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People on Bikes Blogger San Diego’s Turbo Bob

August 13, 2015 by Renee Marchol Leave a Comment

Microdocumentary by Mammals is a creative project of SmartyGirlLeadership Indie.

 

As promised we are right alongside our readers in DIY indie film projects from behind-the-scenes video production to bootstrapping fundraising.

Photo Credit: YouTube SGL TV Microdocumentary by Mammals FAQ The Making of “Emerging Ebikes”

So as Part 2 of our bike documentary short series, we’ve interviewed green transport experts outside of Washington State such as Pedelec Adventures’ Susanne Bruesch of Berlin Germany and Sustainable Transportation Consultant Ayman Zoubir of Lyon France.

 

Who is next? You guessed it! That’s Turbo Bob!

 

Four Fast Facts

  • Turbo Bob is an aviation and automotive technician
  • He predicts that the fourth profile of the ebike rider is the teen who will be receiving his/her first electric personal transport rather than first car because of the cost savings and environmental benefit to parents
  • Turbo Bob hosts an “Introduction to Electric Bicycles” cost-free seminar twice a year in San Diego as a community event, with no sales, no pressure for the public to learn about and test ride electric assist bikes
  • Turbo Bob and his wife Barbara are championing the term “People on Bikes” to describe the people riding bicycles to bring attention to the human life on wheels that is sharing traffic with cars

 

Our Editor-in-Chief Renee Marchol interviewed Turbo Bob last week by phone. Our editors were most curious about how Bob maintains a bike library to blog so prolifically, what is his relationship to bike makers, and how he advocates for bike safety and green transport adoption in his community.

 

As promised SmartyGirlLeadership blog shares MBA best practices so that challenge of maintaining objectivity for product reviews is transparent. Likewise, Turbo Bob shared his commitment to avoid partnering with instrusive advertisements on his Turbo Bob Bicycling Blog. Why? Because his approach is a no sales pressure approach. As in his interview with Morgan Lee of The San Diego Union Tribune in April 2013, Bob is well-qualified to speak about high-tech but is most interested about the green effect and “youthful innocence” that each bike ride brings. So you’ll notice that similar bicycle blogs have chosen a different strategy. This is how Turbo Bob is distinctive.

 

So without bike ads in sidebars, how is Turbo Bob receiving access to all these electric bikes to review? The electric bike companies contact Turbo Bob based on his reputation of giving even-handed product reviews. What does Turbo Bob do when he’s not adding posts to his own blog? He is an active member of a Meetup called the Electric Bike Club of San Diego while writing the E-bike monthly column for reborn Bicycle Business Journal. In other words, Bob stays immersed in the field study of ebikes.

 

So if Bob doesn’t advertise for bike companies what incentive do bike makers receive in approaching Bob for an evaluation? Turbo Bob shared that he chooses to give constructive feedback to startup E-bike makers who have a long way to go for improvements. Instead of slamming them in a damning review, if they are receptive the engineers and in-house team receives his suggestions for improvement. Then they are invited to submit the bike for review again, for a second chance. Bob tries to test each bike for two weeks in different terrain and varying temperatures to really evaluate its capabilities though a full review can be done in 4 hours. How does it perform after 20 miles on a hot day ? How does it ride on a misty 1 mile trip to the market?

 

Lastly, Turbo Bob and his wife Barbara are so community-minded and respected in San Diego that an energy innovation center offered to host his “Introduction to Electric Bicycles” community event, craft services were sponsored, and electric assist bike retailers agreed to a “onsite sales prohibited” policy to participate in a test riding day event for the general public. With waiver of course.

 

Our Editor-in-Chief Renee Marchol and her Emerging Ebikes indie production team knows that what Turbo Bob has accomplished is difficult to coordinate. In the past year, for Part 1 of SGL’s supported electric assist bike documentary short our logistic coordinators found that Pacific Northwest bike coalitions, bike retailers, bike athletes, bike commuters and government transport authorities are fragmented in their individual efforts. Turbo Bob has united efforts for a non-commercial cause of improving the green neighborhoods of People on Bikes.

