Chapter Seven

Transportation

Transportation

Revolutionary urbanists will not limit their concern to the circulation of things and of human beings trapped in a world of things. They will try to break these topological chains, paving the way with their experiments for a human journey through authentic life.

— Guy Debord, Situationist Thesis on Traffic

 

Transportation for the urban homesteader means much more than getting from point A to point B. Transportation can be a joyous experience, a tool for a radical re-envisioning of the urban environment and a means by which we form deep connections with our surroundings. Our means of transportation should enhance our awareness of ourselves and connect us with our neighborhoods. Most of all, our transportation should be fun.

 

Axe-Grinding Alert

Be warned, we’re biased toward human-powered transit; specifically, we’re bike-obsessed (at least one of us is). By all means, stay in your hybrids, or buy those carbon offsets (the Papal Indulgences of the 21st century), if you please, just know that you’re missing out on all the fun.

Transportation Principles:

1 The Journey Is The Journey

Our daily journeys should be a source of joy rather than aggravation. The forms of transportation we choose are those wherein the journey is a joyous end in itself. Why can’t commuting be recreational?

 

2 Transportation Should Be Low-Tech

Ideally, you should be able to repair your means of transportation yourself. Automotive technology has surpassed the ability of the average person to make repairs. The bicycle is simple and elegant. J.B. Jackson said of the bicycle, “It is the kind of machine that a Hellenistic Greek might have invented and ridden.”

 

3 Your Transportation Should Give You Exercise

Combining exercise with transportation is a great time-management strategy. Public health officials have begun to realize that the plague of obesity and the related Type 2 diabetes are directly related to time spent sitting in cars. If your commute is your daily exercise, you not only save time, but you also replace the mind-numbing grind of the treadmill with authentic, real-life experience.

 

4 Transportation Should Promote Community

Traffic Circulation is the organization of universal isolation. In this regard it constitutes the major problem of modern cities. It is the opposite of encounter, it absorbs the energies that could otherwise be devoted to encounters or to any sort of participation.

— Guy Debord

 

Our walking, biking and mass transit alternatives are not only more exciting, but also lead to richer connections with our fellow travelers. Communities form when we get out of our metal boxes and meet each other face to face. Pick a form of transportation that increases the likelihood of human contact and you’ll soon be surrounded by new friends. Walking and biking especially help us form new communities. Humans are social creatures. The more of us that walk and bike the more we improve our neighborhoods. Urban spaces become dysfunctional when nobody knows each other, when people are isolated, when streets are deserted. We were never meant to spend great chunks of our lives all alone, trapped in a metal cage behind the wheel of an SUV with no company other than bad radio. Walking and biking directly transform our streets into inviting and dynamic living spaces.

The Urban Homestead Transportation Triangle: Walking, Biking, Mass Transit

Walking

We’re embarrassed to admit that we used to drive to our local ATM, which is only a half mile away, and then on to the local diner, which is just two blocks further. The average American walks less than 400 yards a day according to a study by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. That’s a shame, because more than any other form of transit, the fine level of discernment that comes with walking leads to serendipitous discoveries and unexpected pleasures. We meet our neighbors, see the changes in our neighborhood, feel the transitions of the seasons. At the same time, we can also move within, and spend contemplative time alone, because walking is at once a mode of travel and a means of getting in touch with the world.

As Henry David Thoreau once said, “It’s a great art to saunter,” and thankfully it’s an easy art to master. All it takes is a shift in mindset from our car-centric ways. New Yorkers, Parisians and San Franciscans are used to walking, and their cities are made for walking, but that does not mean you can’t walk in your city. All it takes is a map and a willingness to try something new.

If you’re not already a walker, draw a circle on a map around your homestead. Everything within a mile is an easy walk. Don’t use the car to get anywhere in that circle, as strange as that might feel at first. Eventually you will become so accustomed to walking that distance that like us, you will be amazed that you ever went through the trouble of driving such a short way.

Our perception of walkable distance was dramatically shifted by a 26-mile walk we once took across Los Angeles to benefit a charity. While the full 26 miles nearly killed us, we learned on the way that 10 or even 15 miles is a reasonable distance to cover in a day. It also opened our eyes to the city’s topography in ways we never considered, and changed our relationship to the city permanently. We encourage all urban homesteaders to devote a Saturday or Sunday to a cross-town perambulation. Not only will your perception and tolerance of long walks change, but you’re guaranteed to discover neighborhoods you’ve overlooked.

