I have an excellent downtown route. Yesterday I made it to 25th & Lex from my house on the Upper West Side in 19 minutes, stopping only a handful of times. I go down Columbus Avenue to 77th Street, where I make a left and get into the park. I then take 7th Avenue south through Times Square (shitty, but I want to stay near Broadway. It’s really not so bad: it takes maybe 3 minutes to get through) — it would be awesome to go from 59th to Times Square on Broadway instead, but note that you’ll have to avoid the pedestrian plaza by getting on 7th at 46th or 45th.  At 42nd, I go left and get back on Broadway. Then at Herald’s Square, I go down the extended sidewalk on 6th, cross 34th on the east side of the street and then ride in the gutter against 6th avenue traffic to get back on Broadway.  Then it’s smooth sailing again down to 26th, where I make a left, go to Lex, make a right, and done!

The beautiful part of this route is that at no point are you really being overtaken by cars. The Columbus Avenue section is downhill, so I can keep a pretty good pace. The 7th Avenue section has proven quite empty (since 7th starts below the park!), so most of the time I have the road all to myself. Broadway is shunned like the plague these days and has a separated bike line – you have to be more wary of pedestrians walking wherever they damn well please.

I’m at school in Midtown on the east side, and live on the Upper West Side, so my natural route to school is to go through Central Park, down 7th Avenue through Times Square, down Broadway, and then cut east a few blocks at Madison Square. This is a pretty nice route, as the street portion of the ride is through low-volume areas, some even with good bike lanes. (However, the separated path in the 30’s is unusable, since it is basically an extension of the sidewalk.)

The trip back home is not so easy. The 40’s and 50s on almost every single uptown avenue are terrifying. I have ridden on 3rd, 6th, Madison, and 8th, and every ride has near misses. I will give Park a try today, I think, although the lack of staggered lights makes me nervous. Also, 2-way traffic means lots of people zooming across my lane without looking for bikes.

My question is, is there are a way not to risk death on the way home without diverting to the Hudson River Bikeway (an exhausting diversion)?

Recall that the role of the chainring is transfer energy from your feet (by way of the pedals and crank) to the chain and eventually to the back tire. Because every ounce of energy your feet put into the pedals is meant to be transferred into the chain, getting very low resistance makes a huge difference in the feel and performance of the bike. When there is too much slack in the chain (low tension) or the chain binds at any point  (high tension), that is energy that should be going from your feet to the wheels, but is instead being dissipated by inefficiency in the system.

As Sheldon Brown’s article indicates, there are two steps to attaching the chainring. The first is to get it straight so that there is no binding at any point. The second is to tighten it down so that position is held. A third step is to fix the chain tension. The way you the first step is to use the chain itself to both detect points of binding, and then to have it correct them, as well.

To detect points of binding, you do as Brown describes; put the back wheel and chain on at a good tension. When I did it, I didn’t even move the back wheel; I left it at the same tension (with no visible sag) as when I ride. It is imperative that the chainring bolts be only finger tight at this point: tight enough that it’s held securely, but loose enough that it can shift under force. To feel the tension, you rotate the cranks a little at a time, and squeeze the chain together. Note also that you should use grease (like the kind you use on the wheel hubs) on the bolts so that a tight seal is formed and the bolts hold better under force and vibration.

Go around once to get a feel for what a high and low tension feels like. Then seek out a high tension point in the chain (when the give is least). Strike the chain with a tool (I used a heavy allen wrench). This action will force the chainring to resettle slightly; this point will no longer be one of high tension. Repeat this step until the chain tension is very consistent the entire way around.

The second major step is to tighten the bolts. This is not a complicated operation. I like Sheldon Brown’s method: start on the bolt across from the crank arm, and then rotate in a single direction (I seemed to naturally want to do counter-clockwise), tightening every other bolt until you come back to where you started. Good practice probably dictates that you tighten them only a little at a time; I went around the set twice to get them to a good tightness.

