Why it's Great to Have a Simple City Bike

I’ve had an idea in my head that I put it into reality towards the end of last year.  To live car free it’s important to have backup transportation.  That backup can be multi-modal public transportation with a simple city bike.

I’ve been commuting by bicycle for quite some time, but full time bike commuting has proven challenging for me.  For one, when the temperature drops low or weather gets bad, it can be miserable.  There are certainly people who ride in colder places than Charlotte, that’s for sure, but this blog is supposed to show how living care free can be accessible for “normal” people.  Here’s a very important rule for living car free – You will need a back-up form of transportation of  even two.  For me that backup is the Charlotte Area Transit System (CATS) bus system, and a simple city single speed bike I built last year.

CATS its a less than ideal bus system.  It works on a hub and spoke system meaning if your destination is not in the center-city or along the path of your paticular spoke, your ride will take a LONG time.  It will take a heck of a lot longer than driving, and my personal tolerance for public transit is about 2X the automobile drive time.  For me, there are some destinations which can take 4 or 8 times my drive time.  In some cases to go just a few miles cross town would take over an hour, when a car ride would be 5 minutes.  Second, even my closest bus stop is over a mile walk.  That’s at least 12 or 15 minutes.  In the book Carfree cities by Crawford he lays out some rules for the car free utopia he’s designing.  One of those rules is that all residents need to live within a 5 minute walk of public transit, and that transit needs to have frequent stops.  My nearest transit stop runs every 20 minutes, which is tollerable, but it’s to far for me to walk for my daily commute.

Here’s where my bike comes in.  I built this bike from spare parts (some of which I saved in Myers Park from the garbage dump), some older parts, and a few things I purchased for this bike specifically.  I started with a steel track frame I got from Performance Bike($150).  This single speed worked for me when I coupled it with a sweeping handlebar and some platform pedals.  It only accommodates a 28mm tire, and 32mm would be better, but I don’t carry more than myself and a backpack, so I can survive without the tire float.  I’ve got a 48/16 gearing on the single speed and I’ve added a chain/bash guard I picked up from Velo Orange.  It’s very hard to find a  bash guard for larger chainrings, but what I have keeps my dress pants clean.  It has a flip flop rear hub.  I don’t like riding fixed and rarely do.  I have a frame mounted U-lock.  This bike works great with street clothes, business clothes, and even dress shoes.  The gearing works fine for my generally short trips that are under 5 miles, and Charlotte has mostly rolling hills.

Coupled with the bus system, this is great backup transportation.  In the winter or bad weather this is an ideal form of transportation.  I have full rain wear and a water proof backpack that works like a charm.  The bike probably cost me more to assemble than if I’d just bought a complete bike, but it was fun.  All in, it was probably less than $400.