 

bike reviews electric assist pedelec bikes Turbo Bobl

Photo Credit: Turbo Bob

 

Turbo Bob is passionate about getting people to embrace bikes and all they stand for. He does much of this through his testing, reviews and feedback to the bike companies. Find out more about city security for folding bikes and electric bikes on his Turbo Bob’s Bicycle Blog.

 

Bike Technology News and Sustainable Transportation Update from France with SmartyFella Ayman Zoubir

August 3, 2015 by Renee Marchol Leave a Comment

What might be the intermediate step before non-bicyclists become bike-to-work commuters part-time? Full-time?

What would have to change in city/suburb transport infrastructure to incentivize these same new-ish bike-to-work commuters to adopt on a 20 mile trip daily versus a 2 mile route during the work week?

Last month our editors interviewed photojournalist Susanne Bruesch of Pedelec Adventures of Berlin Germany who takes bike tours to the very limit for bicycle travel usually seen only in National Geographic. Is cyclotouring becoming more feasible for everyone? The injured, infirm or just-out-breath? Are campaigns of bicyclists crossing landscapes of volcanos, meadows, waterfalls and glaciers that rival car ads enticing enough for adults to consider a two-wheeler again?

This month? Our bicycling documentary editors completed Part 1 of Emerging Ebikes of the Pacific Northwest for focus group test screenings in Washington State and California.

17 July Friday Screening from Renee Marchol on Vimeo.

iZip E3 Dash, Emazing, Kalkhoff Sahel and throttle (power on demand) converted brand X. These are four electric transport options already in the Pacific Northwest USA. Susanne Bruesch of Germany studied pedelec electric bikes when they were emerging in Europe but established in Asia. Now Interbike (the bike industry trade show) has shown electrified sports bikes too.

How might your bike community react to pedal assist bikes, throttle (power on demand) electric boost bikes as part of regional green mobility? What about the Maker movement? How will DIY electric bike conversion kits change the way you commute?

Journalist-on-a-Bicycle Renee Marchol studied electric bikes and its emerging urban and hilly communities in the Pacific Northwest during the summer of 2014. What are your thoughts? How do you imagine the next 15 years of electric transport? Performance or fitness: what is your purpose for cycling? 800 miles from Pacifica CA to Everett WA including San Francisco and Seattle

So for Part 2, we checked in with a transportation researcher known for his Canada Velocity ebike report, Ayman Zoubir PhD Consultant in Urban Planning and Sustainable Transportation of Lyon France via Skype call on July 23rd.

4 Fast Facts

  • Pedelecs bikes are seen as sustainable transport solutions targeted at commuters, which are most typical users. Average commute distance range from 3 to 5 miles. Surveys show that middle-aged people holding higher social positions represent about half of pedelecs users in France.
  • Suburbs outside of Lyon France are still reluctant to adopt the “last mile” on bike practice because a lake of integration into transit system. Solo car passenger is still the most appealing option because of underdeveloped public transport and cycling infrastructure that would encourage combining bike plus bus and train.
  • Conventional foldable bikes seem to present fewer obstacles for commuters willing to adopt “intermodality” particularly when boarding on public transit during peak hours.
  • Commuters can change their mobility behavior when they are confronted with specific new mobility options in experiments. The challenge is to design a sufficient range of experiments to be able to draw more general conclusions on what it is possible under which conditions.

In SmartyGirlLeadership Indie’s documentary short project, Microdocumentary by Mammals, the filmmaker’s conclusion after five months of electric bike research as commuter in the Pacific Northwest is that too many barriers exist for her choose to purchase an ebike for all her commuter needs. Compatibility on other public modes of transport was the number one reason why phase 1 of the research showed that renting a pedelec for certain film and commute trips was the most feasible solution.

Speaking with advisors, Robert & Danny Beaman of Dublin Cyclery of California, our Editor-in-Chief prepared interview questions to ask Ayman Zoubir about the parallels in North America and the challenges he faces regarding transportation innovation for green mobility in Lyon France.

Ayman Zoubir teamed up with transport authorities from local government to study the impact of commuter incentives to reduce solo passenger driving in the city Lyon France and its suburbs since 2011. The tests have included the use of pedelecs, conventional and foldable bikes. Also, cycle & ride facilities were provided near local public transit stops to cover the last mile to workplace.

