In the past two years, Pittsburgh has been named the top urban adventure city in the country by National Geographic Adventure magazine and the top city with outdoor appeal by Shape Magazine.

Those who may not know why can join those who do during Great Outdoors Week, which begins today and ends May 25. The 10-day celebration in Western Pennsylvania is sponsored by Sustainable Pittsburgh and its outdoor recreation partners, including Venture Outdoors, Three Rivers Rowing Association, Friends of the Riverfront, Bike Pittsburgh and more. Read more &raquo

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Paper or Pixels?

Back in October of 2007, Bike Pittsburgh released the first commuter-oriented bicycle map of Pittsburgh since Sophie Masloff was mayor, over fifteen years ago. The print map identifies the best routes for cycling, the less-than-ideal (yet unavoidable) “cautionary bike routes,” the trails, bike shops, hill information, and landmarks to help the inevitably lost cyclist in our spaghetti-like street plan.

Since releasing the print map, we’ve given away almost 20,000 of them. We’ve also been at work turning the print map into an interactive online version to supplement the information available on the hand-held version.

In addition to all of the resources on the print map, the online version contains lots of new information laid over a Google Map. We’ve added information about crossing bridges, an expanded notes and landmarks section, the opportunity to view the routes in terrain and satellite mode, and user-submitted crash information. The latter is useful to cyclists so that we can track patterns, learn from others, and communicate about problem areas. We also encourage the City to use this information to help guide them in improving the safety of all of Pittsburgh’s road users.

Users of the site also have the choice to learn techniques on how to “be a safe cyclist.” Under this heading, instructions on using the map were built around the comic-style narrative following the life and ride of a bike commuter. Visitors can see several interactive maps in-line with a comic (something rarely seen in the world of so-called map-mashups).

Another feature allows users to download the bike routes and trails and view them in Google Earth, so that they can see the buildings and terrain (especially useful in Pittsburgh) using Google’s free software.

This map is an extremely unique and innovative item, and the first of it’s kind to so thoroughly compile and visualize the cycling information of a U.S. city.

Click on the image above to explore the brand new interactive Online Pittsburgh Bike Map.

Thanks to the Heinz Endowments for providing the funding for this project, and to DeepLocal for doing such an excellent job designing our maps!

As with the print edition, please feel free to send comments on the map to map@bike-pgh.org.

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Hey Mr. Green,
I always chuckle when I see articles like “Two-Wheeled Wonder” (March/April) make claims of bikes having “no emissions.” A bicycle produces no greenhouse-gas emissions the same way my home heating and cooling system does: No emissions are produced on-site. But to claim that a bicycle is emission-free fails to take into account the emissions produced by making the bike and fueling its engine. Specifically, what powers my bicycle? Human muscle. It takes corn, beef, and a variety of other food fuels, most of which require the use of carbon-based energy for production. One might even make the claim that bicycling is less efficient than using an automobile given the resources needed to support my engine. –Philip

Read Mr. Green’s answer here »

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Neither rain nor snow nor searing sunshine can keep Caitlin Lenahan from cycling her way to work.

“(Biking) is a whole different way of thinking, and I prefer the flexibility that cycling gives me,” said Lenahan, 27, of Bloomfield. “It cuts down on so much frustration.”

Today kicks off the 14th annual Bike to Work Week, when bike enthusiasts encourage friends and family to hit the road or a trail and pedal to work.

About 1 percent of Pittsburghers — twice the national average — bike to work, according to the U.S. Census Bureau’s 2006 American Community Survey. More than 150 “Three Rivers” bike racks — which incorporate a Y design to symbolize the rivers at The Point — are outside businesses Downtown and in the East End, giving bike commuters a place to secure their ride.

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Nice job Brian and Caitlin!

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Bikes that don’t fit properly can make riding a bike a whole lot less comfortable and ultimately less fun. More seriously, improper fit can lead to myriad physical issues such as knee injuries, muscle strain, neck, back, foot, hand and wrist pain. Not to mention issues relating to folks’ lower extremities including saddle sores and even impotence in men.

Fit is important, and there are a handful of things you can do at home (given that you have an alan wrench set) to try to get the best fit out of your bike. However, if you’re still experiencing pain after trying to adjust for everything on your own (as I was recently with my left knee), it can be well worth a trip to see the professionals.