Naismith’s Rule

Hikers use something called Naismith’s Rule to figure out how long it will take to go somewhere on foot. Naismith estimates that the average person can walk a mile in 20 minutes (you add a half hour for each 1,000 feet of elevation gain, though it’s doubtful you’ll need this adjustment in urban situations). Naismith’s rule is a handy way to figure out how long those longer walking trips will take, though with practice you might find you walk somewhat faster than Naismith anticipates.

To measure distances on a map for walking and cycling, nothing beats Gmaps Pedometer (gmap-pedometer.com), which allows you to use Google Maps to measure out and plan routes. Gmaps pedometer combined with Naismith’s Rule will give you a good idea of how long it will take to walk to your destination. We also use it to send favorite bike routes to friends.

Cycling

Riding a bike allows a person to pack more life into a day. As Americans, we know all too well that the car driver often finds himself caught in a void, a void of dead space and time. The time spent driving to the store, to work, caught in traffic, attention vaguely drifting from the road ahead to the radio and back, is so nondescript, so forgettable, it is lost forever. Did the driver really live these minutes spent in motorized transit? Technically. On the bike, it is vastly different. This is actual living. Blood and oxygen pumping, muscles straining. There is a sense of being a true part of the world, a partici- pant in one’s own life, rather than simply watching it pass by on a big screen.

— Robert Hurst, The Art of Cycling

Every ride on a bicycle is an adventure, the closest thing to flying, with each trip a magical journey through the city. You never have to worry about parking, and you weave effortlessly through the congested streets. Cycling is living what Aristotle called “the examined life,” or what our contemporary pop culture might call “taking the red pill.”

 

KELLY SAYS: Erik is the bike activist in the family. I haven’t taken the red pill on this one yet, and it is not that I love my car. I’d prefer to live in a dense city where I could rely entirely on walking and public transport, and you can bet if I lived in Holland, I’d ride my bike everywhere, joyfully. But I live in L.A., which is not a bike-friendly city. Basically, I just don’t have the balls to share the roads with distracted actors who are driving their SUVs while text messaging, and drinking a latte, and looking over a script, and wondering whether they should switch to a more fashionable yoga studio.

What I do is walk a lot. I like my neighborhood, so I sort of pretend that the rest of L.A. doesn’t exist most of the time. I frequent shops, cafes and restaurants which are close to where I live. I like doing this, it gives me a grounded sense of community in the middle of a huge megalopolis. I take public transport when it is reasonable, but not to the point of martyrdom (the L.A. transportation system invokes metaphors like that). I carpool, condense my errands and just try to be thoughtful about when and how I use my car. And you know what? Sometimes Mr. Bicycle himself comes along for the ride.

 

ERIK SAYS: I could point out that statistically, depending on who you believe, cycling is as safe or slightly safer than walking per mile traveled and that motoring is more likely to get you killed. Cycling in traffic may seem scary the first time you dive into it, but you get used to those latte-sipping SUV drivers after awhile. Plus it’s just plain bitchin’.

How To Ride In Traffic

Riding a bike in the city takes some time to master, but it’s not as scary as it might seem at first. Eventually you will develop a jones for the adrenaline-pumping thrill of it. The intricacies of how to ride are well beyond the scope of this book — all we’ll say is please ride with traffic, not against it, stay out of the door zone (around 3 ½’ to 4’ from a parked car) and ride in the street, not on the sidewalk. These rules are logical for some but counterintuitive for others which is why we recommend seeking out the following three excellent resources for getting the hang of urban cycling.

The first place to start is Michael Bluejay’s excellent and concise “How to Not Get Hit by Cars” at bicyclesafe.com which goes over some basic common-sense rules for riding safely in traffic. Read it before you head out there.

For a more hands-on experience, seek out the adult safety class “Road 1” taught by the League of American Cyclists (bikeleague.org), which usually consists of an evening class followed by a weekend practicing a few emergency handling skills and some time out on the road to go over how to ride in traffic.