The final step once the chainring is fully tightened is to increase the chain tension. Because the high tension points were the limiting factor in the wheel tension before, you should now tighten it up a little more. My technique for tightening the chain is also mostly from Sheldon Brown, but I’ll embellish his explanation a little more. The idea is that you want to shimmy the wheel back into the dropouts so the the tension on the chain doesn’t pull the whole thing back before you can tighten down the nuts on the axle. This is done by tightening one axle nut down, and then loosening the other, pulling it back, and tightening it.

I start on the non-drive side (presumably because it’s easier for the tensioned side to follow, not lead). This one is easier to pull back for me. Since I have the bike upside down, this is on the right side; I wrap my left fingers around the excess axle bolt length (there’s about 1/3 inch that extends past the frame and nut), and brace it with my thumb against the back of the dropout (this is underhand, since it’s hard to reach with a wrench when you do this overhand). I come around with the wrench and tighten the bolt.

On the other side, I switch hands. Since it takes more force on this side to get the tension to where you want it, positioning is key. I do the same as with the other side, not worrying too much about whether the wheel is straight or not (it shouldn’t be too far off, though), but just trying to pull it as much as I can. Once it is right, though I fiddle with the non-drive bolt to get the wheel perfectly straight.

Now I could appreciate just what a difference this work made. Previously, setting the crank spenning and letting it ride until friction stopped it was a pretty quick game. The pedals generally stopped in a single position, which was a point of chain binding. Now, the crank and wheel rotate long past that initial time and come to rest at a random point. Going out on the road gives the feel of the pedals pushing back much harder to the point that I scarcely feel I am working at lower RPM. I haven’t yet vanquished the sound (it seems like at this tension, the chain itself is making a lot of noise in the rear sprocket; I may have the chain too tight after all).

Well, it’s no silver bullet. If there’s anything I have learned about fixed gears so far, it is that you have to get the crank bolts just right, and check them frequently. There should not be any noise, and there should not be any binding of the chain. When I first got the repairs done, there developed an awful rattling in the chainring; it turns out the bolts were too long and weren’t able to be tightened enough. After a couple weeks riding around with a new set of properly sized bolts, the rattling came back. I got a wrench and discovered everything had come loose. I tightened, and the chainring went back to being almost totally quiet.

Well, never content, I tried to remember Sheldon Brown’s article on how to get the chainring dialed in. I only managed to remember about 80% of it however: I was tightening adjacent bolts (you know, NEVER do that?) and broke off the head of one from over-tightening. (Also, my approach to straightening the seating the chainring properly was all wrong.) A cheap problem, but very annoying when the bike is your primary mode of transit. Note to self, repeated: don’t do bike maintenance after bike shops close. However, I really understand the advice Brown offers to straighten out the chainring for whisper-quiet performance, and I’m excited to get my new bolts and get that puppy hummin’, as they say.

The other critical piece of maintenance I picked up from a repair shop guy is: oil your chain often. I went home to NY for a day and rode around the bike I had there: it was like riding a wet sock (whatever that means). I had severely over-lubed it last time, and it had picked up so much dirt that the chain was completely stiff. (As a side-note, going from fixed to free-wheel is really annoying.  I had a moment of panic when I needed to use the brakes before flying into traffic!). Last week, we cleaned the chain on a friend’s bike; the performance difference looking at her ride it was noticeable, let alone actually sitting on it! I want to clean up the hubs on that bike next.

Three weeks ago, I bought a fixed gear bike on Craigslist. I had been eying the offerings for a week already, and then I saw three postings on Saturday, and went out to see them. Given my eagerness to get into the sport, I didn’t want to have a delay and not get the bike that week, so the first one I saw seemed pretty good and I got it. I didn’t have too much qualms about it–probably a mistake, since I knew little about bikes and nothing but what I had read about fixed gears–because the owner seemed to be really into the sport, had the whole thing nicely styled, and seemed very interested in showing it to me. I figured if I didn’t like it, I could turn around and sell it right away, since it was at the bottom of the fixed gear bike market.

It was great. A conversion from and old bike dating to the 1970s it seemed, the parts were mostly original (a strike against, since they wear out). I didn’t really notice, since my bike at home is also mostly original, and works just fine; I’m not really one to pay for quality I can’t detect. It was fun riding around town at all hours in all places.

