the Capreo cassette/hub means you are getting something "special" that will be hard to acquire from anyone other than Bike Friday or the Harris Cyclery in a pinch: For a price you can get anything delivered FedEx!  To some extent you have some of the same problems as the SRAM Dual Drive.  But there is an important difference, the Capreo hub/cassette works the same way as other hubs/cassettes such that a competent mechanic will know what to do and how to fix the problem.  From what I observe, Capreo components are actually carried by a few online retailers; but Bike Friday and the Harris Cyclery are the two that I use.  The alternative which I strongly recommend if you're comfortable with bar ends and would be happy with a top end around 95 gear inches -- I believe that most people have gearing that is way too high -- then you can get a decent gear range with marginally larger than normal chainrings.  Here I propose a chainring/cassette combination with a normal cassette and compare it to a standard Capreo cassette.      

The one case where I would pick the SRAM Dual Drive is if one were going to fold the bike often and in somewhat of a hurry.  On 20" wheel Bike Fridays, the folding rear triangle is independent of the front derailer mount.  Moreover, the distance between the rear axle and front derailer gets shorter as the bike is folded.  Consequently, the chain will flop around a bit, fall off, and, if one is somewhat careless, the chain will hang on the front derailer such that spinning the rear wheel will put a lot of force on the front derailer.

Check out Bike Friday's Youtube videos for more information on the folding process.  The fold with a single chainring.  The fold with multiple chainrings.  Now that you have seen the single chainring video, note that you can install Bike Friday's chain retainer to avoid chain drop issues during folds.  Note that if you intend on folding/unfolding the bike a lot and in somewhat of a hurry, you might consider the folding stem.  Of course, if you want a bike that will be folded a lot and in somewhat of a hurry, the Bike Friday tikit or Brompton might be a better fit for you.  But I can imagine some scenarios where one would prefer the bigger and more robust bike that still folds easily.

Get a high-end head set for the Bike Friday.  In the past, Bike Friday offered the Chris King headset which by no means is cheap.  But considering the extra forces on the headset -- the super long stem mast is a giant lever -- I think it is worth every penny spent.  Recently I noticed them carrying the Cane Creek 110 which has a 110-year "no questions asked" warranty.  I have no experience with it, but I suspect that it is pretty good too.

Use rims drilled for schraeder-valves and use adapters for presta-valve tubes.  Personally, I think presta valve tubes are superior to shraeder valve tubes.  But it is the case that most ERTO 406 tubes at common stores will be schraeder.  If you're traveling and desperate for a tube, being able to remove the adapter is a great option at a trivial weight cost.

Small wheels are wildly strong.  Don't be afraid to use lower spoke counts than you would on a typical touring bike.  Just because of hub and rim availability -- especially at lower prices -- one is likely limited to 32 spoke holes.  But Bike Friday will often lace 36-hole hubs to 24-hole rims as a cost effective method for low-spoke count wheels.

Wide, high-quality tires are strongly recommended.  Ignoring my conclusion that wider tires are more efficient than most people commonly believe ...

• Wide tires can be efficiently ridden at much lower pressures.  Consequently, it helps alleviate the additional bumpiness from small wheels.
• Wide tires will also help slow down the steering up front.

Of course they will be heavier, but at least this are small diameter tires and will be less heavy than typical wide tires.  Personally speaking, I think life is too short to get crappy tires and most wide tires are low end.  But thankfully, there is a good selection of high quality high end tires in ERTO 406.   Folding tires are also good for travel bike since they pack better and are somewhat lighter.  

Carrying loads on the front wheel is recommended.  As I mentioned earlier, since the trail is so low on Bike Friday's, carrying loads on the front wheel helps slow down and improve the steering.  Moreover, the front wheel is almost always stronger than the rear wheel.  A handlebar bag also gives the rider easier access to "stuff" while riding.  

  

Will you ever fold the bike?  If no, strongly consider the Easy Pack Mast.  The Easy Pack Mast is not hinged from the frame.  As the name implies, it makes it easier to pack into a suitcase.  It is also somewhat lighter than the typical folding mast.  If you have money to burn or want something even lighter, get the titanium upgrade for the easy pack mast.


