Shek's Footprint

This is the last post on this blog.

On 30 September 2010, I had the most relaxed motorcycle commute to work. The morning air was a crisp cool and the mostly southbound ride was accompanied by a gentle tailwind. The traffic was light and the engine felt nimble. Cruising at a steady speed under 50mph, the motorcycle disappeared in sensation. All that was left was the feeling of propelling through the morning mist…like flying.

The same tailwind had grown in might in the afternoon. Now, a heavy headwind, the commute back only affirmed my decision of giving up motorcycling. That Thursday was the last day I rode my motorcycle as a primary mode of transportation. Now with an expired tag, it sits in my front yard awaiting a novice motorcyclist to buy it.

I rode my xtraycle to work on Friday, thus closing the week and the two years of my car-free existance. Early morning Saturday, I juggled the local JTA bus transit and picked up my car from my friend. I had already purchased the car earlier that week and let my friend, the seller use it till Saturday before he bid adieu to USA and moved to Brasil with his family.

I started this blog when I went car-light and supplemented my commutes with my bicycle. I went car free on 17 October 2008 and it has been a heck of a ride since then. This blog has been instrumental in channeling my thoughts and ideas on transportation in general and bicycling in particular over the years. Now that I am back to depending on a car full time, it is only apt to shut down this blog.

I will continue to ride my bicycle to work a few times a week.

I will also continue blogging on Finding Mukherjee | Blog. You may subscribe to my universal feed here.

The real world is a combination of what we are supposed to do and where we do it. It generally involves buying a car and a single family home with fake grass and a barbecue grill in the back yard. I put that concept of the real world to a test. In May 2008, I started riding a bicycle to work and grew independent from the car. In October 2008, I sold my car and went car free. In September 2009, I gave up dealing with insolent motorists in suburban Jacksonville and decided to move to Riverside, a part of town built on a human scale.

Motorcycle Ownership

I had decided to not own a car for as long as I could manage it. A voluntary car-free state is a protest against the city of Jacksonville’s mandate to buy a car. Being car free allows me to be more environmentally responsible. To be able to commute from Riverside to work, a distance of 12 miles, I decided to buy a motorcycle. Not wanting to pay too much of the car tax, I bought the cheapest motorcycle in the market. To keep my mode of transportation reliable, I bought a brand new motorcycle. In December 2009, I moved to Riverside. I have been commuting on a motorcycle and sometimes on a bicycle from Riverside to work every day since the beginning of 2010.

Benefits of the Motorcycle

I get around 80 miles per gallon. My carbon footprint is very small and I fulfilled my life long dream of owning a motorcycle.

Drawbacks

This is a very light motorcycle and Jacksonville is fairly windy. At even a 10 mile per hour wind, the motorcycle gets pushed around on the road. This is similar to the feeling if you were to ride a bicycle and someone pushed your shoulder to the side. It gets difficult to keep my position on the lane. I generally drop speed to gain front tire traction to be able to steer myself back to where I was. This gets worse when it is windy and rainy. Most of my commute is on Phillips Highway. It is an old road and the center of each lane is very uneven. When I get pushed from my left half position into the center of the lane, the motorcycle gets even more unstable. This results from the weak forks and fork mounts.

At short stretches of highway, the grooves cut on the surface tracks the front tire giving the motorcycle a mind of its own. This gets worse crossing the tall Acosta Bridge which has rain grooves and higher wind speeds.

Maintenance cost of motorcycles is very high unless you can do it yourself.

Seven months of Riding

By the first three months till March 2010, I was considering moving to Belize. It was the coldest winter in Jacksonville in decades. It was extra cold for me on a motorcycle. Some mornings, the wind chill would be around 15 degrees. My fingers have been so cold that I was unable to remove my gloves and unstrap my helmet.

When it started warming up, the weather was perfect for motorcycle riding. This lasted probably 3 weeks till the pressure system in the Gulf started working and the winds picked up. I remember my first time in a 14 mile per hour cross wind taken by surprise not knowing what to do. I remember struggling to keep my lane position and doing everything in my power to not end up in the ditch where the wind was taking me. Between April and July, there have been only a handful of days where motorcycle commute was fun. Mornings are usually uneventful but it is the afternoon commutes that create stress. Continued added stress leads to fatigue.

