Automobiles and bicycles share an oddly dependent, deeply ironic relationship. Unless you live at the edge of a trail system, or anywhere near a bike park, it's fairly difficult to not drive before you ride. There's a boon in trailer hitch racks and truck pads for a reason. Shuttling, of course, is the most overt offender. But it doesn't end there. Problem is, riding bikes in 2011 is just way too fun to let a conscience get in the way.
Overloaded gas guzzler at Retallack Lodge, New Denver BC. Photo: Paddy Kaye
The truth of the matter though, is that bikes and cars really shouldn't go together. Kind of like ice cream and obesity, or abusive parents and prodigal kids. One element is astoundingly good, the other terrifically bad. Put the two together and you’re not making any real progress. And yet, when you look closely at the sport of mountain biking, even the whole of cycling for that matter (in the developed world anyway), it's almost impossible to ride a bike without a car. Which, when you break it down a little further, is akin to saving and sorting all of your recycling before burning it all in the fireplace. Which is what probably already happens, but that's another story.
Shuttle here, shuttle there, shuttle everywhere...even in Bolivia. Photo: Lucas Kane
Think about it. We're riding bicycles! That's right, the bicycle, a 18th Century solution to a 21st Century problem. It is a most marvelous invention – circles turning circles, propelled by another bit of design genius, the human engine. Consider this: when a human being gets on a bike we become the most efficient animal on the planet. That is to say the energy required to move us, say five kilometres (approximately the calories in one apple) is the least amount required by any animal to move that same distance. If that weren’t a sweet bean enough for you, when a human gets on a bike, the bicycle itself becomes the most efficient machine on the planet. That is to say, the energy required to move the same distance is the least required by any mechanical invention on earth.
Bikes + truck = smiles - guilt. Photo: John Gibson
So here we are, as modern world cyclists, driving to ride. Exempt are the growing legions of bike commuters who transport everything from kids to building supplies by bike. And it's not just shuttling, although that seems to be the most extreme offense. Dedicated cyclists still load their 22-pound cross-country steeds and drive an hour out of town to hammer trail. Even road bikers mount their über efficient carbon fibre asphalt missiles onto the car and drive on a road to another network of road to, you guessed it, ride road.
But it's more an infrastructure thing more than a personal choice. We built this world around the car, not the bike. Of the millions of commuter trips made every year in the United States, less than one percent are made by bicycle. No, the bike, for all intents and purposes, is just for fun.
Very efficient babe on the Noblest Invention. Photo: Ale di Lullo
Which is great. To bike defines fun. The most fun. Just really sucks that it comes with a fossil fuel prerequisite. But couldn't that be changed?
Enter the gondola. Whizzing along on low emission electricity, load em up 4, 8, 10, 20 at a time and go crazy. Visit a country like Switzerland, where gondolas dart up every second valley and for the recreational rider the car becomes a non issue. Back in North America, sure, there's the odd gondola, but it's more of a resort experience that's hard to get to and hard to stay at without significant cash or local residency. That being said, for anyone who's ever spent any time at a bike park, you know they're the business.
Leogang Bike Park, Austria. Photo: Ale Di Lullo
Gondolas for the People, people. And if you think it's a pipe dream anywhere outside of Europe, think again. Portland has a beauty of gondola that travels 500 vertical feet from downtown to a hill top university. Four bucks a ride, free to students. Maybe not a huge trail network, but it's a start. Sounds like it ran over budget and pissed some locals off, but forget about that. If we could only dream for a second….
Consider the money communities spend on infrastructure, stuff like hockey rinks, soccer fields, aquatic centers. Facilities for fun, funded by public monies. Designed and built for the people, they're made affordable, solely purposed for the good of society. Subsidized? Damn straight. They're not positioned to be marketable experiences or tourist attractions designed to make profit--although those monies would most assuredly help. Just a simple, cheap as you can make it, pay for itself one day lift -- a tramway to good times. Get us off the car so we can focus our trail building attentions and infrastructure around one sustainable network, both the up and the down. Imagine texting your buddy on a Tuesday afternoon, "See you at the gondola in 20." It'd be the best.
If not gondolas, how about a few chairlifts? Photo: Sterling Lorence
I guess the sad part is, could it ever happen? Could towns like Nelson, British Columbia, Fruita, Colorado, Moab, Utah, San Fransisco, California, or Bellingham, Washington ever have community run, super high-efficient, self-loading gondolas, trams, chairlifts, or monorails that were recreationally oriented? Hop in from the city center and get whisked away to the heart of a wicked trail system. Runners, hikers, jump on board. Old people and little tykes too. Get a season's pass for $100 bucks. Users help build the trails (or do what Switzerland does, get people with small misdemeanors to do the work as part of their community service).
