Buffalo\u27s Community Bicycle Workshop

The “CBW” is a cooperative learning workshop that provides a facility, tools, and education to those interested in bicycles. The workshop provides affordable bicycles and a free place to learn and thus increases bicycle awareness. The CBW is a program of Green Options Buffalo, which promotes biking, walking, public transit, and other healthy and sustainable transportation options. The CBW refurbishes and sells roughly 109 bicycles per year for an average of $85 a piece, and it donates many free bicycles as well. The CBW is staffed by one part-time shop manager (paid$12.75 per hour), one full-time AmeriCorps member, and a number of volunteers

Multifunctional device for bicycles

This paper aims at designing a "Multifunctional device composed of load support and anti-theft lock for standard bicycles". A previous study has been developed in order to justify and validate the final design of the unmet needs of people in their daily lives, with an emphasis on satisfying those that imply specific savings, whether economic, energy or time. As a result, the use of bicycles as a means of transport in Spain is promoted taking as a frame of reference countries such as the Netherlands or France. This means economic and energy savings (by replacing the car) and an improvement in people's health and quality of life. Following the steps of the design methodology, once the need was detected, an information search was carried out in order to identify and prioritize the design specifications that meet the demands of potential customers. For this reason, various sources were used, The boost to use bicycles has allowed to establish a set of measurements and specifications in the design of the device with a double functionality, the transport of merchandise and an anti-theft system. In addition to meeting the needs of the client, the design must comply with a set of reference regulations both, at the level of security devices and the transport of merchandise at retail. The result of the work has given rise to patent application with prior examination at a national level, in a first phase, and subsequently, at an international level.Universidad de Málaga. Campus de Excelencia Internacional Andalucía Tech

Spatio-temporal analysis of flows in CDC 2013 data

We describe analysis of flows in the CDC2013 bicycles data set

Campus Mobility for the Future: The Electric Bicycle

Sustainable and practical personal mobility solutions for campus environments have traditionally revolved around the use of bicycles, or provision of pedestrian facilities. However many campus environments also experience traffic congestion, parking difficulties and pollution from fossil-fuelled vehicles. It appears that pedal power alone has not been sufficient to supplant the use of petrol and diesel vehicles to date, and therefore it is opportune to investigate both the reasons behind the continual use of environmentally unfriendly transport, and consider potential solutions. This paper presents the results from a year-long study into electric bicycle effectiveness for a large tropical campus, identifying barriers to bicycle use that can be overcome through the availability of public use electric bicycles

Studying Solutions of the p-Median Problem for the Location of Public Bike Stations

The use of bicycles as a means of transport is becoming more and more popular today, especially in urban areas, to avoid the disadvantages of individual car traffic. In fact, city managers react to this trend and actively promote the use of bicycles by providing a network of bicycles for public use and stations where they can be stored. Establishing such a network involves the task of finding best locations for stations, which is, however, not a trivial task. In this work, we examine models to determine the best location of bike stations so that citizens will travel the shortest distance possible to one of them. Based on real data from the city of Malaga, we formulate our problem as a p-median problem and solve it with a variable neighborhood search algorithm that was automatically configured with irace. We compare the locations proposed by the algorithm with the real ones used currently by the city council. We also study where new locations should be placed if the network grows.Universidad de Málaga. Campus de Excelencia Internacional Andalucía Tech. This research was partially funded by the University of Málaga, Andalucı́a Tech, the Spanish MINECO and FEDER projects: TIN2014- 57341-R, TIN2016-81766-REDT, and TIN2017-88213-R. C. Cintrano is supported by a FPI grant (BES-2015-074805) from Spanish MINECO

Perceptions of Bicycle-Friendly Policy Impacts on Accessibility to Transit Services: The First and Last Mile Bridge, MTI Report 12-10

The coordination of bicycle and transit modes has received close attention from public transit planners and researchers in recent years, as transit agencies around the world have installed bicycle racks on transit vehicles, implemented bicycles-on-trains policies, and made other efforts to facilitate bicycle-transit integration. Many planners presume that the catchment area for transit is enlarged by these efforts, but geographic changes in the size of catchment areas have not been effectively documented. This research project was designed to assess the distances travelled on bicycle by cycle-transit users (CTUs), both those who use bicycles as a means of access to transit stops and stations and those who bicycle to and travel on transit with their bicycles. A mixed-methods approach was employed, using a literature review, a survey of cyclist-transit users in Philadelphia and San Francisco, and telephone interviews with a subset of survey respondents. Responses provided by CTUs in the two cities allow us to define their characteristics and behaviors in detail. What is more, they highlight two intriguing conclusions: that transit catchment areas can be much larger for cycle-transit users than for traditional transit users who access transit buses and rail on foot, and that the very concept of a cycle-transit catchment area is quite complex because of the variety of travel opportunities that cycle-transit coordination policies present transit riders. CTUs take advantage of larger catchment areas to reduce their travel costs, and they use those catchment areas in curious, less predictable and more varied ways

A privacy-preserving and power-efficient bicycle tracking scheme for theft mitigation

© 2016 IEEE. Bicycle theft is a big problem in places such as university towns, where bicycles offer one of the most costefficient and quick ways for students to move around. For example, 1,200 bicycles are stolen yearly in Göttingen, with more than 300,000 being reported as stolen in the whole of Germany during 2014. We present a power efficient architecture to track the locations of stolen bicycles using opportunistic communication with collection nodes placed in high traffic spots, that can be used to find stolen and lost bicycles. At the same time, the scheme is designed to prevent a loss of privacy for the owners of bicycles that have not been marked as stolen, while also reducing power usage during times where bicycles are under the control of their proper owners.We also show the feasibility of our approach using a simplified implementation using IRIS nodes, with a university campus serving as a testbed

