Washington DC, March 2004

David M: This is a bike and a half. It’s my old mountain bike frame with a product called the xtra cycle which allows you to extend the wheel base of the bike and makes it into a cargo vehicle. CYC: I’m gonna take a picture of this but how would you describe it? It looks like three skate boards around the back frame of a bike. DM: They they call it the SUB: the sport utility bicycle. It’s a stationwagon-bicycle with a big trunk. You can carry a second person on the back, its like a rumble seat. Or its got space for 6 or 8 really big heavily loaded grocery bags. It can carry up to 200 pounds. It’s a little slow with the extra weight, but it makes being car free . .CYC: that much easier. DM: Really easy. CYC: Yeah yeah. That’s one thing people complain about: Oh I can’t get my groceries or whatever.

DM: My big thing is reducing the barriers to getting on a bike. I work with the League of American Bicyclists and the global advocacy groups and I always wanna try and get more people on bikes. CYC: Chicago is really easy to ride cuz it’s so flat, but how bout DC? Is it hard to get around? DM: It’s a little bit hilly but you know, It’s not hard. There’s ways you can make it so you can commute to work even if you have to wear nice clothes, you can still get to work without gettin too sweaty and more and more work places have facilities to store bikes and store some clothes, take a shower. I heard a rumour that they’re trying to get a smart bike program dowtown. CYC: What’s that like? You have bikes out in the open that people can have a key to or something? DM: Yeah. There’s a docking mechanism. they have ‘em in cities in Europe and in different places. CYC: Like the famous white bikes of uh .. where’s that? DM: Amsterdam. But this is one where it’s a little more secure. So you swipe your card, pull a bike out of it’s bay.. you ride up k street to your meeting on the other side of k street. Dock into a bay there, go to your meeting, come back and ride back down. I mean how much congestion would that help downtown? CYC: I know there’s a thing like that for cars now: i-GO .. DM: zip car, flex car, you know: car sharing. Basically like progressive transportation technology. CYC: So do you think those are good ideas or are they sort of bad middle grounds? DM: Oh it’s a great idea. Anything that reduces the number of cars we have to have and makes it easier to live without owning a car.