Principles of Urban Riding, Part 4: Silent Riding

When I'm trying to ride as quickly as possible, I have a theory. Any and all energy that is expended by either myself or the bicycle should be useful in the forward moving effort. Any wasted energy, such as a rubbing brake pad, a spoke magnet hitting something once per revolution, correcting for an out of true wheel, or a noisy chain, is simply throwing away precious energy. If bicycling generates heat or noise, something is very wrong.

I take a broad interpretation of this principle when riding in urban conditions. I try to ride as silently as possible. Sure, this means that my bicycle is in top condition, with drivetrain clean and lubed, and brake pads (if any) clean and clear of the rim. It also means that I try to be as quiet as possible: I try not to say anything while I'm on the bicycle.

As I ride through Manhattan, I see that messengers, racers, and all sorts of cyclists just waste energy yelling and screaming at people, and it never does any good. My rule is this: audible communication on the road, with very few exceptions, is an exercise in futility, for several reasons. First, yelling and screaming wastes energy and deprives what should be an already depleted cardiovascular system. Secondly, if you are in a position where you need to use audible communication to give someone a message, particularly a warning message, it indicates a failure on the part of either the cyclist, or the recipient of the message. It's the cyclist's responsibility to avoid instances of this nature.

In practice, what this means is that I don't yell or scream at people. If a pedestrian is crossing, or a motorist is doing something strange, I can detect this far enough ahead of time with good scanning technique, and simply re-route to maintain speed. If not, I'll slow down. When people get angry at me for being on a bicycle, almost always without real reason, my silence and calmness throws them off. (What, me, calm and quiet? Yes, it does happen, sometimes.)

The biggest counter-argument to my technique is, accelerating back to speed takes more energy than slowing. This is true. However, things that make you slow down are part of the environment when riding somewhere like Manhattan. If you don't like it, find another route. I spend a substantial amount of my rides doing route analysis.

There are two major exceptions to my silence principle:

• Communicating dangers to other cyclists. I usually ride alone, or with other people who are comfortable fending for themselves, but I'll take the extra effort to help a novice through town. I also let cyclists who are riding against traffic without lighting know that I'm displeased, as this is a real danger.
• Communicating with people who almost door me. I think anyone who opens a car door into traffic without looking should have that door ripped off by a passing truck, just to let them know how it feels. Dooring is a very serious issue around here that has taken too many lives. I do everything I can to reinforce that carelessly throwing your door open is a bad idea.

So, keep your head down, keep your mouth shut, and ride hard.

Principles of Urban Riding, Part 3: Nonstop Theory

My commute from Park Slope to Midtown Manhattan is an 8.5 mile trip. People are pretty impressed when I tell them that 35 minute travel time is the norm. After all, it's "so far" in their minds, and the F train, on a good day, would take 45 minutes for that same trip. If you're a true cyclist, you would be less impressed. You'd know that a strong rider like me ought to be able to average 22 MPH on such a short run, making this a 24 minute trip, in theory. When I move out to the West Coast, and my "commute" is a 10 mile run on a flat, straight road, I'll break out #7 and get to work averaging a hell of a lot faster than 22 MPH!

So, why does it take 35 minutes to get to work, instead of 24? The answer is simple: stops. Stopping - for traffic lights, pedestrians, cross traffic, construction, or anything of the sort - is a huge delay. It's something I try to avoid whenever possible.

I employ a number of advanced techniques in order to navigate city traffic with as few stops as possible. I'll list a few of them here, and leave the explanation of the individual points to future blog postings:

• Equally Weighted Grid Traversal. By this, I mean that New York City is a grid, and, so long as you are able to corner quickly and all of the streets are on a true grid, it really doesn't matter which streets you take from Point A to Point B.
• Heuristic Traffic Preditction. If you ride a route every day, you start to know which streets tend to have more or less traffic on a given day.
• Early Scanning. I usually know when a driver is stopping, slowing, or turning before they do. Subtle changes in speed and direction offer major clues. This happens for pedestrians as well.
• Back-Passing. People tend to not think about the space immediately behind them, and rarely move in reverse. I try to pass pedestrians immediately behind them when possible.
• Route Knowledge. On a route that I ride regularly, I will know where the major potholes are ahead of time. The only events that lead to new potholes are constructions or major storms, and I know to look for new potholes when those conditions occur.
• Equipment Knowledge. I know the limits of the bicycles I ride, and keep them in top condition.
  
• Traffic Light Timing. Here in New York City, traffic lights all follow fixed patterns. The walking signal offers quite a lot of information about the state of a light, and lets me know how long I have until a red. When I combine this with memorizing the cycles of each traffic light, I can optimize how much to slow down, so I never fully stop.
• Silence. I try not to talk, much less scream, when riding. It saps energy, keeps me from getting air, and is indicative of a poor decision already made. (I do shout for children, since they don't fully understand the implications of a 180 lb bicyclist moving at 25 MPH.)
  