UPMC’s Cycling Performance

Luckily for us here in Pittsburgh, UPMC Sports Medicine has a Cycling Performance center, where experts in bicycle fitting and performance can help you fine tune things. For $75 ($65 for Bike Pittsburgh members), the professional athletic trainers on staff (Matt Tinkey and Phil Hensler) will do the following:

1. Musculoskeletal screening
2. Cycling-related injury assessment
3. And Evealuation of appropriate joint angles and pedaling forces including:

• varus and valgus (natural foot alignment)
• cleat position in order to minimize knee strain and foot pain, and maximize power
• saddle tilt
• saddle position (fore and aft)
• saddle height
• riding form (posture, pedal stroke, knee position)

For racers and people interested in maximizing their speed and endurance on a bike, they offer additional services at an added cost that tests for maximal oxygen uptake, peak power, lactate threshold, body composition, nutrition analysis and consultation, injury prevention and rehab services, and baseline testing for concussion assessment and management.

Assessments and Adjustments

Given that I’m mostly into riding my bike to work and the grocery store with only the occasional muscle-burner thrown in for fun, I opted for the basic fit assessment. They started out by taking a brief history and made sure they had an understanding of my knee pain.

They measured my legs to see if my legs were the same length (they were), and checked my standing posture to make sure I didn’t have any curvatures or looked off center in any way (fine there too). They also measured my varus and valgus. Fancy words meaning the angle at which my feet naturally hang when picked up off the floor (yup, fine there too). For folks with more extreme angles in their varus and valgus they will place a wedge in your shoe to keep your pressure even over the pedal.

From there they made sure my cleats were in the right position (they weren’t - not even close!). They used a laser level and some cool measuring techniques based on my toe joints to line pinpoint the proper place to locate the cleat (Photo below). This made a huge difference for me. I immediately felt like I was getting more power out of my pedal stroke. On top of that (and more importantly for me) I felt more comfortable.

After that adjustment, they got me on my bike which was hooked up to a trainer. From there they checked on my knee angle (see photo). I learned that 27-32 degrees at the 6 o-clock position is optimal. When I first got on the bike, my saddle was just a bit too high (they found that I was “ankling” and thus putting more stress on my calf muscles than is optimal), so they lowered my seat post. They also checked the fore/aft positioning of my saddle. It turned out it was a full inch too far back. Adjusting my saddle forward by that amount was critical. Immediately, pedaling became much more comfortable. They also checked the “float” which is how much your foot is able to move while clipped into the pedal.

To finish up, Matt and Phil lined up my knee position while pedaling with my toes to check if anything was out of whack with my pedal stroke. Again, they used a laser level. Everything checked out! (see photo below)

Keep in mind, I knew, roughly, the various tricks of proper bike fit prior to going to this appointment, but was still fairly far off in the fore/aft positioning of my saddle and where my cleats were situated. Prior to this appointment I calculated my miles over the past decade at more than 30,000 (haven’t had a computer for much of the time) with only slight discomfort, which has started recently. Hopefully, thanks to what I learned at this fitting, I’ll be able to pedal many more miles without any problems.

If you’re experiencing any discomfort riding and are interested in getting a comprehensive bike fit, give Matt a call at the Cycling Performance Center. If you’re not already a member of Bike Pittsburgh, consider joining and use your membership card to save $10 off of a $75 fitting.

Contact:
Matthew Tinkey, ATC
Certified Athletic Trainer
UPMC Sports Medicine
3200 S. Water St
Pittsburgh PA 15203
412.432.3770
tinkeyml@upmc.edu

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Reducing urban sprawl could play an important role in addressing climate change.

Julian D. Marshall
UNIVERSITY OF MINNESOTA
Published in Environmental Science & Technology

Improving city layouts and transportation networks could reduce carbon emissions more than replacing all gasoline with corn ethanol (1). Although much attention on mitigating climate change has focused on alternative fuels, vehicles, and electricity generation, better urban design represents an important yet undervalued opportunity. Fortunately, such decisions are well within the reach of local governments and leaders and can reduce long-term carbon emissions.

The impact of cities—and urban design—on the global climate is becoming increasingly important. In 2008, urbanites will outnumber rural dwellers globally for the first time in human history (2). China’s population doubled between 1952 and 2003, but its urban population increased 7-fold; today, 170 Chinese cities have at least 1 million residents (3). The U.S. has 39 such cities (4). In coming decades, urban populations are expected to double while rural populations level off or decline.

Vehicle use is rising rapidly. From 1970 to 2005, U.S. total vehicle-kilometers increased 3× faster than the population (annual increases: 3.0% vs 1.0%) (5). Similar trends occurred in China (8.3% vs 1.7%, a 5-fold difference) and the world (4.3% vs 1.8%) during 1970–1990 (6). If current trends in total vehicle-kilometers continue, vehicle CO2 emissions may increase even if emissions per mile decline (7).