By far the best book on urban cycling techniques, a must-read for any urban cyclist, is the phenomenal The Art of Cycling: Lessons from the Street by Robert Hurst. Hurst offers advice on every situation you’ll encounter, from uneven road surfaces to inattentive motorists, while expressing the sheer joy and wonder of negotiating city streets on a bike. This book has saved our asses many times over, with superb advice on virtually any situation you’ll encounter.

Bike Fit

A bike is an extension of the body, what the writer Alfred Jarry called his “external skeleton.” Finding the right bike is like finding the right shoe. Above all other considerations, your bike should fit your body. Instructions for proper bike fit can be found on the internet and in books, but nothing beats having a knowledgeable person take the time to make sure that you have the right bike and that it is adjusted properly. Even if you know how to do this yourself, it really helps to have a second set of eyes.

Saddle Sore

One of the biggest complaints from new riders is, specifically, pain in the ass. Some discomfort in your sit bones, which is the part of your derriere that should be in contact with your bike’s saddle, is to be expected when you first start out. Work gradually into riding and you’ll lessen this problem, largely by building strength in your legs, which takes the weight off of your butt’s contact points with the saddle. Bike mechanic Sheldon Brown reminds us that bikes have “saddles” not “seats” for a reason — a saddle is meant to carry some, but not all, of your weight.

Persistent discomfort or numbness somewhere other than in your sit bones is an indication that pressure is being put on the space between your sit bones. This can be due to a saddle that is too narrow or, counterintuitively, a saddle that is too soft. Soft saddles are one of the big causes of discomfort since your ass tends to sink into them, thereby putting pressure on the space between the sit bones. Many new bike saddles have a cutout section in the middle to relieve pressure on the prostate and genitals (an endless, and in our opinion, overblown source of fear and controversy), but it’s still more important to make sure that your sit bones are carrying your weight. Additionally, a seat that is too wide can cause chafing, the equivalent of running a cheese grater across your inner thighs — ouch!

The fact is, we are all shaped differently and we ride different kinds of bikes so a saddle that works for one person may not work for another. In addition, seat height, front-back position, and seat angle also play a big role in comfort level, yet more reasons why you need to have a skilled person fit your bike to you and help you choose the right saddle.

Finding A Bike

There are two places we’d suggest beginning your search for a bike. The first is a bike co-op. Many large cities have some form of bike co-op where you can put together a used bike or repair the one you have. The other option to consider is a small independently-run bike shop. With either source, try to go on a weekday when you can find a volunteer or salesperson who will spend time with you to assure proper fit, the seat set at the right height and the handlebars the right width and height.

You are the engine of your bike, so you can’t buy performance with money, as you can with a fancy sports car. Your speed, grace, and endurance depend on you actually getting out and riding. No multi-thousand-dollar carbon fiber road bike will make you Lance Armstrong. And anyway, this is urban riding, complete with signals, stop signs, potholes and drifting SUVs, not the Tour de France. So whatever you do, don’t run out and buy an expensive bike for commuting. On the other hand, this is your transportation, so don’t get some cheap Wal-Mart piece of crap either. You want a dependable, solid bike — start out with something neither too expensive nor too cheap, probably in the $500 to $1,000 range. For short hops to a transit station or workplace where you might need to leave a bike locked up all day, add a cheap (less than $100) beater to your fleet. And don’t fall for new gimmicks. It’s hard to improve on something as perfect as a bike — that’s like trying to innovate on the design of a fork or a pair of chopsticks.

You also don’t need 99% of the accessories and clothing sold in bike shops. That said, if you bike, you should have the following things with you at all times:

1. The means to repair a flat tire — a patch kit, spare tire, tire levers and a small pump

2. Helmet

3. Water bottle

4. Front headlight, rear taillight and side reflectors mounted in the spokes

5. Spare change for the bus in case you can’t repair your bike

Bike Clothes

You don’t need special cycling clothes to get around the city! Lycra is for folks trying to shave a few milliseconds in the Tour de France. You’re not racing. Whatever’s comfortable works. Bright clothes are always better for the sake of visibility, but even if you are dressed from head to toe in fluorescent pink don’t assume that drivers see you — generally they don’t see anything beyond the keypad of their cell phones.