I'm able to use all of these aspects, and more, in my daily commute to and from work. I make decisions on the fly, with a surprising degree of accuracy. There is not much that surprises me on the road these days.

Avoiding Bicycle Theft

A friend of mine recently got their bicycle stolen. This is not fun, and happens all too easily in urban areas. I'd like to offer these tips to make sure that your bicycle stays yours.

Use a lock that is appropriate to the cost of your bicycle, and your surroundings. I would only advise using a cable lock in a sparsely populated area. In a major city, where professional bicycle thieves roam the streets with angle grinders, plasma cutters, arc welders, and bolt cutters at their disposal, up the ante. I used two U-locks to secure my bicycle when I locked it outside in high school. I've had thieves easily defeat chains, cables, and combination locks.

If you must lock your bicycle outside in an urban area, secure anything that can easily be stolen (i.e. avoid quick release anything) and use the top of the line Kryptonite U-lock or chain lock with the linear key design.

Never let your bicycle leave your sight. I always try to go places where I can bring my bicycle inside with me, or where there is safe bicycle parking. A business being bicycle unfriendly is a deal breaker. For the record, bicycle shops are typically extraordinarily bicycle friendly, and will always let you bring your bicycle into the shop. If they don't, find another shop.

Keep your bicycle out of sight. If you live in an apartment building in a city, store the bicycle in a room away from windows, so people on the outside can't tell that there is a $5,000 carbon fiber ride sitting in your living room.

A little diligence goes a long way.

Principles of Urban Riding, Part 2: The Need for Riding

In this series of articles on my commuting through the city, I'd like to address the need to ride around the city on a bicycle.

New York City has the highest density of mass transit in the nation. We have more trains, more buses, and more highways than any other city in the US - even Los Angeles. There is certainly no lack of options from getting from Point A to Point B.

So, why ride a bicycle? Cycling provides a number of very real advantages:

* Run time is fairly constant, and agnostic to construction, changes in traffic or routing, due to the bicycle's ability to bypass traffic.
* Wait time is constant, and nearly zero. The bicycle is always ready to go, provided that you keep it in good mechanical condition.
* In comparison to public transit, a trip by bicycle does not require catching any connections or additional waits imposed by transfers.
* The bicycle has the potential to be faster than scheduled public bus service.
* A bicycle is a true door to door, point to point service. There is no walking to or from a station.
* Cycling is certainly less expensive than taking a taxi, and cheaper than public transit, even with a really nice bike.

Let's do a cost analysis. Assuming a $750 bicycle, with about $250 in annual maintenance costs, the two-year total cost of ownership of a bicycle is $1250. If one rides each and every single day, with one round trip, five days per week, the cost is:

2 trips/day * 5 days/week * 52 weeks/year * 2 years = 1040 trips, or $1.20 per trip.

In comparison, an $81 monthly MetroCard pass, assuming 4.5 weeks per month, comes out to $1.80 per ride. The Express bus comes out to about $4 to $5 per ride, and a taxi can cost upwards of $10 per ride.

New York is a special case. A five-mile trip, 20 minutes by bicycle at modest speeds, will get you to most places you need to go. That same five mile trip can take upwards of 45 minutes by public transit. A taxi can get you there in 10 minutes, if you're lucky, but can easily take upwards of 35 minutes.

The bicycle is cheaper, faster, and friendlier than any other form of transit.

Principles of Urban Riding, Part 1: Hardware Selection

This is the first posting in what is to be a series of posts on urban riding. This is something that I've been doing, by force, since I was about thirteen. I've been riding in NYC, playing in traffic if you will, since I was a teenager. In the many years that I've been riding on the streets, I've learned more than a few tricks for staying fast and live on the road. I've been meaning to put them on paper somehow for some time now, and I figured that this was as appropriate a forum as any.

My commuting bike is a 2006 Fuji Track Pro, 49/17 gearing, with a front brake. This is an interesting and well thought out choice for a number of reasons.

The fixed gear is better in traffic for all of the reasons professional bicycle messengers know and love. Fixies, as they are called, offer a substantially lower cost of maintenance, offer faster handling frame geometries, are lighter, and even look cool to boot. The lack of dérailleurs or multiple gears means that they are easier to service. Their minimalism means that it is quite easy to have a 14lb bike, which really matters when your riding forces to to accelerate and decelerate constantly.

I have chosen to run a 49/17 gear ratio in addition to a front brake. Many people will tend to run a lower gear ratio, and no brake. This is a religious debate. It is my belief that braking a fixie with your legs is really bad for your knees, and as a result, you are lining yourself up for knee troubles down the line if you do this. Additionally, it is rare that I need to do a really hard stop on the bike (more on this later). I'm strong enough to turn a 49/17 from a dead stop pretty well, and I tend to "spin out" the gear at about 25 MPH on flat road.

For a commuter level bike for use in a fairly flat area, I'd say that the key is minimalism. I feel that the Fuji achieves this quite well.