In an influential paper in Science, Socolow and Pacala (8) argue that climate stabilization during the next half century means reducing CO2 emissions by 175 GtC (33%) relative to a business-as-usual (BAU) scenario. They propose seven strategies, with each “stabilization wedge” representing emission reductions of 25 GtC during 2005–2054 (each wedge grows from no reduction in 2005 to 1 GtC per year [yr] reduction in 2054).

The race is now on to figure out ways to design and implement these wedges. Often neglected in the debate is the role of urban form (e.g., land-use patterns and the layout of transportation infrastructure) in meeting climate objectives. My estimates suggest that reducing urban sprawl in the U.S. alone could represent half or more of a stabilization wedge.

Impacts of urban form on transportation CO2

Compact urban form can cut on-road gasoline emissions, the largest segment (62%) of transportation CO2 in the U.S. The transportation sector is the largest emitter (33%) of CO2, outpacing the residential, industrial, and commercial sectors. (Electricity generation, when totaled for all sectors, accounts for 41% of CO2 emissions.) Records of automobile usage (Figure 1) show an inverse relationship between population density and per capita daily vehicle-kilometers traveled (VKT) (4, 9). Evidence suggests that VKT is causally related to population density and other urban form attributes, and therefore, sprawl reduction policies may curtail VKT (10–14). In denser urban areas, trip origins and destinations (e.g., home, work, shopping) are closer; driving disincentives (e.g., congestion, parking costs) are greater; and alternative modes of travel (e.g., walking, bicycling, mass transit) are more common (15).

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Note from BikePGH: this is the Pittsburgh Metropolitan Statistical Area, not just the city. If only the city were taken into account we would doubtless see our VKT decline

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This morning, on Scott’s ride to work, he came across a cycling crash on Friendship Ave where a cyclist was lying on the ground. It turned out his front wheel came off of his fork causing him to endo and fly over his bars. Those little levers on the end of your forks seem simple enough, but do you know how to use them properly?

As a frequent staffer at Free Ride, I see a lot of the problems that cyclists, especially those with a limited amount of mechanical knowledge, have with their rides. One thing I see on many bikes of new cyclists is improper quick release use. This is an unfortunate common problem as I don’t think that their functioning is as intuitive as one might believe.

So, inspired by today’s events, we decided to re-publish this article, originally from Bicycling Life, and help cyclists educate themselves about proper quick release use. It can be hard enough out there staying safe from cars, so let’s not hurt ourselves.

How to use a Quick Release

Bicycle wheels on better bikes come with a device called a quick release which holds the wheel on. These are used because you then do not have to carry tools to remove the wheel. It seem people are often removing bike wheels, to fix a flat, or fit the bike into a car, or to keep someone from stealing it.

Quick releases are simple to operate, and you wouldn’t think a web page dealing with them was warranted. Wrong! Bike shop owners will tell you it is one the most commonly miss-adjusted part on a bicycles owned by people new to cycling.

That wouldn’t be so bad, if it wasn’t so dangerous to misuse quick releases. If not properly used, the front wheel can fall off, and you crash. Hard. Usually head first.

So lets take a quick look at a quick release and explain how it works. It’s really simple, and remarkably secure when used correctly.

By their very nature, it is almost impossible for a quick release to work itself open. Personally, I always disbelieve anyone who says “it just popped open”. They way they are designed, it takes more force for the quick release to open than it does for it to remain securely shut. All the bumps in the world will not jar them open. The only way they “just pop open” is if they are never properly closed.

The quick release operates like the wheel-chocks you will see careful truck drivers place around behind the wheels of a truck parked on a hill. The chock might be only 4 inches high, and the truck might weigh 10,000 pounds, but that little 4 inch bump becomes an insurmountable object precisely because the truck is heavy. It takes a great deal of energy to lift 10,000 pounds 4 inches.

The quick release has a little chock (called a cam) built into it. It has to climb over the top of its chock every time you open or close it. The cam is built into the silver end-cap where the lever attaches.

Wrong Way

Here is the common mistake that many people make when first encountering quick releases.

They un-screw the quick release. They use the lever like the handle of a wrench, and rotate in around and around till the quick release is tight or loose depending on whether they want it on or off. Wrong!

Right Way

First, note that the quick release handle is slightly curved. Almost all of them are built this way. Further, one side of the handle often has the word “open” and the other often says “closed”. When the curve is pointing away from the bike (and the word open is visible) the quick release is loose, and your bike is unsafe. The picture above shows the quick release in an Open state. Not safe to ride.

