One Street News

March 2011

Vol. 4, Issue 3

  1. City to Velo-city Successes
  2. Resources – Analysis of Bicycling Trends...Lessons for New York
  3. Hot Topics – TIG Welding in Africa
  4. Supporter Spotlight – City to Velo-city Supporters 

City to Velo-city Successes

By: Sue Knaup, Executive Director

 

Valerie, Kara, Taylor and I returned just over a week ago from the City to Velo-city trip where we connected with top officials from around the world to learn the latest on designing cities for bicycling.  

In the Netherlands, we spent so much quality time with city officials and bicycle advocacy leaders we are still absorbing all the information and sights they shared with us. With 57% of all trips made by bicycle in the city center, bicycling in Amsterdam was like jumping into a river of bicyclists. The closest thing to danger was a possible collision with another cyclist.

Car drivers, and even pedestrians, stop to let bicyclists by. This is likely because of a law in the Netherlands that frees cyclists from fault in any collision unless absolute negligence can be proven. And even then, no more than half of the blame can be put on the cyclist. What a wonderful feeling to ride in a city where cyclists are treated like royalty. And the numbers of cyclists show the affect of such bicycle-friendly policies. Having the chance to connect with the officials and advocates who made these policies possible made the trip a success, even before we made it to Spain. 

 

Also, during our time in the Netherlands, we spent a day and a half with bicycle advocates in Almere, a 20 minute train ride from Amsterdam. This city of nearly 200,000 was built in the 1970s on new land dredged from the sea. Yes, I said new land! Only the Dutch would take on such an endeavor. And because it was a new city, they did some experimenting with transportation. They built three separate systems: one for bicycles, one for buses, and one for cars. These paths and streets crisscross the island only converging in downtown Almere where cyclists share the streets with cars. Truly incredible to see. 

 

In Sevilla, Spain the Velo-city conference was three days of top-level discussions with officials and advocates on bicycle policies and provisions from around the world. And Sevilla itself blew us all away with its courageous development of a citywide bikeway network that enjoyed an endless stream of bicyclists of all ages and abilities. 

We’re planning our post trip event. Please join us if you are in the Prescott, Arizona area to learn more about our discoveries and take part in a lively discussion about how we can bring such bicycle advancements to Prescott:

  • Friday April 8th at 6:00pm at the Crossroads Cafe (on the Prescott College campus off of Grove Ave.)  

If you are on Facebook, please invite all your friends in the Prescott area so we’ll be sure to have lots of great minds there ready to solve our city’s transportation problems.

You can read more about the trip on our City to Velo-city web page. 

Resources – Analysis of Bicycling Trends...Lessons for New York

The New York City bicycle improvements have been catching a lot of heat lately. Fortunately, a lot of supporters are stepping forward as well. But such street improvements are only a small part of what it takes to make a city into a place where everyone wants to ride a bike. This latest paper from John Pucher and Ralph Buehler sheds intriguing light on some of the other elements needed for New York City to truly take the stage as a bicycle city star: Analysis of Bicycling Trends and Policies in Large North American Cities: Lessons for New York. 

Hot Topics – TIG Welding in Africa

Our local Social Bike Business program partners in Uganda, Ride 4 a Woman (R4W) are well underway with their bicycle rental program, their Women’s Community Centre is under construction, and they are awaiting their first shipment of good quality parts for their bicycle program from their new wholesale account we helped them set up in March.

That means we at One Street get to move on to our next big task for the program – figuring out how to make TIG welding viable in Uganda so that R4W can eventually weld their own bicycle frames. So far the only type of welding that any of us have found in Uganda is “stick,” otherwise known as shielded metal arc welding. Stick is a very crude form of welding and so does not work for the fine welds required in bicycle frame building.  

Brazing with oxy-acetylene could be a fallback if all else fails, but the dependency on prefabricated lugs would limit its usability for creating new bike designs and even off-shoot products like trailers and bicycle machines. This is why we are so determined to make TIG welding work. But we need your help to figure out how.

We’ve heard that the reason TIG welding is not common in Africa is because the most common shielding gas used for this type of welding is argon which is too expensive in Africa to make it cost effective. There are other gases that can be used in TIG welding. In fact, this sort of welding used to be called Heliarc because it originally used helium. But helium is also expensive and requires three times the amount of argon because it is so much lighter than air. Other potential gases include CO2 (ack! isn’t that what we’re trying to get away from?) and Nitrogen. There may be more, too. 

But we’ve only used argon with TIG welding and have no idea how these other gases perform. If you are familiar with alternative gases or have other solutions such as an affordable way to supply argon to R4W in Uganda, please email our executive director, Sue Knaup at sue{at}onestreet.org. Thanks in advance!

Supporter Spotlight – City to Velo-city Supporters 

Our wonderful City to Velo-city supporters get the spotlight this month for their invaluable part in making this trip possible. Please find them all on our City to Velo-city web page and if you see any of them around Prescott, please give them a big hug for us!