Shek's Footprint

Having spent the last week bouncing around on my motorcycle in a 20 mph cross wind, I was super sensitive to every feature on the road that is not motorcycle friendly. The most important ones are cracks on the road between lanes and at a curve and the grooves cut on an interstate to facilitate rain water flow. I encounter these grooves on bridges across the St. Johns where the winds are especially choppy. My protest against Car Tax is more challenging than I thought.

Most roadway design engineers are not motorcyclists or bicyclists for that matter. These two groups usually get left out during planning. When a co-worker asked me how my commute has been lately, I decided to bring forth the issue of grooves cut on the road surface. I made a case that it is designed for four wheeled traffic and is potentially unsafe for motorcyclists. Tires get caught in the grooves which make the motorcycle follow the grooves till they get traction back. This happens back and forth and the motorcyclist is helpless in controlling the machine efficiently. Lighter motorcycles like mine feel it more than some heavier ones. An accident at interstate speeds with moving traffic can be fatal.

Motorcyclists are about 2% of registered vehicles. My coworkers made a point that roads are designed for the majority. They argued that it is my choice of lifestyle to ride a motorcycle and the engineers should not have to bend over backwards to accommodate my personal life choices. I am sure some of his comments were friendly banter but it made me think about concept of designing for majority. It effectively puts a price-tag on the value of a motorcyclist’s life. What is an acceptable price of anyone’s life?

What determines majority?

Is it just number of registered cars v/s motorcycles? The cars win hands down. I have designed a different method of scoring majority that is fairer and somewhat biased.

It has two factors:

Factor One > Occupants per 100 lbs

Factor Two > Gallons per 100 mile per occupant

Assumptions:

• Average motorcycle = Suzuki SV 650
• Average Car = Honda Civic
• One occupant per car
• One occupant per motorcycle
• Fuel efficiencies from company websites

Factor One – Occupants in a vehicle per 100 lbs. Single rider on a 650 cc street bike that weighs 500 lbs will have a score of 1/5. A single motorist, which is usually the case, in a Honda Civic weighing 3000 lbs will have a score of 1/30. Every Honda Civic on the road is equivalent to six motorcycles. Factor One result = 6.

Factor Two – Gallons per 100 mile per occupant. A 650 cc motorcycle gets around 55 mpg (city + hwy). Therefore, the single rider uses 1.81 gallons per 100 miles travelled. A 2010 Honda Civic gets 29 mpg (city + hwy). A single occupant uses 3.44 gallons every 100 miles driven. Therefore, a Civic user is 1.9 times the fuel footprint of a motorcycle. Factor Two result = 1.9

Factor One multiplied to Factor Two gives 11.37. Therefore, each motorcycle on the road gets multiplied by 11.37 to become a car equivalent. With motorcycles being 2% of registered vehicles, for every 98 cars on the road, there were 2 motorcycles. Now, for every 98 cars on the road, there are 2 X 11.37 = 22.75 motorcycles on the road. That is a share of 18% of traffic. Even though a minority, it is not negligible any more.

There are factors such as less wear on the road by motorcycles due to low weight thereby requiring less road maintenance that I have not considered. I have also not considered how motorcycles are unfavorable in adverse weather conditions since I ride all year and it has nothing to do with considering roadway design. Noise pollution on some larger cruisers and choppers is also not considered since plenty of cars have loud exhausts and a lot of them also blare loud music. Most motorcycles don’t come with sound systems.

I am a little biased on my two factor calculation but every road designer and transportation engineer is biased towards cars. I don’t feel guilty.

All of the above rant and pseudo-mathematics mostly try to convey that cars take a front seat in any planning. Cars are convenient, safe, protected from elements and quick. Motorcycles are not that convenient, safe with proper training, not protected from elements at all but are quick. Bicycles are neither of the three but probably the safest. Bicycles are convenient if one lives in a bicycle-centric city. Cars do cost the most amount of money to purchase and operate. They suck people deeper into dependence than a commuter motorcycle does. Yet, we promote it.

We are supposed to be the smarter of the mammals!

I just uncovered my whiteboard at work. It was tucked away under some folders in my drawer. I did not remember what was still written on it.

