[sustran] Re: Micro Motors on Electric Bicycles

[J.H. Crawford]

>Those interested in the state of the art in bicycle technology, I was 
>impressed by the collection of vehicles at a corner bike shop in Amsterdam
>during a research trip there last summer. Some of these were of the owner's
>design but mostly they were pulled together from other builders around
>Europe.

I've lived in Amsterdam since 1990, and I've seen the following:

Nothing much happened in the way of new bicycles until a few
years ago, when there was a sudden flurry of innovative design,
with new bikes starting to replace decades-old bikes of 
conventional design. The big problem in Amsterdam is that
all bikes get stolen, sooner or later.

We're also seeing the return of the "white bike," a public-use
bike. Unfortunately, you have to use a credit-card sort of
sustem to get the bike out of the rack, and you have to pay
about 50 cents or a dollar per ride. The bikes are distinctive
(so not stolen) and have solid tires (so no flats). I don't
know how it's working out--the system is very new, and 
supposedly some problems in the beta-test are supposed to
have been fixed in the final version, now in use.



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J.H. Crawford                                         _Carfree Cities_
postmaster at carfree.com                          http://www.carfree.com