However, I started riding the bike to work, and then the problems started. Literally 500 feet out of the train station, I turned a corner after slowing down, and I heard a clink and then half a second later, the chain fell off. In case you don’t know anything about fixed gears, the chain should never, ever fall off. It should have no slack in it, and the only way for it to physically leave the cogs between which it is tensioned is for the mechanism to suffer serious mechanical failure. I pulled over and noticed a bolt had fallen out of the chain ring, which is the front gear. That was the clank I had heard.

No problem, I used the wrench in my flat-fix kit to reattach it. However, I noticed that the ring itself was bent, and it kicked the chain right off when I turned the crank. What happened was in the course of falling out, the bolt and chain applied extreme torque to the chain ring and put a lateral bump in it. I went back to the bike store by the train station, but it was closed. I asked a passerby for some help to get it back into ride-able condition; he lived a couple blocks away and I used his hammer to straighten out the kink as much as I could. I was back on the road, and proud of my improvisation.

No dice. Later, I noticed the bolts were coming loose from only a few miles of riding. Literally, they stuck up several millimeters having started out flush and tight. I took the bike into a shop, and when the bolts were lock-tite’d in, the bend reappeared. I should have replaced the chain ring almost immediately; instead, by waiting I got the bolts refastened and the misshape bent the entire crank, broke the chain on the bike, and unwound the rear cog (that might have been sloppiness on the part of the mechanic I went to as well.)

In the course of having this problem checked out, I discovered from the mechanic that the wheels were totally trash. The hubs were so decrepit that they wobbled and wasted enormous energy; going down the street became a very vibrating affair. I resolved to buy a new wheel, not yet realizing that the chain ring was a serious problem.

The first mechanic I went to picked up on most of the problems, but definitely was not knowledgeable about fixed gear bikes; I blame him for removing and then incorrectly reattaching the (converted) cog on the back, which then flew right off the wheel the following day.

The second mechanic I went to got my repair work. Although he was more knowledgeable, he wasn’t really an expert in the subject of fixed gears, or he didn’t care enough about his job to do it properly (I think it’s the former given our later conversations). We agreed he would replace every moving part except the pedals and the rear cog: the wheels, the chain, the crank and chain ring, and the bottom bracket. When I picked it up a week later, I found that he had changed the mechanical gain from 5.2 to 5.8, which may not sound like much, but man it was killer, and I detected it immediately (on sight, and then from riding it). He gave me a longer crank (with which I had a pedal strike almost immediately) and a much larger chain ring. I started with 40 teeth in front and 16 in back, 27″ wheels and 165 mm crank, and ended with 46 teeth in front, 16 in back, with 700c (680 mm diameter) wheels and 170 mm.

Not wanting to wait for a new order of mystery at the shop, nor to miss another weekend of riding, I went myself down to Harris Cyclery. I made up a spreadsheet with all the gains  on it, and found that I would be pretty much in the same spot I started in if I went with a 42×16 and 165 mm. I found the mechanic who helped me extremely helpful and knowledgeable; he dropped what he was doing (forcefully!) and was willing to listen to me, offer his opinion and guidance, give me the choices, and not make me feel clueless (which I mostly was).

Finally, I dropped the new parts off at the shop that still had my bike, and they changed out the parts. I went for a ride on it, and damn it is smooth. The gain feels the same now with the smaller chain ring and cranks, no anxiety in turns as with the 170’s, and smooth as a whistle (?). I am extremely excited to ride this puppy around, and I doubt if you’ll really see me tomorrow as a result except by coincidence as I ride up and down the street.

Anyway, the moral of the story is twofold. First, whenever you hire someone to do work, you must be proactive. Don’t be afraid to ask questions, sound stupid, and deliberate. Don’t put yourself in the situation of being in such a time crunch and with so little preparation that you’re at their mercy. This goes from buying the bike — I should have been more patient, and more knowledgeable — to getting the work done. Don’t feel like you owe them anything; it’s strictly a business arrangement.

Second, only have fixed gear work done at a shop known for fixed gears. A regular bike shop won’t do it justice.

Third, and this isn’t much of a moral, but bikes can really add up quickly in cost.