Believe it or not, that is about all that I typically recommend in a generic sense on a new (or used) Bike Friday either because I find it hard to broadly support a choice or I have little personal experience with it.  Some of the things I barely discuss are the Bike Friday tikit, fenders, suspension, and using racks versus the suitcase/trailer (you can find the Bike Friday description on their FAQ page and a negative review here).  I always recommend joining the Bike Friday YAK and talking to others in a local Bike Friday club; if you are in the DC area, you can find us here.  Generally, you will find lots of helpful folks more than willing to share their experiences and advice.  Shockingly people will disagree with my assessments, but it would be worthwhile for a potential buyer to read/hear alternative reasoning.

Say hello if you see us.

The Montreal evidence for cycle track-to-street safety

A recent paper on Montreal cycle tracks has drawn a lot of publicity from the official news sources and blogs without an appropriate amount of skepticism for the results. 

Briefly, the authors compare six cycle tracks to reference streets to compare the relative risk of cycling on those streets.  Exposure is determined by a two-hour simultaneous count on 2009 on the streets.  The number of injuries is tabulated from emergency medical reports (EMR) from 1999 though 2008 during the cycling season; but are subsequently adjusted by estimating the number of intersection injuries from bicycle/vehicle collision police reports.  Aggregating over all six cycle tracks they conclude that the relative risk of cycle track streets to the reference streets is approximately 0.72.  Moreover their two-hour simultaneous count estimated 2.5 times more cyclists on cycle track streets.

Fundamentally, the relative risk measure is only valid if the cycle track and reference street have similar qualities and would face similar risks if not for the cycle track.  Below are person-views -- roughly at the beginning of the focus area -- with maps of the first comparison in Table 1 of the paper.


St. Denis ... the reference street


Brebeuf ... the cycle track street

Personally, I think a picture is worth a thousand words.  In the interest of completing the point, a cyclist traveling northbound on St. Denis has to deal with several more lanes of motor vehicle traffic including opposing direction traffic -- left turns into driveways, u-turns, buses and so on -- in a commercial area.  Moreover, it is unclear to me what type of injuries are in the EMR data; but if pedestrians collisions are included then the St. Denis cyclist would have people shopping and dining in the area.  Wider roads also tend to have faster motor vehicles which increase the likelihood of a serious injury.  As one might expect, Table 3 show that the relative risk to motor vehicle occupants is significantly different from 1.  In short, to find no statistical difference in relative risk would be far more surprising than their estimate.  Identifying any effect from the cycle track is highly unlikely, in my opinion.  Just to be clear, I picked this comparison because it was listed first.  One could grind through the other cycle track-reference street comparisons to be more thorough but I suspect that the point has already been made.  Others have done this precise task.  If and when they write up a paper or webpage, I will be sure to link it.

In large, we can probably stop here with regards to raising a serious level of skepticism about the study.  However, there are also some serious questions about the data underlying the relative risk metric.  The exposure data was collected during a two-hour period on a day with mild weather.  That data was used to compute the exposure ratio for the cycle track and reference street during a 10-year period of cycling seasons.  Now, if we ignore the huge difference in reference periods, we should consider whether the population of cyclists on the cycle track and reference street are similar enough that this remains a good estimate subject to changes in weather, time of day, and other random perturbations over time.  Again a picture is worth a thousand words.  Does anyone expect similar cyclists on the two pictured streets above?

As I mention above, the EMR injury data that occurs at intersections is adjusted for the expected number of cyclists originating from the cross street instead of traveling on the streets of interest.  The authors estimated the fraction from the cross street based on tabulations of police reports which overlap but do not fully cover the same reference period.  But do EMR and police bicycle/motor-vehicle collision reports have the same meaning?  Certainly they are correlated, but simply based on anecdotes in the US, when a police report is filed seems to vary considerably and could differ from say whether an ambulance is sent to the scene.  For instance, until a recently, an Arlington police report would only be filed if the cyclist in a collision with a motor vehicle went to the emergency room despite emergency personnel being sent to the scene.   Note that part of this uncertainty is about my limited understanding of Montreal/Canadian laws and data: It could be the case that the relationship is well understood.  But the short blurb in the paper omitted a thorough discussion and cited a paper about New Zealand.  Consequently, I couldn't tell whether their conclusion was based on their own tabulations/local knowledge or the New Zealand paper.  Nonetheless, besides the potential bias regarding the share of intersection EMRs originating from the cross street, modeling this component also induces a bias in relative risk due to the variance of the estimated shares.  At the very least, it would have been prudent to do some robustness estimates by using police report collision data only to compute the relative risk ratios.  There are 340 and 191 EMR injuries for cycle track and reference streets using the authors' method.  If the overlap is high then one could probably get good estimates to make comparisons.