The time you may want to invest in some cycling-specific clothes is in cold weather. Dress in layers, with a base wicking layer such as thin wool, a fluffy middle layer (wool or fleece), and a waterproof shell. You may also want a balaclava to keep your face and head warm under your helmet, even though it will make you look damned scary. Remember that you will warm up considerably once you get moving, so you should be cold when you first head out the door — otherwise you’ll be soaked in sweat by the time you reach your destination.

I have been riding a bicycle in New York City for almost 30 years! For transport, not for sport. At first there were only a few of us. Loners, losers, maniacs and nerds. Some of the members of Talking Heads used to make fun of me and say I was going to turn into Pee Wee Herman — and they weren’t talking about his extensive porno collection. But we knew some pleasures of which other New Yorkers seemed completely ignorant. Pleasures available to all. An exhilarating feeling as the air rushes past and we dodge taxis and New York pedestrians, who still insist on playing in the traffic. A feeling of flying through and around the inevitably stalled traffic. One has to stay alert — if your attention wavers, you’re done for.

Who needs coffee? Or a morning at the gym? A ride across town gets the adrenalin going as one heads to work or to the studio in the morning. By the time one arrives for a meeting one is fully awake — blood pumping, on alert — having just had three near-death experiences. In the hot New York summers, yes, one can tend to “glisten” when one arrives at an appointment, which is not always appreciated, so I had a shower installed in my office. But, if one pedals at a relaxed pace and stays away from the snarled traffic as much as possible (cars and trucks raise the surrounding temperature) one can arrive more or less dry, but with a healthy glow.

 

— David Byrne, New York. From his online journal, davidbyrne.com

Route Choice

Many newbies, embarking on their first urban commutes, simply attempt to follow the same exact routes they’ve been driving in their cars every day. This is ill-advised. The best routes for cars very rarely correspond to the best bike routes.

— Robert Hurst, The Art of Cycling

 

We can’t emphasize enough Hurst’s admonition to find quiet, peaceful routes when you head out on your bike. It’s not always possible, but more often than not you can find alternatives with a little effort and some time spent carefully studying a map. It sometimes means going out of your way, but it’s always worth it. It took us a while, but we even have peaceful ways to bisect the notoriously bike-unfriendly city of Los Angeles with relative ease and comfort. And you’ll discover places and streets that you never would find in your car.

Some cities and bicycle advocacy groups publish bike maps that can help find the better streets for biking. Like Hurst, we don’t think it’s necessarily more dangerous to take a major arterial street, but your ride will be more comfortable and less hassled on peaceful side streets.

Cargo Bike

So how do you carry groceries or other big items with a bicycle? The answer is the amazing Xtracycle, an SUB or “Sports Utility Bicycle.” You can buy an Xtracycle whole, or purchase a kit which extends the rear wheel base of your own bike so that it has space to hold a set of saddle bags and a wood platform that doubles as a passenger seat. An Xtracycle can easily transport four full bags of groceries, the same amount we used to carry in our car, and it handles well even with heavy loads. The ride is smooth and cornering is just like any ordinary bike.

Xtracycle

The Xtracycle’s cargo bags, which the company calls “Freeloaders,” are designed in such a way that they cinch up the cargo and maintain a narrow profile, essential for maneuvering in city traffic. This narrow profile is the great-est advantage that the Xtracycle has over bike trailers. The long wheel base of the Xtracycle combined with a load over the back wheel makes the bike easier to brake and it’s nearly impossible to flip over the front handlebars. For our Xtracycle we used an inexpensive fully rigid (no front or back suspension) mountain bike, which is, in our opinion, the best kind of bike to turn into an Xtracycle.

We put the Xtracycle together ourselves, but those without bike repair experience can have it done at a bike shop. Doing it yourself involves bolting the Xtracycle’s frame into where the back wheel used to be, adding on to the chain and extending the rear brake, derailleur and cables.

Other Cargo Options

If you don’t opt for an Xtracycle, make sure that the bike you get has eyelets, threaded connections located on the frame of the bike that allow you to attach a rack to it with screws. Once you attach a rack you can hang pannier bags (saddlebags) over your back wheels, giving you the capacity to carry at least two bags of groceries. Pannier bags can be a bit expensive, which is why some savvy cyclists improvise them by strapping two plastic wastebaskets to a rear bike rack.

