Brattleboro Citizens' Breakfast September 21, 2012 Gibson-Aiken Center - Brattleboro VT

Brattleboro's New Family Car . . . a Bike? Video link: http://vp.telvue.com/preview?id=T01304&video=134541

Presenter: Dave Cohen - dave@davecohencounseling.com

Dave grew up in New York City and like a lot of people living in that metropolis, saw no need for a drivers license, until, at about the age of 25-26, he moved to Los Angeles for employment. He remembers he was able to rent a British Sterling but then calculated that his living quarters were only 1 mile from the office, so he walked instead of drove. His co-workers were incredulous and his boss even stopped to offer him a ride. He remembers the Berkley Car Free Day. One of the co-organizers drove to the planning meeting. Such is our automobile culture! We have Drivers Ed class. We need an alternative: alternative transportation education. Dave was involved in the formative days of Pedal Express, a west coast bicycle courier, hauling and delivery service still in existence. 1 They called themselves PedEx and received a letter alleging unfair competition! What alternatives do we have to the automobile? Dave holds a counseling psychology degree from Antioch and specializes in eco-psychology. As such, he is concerned with our relationship to the earth. What have we lost in our society? What do we need to bring back? The earth is in decline. We are experiencing a nature deficit disorder. There is healing potential in our encounters with the natural world. He started to do research for an as yet unwritten paper by asking about what is it about driving a car that impacts our perception. He did not find much in the literature. There is a field of traffic psychology but that pertains to things like road rage, but he found nothing about how the car influences our perception of the world. Is this an oversight of psychology? We are also prone to dissociation. While we might agree that climate change is a serious issue, if the subject of driving a car comes up, the conversation stops. The question Dave proposed for the research paper is: Are we living in a time of ecological dissociation?
As soon as the technologically altered situation becomes routine, it tends to be regarded as normal, no matter how great the disruption in the balance of things. 2
1 2

http://www.pedalexpress.com/ Bruce Wilshire, Wild Hunger: The Primal Roots of Modern Addiction, Rowman & Littlefield, Lanham, Maryland & Oxford, England, 2000, p. 223 http://books.google.com/books?
id=h1dxrdj9R28C&printsec=frontcover#v=onepage&q&f=false

The car has become a part of our body. A car can weigh 4,000 lbs with an SUV weighing in at 5,000 to 6,000 lbs. We are not aware of its potential. It multiplies our own power. The use of gas as a fuel argues the case that it is really substance abuse. Eco-psychology tries to reconnect mind - body - earth and is concerned with how technology alters perception. Are we patho-adolescent? 3 Or, to quote Carrie Fisher, Instant gratification takes too long. Asking how we inter-relate with our technologies leads to an investigation of technologies we have left behind, such as the bicycle. To illustrate his point., Dave showed historical slides of German firemen and the British postal service using bicycles. With the advent of the car, bikes were relegated to children. There was a bicycle revival in 1960s and 70s, but this was mainly for recreational purposes. Bikes developed for recreational purposes are super light and are made so they cant even carry a loaf of bread. On the other hand, many city centers in Europe banned cars and on that continent was born the modern cargo bike, exemplified by the Danish Christiana Trike.4 Both DHL
5

and Fed Ex

have used cargo bikes and electric trikes to good success in Europe.

There are various types of cargo bikes: utility bike - a regular bike with a basket; cycle truck - having a smaller front wheel and rack in front; long tail - developed for third world countries, a frame added to a regular bike, now integrated long john - extra long bike with the steering mechanism under the carrying rack bakfiets - a tricycle with a box tricycles A design competition in Portland OR resulted in an innovation of the long tail by Xtracycle. Yuba developed an cargo bike with an electric assist 400 watt motor with batteries; the technology is getting better. 8
7

i.e., that the majority of humans in developed societies now never reach true adulthood. http:// www.animas.org/newBook/interview.htm 4 http://www.christianiabikes.com/dansk/dk_main.htm 5 http://cargocycling.org/2009/06/paris-cargo-bicycle-delivery-network.html 6 http://electricbikereport.com/fedex-electric-trike-deliveries-paris/ 7 http://www.xtracycle.com/what-is-a-longtail/ 8 http://yubaride.com/electric-cargo-bikes

The Stoke Monkey was a bike motor that climbed hills better. 9 The BionX electric motors used by seniors in Canada have regenerative braking. 10 Dave cited Emily Finch as a unassuming evangelist for the new bike culture as she pedals with her six kids around Portland. 11 Finally, attendees at the breakfast were able to see and experience Daves new Yuba el Mundo, 12and the Yuba Boda Boda, 13 another cargo bike displayed by Robert Woody Woodworth, from Burrows Specialized Sports. 14 Question and Answer Period In response to questions, Dave summed up:
In the foreseeable future we're not going to see any great changes in our infrastructure

to accommodate cyclists. We might get some small fixes here and there. There quite conceivably could be yet another bike lane to nowhere implemented (we have a couple of those in Brattleboro). The fact is that there are far too few of us biking for transportation and consequently as a mode of transport it is largely marginalized. So while the infrastructure remains stagnant and seemingly frozen in a 1950's vision of the world we have a great opportunity to concentrate on changing the bike and greatly expanding its range, carrying capacity, and comfort. Thankfully that change is already happening with the re-imagining of the bicycle occurring in places like Portland, OR and the SF Bay Area. A utility bike revolution is taking place and currently there are a number of great bikes on the market that are capable of hauling the kids and cargo and feature electric-assist motors that can help us to power up almost any hill in Brattleboro. Furthermore, there are plenty of readily available electric assist kits that almost anyone can snap on to their current bike and profoundly expand their range and carrying capabilities, while helping to flatten out those problematic hills. I believe that once we're able to grasp the potential of the new bike designs and the "game changer" of electric assist technologies, the use of the bike will dramatically rise in our area. Folks will get totally excited about biking once again! When this happens the infrastructure will change because of pressure from a new bike riding culture. So, change the bike and the infrastructure will follow. References:

http://clevercycles.com/blog/products/stokemonkey/ http://www.nycewheels.com/bionx-electric-motor.html?gclid=CLvJnpOH17ICFet9OgodslQACA 11 http://bikeportland.org/2012/06/28/with-six-kids-and-no-car-this-mom-does-it-all-by-bike-73731 12 http://yubaride.com/electric-cargo-bicycle 13 http://yubaride.com/yubashop/product.php?id_product=98 14 http://www.burrowsspecializedsports.com/index.htm

10

Peddling unique bicycles - Local bike shop starts carrying special-utility rides Brattleboro Reformer - Wednesday, October 3, 2012 - by Domenic Poli http://docs.newsbank.com/openurl?ctx_ver=z39.88-2004&rft_id=info:sid/ iw.newsbank.com:NewsBank:BRFB&rft_val_format=info:ofi/ fmt:kev:mtx:ctx&rft_dat=141B01C5CA635128&svc_dat=InfoWeb:aggregated5&req_dat=1026F 45C6CE0E79A