We meet every fourth Sunday 1pm to 3pm at the Quaker meetinghouse (3rd and Madison) in the Northside neighborhood of Ithaca NY. We also hold occasional mobile bike clinics. Everyone is welcome! We are an all-volunteer organization. Come to work on your bike, to help others fix their bike, or just to talk about bikes and biking. In particular we help people install electric motors and cargo bike extensions on their bikes.
Last weekend Alan Bleier of Eco-Village kindly donated about a dozen bikes to Friends Bike Clinic. He explained that in order to make room for a new community center building, Eco-Village is moving the car sheds in which the bikes were stored. He has spent a good bit of time cataloging the bikes and finding them a home. Thanks Alan!
We will be fixing up the bikes at RIBs during their May and June Tuesday evening open shop hours (5pm to 8pm). Quaker teen Dylan Beisner-Kaiser is helping out. Some of the bikes we will fix up and give away as part of LACS student Ian Culling’s 8th grade project. Other bikes we’ll dismantle for parts. Let me know if you want to participate in either of these activities.
-Larry
May 18th is national Bike to Work Day. Friends Bike Clinic, along with seven other spots around town, is serving breakfast to everyone who bikes to work. Join us on the deck of the Quaker Meetinghouse at 3rd and Madison from 7:30 to 9:30am. Festivities continue on the Commons until 2pm. Post the official poster!
There will be a Friends Bike Clinic this Sunday 4/29 from 1pm to 3pm on the deck of the Quaker Meetinghouse at 120 3rd Street. Get help fixing your bike, help others fix their bike, or just hang out to chat. Note that Friends Bike Clinic will also be set up at the Farmer’s Market gazebo on Saturday 5/5 10am to 2pm and first Saturdays thereafter.
I should also note that the first meeting of the Cornell Bike Collective went very well. About two dozen people met in the Cornell Outdoor Education classroom. We went around the circle and everyone introduced themselves. Six students agreed to convene a separate meeting to assign themselves the roles of the club officers. We described the events leading up to the club and future steps. We brainstormed on projects we envision and on near-term goals (see the photos below). Lastly we scheduled the next meeting for May 7th at 2pm tentatively at the Dilmun Farm.
I created the following petition encouraging New York State to legally define electric bikes. Currently electric bikes are in a kind of legal limbo, and the bill that would bring them out of that limbo has been stuck in committees for several years. Please read the following petition. If you agree with it, send me your name and your official title as a token of your agreement. After adding everyone’s name to the list I’ll send it off to Albany. You can also comment on this bill on the NY Senate website.
-Larry Clarkberg, Friends Bike Clinic
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Dear Senators Dilan and O’Mara,
We are writing to you to encourage passage of New York Senate Bill S1357B. This bill would legally define electric bicycles as follows:
HAVE A POWER OUTPUT OF NOT MORE THAN SEVEN HUNDRED FIFTY WATTS; BE INCAPABLE OF PROPELLING THE DEVICE AT A SPEED OF MORE THAN TWENTY MILES PER HOUR ON LEVEL GROUND; AND BE INCAPABLE OF FURTHER INCREASING THE SPEED OF THE DEVICE WHEN HUMAN POWER IS USED TO PROPEL THE DEVICE AT OR MORE THAN TWENTY MILES PER HOUR.
Ithaca has a great biking community and supportive city administrators. Because of the hills here, however, everyday bicycling is limited to the most athletic of us. Electric bikes could change all that. Electric bikes would enable more students and families to choose bicycling as a means of transportation. However, the ambiguous legality of electric bikes in New York State has had a stifling effect. We feel this is the opposite direction our elected officials should be taking; electric bike use should be encouraged rather than discouraged.
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We the undersigned support immediate passage of New York Senate Bill S1357B-2011.
Larry Clarkberg, Director, Friends Bike Clinic
David P. McCobb, Assoc. Professor, Cornell University, and bike commuter
Alan R. Bleier, Sr. Research Assoc., Cornell University, and bike commuter
Kent Johnson, Junior Transportation Engineer, City of Ithaca Engineering Office
Victoria Armstrong, Project Associate, Creating Healthy Places, Human Services Coalition of Tompkins County
Govind Acharya, City of Ithaca, Chair, Planning & Development & Commissioner on the Board of Public Works
Thea Clarkberg, electric bike commuter
Graham Ottoson, Nurse Practitioner, bike commuter
Karim Beers, Cornell graduate student
Tobias Hanrath, Assistant Professor, School of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering , Cornell University
Dwight Mengel, Chief Transportation Planner, Tompkins County Dept of Social Services, and bike commuter
Sylvie Froncek, Recycle Ithaca’s Bicycles
Laetitia de Freslon, Marketing & Operations Manager at The History Center in Tompkins County, bike commuter
David Kay, former Chairman, City of Ithaca Bicycle Pedestrian Advisory Council (BPAC)
Jeanne Leccese, Coordinator, Creating Healthy Places, Human Services Coalition of Tompkins County
Daniel Keough, Voting member of the Bicycle Pedestrian Advisory Council of the city of Ithaca, NY, and daily bike commuter
Chris Proulx, City of Ithaca Alderperson, Ward 5
Ray Weaver, Way2Go program manager Cornell Cooperative Extension of Tompkins County
Anna Cook, Ithaca Carshare, Assistant Director – Fleet, and bike commuter
Jennifer Dotson, City of Ithaca Alderperson Ward 1, and bike commuter
Fernando de Aragon, Director, Ithaca Tompkins County Transportation Council
Robbert Van Renesse, Principal Research Scientist in the Department of Computer Science at Cornell University
Gail Steinhart, City of Ithaca Bicycle Pedestrian Advisory Council
Jeff Inman, owner of Cayuga Ski & Cyclery bike store
Christopher Sturgeon, motorcyclist
Lauren Goldberg, Head of Ithaca College’s Bomber Bike Initiative
Eric Duchinsky, commuter, Brooklyn, NY
Ken Stuart, Senior Web Developer for cornell.edu and want-to-be-an-electric-bike-commuter
I recently set up my mobile bike clinic on campus at Ithaca College at the invitation of Lauren Goldberg. Lauren heads up the Bomber Bike Initiative, a group of students who are working to promote bicycling. They have several projects in the works, including building bike shelters on campus and creating a bike share program. It took me some time to get my mobile-bike-clinic bike to the appointed spot for the clinic. Ithaca College campus is on a hill with only stairs to get to the various levels of the hill. Lauren noted on a map that Ithaca College is not very bike friendly; it seems designed for cars and pedestrians but nothing in-between. She noted that some students even drive from one end of campus to the other because that is more convenient than walking or biking.
