Bikes in England (Newcastle, London and Beamish)

Bicing in Buenos Aires

The Buenos Aires government sure is doing something right aggressively pushing bike use, even against complaining drivers or dumb press campaigns. After creating new bike paths and better conditions for bike parking, they are now officially launching the city's bike sharing system, announced more than two years ago but finally hitting the streets tomorrow.

According to Clarin newspaper, the system will start with 100 bikes in three stations (Retiro, Law Faculty and the Customs park). It's estimated that it will get to 500 bikes in 12 stations in the next three months.

The local Bicing -yes, called the same as the über popular Barcelona system- will be free with previous registration and the bikes will be requested personally with an ID and automatically later on.

Bikes will be available from Monday to Saturday for two hours a time, with an accompanying helmet. Registration will be open from tomorrow on at MejorEnBici.gov.ar.

The quiet launch with only three stations and lots of personal control by government personel aims to avoid vandalism problems that systems like Vélib faced, until they can test how users react to the idea.

Although some problems may come up, the local Bicing will certainly encourage the growing hip wave around bikes Buenos Aires is going through. With hundreds hitting the local Critical Mass every month, events popping up everywhere and the government pushing the vehicle, the city is on its way to become more and more bike-friendly.

This certainly needs to happen if the government wants to put some order to the traffic madness that the soaring car sales have caused in the street.


SOURCE: treehugger.com

Biking to Jauregui, Greater Buenos Aires.

SRAM

I have interested in finding out about this new technology available for all of us. I've searched some websites for some knowledgeable reviews and bikeradar.com proved to meet my needs. Below is an extensive review for you: 

SRAM Red is the third and highest level road groupset that the American company has released. It's lighter than Shimano Dura-Ace and Campagnolo Record, but also a lot more expensive…

From not so humble beginnings

SRAM made a big splash with its Force and Rival groups and the positive reception was well-earned. Its novel DoubleTap levers proved to be remarkably intuitive, the Exact Actuation geometry really did deliver what is arguably the most precise (and robust) shifting in the road business and weights were roughly on-par with the best offerings from Shimano and Campagnolo.
Even so, all was not perfect with Force when Cyclingnews reviewed it in 2006. We found the brake and shift levers to be a tad short, there was too much drag in the bottom bracket and we were somewhat disappointed that the cassette and front derailleur were wholly shared with Rival (save for the finish in the latter). We also had some niggling gripes with the brake pads and cable routing.
SRAM has apparently taken those previous criticisms to heart in developing the new Red group, though, and try as we might, we have to admit that it's difficult to find fault in this latest round.

Shifters: no slop

 

Just as with Force and Rival, the DoubleTap levers remain at the heart of the group and the Red version beats noticeably stronger and longer with a number of upgrades. New 'Zero Loss' internals virtually eliminate the shift paddle free play found in Force and Rival, shift and brake levers are now longer, the newly carbon shift paddle is bigger, and both shift and brake levers are independently adjustable for reach. Compared to Force, the Red levers are about 10g lighter per pair and Gore Ride-On coated cables and housings are included (the low-friction kind, not the sealed ones).
Lever throw is roughly half that of Force/Rival (and about 40% of what's required for Dura-Ace) to yield faster and more precise shifts. The new shapes and adjustable reach mean that the controls are easier to manage, especially when in the drops or for riders with smaller hands.
Brake lever adjustments are easily made with an Allen head bolt hiding under the hood but shift lever adjustments aren't quite so simple. SRAM suggests using a pick or other sharp object to simultaneously depress and rotate the small cam located at the lever's base but we had a far easier time just using our fingertips. Either way it's a bit of a pain but thankfully not something you have to do often.
How significant is Zero Loss? Think of it this way: if you were take the amount of lever travel required just to take up the slack in Force and transfer that same movement over to Red, you've already made a shift. More to the point, upshifts on Red requires less than half the lever travel of the current Dura-Ace generation. The only drawback we can think of here is that riders who might regularly swap back and forth between Red and Force or Rival may have some difficulties shifting the intended number of cogs.
The front shifter is now equipped with a outer chainring trim position, although SRAM has curiously eliminated the inner trim position in the process. Admittedly, we've always been able to set up Force/Rival-equipped bikes to run rub-free in the big ring without the trim position in the past as SRAM intended but we can understand that many users could never get used to the idea. Unfortunately, though, now we get cross-chain rub in the inner ring which we can't dial out; can't we have both?
Finally, users now have the option of running the derailleur housing on either the front or back of the handlebar a la all but the earliest versions of Campagnolo Ergopower.

