Silence, one bike – or one plug-in hybrid – at a time

Riding around town the other day, I had a picture of what streets of the future might be like, as a super-silent Toyota Highlander hybrid crept past me. Of course the biggest problems that more bicycles on the road will solve are the escalating release of carbon into our atmosphere and our insatiable thirst for energy. But a curious byproduct of our desperate need to make use of every possible solution we have available might be more silent streets.

Think about it. How magical would it be to replace the roar of car and truck engines burning fuel at their most inefficient with the quiet hum of electric motors and the whir of bicycle chains? It doesn't take an engineer to figure out that those stops and starts downtown and residential areas are murder on gas mileage, often driven by our perceived need to accelerate as quickly as possible to the next stoplight. Toyota and other leaders on the hybrid front have turned that on its head, recycling the energy generated from the constant braking in urban areas and funneling it back into forward motion.

Now, with companies like General Motors beholden to the will of the masses – not just as the easily hoodwinked consumers who chomped down so hard on the sport-utility craze of the 1990s, but as (hopefully) more savvy investors who will demand ventures into technology that will be profitable and stem the hemorrhage of oil from the earth and carbon into the air – an affordable plug-in hybrid seems to be within our grasp.

Neil Winton at the Detroit News would counsel me to temper my enthusiasm, but I'd argue the closer we get, the more exciting the potential. Predictions about battery life, range and consumer enthusiasm are conservative, he writes. If that's the case, fair enough – it wouldn't be the first time car companies have fallen woefully short of expectations. But maybe we just need to take the time to envision the wondrous and unanticipated ways that our world might change – ahem, enter the quiet cul-de-sacs and hushed avenues of the 21^st century, part of my own tenuous hopes – for solutions to go viral. Winton himself points out that in Germany, and undoubtedly most developed countries where nearly everyone owns a car, most trips top out at around 30 miles: tripping to the grocery, running the kids to school, hopping to the gym. You get the idea.

Sure, we in the media hype, and in many cases overhype, a good deal too many proposed solutions, such as the exciting idea to pepper the oceans with iron flakes, hoping to encourage the growth of carbon dioxide-absorbing algae. So avoid the hyping the naysayers too, and don't be afraid to imagine the possibilities.

What’s in a Lane?

Here's a riddle: What relies on an ancient Mesopotamian (probably) invention, and yet, these days, incorporates design elements developed by NASA? It's a healthy and green alternative to the automobile. Once you learn how to ride one, you'll never forget how, or so goes the conventional wisdom.

Answer (as if you hadn't already guessed): The bicycle. Since my childhood, I've been transfixed by these simple machines that allowed me to rocket down hillsides, weave through busy city streets, and keep my car parked in that enviable shady spot outside my apartment. And yet, it's been a contentious relationship as I took my knocks, both literally—like the crash that left me with nasty road rash, a jammed shoulder and a tacoed rear wheel, just days after I bought my first mountain bike when I was 15—and otherwise.

"Get off the road! You're not motor vehicles!" yelled a driver as he passed me and a friend I was riding with, over-pronouncing the 'h' in vehicles—common in Ohio where I grew up. He came close enough that I could have snapped off his antenna (I didn't). I don't remember being scared—just pissed off.

Screaming something about how cyclists had the same rights as drivers, I pedaled as fast as I could, not quite sure what I would have done when he stopped. He dusted me with a flick of his foot, so I didn't get a chance to "discuss" the issue with him. Probably just as well, but it was a rough introduction to the hazards cyclists face on the road. As if the stability disparity and several-ton weight difference weren't dangerous enough on their own, a host of behavioral issues play a role in the cyclists' safety. Anger, frustration, ignorance, carelessness—they all cause us to make unwise decisions, but on the road, the results can quite literally be life or death.

The basics of the argument aren't hard to understand: Spindly, slow-moving and ill-protected, a bicycle is no match for even the smallest car, especially when either the driver or the cyclist doesn't know—or is wantonly not following—the rules of the road. The catch-all solution seems to be cordoning off a space of the road for cyclists, as with bicycle lanes. It seems to make sense, right? Paint a white line on the pavement, and tell bikers to stay on one side and motorists to stay on the other.

But as I've investigated further, I've found vocal activists who say that bike lanes promote unsafe behavior. For my recent article in Bicycle Times, Cyclists Find No Safety in Numbers, I talked with experts on both sides of the issue, and I looked at a tragic accident—one of the type that critics point to as they lambast bicycle lanes as a safety strategy. They say that the placement along the right side of the road encourages cyclists to remain there even when the bicycle lane ends, as they inevitably all do at some point. Further, they say, bikers still stay in the gutter when they should in fact be entering traffic: to make a left turn, say, or—as the cyclist in my article could have chosen to do—to avoid a semi that was turning right while he planned to continue going straight.

It's a heated debate (at least in the small circles that debate such things) with few clear answers that I can see. To make matters worse, the will for research that might tip the scales one way or the other is hard to come by in this country where cycling isn't the mass mode of transportation it is elsewhere in the world.