The fun factor of the funiclaire, Zermatt, Switzerland. Photo: Sterling Lorence
It’s all there. Take a fraction out of military spending by most countries and we’d have gondolas by the hundreds. The bicycle is a fairly harsh draw out of the environment. It takes factories, plastics, metals and boatloads of energy just to make one. But its potential to make good on that ecological investment is much greater than the cost. We all know this. All that goodness seems somewhat lessened, however, when we're constantly forced to toss the sucker into the car every time we want to go for a ride.
Time for some solutions.
The city should provide the resources to rebuild, but imagine for a second that it was a burial ground. The indigenous peoples of the Americas have been brutalized and controlled to the nth degree. Have a little heart, or be quiet when some kids destroy your families gravesite for their fun.
The environmentalists are also responsible for preventing the sale/destruction of a lot of public land to private parties/developers. So, while the laws may seem a bit draconian, build discreetly and enjoy what could be owned by some crappy person/company that would be even more interested in getting you in legal trouble.
Haven't you seen Poltergeist?
Don't forget Pet Cemetery!
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Well said!
The real answer to this problem, although not the most popular alternative, is to ride your bike to the trail. end of story.
Please remember that our governments have been promising to do right by the native canadian community since we landed here. And yet they still live on reserves in third world conditions. You really don't have a leg to stand on for this argument.
Exactly.
www.youtube.com/watch?v=G880gxjj9dI
if enviromentalists werent tearing down everything; there would be longer lasting trails and trail networks. and plus isnt california already so overly populated with parks anyways? shouldnt your children not have to worry about bike trails "doing significant damage to the ecosystem"? i mean we're not logging the entire forest or putting up huge wildlife barriers (roads). but i do see what your saying; there is better things to do than fight with people. but it just sucks if everything is deemed unridable
...without my bike
"Shuttle-guilt"...zomg, so North American puritan guilt-trippin' uptightedness......so Chicken Little. Maybe we need plastic Five Ten's and bamboo TLD gear and biodegradable tear offs and Minion's made of camel skin.
There is lots of rideable land in america, and I don;t mind driving a little further so I can ride trails specific to my mtb and moto in places that don't bother the public.
But yes, sweet jesus gondolas everywhere would be awesome. More ski resorts need to start wising up and realising that biking = money.
Especially those that buy a bicycle every year, the manufacturing foot print off sets the good of a bike. I hate all the jumping on the green band wagon with blind folds, look at the whole picture not just the "green" sticker!
That being said I love my new bikes and sports car, but at least I am not ignorant to what I am doing, for me it is all trade offs and offsets. In the end compromise wins.
I also agree with the several above me. Sustainable growth isn't real, because to "sustain" means to maintain not grow... And in regards to the environment we are throwing off the balance. The Eco system is always trying to maintain an equilibrium of "sources" and "sinks" aka inputs and outputs. We use up the inputs and produce things faster than the environment can recycle the outputs.
I could go on and on about this topic and all of it's facets. I would highly recommend taking an environmental class while in school. I took one last semester at my university and it was eye opening.
www.prisonplanet.com/archives/peak_oil/index.htm
anyone go to the nhra round in seattle this weekend? top fuel ftw!
All those hybrids sound cool... but they are retarded as well, we need to change our lifestyles, be less greedy - not find new ways how to keep on rolling the way we do. Driving a hybrid is like US changing credit ceiling, EU lending money to Greece - it's just postponing the sentence. Nothing to be happy about if you die, before the next case in the court, your kids will go there and along with dead ancestors -> they will figure out that you are the axxhole
As for the lifts... People should pedal more...
As for the gondolas and chairlift... Help me understand why this is different than shuttling? You ride you big-ass heavy bike (or small, light bike) down a hill and then you sit on a chairlift that lifts you to the top of a hill. That's what a car does. And don't give me the crap that a car burns fossil fuel and takes more energy, the electricity used to run that chair lift constantly takes energy that was most likely made by burning coal. You can tell me that a chairlift takes less energy, but until I see the real numbers I'm not convinced either way.
Road bikers confuse the hell out of me, so I don't have an opinion on them.
Next time you take lines directly out of a movie, site them.
Yes, I would, as many others would, prefer chairlifts over shuttling. As for going from the center of town to the forrest on a gondola... I'm not quite sure what this would accomplish? Would this take gas guzzling cars off the road? or would it just make it more convenient for any citizen to go to their favorite trails? or both?
good movie...
I have an idea. RIDE YOUR BIKE. Today's selection of bikes makes this more possible than ever. Many of us enjoy the up as much and sometimes more than the down. In my area (British Columbia) fast guys on all mountain bikes go just as fast as the fast DHer on 90% of the technical trails. I have a five and five bike, Talas fork and adjustable seatpost. Rides like an XC bike to the top and stransforms into a downhill weapon at the top. I race a little XC so my bike is more set up to being efficient going uphill. If your not racing and don't need to set records on your local climb, there are plany of 6" plus bikes that pedal fine and will kill it on the downhill. You might even get in shape in the process.
a perfect example is the solar car, the solar panel on it's roof is only about 10-20% efficient. which means that of the 1000w/m that are incident from the sun it can only harness 100-200w/m. not particularly efficient last time I checked. that's also ignoring the efficiency of the battery and motor, etc. That dosent mean solar cars are bad, but they arent as efficient as a bike. the ratio of energy in to energy out is nowhere near as good as a bike.