Derailleurs/mechs: strange, but they work

 

Speaking of front derailleurs, the biggest change with Red is the new titanium cage which drops 30g compared to Force. As with SRAM's other road groups, the Red derailleur can be used with both compact and standard cranksets and seemed to work equally well with both.
Sharp-eyed readers will note from the images that the trailing edge of the cage seems to arc away from the big ring… and you'd be correct. We were assured that it's a feature, not a bug. More alarming, though, is the titanium cage's marked flexiness as compared to comparable steel cages. Cage flex is generally bad as far as front derailleurs go but in spite of that and the odd shape, the bit works as intended, even under power. Go figure.
The rear derailleur remains functionally equivalent to Force in terms of shifting, but drops 31g courtesy of a carbon fibre inner link and more dramatically relieved aluminium outer link. The newly included ceramic bearing-equipped pulleys supposedly spin with less friction than before.

Drivetrain: on a diet

The other notable star of the group is the new OG-1090 'PowerDome' cassette which foregoes alternative materials in its quest for lighter weight in favour of an innovative construction technique. Save for the lockring and backing plate, the new cassette is made of good old-fashioned steel. Instead of usual stack-of-plates arrangement, though, the PowerDome cassette is essentially just a hollowed-out cone with teeth on the outside courtesy of the magic CNC milling machine. A thick aluminium backing plate seals it all up and transfers the power into the freehub body. Weight on our 11-26T sample was a superb 169g (the Force equivalent is 232g).
SRAM uses the same OpenGlide tooth profiling on the new cassette as in previous versions and shift quality was as we expected: excellent but still not quite as smooth as Shimano. In theory, the PowerDome concept should yield a significantly stiffer cassette although we couldn't tell much of a difference given our meagre bike journalist power outputs.
The idea of transferring that torque through a 3mm-thick aluminium plate has caused some concern amongst some. Contrary to popular expectations, we're happy to report that we noticed exactly zero galling (or scuffing for that matter) even on soft aluminium freehub bodies. As such, weight weenies out there will happily note that the unique cassette construction also means that there is now a whole lot of 'unnecessary' freehub body spline that you can happily grind away to your heart's content. Not that we would ever dream of advocating such a practice...
There's no official word on whether or not SRAM will introduce the PowerDome concept on mountain bike cassettes but it seems like a no-brainer to us even with the seemingly diminished benefit of the additional surface area. Sure, there is the issue of mud and/or dirt clogging up the shallow channels in between the cogs but we'd imagine that machining deeper channels or adopting a more open-shelled structure might provide a solution. We'll leave it up to the SRAM engineers to figure that one out.
The new Red crankset shares the carbon-over-aluminium spine construction of Force but bears a sleeker, narrower profile, a new unidirectional finish and standard ceramic bearings in the GXP bottom bracket. A new outer ring adopts a Dura-Ace-like near-solid architecture to improve stiffness, and shift performance. As with Force and Rival, Red is offered in both standard and compact versions; arm lengths range from 165mm up to 180mm. Weight of our standard 172.5mm crankset drops to 639g without the accompanying bottom bracket.

Brakes: adjustability wins

 

Finally we come to that unsung hero, the brake calliper. The new Red version is more aggressively machined than Force but only slightly lighter at 260g per pair - a modest 13g loss. The more heavily triangulated upper arm adds a bit of rigidity, though, and SRAM has finally managed to fit the Red callipers with proper spring tension and centring adjustments. The aluminium brake pad holders are milled out as well but more importantly, move the fixing bolts from the top to the sides for easier maintenance.
It'd be an utter lie if we said we could actually feel a difference in our hands on the road with the new callipers; we were quite satisfied with the performance of Force and these are certainly easily as good. However, the new adjustments make these far easier to live with than before so we'll consider the 13g weight loss a nice bonus.