Backpack Just For Bikes

When out and about on our road bike, we just use a backpack, which will easily fit a few groceries and a change of clothes. Of course, many use messenger bags on bikes, and those definitely look hipper, but we prefer a cycling-specific backpack because they feel more secure on the back and are more comfortable for long rides and heavy loads. Bicycle-specific packs are built low, so they don’t block your over-the-shoulder view. We use the commuter backpack made by Banjo Brothers, which is waterproof, fitted with reflectors, and has a place to hang a blinking rear light.

Bike Trailers

While we prefer the maneuverability of the Xtracycle over bike trailers, if you really want a bike trailer, why don’t you make your own out of bamboo and a pair of used bike wheels? Full instructions at: carryfreedom.com/bamboo.html.

How To Lock Up A Bike

The sad truth is that bike thieves are always one step ahead of any lock. But there are ways to minimize thievery. We recommend carrying two locks, a U-lock and a cable. Lock the rear wheel and frame with the U-lock to a secure object and use the cable to lock the front wheel and frame, preferably also to something that ain’t going anywhere. The philosophy here is that a thief will have to carry two different tools to defeat both the U-lock and the cable. And secure those wheels — thieves and crackheads will make off with those $100 rims if they can’t take the frame.

Mass Transit

Ken Kesey said, “you’re either on the bus or off the bus,” and as much as we love walking and biking, sometimes the bus (or train) is the way to go. When you site your urban homestead, one of the first things you should consider is its proximity to mass transit. The more transit options the better, and the less likely it is that you’ll have to rely on a car. Get out the local transit map, and check times and frequency before signing that lease or deed.

While mass transit sometimes takes longer than biking or driving, at least buses and subways allow for true multi-tasking. Take a book, a laptop, an MP3 player, and a cell phone, and take care of all that business while someone else does the driving.

Trip Planning

Mass transit trip planning is becoming easier thanks to the Internet. Most transit authorities have some sort of web presence with maps and trip planners with varying levels of quality depending on how seriously your city takes public transit. Thankfully a growing number of Internet companies are stepping into augment trip planning. As of the time this book was written, the car-centric Google Maps are being augmented with Google Transit (google.com/transit), which now serves 13 cities with more on the way (we hope!). Another source is Public Routes (publicroutes.com), which has transit information augmented with walking directions for 15 American cities, two metro areas, and the city of London.

Combining Bikes With Mass Transit

Public transit and bikes go together like gin and tonic, creating a mobility cocktail that will get you nearly everywhere, even in the most transit-poor city. Too far from the bus stop? Take your bike. Most buses have a rack on the front you can put your bike on. If your town doesn’t, agitate until they do. In most places you can also take your bike on the subway. If there are rules against taking a bike onboard, you can purchase a folding bike that you can take anywhere, even when you fly. Popular folding bikes include the Bike Friday (bikefriday.com), the more spendy and deluxe Brompton bike (bromptonbicycle.co.uk), and the moderately priced Dahon (dahon.com). If you need to lock up your bike all day at a bus stop, or subway stop we recommend getting a disposable beater bike that you won’t miss if it gets stolen.

PROJECT

MAKE YOUR OWN BIKE LIGHT

Bike headlights are something we like to gripe about. The cheap ones are little more than toys. They don’t have enough power to light up the road, and they break easily. The expensive ones are, well, expensive. A decent headlight that will both keep you visible and light up the road (important when dodging the ever-present urban pothole) will set you back at least $100 and possibly as much as $400.

Thankfully, a cheap and powerful front bike light is easy to improvise using a common landscape light, a few parts from the hardware store, and a battery ordered over the internet.

Materials

• 1 Malibu® Halogen Floodlight such as model CL507 (costs around $11) or an equivalent 12-volt outdoor light.