Electric Two-Wheelers in China: Analysis ofEnvironmental, Safety, and Mobility Impacts

Electric powered two-wheel bicycles, while extremely popular in China, have been recently banned by policy makers due to safety, congestion, and environmental concerns. This study investigates the tremendous growth of electric two wheel bicycles in China and compares and quantifies their environmental and safety impacts with the impacts of alternative modes of transportation, such as traditional bicycles, public transportation, or personal cars. The research also analyzes the benefits of electric two wheel bicycles, such as increased mobility and access to opportunities. Additionally, the author looks at the impacts of prohibiting the use of electric bicycles. Two case studies are carried out in Kunming and Shanghai, cities that have similar electric bicycle use but with very distinct differences

The Bicycle in Western Literature: Transformations on Two Wheels

Since the invention of the modern bicycle in the 1880s, bicycles have played an integral role in western culture. As a reflection of its cultural significance and impact on individuals, many novelists have incorporated bicycles into their works in both realistic and symbolic ways. This paper focuses on the use of bicycles in western literature from the bicycle boom decade of the 1890s to the mid-twentieth century and includes works of H. G. Wells, Émile Zola, Arthur Conan Doyle, Dorothy Richardson, D. H. Lawrence, Ernest Hemingway, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Simone de Beauvoir, Samuel Becket, Luigi Bartolini and L. P. Hartley. These novelists used bicycles not merely as a means to transport characters, but as catalysts for or symbols of social and personal transformation. Novels written around the turn of the twentieth century reflect the significant positive role bicycles played in the cultural changes and personal freedom of this era. Later, after the first World War and the advent of the automobile, bicycles remained literary devices, but their symbolic use changed. While in the post-World War I era bicycles are still capable of transforming characters, their transformational potential is often unrealized or is tempered by skepticism or pessimism

Understanding Public Attitudes to Bike-Sharing in Gothenburg

A predominately car-oriented transport has been the cornerstone of urban development in a worldwide scale for decades now; a cornerstone that is associated mostly with the short-term individualistic benefit of the road user in terms of comfort and convenience, but also with severely adverse effects on societal and environmental sustainability. The problem for society – and policy – is therefore how to retain the social and economic benefits linked to mobility while reducing the negative environmental, economic and social impacts from transport. Considering this and the ever-increasing number of people who live in cities, the development and promotion of alternative social, attitudinal, behavioural and technological niches to the current automobile-focused transport regime is needed more than ever before. One of the prime non-regulatory frameworks to promote this transition to a more sustainable transport paradigm refers to the shared-use of mobility innovation mechanisms. Bike-sharing is perhaps the most characteristic and greener example of this sort of alternative transport solutions. It can be described as a short-term bicycle rental service for inner-city transportation providing bikes at unattended stations. Bike-sharing systems have been introduced as a means to extend the reach of public transit services to final destinations in a way that promotes the development of sustainable and aesthetically pleasing urban environments that prioritize people over cars. The most distinctive function of such a scheme however, is clearly the concept of “sharing” since individuals use bicycles on an “as-needed” basis without the costs and responsibilities of bicycle ownership. Despite the vast potential of bike-sharing outlined herein and more importantly despite the numerous (at least 500) schemes of variable sizes and types that run in more than 50 countries worldwide, the impact of its use and the factors that can make it successful or not constitute a topic that is still only modestly negotiated by research. This abstract refers to a study aiming to frame the attitudes of people towards the rapidly expanding bike-sharing scheme of Gothenburg some of them referring to their experience of the scheme as users.Gothenburg has in place Styr & Ställ, which is a self-service bike rental system, spread across 62 stations throughout the city centre with an excess of 600 bicycles. This fairly inexpensive system can be accessed 24 hours a day and seven days a week between 1st of March to 31st of October. Approximately 50,000 annual users signed up in 2012 for using this service (including tourists) a number that has really forced the rapid expansion of the scheme in what it is today and calls for research pointing to two directions; research that could either attempt to captivate what it seems to be a formula for success or understand how a scheme with such a potential could become even more publicly acceptable.A number in excess of 500 fully completed questionnaires were collected and analyzed. The respondents believed in general that cycling could be a sustainable, cost-saving, healthy, pleasant mode capable of reducing road traffic congestion. 90% of them agreed or strongly agreed that more bicycle-related investments are necessary for Gothenburg. More importantly though, only an insignificant proportion of the respondents (approximately 1.5% of them) disagreed or strongly disagreed with the notion that Styr and Ställ is a good scheme for the city. The respondents believed that Styr and Ställ is a pro-environmental, inexpensive and healthy travel option, which complements the other existing public transport services and promotes a more human-friendly identity for the city. The vast majority of them also believed that public bicycles provide a viable service for the city that should expand to more areas. Despite these positive attitudes and although at least one out of four respondents cycle in a daily basis and more than half of them use a bike regularly, very few of them ride a public bicycle: almost 85% of them don’t or use it rarely. More than 40% of the respondents though reported that they do that because they use their own bicycles, while an excess of 30% considered that there is still a lack of good public bicycle related infrastructure in the city. Another finding of the study is that quite a few people find neither the bicycles nor the rental stations particularly attractive and they do not see a need for electrical bicycles. All in all, even the majority of the respondents that self-reported a small likelihood to ever use systematically public bicycles was positive towards the scheme