Summary

Red is undoubtedly a marked improvement over Force: it's more ergonomic, it works better and it's lighter (by about 150g in all). From a purely functional perspective it's possibly the best out there at the moment and let's face it, some people are also drooling over the bold appearance. The professional ranks have embraced Red as well as it's now found on the bikes of Saunier Duval-Scott, Astana, Agritubel, Bissell and Kelly Benefit Strategies-Medifast among others.
The big issue is at a MSRP of US$2142/£1399, SRAM Red is substantially more expensive than Shimano Dura-Ace (£756) and about the same as Campagnolo Record (£1397). At 1953g, it's about 200g lighter than Dura-Ace and 75g lighter than Record, so will appeal to weight weenies, but still... And compared to the other SRAM groupsets, Red is roughly 50 percent more expensive than Force, and well over double the cost of Rival.
Is it worth it? That's a tougher question and not one we're going to attempt to answer for you.
We will say, however, that all of the Red bits are fully compatible with Force and Rival. Since the biggest gain comes with the DoubleTap levers, current Force or Rival users might consider just upgrading those to reap most of the benefits. If your tax rebate is burning a hole in your pocket, though, we're certainly not going to try to talk you out of it


SOURCE: WWW.BIKERADAR.COM

 

 

 

 

Biking in Carlos Keen - Five months later after the first visit

Bikes in Amsterdam

My friend Jack Turton kindly sent me these pics from his trip to Amsterdam. It really shows why Amsterdam is so bike friendly. Thanks Jack!

BUENOS AIRES: BIKE FRIENDLY? IN SPANISH

La Ciudad fomenta el uso de la bicicleta como medio de transporte habitual

El jefe de Gabinete del Gobierno porteño, Horacio Rodríguez Larreta, aseguró que la construcción de ciclovías y bicisendas a lo largo de la Ciudad de Buenos Aires alienta a que las bicicletas “se transformen en un verdadero medio de transporte que los vecinos puedan utilizar en forma segura para llegar a sus lugares de trabajo”.

“Es una apuesta grande que hace el Gobierno y que va en línea con lo que están haciendo las grandes ciudades del mundo, porque la bicicleta es un transporte ecológico, que hace al deporte y obviamente también, a la salud de la gente”, puntualizó Rodríguez Larreta.

El jefe de Gabinete formuló estas declaraciones en Lavalle y Bouchard (San Nicolás) durante una inspección a las nuevas ciclovías, que el mes próximo terminarán de unir Plaza Italia y Parque Lezama y que en poco tiempo se conectarán con el circuito turístico de La Boca.

Lo acompañó el Subsecretario de Transporte de la Ciudad, Guillermo Dietrich, quien anticipó que habrá personal del Cuerpo de Agentes de Tránsito y de la Policía Metropolitana garantizando la seguridad de los ciclistas.

Rodríguez Larreta recordó, al respecto, que en las calles las ciclovías están separadas del resto de la calzada por un zócalo para evitar el contacto directo con el resto de los vehículos.

“Nosotros fomentamos la utilización de este medio de transporte porque es una de las formas más eficaces para luchar contra la contaminación y el cambio climático. Y sabemos que requiere un cambio de cultura que va a mejorar la calidad de vida de la gente en la Ciudad”, apuntó.

Invitó a tener en cuenta para el uso de la bicicleta que Buenos Aires “es una Ciudad plana que no tiene temperaturas extremas”.

El Gobierno porteño prevé, también, crear lugares de estacionamiento especiales en la zona del microcentro para que los ciclistas puedan dejar sus rodados en forma segura al momento de ir a trabajar o realizar trámites.

En la Cumbre Mundial contra el Cambio Climático, realizada en Copenhague en diciembre último, el jefe de Gobierno porteño, Mauricio Macri, elevó la postura de la Unión de Ciudades Capitales Iberoamericanas (UCCI) - organismo en el que Buenos Aires ejerce la vicepresidencia de la región Cono Sur - y reivindicó la implementación de políticas de planificación urbana que privilegien el uso de la bicicleta y la peatonalización.

SOURCE: GOBIERNO DE BUENOS AIRES