It is a small sized board that was light enough to be pinned to my cubicle wall. It was the statistics tracker for my car-light days.

Since I was sparsely driving my car, I decided to track what I was exactly doing.

• The first line says when I last filled up my gas tank. 14th august had been 26 days since I I updated the board last. I put my car up for sale (link)  in the beginning of October which shows when I stopped updating the board.
• The next line tracks the gallons used since the last fill up. In 26 days, I had driven 143 miles at the rate of 24.5 miles per gallon and used 5.8 gallons.
• I had ridden 923 miles since I started commuting by bike in the end of May 2008. A coworker added “Days ridden in Tropical Storm : 1″ since I rode to work and back on one of the first days of tropical storm Fay hitting us. Riding in strong winds and rain was challenging but I lived just two miles away. That was also the day I did not get honked or yelled at.
• I tracked days that I had not driven the car. This prompted me to question the times I did drive thereby thinking of alternatives. The xtracycle was purchased out of this statistic.
• My goal was to ride atleast 250 miles a month. Below that, I measured the miles I rode each month. Since I stopped tracking by the end of September, I never updated this board.

Keeping track of various numbers helped me make a sound decision about a drastic change in lifestyle. The anxiety I felt was minimal. It was also a good motivator to keep riding. I did not openly track the money I was saving in car payments and insurance. Those were constant expenses.

Discovering this white board brought me back good memories. Those were very passionate days and played a strong role in making me what I am today. It is because of those days, and that whiteboard that I joined forces with Matt at Bikejax and executed a successful bike valet. We are expanding it this weekend due to higher numbers of commuters to the Arts Market.

A tax is something that one is compelled to pay to be able to live a problem free life. We pay taxes to the government who spend it on schools, roads and public safety. Sometimes we resist with tea parties to the extra dollar they they raise in taxes. Once that paycheck hits our banks after a methodical deduction of taxes, we pay our rent or mortgage on our home that puts a roof over our heads and protects us from elements. We pay for utilities and for basic groceries to feed us and keep us nourished. These are means of existence. We absolutely can not survive without food and shelter. These are necessities.

In order to pay for these basic necessities, we have devised a system of compensation for work or service that creates a product that other people want to buy. We go to work everyday, get paid, pay our taxes and so on. Sometimes, we have money left over that we try to save for a rainy day or retirement, take a vacation, sponsor our hobbies or just plain consumerism. These are indulgences.

A car is something we buy to commute in a safe and protected way, though the safety of commuting in a car is questionable. When you are made to buy a car due to the design of the city’s infrastructure, the car becomes a necessity. It is not a cheap necessity either. A brand new car kept for 10 years with insurance and gas will cost over $200 a month, usually more than utilities to power your home. That is $2,400 a year. Most people do not keep their car for 10 years. For the first five years, that car costs over $500 a month or $6,000 a year. This car puts us in a random environment of traffic, made random by the presence of other drivers. Random = increased risk of an accident.

Mass transit, though costs extra tax revenue, and in turn the payment of extra taxes take the human element out of the commuting equation resulting in a safer method of commuting. The absence of mass transit or an effective mass transit will compel people to have to spend on a car. Such is the case with the City of Jacksonville. They provide an infrequent bus service with insufficient routes to conquer the vase expanse of the city. They also insult us with a skyway system that starts at a parking lot in the middle of nowhere and takes you to a convention center with ample on site parking, a college and a few other businesses. It does not even take you to the sports arenas.

Therefore, the citizens of Jacksonville FL, mostly republican, pay the car tax because it is a necessity, a need, not a want any more. No one protests at a tea party.

The struggling citizen who work hard to make a living are left behind to fend for themselves. They have to chose between a budget for either gas, car payments and insurance or quality food to feed their children. They choose the high-fructose corn syrup laden preservative infused cheap foods. They would like to pay premium for food not car but they don’t have a choice. They are not given a choice. Who cares about them anyway?

Some people understand the severity of this issue and protest on a very popular website namely metrojacksonville.com. I wish to protest by not owning a car. I moved recently to a walkable part of the city that put me out of bicycling range to work but I did not buy a car. If I was to pay a tax and had the choice to decide how much to pay I will try to pay the least. I wanted my mode of transportation to be reliable and requiring low maintenance. I bought the cheapest motorcycle in the market for $3,000. The insurance on that cycle is $20 a month. It gives me about 70 miles per gallon. The monthly cost on the motorcycle is $100, including depreciation. This is my protest to the city. This is my protest against the car tax.