In the interest of brevity, I want to avoid nit-picking another dozen points on the paper and instead make a few general points relevant to cycling advocacy.  One, many discussions about safety conveniently ignore notions of convenience and speed.  Pro-facilities people gloss over increased conflicts at intersections and slower travel.  Vehicular cyclists (VC) tend to ignore the ability for skilled cyclists to use something like a bike lane to pass motor vehicles stuck in a traffic jam which might be safer than filtering up in an alternative environment.  By simply looking at collisions, fatalities, or whatever, we often forget that these things are an imperfect proxy for the true object of interest: getting around quickly and conveniently with a low amount of risk and effort.  My point is that as advocates, we need to mentally process the statistics and research into something more appropriate for our goals.

Two, the concerns that AASHTO and many traffic engineers have with cycle tracks ( 1, 2)  and similar side paths that have a theoretical and empirical base.  And there are certainly lots of anecdotes from experienced cyclists -- not necessarily VC -- that echo the concerns.  So when we read that there is research concluding the cycle tracks makes cycling safer in an all-things-equal context -- for contradictory evidence read this paper on Copenhagen -- it deserves a lot of skepticism and/or it needs further consideration with respect to my first point regardless of one's beliefs about the world.  Given the strong feelings among certain groups, I want to emphasize that bike lanes, wide-outside lanes, cycle tracks or whatever should still be under consideration for some set of circumstances.  Instead, I want to emphasize that one should be much more careful about implementation than the current euphoria over cycle tracks.

Lastly, in the context of building livable neighborhoods, I share many goals with cycling/walking advocates and other "smart growth" people.  But part of smart growth means being good scientists, properly evaluating all evidence that either confirms or rejects our priors, and giving it the appropriate weight when making decisions and choosing what to advocate.  Most importantly, this includes considering much more difficult topics regarding causality and what we don't know.  

P.S.  M. Kary, a statistician living in Montreal, wrote a response to the paper here.  Thanks to John Allen for pointing out the paper and adapting it for the Internet.  

Replacement studs for winter tires

Thanksfully, someone else already did the work for me.

Schwalbe's Marathon Winter tires are available in a number of different sizes, and all use the same type of stud.  Unfortunately, Schwalbe replacement studs are not normally available.  Fortunately, Nokian replacement studs are a perfect fit.

Woo hoo!

Schwalbe Winter Tire follow-up

With a second snow storm past us and some more experimentation, I wanted to add a few comments regarding the tires to my original post. 

For a better context, I typically use Schwalbe Marathon Racers on the recumbent which have a very shallow inverted tread and relatively flexible sidewalls whereas the Marathon Winter tires have stiff sidewalls and v-shaped knobs as well as studs.


Marathon Racer



Marathon Winter

The rolling resistance between the two is quite noticeable.  The weight of the tires is also radically different. 

Late last night, I stopped by the supermarket with the recumbent and I had an opportunity to test out the bike in varing conditions.  Some of the side streets had remained unplowed such that there was 3 to 4 inches of snow and slush with little ice.  Just based on my observations, the studs had virtually zero effect.  Essentially I was riding on 42-46 mm knobbie tires through loose snow and slush.  I managed to make it through with my feet relatively dry, but something wider -- more surface area as well as lower tire pressures -- would have been better.  On streets that had been plowed, there was sections of hard packed snow/ice, opaque/black ice, and pavement.  With regards to tire traction, distinguishing between the three was very difficult.  Besides any visual clues, the tires produced different sounds on the three surfaces which is how I determined what I was riding on. 

In short, if you're riding on (potentially) ice-covered surfaces the studs make a big difference.  If the surface is simply covered in loose snow/slush, these are expensive knobby tires. 

While I do not have a true answer to Jim's questions, I have a bud who picked up a set of studded tires for his mountain bike but inexplicably -- JP has plenty of free time -- has yet to put them on the bike.  I'm hoping that JP plops them on and produces a comparison of wide knobbies versus studded tires.  He picked up a set of Nokians but unfortunately the model as well as his present set of tires escapes my memory.  I'll be sure to post something here when it happens.