Solving the wind problem

Between the motorcycle’s weight of 300 lbs and mine of 220 lbs, the center of mass of the two of us sits fairly high up. This makes it easy for the wind to create an impact on the direction of the motorcycle. Scouring numerous forums and blogs about people facing similar problems with the wind, I discovered that no one faces this at under 20 mph winds. They all ride heavy motorcycles.

Therefore, buying a heavier motorcycle with thicker forks, sturdier fork mounts and thicker tires will greatly solve my woes. Alas, even a used heavier motorcycle (650 cc to 800 cc) costs between $3,000 and $4,000. Incidentally, a coworker is moving to Brazil and is selling an old Toyota in great shape for under $4,000. I am jumping on this opportunity.

The Real World

This marks my re-entry into the so called real world. It starts by buying a car. The feelings associated with buying a car now are so different than the feelings I had when I bought my first car in 2006. Now, I view a car as a bloated and inefficient tool that is unofficially mandated by the city. Back in 2006, my car was a toy, an extension of my limbs and a mode of transportation to the nearest money-draining chain restaurant.

I re-enter the real world with desperation and need of a car, not a want. I re-enter the real world with open eyes, not eyes masked by social norms designed to impress faceless members of society. I will always regret that I wont be car free anymore.

Update: For more on the philosophy behind this post, read this http://www.mnmlstlife.com/archives/83

I had quoted that living in Riverside put me out of bicycling range. Riding a bike to work would make my commute time almost 3 hours. That coupled with a 9 hour day (sometimes more) will keep me out of my apartment for upwards of 12 hours, thereby putting my dog in an uncomfortable situation. Hence, the motorcycle.

A friend recently moved next door and her work is literally a stone throw away from her apartment. She get a lunch break which she uses to get out of the office and walk her dog. She willingly agreed to walk Laya for me if I chose to ride my bicycle to work. Since I am not in the best of shape, I am only riding to work twice a week, Tuesday and Thursday. I want to get to 3 days and eventually all 5 days.

My work is a 28 mile round trip and it involves climbing the Acosta bridge. The morning rides are very refreshing. The afternoon rides are a little tiring. Between the sun and 5 PM rush hour traffic, I am fighting several battles on my bicycle.

I am riding my xtracycle to work. It is the only long distance bicycle with multiple gears and a rock solid construction. Moreover, the heavy bike gives me a good workout. This is my second week and I can already feel the difference. Moreover, this is an appropriate activity for Bike Month rather than group ride with police escorts like this one: link

Riding a bicycle does not save me a whole lot of money since I am only offsetting minor wear and tear on the motorcycle and negligible fuel usage. Yup, I have been getting over 75 miles per gallon on the little Kawasaki. All I did was reduce my speed on Phillips Highway from 50 to 45. Enjoy the graphs and charts. Happy motoring!

No position is absolute. Times change and with time changes the angle with which we look at a problem. I often evaluate my position against the car tax. It is a position of protest against the City of Jacksonville making people spend a large sum of money every month in the name of basic necessities.

Days like today make me evaluate my stand. It was starting to rain by the time I was leaving work. I left early to beat the rain. The rain caught up with me by the time I reached I95, the last 4 miles of my 13 mile commute. It is here that grooves are cut along the road to help cars. Motorcycles be damned.

Climbing the Acosta bridge was very challenging. It is already super windy on the bridge. Even more grooves give the motorcycle a mind of its own. By the time the motorcycle climbed near the top of the bridge, the cross wind started to push it into the next lane. The grooves cut on the road aid the wind making the motorcycle even more unstable. There was nothing I could do to compensate the shift. A heavier motorcycle will compensate for the wind and the grooves but it costs more money. If I money was not an object, I would never protest against the car tax.

I reduced my speed, stepped down a gear while making a mental note to not use the front brake. The red Camaro behind me was surprisingly understanding and kept a safe distance while I negotiated a freshly wet curving exit lane. I later saw the sticker “Harley Davidson” on the rear window. They probably knew the limitations of a motorcycle on a windy rainy day on top of a bridge.

This somewhat righteous protest of mine is based on an absolute truth. The truth that even a minimum wage employee is required to either buy a car and pay running costs or waste time and effort waiting for busses.

I feel compelled to carry out this protest even if nobody is listening. This protest was never supposed to be easy.

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!