Intermodality is a theoretical term, which means combining several means of transport during the same journey, using different types of vehicles to get from A to Z. For example, train + car or bus + bicycle.

This logic aims to justify the use of the car by offering relevant mobility alternatives.

But I’m not sure that the UK and the USA share the same definition of multimodality, which in our  UK meaning assumes a choice (not a combination) between several means of transport.

For example, you can commute to work by bus and ride a public bike for your return trip to home. This could be considered as multimodal mobility behavior in the USA.

What is the problem? What is preventing adoption of this commuter lifestyle by bike?

Infrastructure is not consistent in the suburbs. In contrast, the city has amenities such as convenient, numerous bus and train stops and designated bike lanes. Commuters living in the suburbs do not adopt a bike-to-work lifestyle because bike paths are lacking and connecting public transport is lacking. Biking is not a convenient alternative to using a solo passenger car for suburbia yet. Another barrier to bicycle commuting stated by testers during the experiment in linked to safety concerns. We’ve noted also a strong seasonality in the frequency of cycling, commuters were particularly sensitive to weather conditions in particular precipitations.

What incentives have been tested? What was the result?

The main aim was to introduce industrial employees commuters who normally drive alone to work by car to test an e-bike, a conventional or a folding bike as an alternative mode of their daily commute. The objective was to involve a core group of around 100 “test-commuters” for the experiment. The main finding was a long-term change in car use in the first demonstration site: 10% modal shift from SOV to Cycling. 20% of test-commuters purchased a bike.

Among other incentives introduced by the local government to promote alternative ways of transport and encourage employees to cycle to work, Greater Lyon metropolitan authority has decided in 2012 to assign grants for e-bike purchase (maximum grant €250) for resident living on the Grand Lyon area.  Measures are part of Lyon’s active transportation master plan (2009-2020), which plans to reach 7.5% cycling mode share by 2020.

Many were frustrated with the lack of compatibility of the electric bike frame’s weight and frame to fit in comfortably as bus-rider and train-passenger. The participants also expressed reluctance to store their expensive electric bike, even in the newly built bike parking and storage for fear of theft. Reducing the initial cost of the electric bike purchase did not seem to assist the intermodality bicyclist commuters in maintaining this lifestyle beyond a year.

What other types of bikes are in the study?

Non-electric folding bikes present fewer obstacles to intermodality bicycle commuters when passengers on bus and train. We are still studying the customer satisfaction of the newly built bike storage for these types of commuters.

Glossary

Infrastructure: human strategy for logistics in a settlement. The objective is a transportation sustainable eco-system for people, goods and services. For widespread early adoption and a permanent lifestyle change for commuters, the criteria includes: cost-effectiveness, safety, security, comfort, technology adaptability, and social acceptance.

Foldable bike: a personal transport, usually with two wheels, for one commuter. The frame can be folded to take up less space for portability.

the “last mile” campaign: Ayman Zoubir studied the results of the tests on commuters choosing to use a combination of bike, bus and train for their daily commute for 12 months in the Lyon France are. The goal was to make reducing solo passenger cars for daily commutes to alleviate congestion on the roads. Example: For a two mile work commute, consider riding a bus/train and then riding your bike for the last mile to workplace.

SOV: single occupancy vehicle

To read his original reports visit the following links.

http://www.ecf.com/wp-content/uploads/Zoubir-Ayman-Experimenting-bicycle-commuting.pdf

http://www.epomm.eu/index.php?id=2771&lang1=en&study_id=3391

For creative ways eco-transport intermodality biking advocates have used video campaigns, go here. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N1HYYvEVw6c

What? You thought that laughter wasn’t allowed?

Photo Credit: Ayman Zoubir PhD Consultant

Photo Credit: Ayman Zoubir PhD Consultant of Urban Planning and Sustainable Transportation of Lyon France

SmartyFella Ayman Zoubir answered our Skype questions via video conference while sitting in his private office in Lyon France wearing a long-sleeve collared light blue shirt suitable for a bicycle commuter working in an academic setting. Oh yeah. He also chose our pop culture export a dapper Garfield as his Skype avatar. Go scientist-scholars! For more green transportation innovation news follow @Mobilius_C

 

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