My letter to Governor McDonnell regarding the Norfolk Four

Below is my letter to Governor McDonnell regarding the Norfolk Four who were convicted of raping and murdering a woman based on coerced confessions despite physical evidence to the contrary.  Of course, my opinion matters little.  I ask that you consider the opinion of the Society of Former Special Agents of the Federal Bureau of Investigation where they state

From our review of the facts of these cases, we conclude that only one person sexually assaulted and murdered the victim in this case. ... Once implicated by DNA evidence, Omar Ballard confessed to police and bragged that he committed the crime by himself.  Ballard's confession is completely consistent with the physical evidence

On the other hand, the "confessions" of the four navy men are completely inconsistent with the physical evidence and have all the hallmarks of false confessions.  

You may believe that former special agents of the FBI with a few hundred years of experience are a bunch of softies with bleeding hearts and, consequently, need more evidence that these men were unjustly convicted, eventually released after ~10 years, but still considered guilty of rape and murder by the law.  If so, I ask that you view the Frontline episode linked below and peruse some of the linked websites and documents.  

Frontline episode, "The Confessions".
Website maintained by people supporting the Norfolk Four.
Washington Post editorial following Governor Kaine releasing the men from prison without a pardon.

If you are convinced of the men's innocence, you can contact Governor McDonnell here. 

--------------------------------------------------------

January 16, 2011

The Honorable Robert McDonnell
Office of the Governor

Dear Governor McDonnell,

I am writing in regards to the "Norfolk Four": Messrs. Williams, Dick, Tice, and Wilson.  Both as the governor and a former prosecutor, you are undoubtedly aware of the case and the overwhelming evidence that convinced several former Virginia Attorneys' General, US Attorneys, Federal and State Judges, and the Society of Former Special Agents of the FBI of their innocence.

There are several political reasons to deny these men a full pardon.  One, many citizens simply cannot believe that ordinary people will confess to a crime they did not commit despite the empirical evidence to the contrary.   Two, the family of the victim, Ms. Moore-Bosko, continues to believe that the four men are guilty.  Three, pardoning the men despite the efforts of former peers at the Norfolk (and now Chesapeake) Commonwealth's Attorney Office would presumably create issues among law enforcement.

Nonetheless, there is an overwhelming reason to move forward with a full pardon: Punishing innocent men undermines the principles of justice essential for a well functioning society.  Citizens need confidence in society's institutions to fully support and be wholly integrated in society.  Moving beyond the pragmatic aspect of rendering justice, there is a more fundamental notion of "right and wrong" at stake here.  Continuing to punish innocent men is simply a sin that should be corrected as swiftly as possible. 

There is little doubt that these men are innocent.  Your predecessor, Governor Kaine released the four men but fell short of releasing these men from the "rapist and murder" albatross hanging around their neck.  In short, he left the dirty work to you.  It may be the case that the politically astute choice is to let the appellate courts take the cases, hope that a technicality can be found, and their convictions overturned.  But keeping these men in this limbo is particularly cruel and unfair after so much has been taken from them.  Governor McDonnell, we need a strong person to step forward and end this travesty of justice. 

Thank you for your time and consideration.

Schwalbe Winter Tires

As a year-round cyclist living in an area with snow and frost, despite the cost, I decided to get studded winter tires.  The combination of a few things convinced me that it was worth the experiment:

1. I caught a sale at a store that had both a 20" and 26" matching tire for the recumbent.
2. A few positive experiences from friends gave me the opportunity to ask a few questions.
3. I decided that an injury was far more expensive than a pair of tires.

Given that virtually all of my riding is on roads, my primary interest was dealing with icy conditions on plowed surfaces.  Consequently, I didn't need a particularly aggressive tread.  Vanity pushed me to get matching front and rear tires for the recumbent such that I settled on the Schwalbe Marathon Winter.  At this point, I have several days of riding and commuting during normal and "winter" conditions and have reached a few conclusions.

Let's consider winter weather first ...

We recently had a snow storm with mild amounts of snow -- approximately one to two inches by my unscientific observation -- but excellent conditions for ice formation.  The morning commute had noticeable snow accumulation mixed with slush and ice.  By the evening, there were long strips of relatively thick and hard ice on the multi-use paths (MUP).  The roads, however, were plowed and well treated for ice such that ice was spotty. 

