It’s All Happening This Week!

This coming week will be an exciting one in my bike world.
Guim valls Teruel, the Spaniard who is riding around the world on his E bike will arrive in Sydney, he promises, towing his trailer with it’s solar panel.

I have my doubts Guim make it in time. He told me by mobile that today, Sunday 18th, he was lingering way too far north , one would think, doing the Nimbin markets.

He’s found that the best places in Australia to promote his E bike as the perfect Eco vehicle, (since arriving from NZ a month ago) are local produce markets.

Anyway, Guim assures me he can, if pushed, do 200 kms. a day. I guess he’ knows what he’s doing, having ridden 10,000 kms. already from Beijing.

I’m hoping he makes it in time for Friday, for a possible meeting with Lord Tony Berkeley, who I’ve been asked to show around Sydney on a bike. Lord Berkeley is a keen utility cyclist in Britain

Since, I don’t know the new bike plans for Sydney very well, I’ve asked City of Sydney’s Fiona Campbell to host the ride as I’ll make the movie.

Lord Berkeley a Labor Peer, and British rail expert, is in Australia to discuss rail freight, I believe. He is also a spokesman in the British Parliament on bike policy.

I have some wider hopes for his visit. CTC, the venerable British bike organization which contacted me, is doing much to promote cycling politically in the UK.

Going to their site, I find the CTC is making bikes an election issue in Britain with their Vote Bike campaign.

How one wishes some Pollie was putting questions in our parliament and, Oh, for bikes to be an election issue here as well.

So, this contact,and the future networking which I hope comes of it, may help us raise the political status of utility cycling here through some sort of cross pollination .

Right now, neither party at the Federal level. seems much interested in Cycling as transport.

Here is a film the CTC posted about visiting Cambridge, one of the most Bike conscious cities on Britain. Thanks to Carlton Reid for the film

The narration makes a telling point. In that town, planning automatically brings in bikes because they are so well embedded in the public consciousness. We need to get to that state and stage.

Anyway, what will be, will be in terms of who arrives. and who’s held up this coming week.

There’s plenty else that’s exciting coing up.

Maurice Wells who runs what we think it Sydney’s first bike shop, a store front in Marrickville, Glow Worm Bicycles, is making plans to host Guim. Sydney cyclists will have a change to meet him and see his solar system at the shop.

Here is Maurice in red, at the launch of his shop.

And here’s a great mural Maurice had on the shop wall

But the really big news is this. For years, the RTA, our State road body, has been working on changes in the rules for E bikes to bring us into line with Europe.

Somehow the RTA, a NSW org. seem to be in charge of coordinating the changes nationally

Friday the 16th, selected people in the bike world got an Email from Gabriel Denoury, the RTA guy who’s been working on the new policy I was not one of them, but it was soon leaked to me.

My nose is slightly out of joint in that I’d made numerous suggestions to Mr. Denoury 9 months ago when the policy was open for comment, and thought he’d promised to let me know, as a stakeholder, when the changes came through

Never mind. The important thing is that the changes are mostly very good,

In big picture terms, it will mean that the E bike will come out of the shadows here and present itself, I’m quite sure, as a very appealing alternative to the car for shortish trips

Better yet, if the 250 watt motors we will soon be allowed to use are partnered with the classic sit-up configuration, then we really have a knockout winner in terms of comfort, safety and carrying capacity for urban getting around

You may laugh, but my prediction is that 5 years from now, this will be the bike combo of choice for anyone serious about a bike as urban transport .

The very young and fit may turn up their noses at such assistance, but when they get round of carrying a kid, large shopping loads, even moving house by bike, as folks love to do in Portland, Oregon, then the E bike is going to look very good.

It will also be a bike you can be proud to be seen, I feel.

I mean how about this, superb gazelle Innegy, the Rolls Royce of E bikes? Can’t you see your self on that?

And if you want something more BMW-Like, how about this Giant Freedom Twist?

I ride a Giant Suede with a motor I added on, a kit, and the cheaper way to go.

Mine is to a somewhat grubbier Giant, but I love it just the same. (time to say again I have no financial interest in E bikes, rather something far more deadly. a philosophical interest.

Guim will spoil my party somewhat because his Wisper, a great E bike, is not a sit up. I can forgive him that, given the long distances he rides. I guess he’s not going to switch his handlebars for my photo op.

The changes, (thanks, Gabriel and the team) mean that we can now import these great bikes from Europe and the US, they being 250 Watts.

My friend, Dr Paul Martin in Brisbane has jumped that gun and is already on a Gazelle, tuned down to 200 watts, I assume.

Why do I think E bikes are the future of urban transport the real alternative to the car? because of the look I imagine my little Diahatsu Sirion gives me every time I leave on the bike and leave it behind

As I come out of our car port, too stuffed with junk to hold an actual car, I see my bike and my car side by side. Which will i choose for the journey ahead?

Why do I choose the bike most of the time?

Because, even though my the car is as economical as they get and quite fun to drive, the bike will feel better.

More importantly, I know there is no hill ahead which will give me pain. amd wish I was in the Sirion. I’ll work hard on a couple of rises, but no get-off-and-push, pain.

With the E bike, I control the ride, not the terrain.

I think that’s a key recurring moment in one’s transport life. If that moment and my choice, could be multiplied into millionsof people coming out, looking at their transport options and choosing the bike most of the time, that would be the changing of Australia.

And way for the better. We know our car addiction is killing us.

Now, I’m not saying the E bike is transport methadone, though my friend David Hembow in Holland might like that analogy. I’m saying its a bit intermediate and something the public, the bike hostile public, can get their heads around .

Hostile in the sense as bikes as transport. Everyone likes the ides of biking around our pretty waterways, but doesn’t count

The E bike gives that dream a chance. The regular push bike does not, not for most people who are now not riding, and not thinking of riding.

I know you don’t believe me. That’s OK, you haven’t tried one of these E bikes. When you have, you’ll believe too.

It promises to be an interesting week.

I do have a quibble with the RTA regulations, now awaiting Federal approval (Go on, Minister Garrett, give it a shove, will ya?) and that is their plan to do away with the throttle which I think is silly and an overdone copying of Europe .

You can sample a discussion the throttle on Sydney cyclist. here

As I said in a letter to Gabriel Denoury, if we are going to copy Europe so slavishly, let’s put our gas prices up to the same level as theirs. i.e double, and then spend the extra money on bike-ways, like they do over there.

How about that. eh?