To close the quick release swing the lever (see drawing) so that the curved handle points to the bike or the wheel, and the word “closed” is visible. You swing the lever like a door, you don’t twist it or rotate it.

The lever swings about 180 degrees.

When swinging the lever from full open, to full closed, you should JUST start to feel some resistance when the lever is pointing straight out (sideways or perpendicular) from the wheel. This resistance should start getting harder at about the 2/3s way closed, and really hard up to the 3/4 point (still 1/4) open. Then it may get easier the rest of the way. Your lever has climbed “over the top” of its cam and is sort of rolling down the back side of its little wheel chock.
Note, that some brands just get progressivly tighter, and there is no perceptable feel of “going over the top”.

How Tight is Tight Enough?

When the lever leaves a mark in your hand after closing it, it’s probably tight enough. The mark should not be bloody - lets not get crazy here… An indentation that lasts more than 5 or 10 seconds usually means you have pressed hard enough.

Preliminary Tuning

What if you don’t feel any resistance, or you feel resistance even when it’s wide open? In either case your quick release needs to be adjusted.
Resistance when wide open
If your lever binds up or becomes hard to swing and it is still in the wide open position (the word Open is showing) then you have to unscrew (lefty-loosie, righty-tighty) the lever a bit. Now you may use the lever as if it were the handle of a wrench, (without fear of being laughed at) and unscrew it a half turn at a time, then try swinging the lever, then unscrew a bit more, till you get it so the resistance just starts to set in with the lever sticking straight out from the bike.

Resistance never felt, easy to swing from open to closed

In this case, you have to tighten the lever. First open it all the way. Then start rotating the lever like it was a wrench, and swinging the lever every half turn or so, until you just barely feel resistance when it is sticking straight out. If it is really loose, you may have to reach around to the other side of the bike wheel and hold onto the other end of the axle to keep the quick-release end-cap (or nut) from spinning. (Sometimes it’s easier to just spin the nut with your fingers while holding the lever straight out. When the nut gets hard to turn, you are near the proper adjustment.).

Final Positioning

After you get the resistance dialed in so it just starts getting tight with the lever at the 90 degree mark (sticking straight out from the wheel), grab the nut (other side of the wheel) with one hand, and the quick release with the other, (flip the lever to the full open position) and rotate the two together so that when you close the lever it will be pointing rearward, or parallel to the fork.

Warning: We are into religious territory now. There are people who feel quite strongly about the orientation of quick release levers.

On a bike used only on the road, as long as it is tight it can be pointing any which way. It really does not matter. On a bike you will ride off-road through brushy trails, point them rear-ward so a branch does not catch it and flip it open, as might happen if it were pointing forward. I said “might” happen. Never has happened to me, or anyone I know, but you hear stories….

Some folks like to align the quick release lever so that (when closed) it will be parallel to a solid piece of the bike, like the fork or chain-stay. This allows them to grab the release lever and the fork and really squeeze the two together. It also makes it harder to get your wheel off when you want to, because you can’t get your hand behind the lever to pull it out. If you have small hands this technique may help, but if you have a weight-lifters grip, this is unnecessary, you putting more stress on the system than is necessary, unscrew a quarter turn and try again.

Nuts Vs Quick Releases

Quick releases are by far more reliable than nutted axles. Nuts will unscrew over time, but quick releases will not. The quick release is actually stretching the rod (skewers) that runs through the hollow axle to the nut on the other side. This stretching puts a great deal of pressure on the quick release nut on the other side, which has little teeth next to the bike frame. These little teeth dig in and make it impossible for the nut to come loose.

Regular nutted axes, on the other hand can work loose over time, unless they rust, which unfortunatly, they do.

But this safety benefit of quick releases only comes into play by virtue of the camming action, so if you have previously used that quick-release lever as a wrench, you now know why that was the wrong way to do it.

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Monday, May 5
5:00 pm SHARP
Harris Theater (809 Liberty Avenue, Downtown) - map

Mayor Luke Ravenstahl and landscape architect, Dina Cole Klavon, will present three design concepts for Market Square. Ask questions and offer comments during this informative session. Or, send your thoughts (e.g. “please consider keeping cars out of Market Square and making it a car-free zone.”) via e-mail to MarketSquare@DowntownPittsburgh.com. The design concepts can be viewed on the Pittsburgh Downtown Partnership’s Website.