Handling is much much much better on icy trails and roads.  The moderately aggressive tread -- for a city/road tire -- helps somewhat in the snow and slush.  If we assume that it is meant to be applied to the MUPs, Schwalbe's claim of "full control on icy roads", however, is a fantasy that would make Mr. Roarke proud.  During the evening commute, my typical speeds on the flats and downhills will be about 13 to 18 mph.  While on the MUPs, my velocity was roughly cut in half.  Any faster than that and I would get an occasional squirm that was a little unsettling.  Note that I could still pedal up the occasional steep climbs while leaving the Teddy Roosevelt parking lot heading towards Rosslyn.  Moreover, the tires gripped much better than walking while wearing these shoes.  A test walk at the top resulted in comedy that would have made Chevy Chase proud if I had actually fallen.  But the bicycle was very steady.  The tires, however, performed very well on the arterials and side streets.  While I am a little too chicken to ride at 100%, I have noticed no handling changes nor sliding while riding at 80 to 90%.  Mind you, I would slow down more while going downhill; but I am quite pleased with the road performance.    

Now normal conditions ...

The fastest way to describe the tires is that they behave a lot like a mountain bike tire with some moderate knobbies.  Personally, I typically use wide supple tires with little or no tread so the change in rolling resistance and handling is noticeable.  Relative to my typical tire, they are very heavy.  Schwalbe claims the 26x1.75" tire is about 1000 grams.  I believe it.  So while I have friends that do centuries -- or longer -- with the winter tires, they wouldn't be my first choice.  On the plus side, the tires do support a wide range of tire pressures.  During normal conditions I have been running them at 45/50 PSI in the front/rear.  So the ride is comfortable. 

My conclusion ...

In short, if you want to blast down the Mount Vernon Trail or similar, I think you need a more aggressive winter tire.  But it will allow you to ride the trails with much more confidence at a relaxed pace while performing at an acceptable level during normal conditions.  If you want to continue road riding with a much higher degree of confidence, these tires are an excellent choice. 

Important note regarding the tires ...

I had an opportunity to play with tire pressures a bit and ice, snow, and slush handling all improve with lower tire pressures.  As a cyclist that is floating between 190 and 200 pounds and typically rides with lower than average tire pressures -- a story for another post ... I think the average person rides with way too high tire pressure -- I still lowered the tire pressure another 10% or so for road use.  And for the local MUPs, I pushed it further towards 35 PSI in the front.

Advocate safer, robust, and efficient transportation for better cycling

What should cyclists advocate?  As an avid cyclist who enjoys such discussions, it is a question that comes up in one form or another.  In many ways, the same discussion arises during conversations with non-cyclists who simply want to get around in a convenient manner, have safe neighborhoods, and enjoy their lives.  That is the direction that I want to take advocacy.  Or more generally, a lot of "us" -- everyone in a neighborhood instead of simply cyclists -- want safe, vibrant, and livable neighborhoods and as Charles Marohn writes,

When you can't let your kids play in the yard, let alone ride their bike to the store, because you know the street is dangerous, then the engineering profession is not providing society any real value. It's time to stand up and demand a change.  It's time we demand that engineers build us Strong Towns.

The point is that instead of talking about what cyclists want, how great cycling is, or the many other benefits that it can give, we should recognize that a lot of what is good for strong neighborhoods is good for cyclists. 

My conclusion in a nutshell: slower road speeds are the easiest and most effective way to improve the cycling/pedestrian environment and a huge improvement for livable neighborhoods in general.  Underlying the idea is that a modest level of uncertainty is good since it requires drivers, cyclists and pedestrians to remain aware of their surroundings to successfully navigate the environment.  Instead of calling this bicycle or pedestrian advocacy, I think that we should push for safer, robust, and more efficient transportation network since we can make transportation safer, give people more acceptable options, as well as make driving trips shorter (make the same trip in less time).  We can make everyone better off regardless of their transportation choice.