Keen idea though, and a good read, thanks for sharing!
Electricity is actually really clean! alot cleaner than our other resources, and the best part is that its actually renewable! so i dont know why i have already read like 10+ comments from people saying that its actually not a good energy source! i dont know about california or other areas but in BC canada hydro energey is as clean as it gets! and then there is wind farms in california and the list goes on. Sure there is unclean ways to create electricity but there is alot of clean ways to create it too that their just isnt enough implementation of it yet. as far as i am concerd in my basic knowledge, electricity = clean
Don't believe me? Maybe you need to look into power pricing. Let's take a large hypothetical situation where the green crusaders all got wind power installed instead of the big evil coal plants. Someone would have to pay to install 4 times as many wind farms as we actually need because our electricity demands do not decline when the wind stops blowing. Now if the wind is blowing we have 4 times as much power as we need and it's dirt cheap. Who is going to pay for this and not be able to make any money( or even get their money back from it)?
jon-15 has a point. Google Kinbasket lake. I'm all for Hydro power where it's feasible but it's not free. Just because an energy source eliminates emissions at the point of use doesn't mean there is no impact at all. You're just passing the buck so you can live in a dream world. Electricity is not magic, it all has to come from somewhere.
Ever been to whistler? Or any other lift accessed bike park for that matter? The trails take a complete and utter beating. And the mountains they are on have fully dedicated 9-5 trail crews that maintain them on almost round the clock basis.
While lift access to local trails would be nice, it will bring with it the crowds. Anytime you make something easier to access you'll get more people, its inevitable. So that little slice of heaven trail that you never see anyone on will soon become a congested highway (ever ridden a-line on a weekend), that gets rutted out in mere days.
Unfortunately in life you cant have the best of both worlds. You either work for your elevation and get perfectly groomed trails where its rare to see anyone. Or you pay $$$ for your descents, and deal with trails that are over ridden.
But even if there were crowds at an area where you had to earn your vert; because the riders would have to spend time earning their vert, the trails would get less use and last longer between maintenance.
With bikes today, there is absolutely no reason to shuttle unless your just plain lazy. Buy a bike with 4 to 6 inches of travel, get a telescoping seatpost, etc. A bike in this category will range from 24 to 35 pounds and will be just as fast as your DH pig on more than 80% of technical trails. 'end rant'
but yeah translink wants to put a peak to peak style gondola from the skytrain station to sfu, but residents are already getting angry because they don't want it going through their backyard. Fair enough.
www.globaltvbc.com/tensions+rise+over+proposed+gondola/4843692/story.html
While I agree with the general point that more gondolas would be a welcome addition to any area in which people want to get their gravity kicks, a lot of people here are forgetting that most of us here are talking about the use of our bikes for non-necessary fun, not our everyday transport. There is no "essential" travel involved when we go out and ride for fun; and transport policy is therefore unlikely to consider it very highly.
The article does make a one sentence cap doff to "the growing legions of bike commuters who transport everything from kids to building supplies by bike" yet that is not what we ride for here is it? (Personally I do but that has no relevance to my DH weekend rides).
Gondolas are highly unlikely to be a part of a coherent transport planning scheme since they do not represent a way to make essential journeys,
We have a Life Cycles fan...
www.sicklines.com/news-images/IMG_3703.jpg
yes, i hate them and their crappy music too, but they are in the political drivers seat right now, and that is reality. While all this BS about gondolas and chairlifts saving the environment is retarded, they don't know that. I want more lifts around simply because girlfriends and sisters aren't willing to shuttle us for all eternity. We need to use this angle to help the fight for more lifts/gondolas! Who cares if it is a bunch of BS about bikes and lifts saving the environment? If they think that, more trails will be open to biking and more lifts will be built!!!!
nothin like chicken littles running around claiming pseudo intellectual facts /theories/claims about what society does or does not need.
does anyone with half a brain fall for this stuff anymore?
gondolas? how 20th century.
wait till the hippies get aload of the shweeb...
www.shweeb.co.nz
and talk about biting the hand that feeds. how much money has this author made off the shuttle uplift? directly or indirectly, shuttles have been lining his bank account for years.
As for problems getting around via public transport I feel your pain, although this is definitely the reason I stick to hardtail/AM style bikes; as you're not reliant on other forms of transportation as you can actually ride the thing.
In all seriousness though, think about what you're saying here; you want to replace cars ('bad' for the environment) with electrically-run alternatives? Excuse me but what fuels electricity? We're a long way off from dropping our dependency on fossil fuels. Whatever system you use is just going to be using 'dangerous' chemicals in a different way.