Amazing Bike Light Idea

OK, this looks like magic to me, but an engineer friend tells me the principle is sound.  I have ordered the as yet to be produced Magnic Light:

Quote from the developer:

Magnic Light is real !

Magnic Light is the first compact contactless bicycle dynamo - a new invention which we believe has the potential to revolutionize bicycle illlumination. Magnic Light is so powerful and looks so magic at first glance that most people search for a trick behind. They can't believe a dynamo can produce electric energy without touching the wheels.  (end of quote.)

I have spent countless hours developing my version of the perfect commuter light.  Considering how much time I spent, and how much I spent on parts and pieces, this light is cheap at half the cost.  

When I actually have one to use and test, I will update a report. I do think that some version of an LED bike light that comes on all the time, and does not need off the bike recharging, is an important item for the commuter and everyday bike rider.

In the mean time, I have tried to duplicate this principle on my work bench, but I did not get any satisfying results.  It will be even more fun, when I can figure out how to make one myself.

Here is a forum thread with some interesting discussion.

I am not versed enough in electronics to decipher all of the propositions put forward in the forum.  One comment refers to the developer's video and how quickly or not quickly enough that the spinning wheel slows.  The energy has to slow the wheel, you cannot have a power transfer without a resistance.  But, the type of LED light that the product is using could be quite bright with a watt or less of power.  This suggests another experiment.  When my generator hub was new, and it was used to drive a 1 watt or less light, it would also spin quite easily, almost like a wheel with no generator.

My guess is that the light is only marginally more efficient than a very good dynamo, but the huge advantage is that it could mount on a variety of bikes without the trouble of using a costly and complicating dynamo wheel.  It would be a huge improvement over the option of using a bottle dynamo.

I hope it works.  

Why does Alaska have the most biking and walking commuters?

The percentage of commuters who walk(relative scale):

Follow this link to see the interactive graffic


I found the map shown above in Bike Retailer and Industry News.  What really surprised me is that Alaska has the highest percentage of walking commuters of any state.  Alaska also has a relatively high number of bike commuters, and the total of bike and walking commuters is also the highest of any state.  How can this be? Alaska is not mild weather, flat land, full of young granola eaters, so what is the reason?

Here are some more interesting graphics:
This one suggests there are health and enjoyment benefits that might result if more people can find a good way to add walking or bicycling as an option for getting to work:

The next graphic suggests that it is appropriate to put more funding toward facilitating bicycle and walking because of the level of use and the level of fatalities.  The "% of trips" part of the graph needs more detail, it represents the percent of commuter trips in the 51 largest cities, not counting public transportation.

“The NSC estimates that every crash fatality corresponds to $6.8 million in economic losses (a figure that incorporates both fatal and nonfatal crashes, and includes both property costs and losses of economic productivity)” source = http://daily.sightline.org/2012/01/20/a-new-low-for-car-crashes/

As I have stated in my post Do Bicycle Users Pay Their Fair Share?, bicycle and walking commuters actually subsidize motorized travel.  For may good economic and life style reasons it would be appropriate to spend a larger percentage of transportation money to facilitate walking and bicycle riding.

You are not stuck IN traffic, you ARE traffic

I found this image in Flickr

This billboard came to my attention while listening to The Gardens of Democracy on KUOW.  The speakers are Eric Liu and Nick Hanauer, speaking about thier book:  The Gardens of Democracy: A New American Story of Citizenship, the Economy, and the Role of Government

In the recorded talk, the authors give a very appealing idea of a different metaphor to use as a basis for conceptualizing how we view ourselves in relation to needs of the environment and society around us, and what our obligations for action might be.  Essentially they say that if we view the image of a garden and the understanding that a garden needs tending, this will be a much more useful metaphor than the more common one they call the mechanistic view, that the world and our society are like a machine that just needs getting started and then spins on dependent only on its internal perfection. 

The metaphors we use shape the way we think about solutions.  I like their garden metaphor.

Bicycle vs Jet Blue

Wolfpack wins!

The much-publicized event of re-traffic-ing called “Carmageddon”, where LA shut down the 405 freeway for 53, hours prompted a very interesting commuter competition. 