Many students dropped by, some experienced with bikes and some not at all experienced. Our little bike clinic was very much needed. Several students said that after seeing us there they were now considering bringing their bikes to campus. One student who stopped by with a flat tire said he was prepared to put his bike in storage if we hadn’t been there to help him fix his flat. And many students had brakes so far out of adjustment that their bikes would not have been safe on Ithaca’s hills. We managed to help them all and enjoy a beautiful day outdoors too.
As shown in the photos below, we set up a mobile bike clinic at the opening day of the Ithaca Farmers’ Market. It was a beautiful day and we found ourselves lollygagging in the sun between times replacing brake cables and truing wheels. Margaret and Claire from Ithaca Colleges’ Bomber Bike Initiative joined us for most of the time. Thea Clarkberg lended much-needed organizational support.
Graham O (standing) brought a group of about eight Burmese immigrants to the clinic last Sunday. Each of them had recently been donated a bicycle that will serve them as their primary means of transportation. We helped them tune up their bikes. Clinic visitors David McCobb and Brien Colgan selflessly pitched in.
Warm weather! Very warm weather! That means that the March bike clinic can be held outdoors on the deck of the Quaker meetinghouse at 120 Third Street. The clinic will be from 1pm to 3pm on Sunday March 25th. Please RSVP if you think you might be bringing your bike by. So far I know of one person with a flat tire and two people with braking issues who plan to stop by; they’ll get priority since they let me know in advance.
Also: I’ve lined up at least four mobile bike clinics in April and it would be great to get help at any or all of them:
No experience is necessary for helping out. Note that I don’t yet know the time and date of the Cornell Earth Day celebrations so I don’t yet know if that will conflict with the clinic at the meetinghouse.
I’ve recently been attending the meetings of an informal transportation group called Active Ithaca. The group is open to anyone who is interested in alternative transportation in Ithaca, and has a healthy mix of bicycling advocates and city, town, and county transportation-related employees. At our most recent meeting the question came up as to whether electric bikes are legal. After some research I came to the following conclusions, and a plea for help.
The short answer is that there is no legal reason not to buy, sell or ride an electric bike in New York. Tens of thousands of New Yorkers, mostly in New York City, use electric bikes. One of the most successful ebike stores, NYCeWheels, is in New York City. And there are several places in Ithaca to buy electric bikes, including Cayuga Ski and Cyclery and Swan Cycles. This business would not exist if electric bikes were clearly illegal.
The long answer is that ebikes are neither legal nor illegal because they are not legally defined in New York State. This makes it difficult to judge which laws apply to them. Some people point to an old state law that says “motorized bicycles” are not legal, but this law seems intended for bicycles with small gasoline engines. Others point to a more sensible federal law that defines an electric bike as having 750 watts or less power and only able to go less than 20mph. According to this federal definition electric bikes are not considered “motorized” and regular bicycle laws apply to them.
Frustratingly, a New York State bill does define electric bikes (giving them the same specs as the federal definition) but this bill has been kicking around Albany for three years now. There is no opposition to this bill so it is unclear why it hasn’t been passed. I was inspired by our Active Ithaca meeting to do some investigating. I called our state senator’s office (O’Mara) and spoke for some time with his assistant (Nick LaStella). We both agreed that ebike legality in NYS is surprisingly ambiguous. The bill that would resolve the issue (S1357B) is inexplicably held up in committees. Nick encouraged me to write a paper letter to senators O’Mara and Dilan (the bill’s sponsor). I encourage others to write letters; I’ll post my letter as an example. Ithaca City Junior Transportation Engineer Kent Johnson has since contacted me about “forming a group advocates interested in working to urge Albany to keep the legislation moving, and to prepare a resolution for our elected officials to pass onto Albany endorsing the legislation”. So that’s the next step. Let me know if you are interested in helping out.
-Larry