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Author James Kunstler says the Automotive Age is almost history and deconstructs McMansion living

by Mara Der Hovanesian

The suburban landscape has been marred by foreclosures and half-built communities abandoned in the subprime aftermath. But James Howard Kunstler, author of a dozen books, including The Geography of Nowhere: The Rise and Decline of America’s Man-Made Landscape, thinks there’s a bigger threat to those far-flung neighborhoods: the scarcity of oil. As Kunstler sees it, oil wells are running dry and the era of cheap fuel is over. Given the supply constraints, he says the U.S. will have to rethink suburban sprawl, bringing an end to strip malls, big-box stores, and other trappings of the automotive era. Kunstler, 59, predicts a return to towns and cities centered around a retail hub—not unlike his hometown of Saratoga Springs, N.Y. But the shift to this new paradigm, he says, will be painful. (Kunstler could be off the mark; he predicted technological Armageddon after Y2K.) BusinessWeek writer Mara Der Hovanesian spoke with Kunstler about suburbia, which he calls “the greatest misallocation of resources the world has ever known.”

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FRESH TALK: ERICA MINTZER, HUNTER SMITH AND THOMAS HARNED

April 30, 2008

Originally published in the Hartford Courant

The tragic death April 20 of Mila Rainof, a Yale medical student, who was struck while crossing an intersection at South Frontage Road and York Street in New Haven and later died from her injuries, brings home the great danger inherent in our transportation system and the need to set higher safety standards.

Each year, more than 42,000 people die in crashes on America’s roads. That’s some 117 of us every day. Motor vehicle crashes are the leading cause of death for every age from 2 through 34. In Connecticut, 300 of us are killed a year. Who among us does not have a friend or relative who was seriously injured or killed in a car crash? And yet, while these numbers remain the same year to year, we and our politicians all remain remarkably silent about road safety.

This is because crashes seem to be a force of nature, a fact of life — they happen and we call them accidents. Unlike with a war or a crime, there so often doesn’t seem to be any human agency behind motor vehicle crashes. There is something unsatisfying about blaming a jaywalker or someone traveling a few miles above the limit. Who hasn’t been guilty of a similar offense themselves? We are all fallible, after all.

Yet such thinking evinces a general failure to look at the bigger picture. Blame may be assigned to users or it may not. But a transportation system should be built with the recognition that its users will be fallible and with the premise that mistakes should not be fatal.

In 1997, the Swedish Parliament adopted a plan called Vision Zero. Its goal is to reduce deaths and serious injuries from motor vehicle crashes to zero by 2020. Imagine that: zero!

The plan calls for changing behavior and practices among everyone from drivers and pedestrians to police, traffic engineers and licensing agencies. Along with traditional measures such as getting tough about seat belts and drunken driving, the plan involves replacing traffic lights with traffic circles (you can run a red light but not much can be done about a traffic circle) and installing medians along the main roads. Raised crosswalks are now being constructed in dense, pedestrian areas. Speed limits are being lowered while the driver’s education program is reconsidered.

The Swedes fashion Vision Zero as an “ethical approach to road traffic.” At first this sounds strange — what does traffic have to do with ethics? But our failure to link the two is precisely the problem: Long ago we decided that we would not tolerate industrial accidents or, more recently, deaths in commercial aviation.

We mobilized large campaigns to prevent these and we’ve been fantastically successful. Yet why should we continue to tolerate massive numbers of lives being cut short by our ground transportation system?

In fact, how could we fail to take “an ethical approach” to a system that kills and injures so many?

If Sweden, a country of roughly 9 million, can strive for zero traffic deaths, there is no reason that Connecticut, a state of 3.5 million, cannot as well. Sweden has recently realized that it may take beyond 2020 to achieve zero deaths, but it has not used this as an excuse to stop working relentlessly toward its ultimate goal.

The decision to adopt Vision Zero is first and foremost a political one: We and our representatives need to send a message that the only number of traffic deaths that is ethically acceptable is zero.

Such a message can and will lead to an ever-decreasing number of us being killed in traffic. It would require all agencies in government to look at what they can do to save lives. It may well even force us to re-examine our commitment to the automobile as the mainstay of our transportation network.

It would recognize that while some accidents may always happen, fatal ones need not. It’s time to demand a Vision Zero for Connecticut.

Erica Mintzer, 27 is a student in the Yale School of Medicine class of 2009. Hunter Smith, 25, is in the Yale Law School class of 2010. Thomas Harned, 26, is a transportation planner and a master’s candidate in research, statistics, and measurement at Southern Connecticut State University in the class of 2008.

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