Slower is safer for everyone

The claim that slower speeds are safer on local roads is probably accepted by just about everyone.  As one drives faster the distance covered before reacting and stopping increases; controlling a vehicle becomes more difficult; and damage increases in the event of a collision.  How much more dangerous is probably something that remains quite fuzzy for most people.  Given that an alert driver takes about 1.5 second to react and a few assumptions about the rate of deceleration we can determine the following:

Breaking Stopping Distances
MPH	Reaction Distance	Total Distance
20	44	63
30	66	109
40	88	164
50	110	229

Relative to 20 mph, traveling 30 or 40 mph increases stopping distance by ~70% and 160%.  Clearly as one travels faster, the ability of an alert driver to slow their vehicle decreases at an increasing rate. Even a slightly distracted driver -- say it takes three seconds to react doubling the distance in the table above -- would significantly exacerbate the issue.  As expected, vehicle speed is highly correlated with pedestrian and cyclist injury/mortality.

From DOT HS 809 021 October 1999

A pedestrian hit by a vehicle traveling in the low 30s instead of low 20s has almost a three to fourfold increase in mortality.  A statistic that is perhaps more surprising for many is that the risk to the driver is significant too. 

Injuries per 100 Occupants by Change in Speed (deltaV) at Impact
delta V	Moderate Injury	Serious Injury
mi/h	AIS 2+	AIS 3+
1-10	4.5	1
11-20	10.6	2.6
21-30	29.2	11.1
31-40	53.4	27.9
Bowie and Waltz (1994)

 
Mortality for drivers also follows a similar pattern: velocity changes of 20, 30 , and 40 mph are estimated to have a 0.6, 3.2, and 10.1% fatality rate (Joksch, 1993).  Clearly, cyclists, pedestrians and drivers are all better off at moderate residential speeds in the event of a collision.  Perhaps more important is that the traffic calming literature -- see the same FHWA synthesis -- strongly supports that collisions are reduced as well.  A recent traffic calming success on Lawyers Road in Fairfax County demonstrates the concept.  Consequently, pushing for roads designed for slower velocities and greater user awareness, as opposed to roads built like freeways with lower speed limits, is likely to produce fewer and less serious collisions/crashes. 

A more robust transportation system

A transportation network that gives people several acceptable transportation options is more robust than one that emphasizes driving only and can benefit even those that typically drive.  This is most obvious during major events such as the recent snow storms ("Snowmageddon") or "Tractor Man" where people were forced to choose alternatives due to their cars being trapped by snow or restrictions that made driving unreasonable.  More transportation options, however, are useful for far more mundane problems such as poverty -- cars are expensive to own and maintain: greater than $5K annually for a Ford Focus -- vehicle downtime, or as an alternative for a household second or third vehicle. 

Let me briefly emphasize that last point.  Parents often purchase (or let their teenagers use their vehicle) another car for a teenager because few alternatives exist and chauffeuring him/her around becomes a burden.  In short, teens are terrible drivers.  Giving parents alternatives to letting their teenager drive or greater leverage in limiting driving until a teenager demonstrates greater maturity and skill could literally save their life.  For instance, legislative changes that limit teenager driving have resulted in fewer fatal collisions.    

Naturally, there are people who would actively choose to cycle or walk more if they felt conditions were better.  As I demonstrated above, a strategy that lowers road speeds would make a given road safer and likely more acceptable.  Mind you, I believe virtually any road can be cycled on with a reasonable level of safety by applying a few rules and riding according to the rules of the road.  Based on my conversations with people of varying levels of interest in bicycling, however, when motorized traffic on a road crosses some threshold of volume and speed it is classified as too dangerous (or simply undesirable) regardless of the evidence.  Adopting a paradigm where slower but better flowing traffic becomes the norm clearly makes more roads accessible to average citizens.  

Yet typically one can simply look at a map in combination with some local knowledge to identify "high stress" areas or other obstruction that would limit cycling and walking for many even with some measure of traffic calming.  If these areas represent major connecting points in a local transportation grid, then addressing desirability via some smart engineering is probably worthwhile.  That is, if the cycling and pedestrian transportation network is meaningfully expanded with some thoughtful changes, then it should be seriously considered and pursued.   "Thoughtful" is the operative word here since careless application of bicycle treatments can create perverse situations for cyclists and other road users by increasing the risk of collision at with crossing traffic (intersections) which represents the greatest risk of collision to the cyclist.  While this is supported by observations in the U.S. as well as overseas, there are studies that find little correlation between facilities and collision risk but that facilities are also correlated with increased use and an overall improved safety that many attribute to safety in numbers.  Overall, my take on the literature is that it doubles my emphasis on the "thoughtful" adjective used earlier.  Over-engineering our roads can not only decrease safety directly, but facilities often remove driver/cyclist responsibility from actively thinking about their actions.  But in many cases, the engineering solution is the easiest way to connect sections of the transportation grid for many cyclists and pedestrians.  If one is looking to expand the acceptable cycling transportation grid through high stress areas, pick places with little or no crossing traffic, long ascents on roads with moderate to high traffic volumes, and so on.