However, this is backward; trucks and other commercial vehicles have no alternative, and are the most needed of vehicles, and cars are the most destructive to pedestrian and transit alternatives. When the private automobile is allowed to thrive, it steals those marginal users from mass transit, lowering bus and train utilization. Streets are widened, made one-way, and streamlined to promote rapid car transit at the expense of pedestrians. Parking becomes an imperative at the expensive civic density. Trucks may be in nearly perfectly inelastic demand, but business will simply pass those costs on to their consumers in the city and lower quality of life and vitality within, something we can agree is totally counter-productive.

The proper alternative is one Jacobs proposes, and it makes inherent sense: make the city inhospitable to car traffic, and alternatives will be promoted. Reduce demand for private transportation. The core observation, and one that bears repeating is that transit is a nonlinear problem. This means that there is no fixed number of cars or even visitors to a city. There is no one story. Some come to shop, some to work, some to visit, some to make deliveries. The magnitude and frequency of these uses is a function of the city’s vitality, and the manner in which these activities are carried out is not predetermined for all.

That last point is where congestion pricing falls short. It discourages all economic activity; instead of gently nudging private drivers to take transit because it is both faster and cheaper, it tries to force out some users, thereby making private transit faster but much more expensive. At the same time, it makes necessary trips by trucks much more expensive, and therefore only increases costs, reducing city vitality. Deliveries and commercial uses should be accommodated.

Jacobs’ and William McGrath’s basic solution is to promote truck travel and discourage car travel by way of disruptive traffic engineering. Put in more two-way streets. Having poor signal timing. Reduce road width. Have more dead-ends. All of these things simultaneously benefit the pedestrian — the sole progenitor of economic activity — and discourage the casual and wanton user of the roads. Studies of road closures show that cars are not redirected, but instead they vanish. Their users either stop coming, or, more likely, they make use of alternatives. And given the high operating leverage of mass transit, this is a huge boon and makes it possible to run a proper mass transit system. August Belmont fervently resisted reducing crowding on his original IRT line because he understood that so well (and this is why only the city would build the IND lines to reduce crowding: they have no profit motive).

I am a little uneasy promoting truck travel, since as a biker, I fear them. The question is: do the statistics bear this out? Or am I actually afraid of trucks in congestion, a markedly different problem.

When reasonably necessary to avoid conditions (including, but not limited to, fixed or moving objects, vehicles, bicycles, pedestrians, animals, surface hazards, or substandard width lanes) that make it unsafe to continue along the right-hand curb or edge, subject to the provisions of Section 21656. For purposes of this section, a “substandard width lane” is a lane that is too narrow for a bicycle and a vehicle to travel safely side by side within the lane.

So, when there’s no shoulder, you should take up a lane. It’s that simple.

He [Irving M. Felt,Madison Square Garden Corporation president] questioned the architectural value of Penn Station, going as far as to say that “he believed that the gain from the new buildings and sports center would more than offset any aesthetic loss.”  (Later, when outcry over the station’s demolition reached a fever pitch, Felt went even further, saying, “Fifty years from now, when it’s time for [the new Madison Square Garden] to be torn down, there will be a new group of architects who will protest.” (25-26)

Further support for the Garden plan.

The Madison Square Garden Corporation received some public support for its development plans.  Two letters in the September 1962 issue of Progressive Architecture were from architects not in the least bit sorry to see Penn Station go. “The basic question is whether the Baths of Caracalla have ever been appropriate as a railroad ticketing center,” posited one.  The other harshly condemned the station as a “neoclassic behemoth” and insisted that it “…negates almost 1500 years of architectural progress.  As was the vogue of that era, majesty could only be achieved by bastardizing a Greek or Roman temple; ergo, a multitude of our banks, libraries, and museums look like residue from a Caligulæan invasion.”  Another
architect, writing to the New York Times,  called the station “grimy,” “old,” and “an eyesore,” claiming that “today we know that a railroad station need not look like a Roman bath in order to be good architecture.” (26)