I remember growing up during the beginning of consumerism in India. My father owned a car that I used for errands and to transport myself to the commuter rail station. He used the company car to commute to work. Before I have been driving, I watched my friends get motorcycles and scooters. I have been drooling over motorcycles for as long as I can remember.

Mom and Dad, fearing traffic conditions of Bombay, never bought me one. After laboriously evaluating every production motorcycle in India through magazines and internet, I had zeroed in on the Enfield Bullet 350 as the object of my affection. I got to ride a 1971 Royal Enfield Bullet 350 on the closed streets of Godrej & Boyce manufacturing campus. Even though I ended up pushing the heavy kick-start bike back to its owner for a quarter mile, consumerism was taking over. I wanted to acquire motorcycles from everything like the Enfield 350 to the over powered liquid cooled V4 engined Yamaha V-Max. Frugal options like 100 cc to 150 cc commuter motorcycles legendary for their reliability, affordability and fuel efficiency were not on my radar.

Others: Get what you really want. You will grow tired of this in three months.

Me: But I don’t have $9000 for the Triumph America. I want to keep my operating costs low.

Others: Put it on your credit card. Ask for an extension on your limit. Get financing. (in other words, get deeper into debt like the rest of us)

Me: I get 90+ miles per gallon. Insurance costs only $181 annually for Liability and Comprehensive.

Others: You will grow out of it soon. Get what you really want.

Me: I just want to commute. Not really worried about speed.

Others: You’ll think your bike is too slow in 3 months.

I am in a position where only time can tell if I grow tired of this bike quickly. Till now, my top speed has been a modest 30 mph on slippery rainy conditions with slippery new tires. I plan to own this bike for two to three years till I can afford to own and maintain a bigger motorcycle without going into debt. I am not, however, excited about being pulled into the rat race of traffic and commute. Owning a motor vehicle is one step closer to being another brick in the wall.

The nail that stands out gets hammered the most.

Calling a much slower instrument a vehicle and placing it on the road with much larger vehicles only with a thin shear blanket of a law is lazy. I am of the opinion that the definition of bicycles as vehicles is flawed. If the law and motorist’s courtesy is all that sufficiently protects a cyclist on a road, then let’s remove sidewalks and place the pedestrians on the road as well. They can use the shoulder and save bucket loads of money on concrete sidewalks.

Projecting a vehicular cyclist logic forward, cars, motorcycles, buses, trucks, tractor-trailers, bicycles, wheel chair bound disabled people, pedestrians etc. will all be called ‘widgets’ and all widgets will share the road with each other. Why should pedestrians be separated from the road to make it easier for vehicles to travel safely? Why support vehicular superiority? Vehicular Cyclists do not aggressively support Shared Space (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shared_space), making their arguments hypocritic and selfish.

Living in any sprawled area with no infrastructure but the blind principles of John Forrester makes life friction-full. Yells and honks start becoming an itch that wouldn’t cease so much that you would wish to cut off your limb to ease the pain. Initially, optimism and gumption help overcome the constant reminder that you as a bicyclist are unwanted and unwelcome on the road. The hammering does not stop, not till a large organization (Eg. a government) recognizes it and makes plans to stop it. Such efforts are usually graced with positive and constructive outcomes as seen in the cities of Portland OR, Davis CA and New York City NY.

I have decided to stop getting hammered. I am buying a motorcycle and moving to a bicycle-friendly neighborhood further away from work. I am moving from the top of a pile of bicycle commuters to the bottom of the pile of motor-vehicle commuters. In my efforts to latch on to a higher dynamic quality, namely car-free bicycle commuting, I am degenerating to an activity of lower quality, namely motorcycle ownership for commuting. I have kept gas bills, insurance and depreciation on the motorcycle to a frugal low of $100 a month, which used to be my taxi fare budget.

Lastly, the people who continue to bicycle commute here, Jonathan, Jose, Rebekah and the couple others who I haven’t met, are bigger people than I am. They are true heroes.