More efficient and slower?

Clearly we all expect road diets and traffic calming to be safer however, their effect on vehicle capacity and travel duration is often minimal.

Under most annual average daily traffic conditions tested, road diets appeared to have minimal effects on vehicle capacity because left-turning vehicles were moved into a common two-way left-turn lane. (FHWA)

For instance, the Lawyers Road diet referenced earlier pulled back extreme speeds but only lowered average speed from 45 to 44 mph.  Moreover, distances are generally much shorter for local travel consequently the absolute change in travel duration will be small: a 5-mile trip without any stop lights driven at 30 versus 40 mph takes 10 and 7.5  minutes respectively.  Traffic signals clearly decrease the percentage difference between the two.  But we can actually slow traffic, decrease collisions, and improve travel times with a simple traffic device: the roundabout.

Many Washington DC locals shudder when they think about the high speed traffic circles that litter the area.  Modern roundabouts are not traffic circles nor rotaries!  Roundabouts have much more deflection, are much smaller than circles, and consequently have slower speeds.  Some of the benefits of modern roundabouts include:

• Reduces injury accidents by 75 percent and fatal accidents by 90 percent.
• Increases efficient traffic flow up to 50 percent.
• Helps the environment by reducing carbon emissions by double digits.
• Decreases fuel consumption by as much as 30 percent.
• Costs less than traffic signals and does not require expensive equipment or maintenance.

Roundabouts never have a "dead time" like traffic signals where no traffic is in the intersection.  Roundabouts avoid long vehicle waits during off hours.  By design, entering traffic yields to traffic already in the circle and pedestrians traveling on the outside.  Consequently, successfully navigating the roundabout requires that the driver pay attention instead of mindlessly zipping through a green light.  As demonstrated by the red dots, roundabouts have far fewer conflict points than a signalized intersection.

The standard signalized intersection has 32 vehicle-to-vehicle conflict points

The roundabout has 8 vehicle-to-vehicle conflict points.

Not all intersections are appropriate for roundabouts and the literature has mixed reviews for cyclists since some of the early designs put bike lanes in the "circle".  Nonetheless, for the typical local trip, a few well placed roundabouts could easily reduce travel time to offset slower velocities and newer designs either encourage cyclists to behave as a vehicle or provide easy access to behave as a pedestrian. 


Conclusion

I know several cyclists that think fondly of European facilities.  While they look like a lot of fun and could work in some areas, even Copenhagen facilities show some warts and, to be frank, I have doubts that many would be willing to pay the price to have them.  Moreover, bike safety and ridership in many Netherlands cities likely experience a positive effect from strict liability and slow road speeds.  So the concept of building livable neighborhoods takes into account the European experience.   

Broadly speaking, here in the United States we spent a lot of energy and resources pursuing a strategy of safe crashing.  While seatbelts and other technological achievements are true advancements that help prevent injury and death in the car, we should also consider how people drive when they are in a protective cocoon and the effect on neighborhood livability.  Local streets should be for local travel which includes cycling and walking.  What this means is that for better neighborhoods we need to design our roads for slower travel that require greater driver attention.  Moreover, we need to stop building roads like freeways and simply slapping a 30 mph speed limit on the road.  We should consider innovative and efficient ways to enforce speed limits such as the speed camera lottery or ordinary automated cameras where engineering a slow road proves too costly for various reasons.

Thanks for reading!

Post Script

Just to be clear, I breezed through many details of the safety literature that might be important to particular individuals.  Moreover, I omitted many interesting studies and articles that could be related to various points discussed in the post.  My objective here is to give a broader outline but provide links that an interested individual could follow to obtain a foothold in the literature.  I'm also trying to reach a broader audience that might know little or only one side of the safety literature as well as a much broader community that could support pro-neighborhood policies that would find a more in depth discussion tedious.