The period rebuttal,

Carl Condit notes that the $116 million Madison Square Garden complex is a “prime candidat[e] for the most poverty-stricken architecture in New York — indeed, it is questionable whether the structures and enclosures can be regarded as architecture at all.” … “The interior space consists essentially of two parts, a large ticket lobby embracing a much greater area than is necessary for the moving traffic, and a combined waiting room and concourse that is an insult to the user: it is too small, too low, contains too few seats, and provides access to all train gates in such a way as to guarantee conflict and confusion.  The decor might be described as men’s room modern, and the food available in the restaurants ranges from unappetizing to unspeakable. (49)

A jab at Moses,

“We are an impoverished society. It is a poor society indeed that can’t pay for these amenities; that has no money for anything except expressways to rush people out of our dull and deteriorating cities. ” (38)

And Moses pops up again. (Morris was his hand-picked successor and lackey, and Moses was in charge of the 1964 World’s Fair, and saw Flushing Meadow as having the potential to be his crowning achievement).

In addition to the formal support by New York’s developers and businessmen, the Madison Square Garden Corporation counted on the tacit  cooperation of certain officials within the New York City government.  Chief among these supporters was Parks Commissioner Newbold Morris.  Seizing upon the opportunity to appear as a savior, Morris, who had not otherwise been involved with the project, announced in early 1962 that he had begun to formulate a plan to save some of Penn Station’s 84 Doric columns.  “He envisaged … a rectangular colonnade, surrounded by tall trees, with perhaps a fountain in the middle,” to appear in Flushing Meadow Park, where the New York World’s Fair would open in 1964. (27)

And again, the Moses-aligned Port Authority abdicated its responsibility for rails (when politicians began to call for toll-supported public authorities to subsidize rail transport, Moses worked with the Port Authority to tie up their surplus funds in projects).

But AGBANY’s platform, that Penn Station should be bought and operated by the Port Authority, was dealt a major setback only days after the group’s meeting with Wagner.  “The Port of New York Authority, which owns and operates other gateways to the city — bridges, tunnels, airports — does not believe it has the authority to take over and operate the station, as [AGBANY] propose[s],” reported the New York Times  on September 23, 1962.  “In any case, its officials have indicated they have no desire to do so.” (45)

However, the destruction of Penn Station did spur the Landmarks Preservation act, which saved Grand Central Terminal. This very case provided the first court challenge to the landmarks law by going all the way to the US Supreme court (page 56-7).

Other Quotes

Why is the Farley Post Office across the street from Penn Station (designed by the same architects, McKim, Mead, and White)?

After Penn Station opened, the United States government “took the opportunity to build a much-needed post office across the street on Eighth Avenue. The Pennsylvania’s trains carried about 40 percent of the mail originating in New York City,” so a post office directly over the Pennsylvania’s tracks (which ran underground all the way to Twelfth Avenue) would be efficient; (15-16)

Ironically, this connection seems to be the impetus for turning Farley into a new Penn Station. (a nearly-dead plan, seemingly without any friends in government, especially since David Patterson took over as governor. The sports arena is such a powerful lobby that I don’t think any Penn Station deal can get done today without them having a role in the immediate vicinity.)

…Amtrak learned that space might be available within the Farley [Post Office], which shares platforms and rail access with Penn Station, and decided to evaluate the feasibility of moving its rail terminal facility to the Farley Building. (61)

It seems that the claustrophobic, overcrowded main concourse in current Penn Station is from the original 1910 station, although that is a little unbelievable. (Forgotten-NY has a page on the vestiges of Penn Station.)

The main waiting room of Pennsylvania Station will be left as is, and special
facilities, such as ramps and arcades, will be built to permit ready access to the
sports and entertainment facilities for persons using either the Pennsylvania
Railroad or the Long Island Rail Road. (23)

More scathingly,

“Have the railroads so completely capitulated to the airlines that a series of low-ceilinged, concession-strewn rat mazes is the best gateway to New York which they now can offer?” (35)

Perhaps most scathingly,

One entered the city like a god… one scuttles in now like a rat. (Vincent Scully, Architecture and Urbanism, 1969)

From the pictures I see of Pennsy, the building is a temple: simply too much to comprehend, in a scale too large for humans. In other words, it served its designed purpose well.