Writer Tom Vanderbilt  [Traffic: Why We Drive the Way We Do (and What It Says About Us)] discovered that Jet Blue was offering a special flight from Burbank to Long Beach to ostensibly help people around the surmised traffic jam.  Mr. Vanderbilt tweeted with the supposition that someone riding a bicycle could arrive at the destination more quickly than someone on the plane.

The bicycle group Wolfpack Hustle A Team took on the challenge. 

The rules:

·      Point to point from a Burbank home to the Long Beach aquarium. 

·      All participants must follow traffic rules and be street legal. 

·      The airline participant would add time to allow for the recommended airport arrival time published by Jet Blue.

While not exactly taking up the challenge (Jet Blue was careful to say that they were not racing) the airline offered a ride on the over booked plane for one of the participants.  The contest was held on July 16^th and here are the results:

1.     Bike: 1:34


2.     Metro/Walk: 1:44


3.     Rollerblades: 2:40


4.     Plane/Lost Cabdriver: 2:54  (2:21 if they had really pushed the limit at airport arrival.)

The air distance was about 28 miles.  The bike riders’ average speed was just over 24 mph, traveling about 38 miles.

If one guesses that the cruising speed of the plane on a short haul would be about 200 mph, and that the bicycle riders could continue at the pace of 24 mph, the bicycle could have gone another 36 miles for a simultaneous arrival.   With this amazing level of performance, the Wolfpack Hustle A Team could travel from Bellingham to Everett as fast as Jet Blue!

While this demonstration has made an astounding point testing the boundaries of commuter travel, it probably has no connection whatever to real world commuting.  After all, these types of commuter challenges are usually meant to help people expand their day-to-day travel ideas.  Most of us are going do our commuter bicycle travel at some more reasonable pace, like 12 mph, for an hour or less in order to arrive comfortably at work.

Here are some links for more on this story:

Rachael Maddow tells the story

Original article in Slate Magazine

Details from Bike Commute News

Bike Lane Reality with Humor, and the Bicycle Culture Clash

Casey Neistat has posted a video on YouTube prompted by his experience of getting a ticket in New York city for not using the bicycle lane, and knowing the obvious reality that bike lanes are not always actually practical and usable for the bicycle rider.  This is a very funny and amazingly reckless movie, and I can't decide if I should cringe or laugh.  Of course I remember doing similar stunts as a kid, and Mr. Neistat makes a very good point.


I admire the efforts planers have made trying to improve bicycle riding options, but many regular bicycle commuters will continue to see the problems and challenges with bicycle lanes: they can't always solve the systemic problems of trying to blend auto and human powered modes of conveyance, they can't satisfy everyone's preference for a perfect route, they can't change the cultural and physical dominance of the automobile, they get pre-empted by abutments and structures and all the examples that Mr. Neistat so amazingly points out.


Nick Miller writing for the Sydney Morning Herald says "They'er calling it the Bike War of 2011."

I hope there is not, indeed, a culture war, but these popular discussions my be a sign of a good thing, that things are improving for pedestrians and bicycles, even if there may not be easy and universally satisfying answers to these transportation planning and usage challenges.

Three Recent Bicycle Commuting Ideas and/or Resources

Three items caught my attention recently:

1. One is an article about the financial value of considering Getting Rid of that Second Car.   It has been more than 10 years ago that I made a similar choice.  I had an old but reliable and very inexpensive second car for our two person family, and yet once I got rid of that car there was a surprisingly obvious savings.  Car ownership has a way of being so organic to our way of living in the US that we really can't see all the true costs and impositions that are entailed.  The benefit I discovered by eliminating the car seemed much more than my calculations had projected, and even now it is hard for me to detail the reasons for unexpected sense of net savings.  As convenient as a low cost car is to own, maybe it also allows one a few too many wasteful options.  In my case I discovered that one of my job choices was ultimately more of a drain on my finances than a benefit, what with all the driving and moving about that the job entailed.  What I discovered was that by getting rid of the car and getting rid of the job, I saved money.

These other two articles are nice resources for bicycle safety information and bicycle safety improvement:

   2. Ride Smart

          How to avoid the 5 most common bike-car collisions.

    3. "Bikewise is a place to learn about and report bike crashes, hazards, and thefts. By     sharing our experiences with each other, and with researchers and relevant agencies, we aim to make biking safer and more fun. You can help by adding your reports."