• 1 Panasonic Sealed Lead Acid Battery LC-R123R4P (around $20)

• 1 inline cord switch, like a lamp switch

• A length of copper wire that is longer than the distance between your bike’s seat and handlebars — we scavenged ours from a disused power transformer from an old answering machine

• A battery charger (order from the same place you get the battery)

• 20-watt halogen spot bulb (Optional — The Malibu® light comes with a floodlight. This will work fine, but you can replace it with any 20-watt 12-volt halogen spotlight for a more tightly focused light. )

• A saddlebag large enough to hold the battery

• A way to attach the light to your handlebars (you’re gonna have to improvise this one)

Tools

• Soldering iron and solder (optional but recommended)

1. Cut a piece of wire long enough to reach between the saddle bag and the handlebar leaving some slack so that you can wrap the wire around the top tube of the bike to keep it secure and out of the way of your legs. The light will go on the handlebar, of course, and we like to put the battery in a saddle bag firmly attached to the bottom of the seat. It could also go in a pannier bag.

2. Take your Malibu® light and cut off the weird proprietary connectors it comes with — you will be left with two bare wires.

3. Solder in your inline cord switch and add some wire to connect the Malibu light to the battery.

4. Solder the ends of the wire that will go between the seat and the handlebar to the terminals on the battery. Put a piece of tape around the battery to secure the wires to the battery. Leave the terminals exposed so that you can hook them up to the battery charger when it’s time to recharge.

5. Flip the switch and test to see if the light works.

6. The hardest part of this project is figuring out how to attach the light to the handlebars. Due to the bumps and vibrations of the road anything you attach to a bike must be solidly secured. We’ve used the old attachment hardware from busted bike lights as well as hose clamps.

7. Put the battery in your saddlebag and make sure that the bag is securely attached. Wrap the wire a few times around the top tube of your bike and leave enough slack for the handlebar to turn. Make sure that the wire is not dangling where it could get caught in the wheel or some other moving part of your bike. While the battery fits in a water bottle cage, don’t be tempted to put it there. Once ours fell out of the bottle cage and swung into our back wheel causing us to skid 30 feet and break a bunch of spokes. For the same reason definitely don’t hang the battery anywhere near the front wheel!

8. Your light should run about two hours on a charge, so we usually bring a cheap LED light as a backup if we think we’ll be out for a long time. When you’re back from your night ride recharge the battery immediately as it will last longer if kept fully charged.

Conclusion: The Future

We don’t pretend to know what the future holds. If you frequent thrift stores you’ll find plenty of dog-eared books that predicted a doom that never came, and we don’t want to be one of those books. All we’ll say is that it looks like we are at some kind of historical juncture, caught awkwardly at the end of an industrialization that began in the 19th century, and at the beginning of a technological revolution whose trajectory is difficult to discern. Ominous trends are taking hold — global warming, debt, energy scarcity, a spiritually bankrupt consumer culture, war and fear.

Absent a functioning crystal ball we offer three possible future scenarios:

 

More of the Same: A continuation of our current paradigm, in which an elite has access to organic produce and solar panels, while the poor eat heavily processed foods, and everyone, rich and poor, tools around in massive oil-guzzling vehicles and entertains themselves by shopping in soulless big-box stores. This is a life where we are defined as consumers rather than citizens, where we are identified by what brands we buy rather than by our actions and ideals.

Apocalypse: Just around the corner may lurk a devastating resource shortage, at which point a many-headed beast of Babylon will shuffle the consumer zombies, sinners, and hipsters off to certain destruction while the righteous ascend into some kind of holy shopping mall/office park in the sky — or descend down into their heavily stocked bunkers.

Consciousness Shift: This is what we hope for, and what the activities profiled in this book are geared to jump-starting — the rise of a new urban agriculture and home economics along with a growing concern about where our food comes from and how we use energy and resources.

The good thing is that if you and your neighbors pick up a few skills in this book you can ditch the crystal ball and be ready for any of these possibilities.

Note the emphasis on neighbors. Intrepid urban homesteaders may attempt all of the many activities in this book and more. However, most of us have jobs, kids and a million other responsibilities. But we can exchange skills and goods with our friends and neighbors. Say I have some land so I grow some food. I trade with a friend who lives in an apartment who makes beer. Together we can swap knowledge, make dinners together, forage for food, bike to work, and agitate for positive change in our communities.

Community building is the next step beyond this book. Share these skills with your friends, family and neighbors. Share your time, your crops, your knowledge — build a community of urban homesteaders.

Build community, and we’ll stick our necks out and make a prediction — everything’s going to be all right.